Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/561570.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other
  Fandom:
      Dragon_Age
  Relationship:
      Fenris/Male_Hawke, Anders/Male_Hawke, Fenris/Isabela
  Character:
      Leto, Varania, Danarius, Hadriana, Fenris_(Dragon_Age), Isabela_(Dragon
      Age), Varric_Tethras, Male_Mage_Hawke, Anders_(Dragon_Age), Merrill_
      (Dragon_Age), Aveline_Vallen, Sebastian_Vael
  Additional Tags:
      Abuse, Angst, Dark, Drama, Harm_to_Children, Torture, Violence, Alcohol,
      Barebacking, Blood_and_Gore, Dreams_and_Nightmares, Mental_Health_Issues,
      POV_Third_Person_Omniscient, Explicit_Sexual_Content, Slavery, Trauma,
      Love, Complete
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-11-13 Completed: 2014-11-18 Chapters: 116/116 Words:
      645574
****** Ebony And Alabaster ******
by excelsis
Summary
     "And the wolf was bound in the rarest of bindings, woven by dwarves,
     and sealed by mages. But if freed, once free, will destroy
     everything, until it was cut down by the son of one the wolf killed."
     If this story is about anything, it’s love. Love of honor,
     compassion, and nobility. Love of bloodshed, pain, and others’
     suffering. Love of dance, family, and friends. Love of religion, sex,
     and politics. Love of joy; of fear; of hate. Love of passion. It’s
     about finding small things you can admire in someone you dislike.
     There is no such thing as evil, and the world is never that black and
     white. And we so rarely do the things we should.
     The story opens in Leto's third summer...
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Bleeding Sun *****
Chapter Summary
     Doom lurks in the air like a crow, and everyone feels its presence
     even if they cannot yet see it.
Chapter Notes
     Chapter Guide (For those of you who want to skip sections):
     Part One: Chapters 1-15 This section is when Leto is a small child,
     detailing how he is enslaved, primarily from the eyes of his mother.
     Part Two: Chapters 16-20 This section details Leto growing up and
     learning how to fight.
     Part Three: Chapters 21-44 This section is when Leto decides he has
     to win the Tourney to free his mother and sister, and about the
     Ritual.
     Part Four: Chapters 45-65 This section is about Fenris’ life as a
     slave to Danarius.
     Part Five: Chapters 66-81 Fenris' travels before he gets to Kirkwall.
     Part Six: Chapters 82-End In-game time and a little post-game.
                                   Part One
                Before the city, the golden sun was setting, its warm light
casting a soft glow to the foggy land and reflecting off of the glass windows
and mosaics in the city, but also creating long dark shadows in its wake—shapes
that would twist into dragons and demons.  It was at once beautiful and
frightening, and in so many ways felt like the last day on earth.
                “They’ll be here by tomorrow,” Calias said, looking out at the
empty horizon, leaf-green eyes squinting against the sun.
                Mieta’s fingers wrapped around her husband’s arm, seeking
comfort as well as his full attention.  “Do… Do you suppose we should have gone
north with the others?” she asked apprehensively—a question she asked herself
at least once a day lately, as the time drew nearer.
                He looked back at her, and smiled so warmly that it even
reflected in his eyes, as if nothing in the world were wrong.  She found
herself wanting to smile back on instinct.  His smile had always tugged upon
her soul like that.  She hadn’t loved him when they had been wed; he had seemed
so austere.  As it turned out, she had intimidated him into silence
unwittingly.  After she was pregnant with their firstborn, and she was sick, he
became very attentive.  One day, he had come back from a scouting mission, and
she had presented him with their son; he had presented her with a bouquet of
wildflowers he had picked during the mission, and her heart had softened to his
thoughtfulness.
                He put his hand against her slightly swollen belly, and kissed
her gently on the mouth.  “It would be dangerous to make that journey, my
love,” he told her, his voice a soft whisper.  She felt like all the world was
right when she looked into his leaf green eyes, like nothing in the world could
ever come between them.  Tomorrow, they would weather the day, and everything
would be all right.
                But that wasn’t how it was, and defeat lurked inevitably in the
air all around them like the fog, so thick you could almost pluck it from the
air.  They were outnumbered—badly.  They were alone; the branch of the Antaam
stationed closest to them, the one harrying the Tevinters in Seheron, was still
weeks away and would never make it in time to save them (many said they had
never intended to come), and there was nothing they could do.  Infuriating,
considering that the army could have moved to help them, but they had not. 
Weeks ago, they had been warned that they were coming, and some had fled in
fear.  At first, the others had laughed.  Surely their city was too small to
warrant their attention?  Surely the Antaam would arrive before it was ever a
problem?
                But that had been weeks ago.  Others had continued to flee as
their impending demise came down upon them.  Others had remained resolute: 
They were too stubborn, or had faith in their warriors.  They didn’t believe it
could happen—does anyone believe their doom is coming before it is upon them? 
They would not abandon their post.  They were invincible; and they were going
to win.  The Tevinters had been breaking their teeth against the walls of
Schavalis for years now, and they had never fallen.  They had always held fast,
an outpost and haven for decades since it first fell.  But the fist of the
Antaam had never been so far away, called to where they were needed; one of
their own ports was under siege and they had to break the siege.  Of course
they were more important than a mostly sovereign town.
Schavalis had an interesting history, reminiscent but not quite like the Free
Cities.  It was, once, part of the Tevinter Imperium but war left it ravaged
and for some time all but abandoned by the Imperium.  Years ago, it had been
assaulted by the Qunari forces.  The histories spoke that the siege lasted
three days, and by the third, the city burned.  The Tevinters escaped in their
ships or horseback if they had to, but they had no room for their slaves and
anyone they deemed too unimportant to be granted life, who were left behind at
the mercy of the Qunari; it had been a liberation of sorts.  That had happened
little over a generation ago.  Now, it bordered on the territory the Qunari
controlled, but was overall considered a free city with its sympathies toward
the Qunari; the Qunari did not have anyone to spare to maintain control over it
at the time.  There was some talk and dispute over officially joining the Qun,
but the city officials never seemed to stop bickering about it and were
reluctant to give up their “sovereignty”.
In reality, it was a feigned sovereignty, but only a rare few actually knew and
acknowledged that.  They had convinced the Qunari, though it wasn’t easy, to
begin conversion slowly, though it was only beginning to take deeper root.  The
Qunari were rarely so patient, but even they had seen that forced conversion
wasn’t working every time and there were those in their own people who
suggested a different way might be better.  Their leaders had accepted this, as
they had seen in the past for themselves how peoples of other cultures and
races would go to them, given time, of their own free will; Schavalis was a
trial of sorts.  It also helped that forced conversion generally roused the
attention of the Chantry—and that only led to more war.  The Chantry, for the
larger part, was content to ignore the Qunari if all they did was attack
Tevinter, but Schavalis was different since it declared sovereignty.
People had begun to notice, to accept.  In a few more years, it might just
simply become natural.  One of the biggest arguments was that the language
would be difficult to pick up and learn, more because many Qunari do not speak
the common tongue than anything else, so it would be required that everyone
learn their language, so they might speak the Qun as it was meant to be
spoken.  There were a few Andrastians in Schavalis who were starkly in
opposition to this, but Schavalis’ former allegiance to the Imperium had left
its Chantry a ghost of what it meant in other countries.
                Mieta stared at Calias, wanting so desperately to believe him,
but all she could think of was the death that marched on the horizon.  They
would be in sight by morning, a dark death brought by the dawn.  And, with the
flat of the land, they would see them march all day, slowly.  The waiting alone
would drive her mad, she felt.  It was rumoured that they would attack at dawn
the day after tomorrow, when the light was in the defender’s eyes.
                “You didn’t answer me,” she insisted, taking his callused hand
in hers.  It was strong, usually, from work, from a sword.  Today, it felt that
her terror overpowered his calm and his strength.
                But even so, his calm did not yield.  “The walls have never
fallen, not since they were built,” he told her, still evading her.  She looked
at him, her eyebrows raising in disbelief.  He thought they were going to die. 
At best, that would be true.  At worst… it didn’t bear thinking of.
                She looked back, at the town below them.  She looked back at
him, her eyes watering in terror.  They could run.  Her husband couldn’t; he
would be considered a deserter, but no one would stop the helpless refugees. 
It had become so bad that they had drafted anyone who could hold a sword or bow
into the militia, and those ones would likely balk once the gates fell.
                He must have guessed her thoughts from her expression, for he
said, “My dear, if you ran, you would be alone in the wilderness.”
                She swallowed hard.  But if she ran, she might preserve her
life, and their child’s.  Her hand touched her belly.  Her throat still felt
dry.  “So I should be alone in our house, listening to the gates breaking and
the sound of men dying?” she asked him.
                He didn’t know what to say, so he pulled her close against him
in his arms.  It wasn’t private.  There were others on the wall too, but they
gave the two some semblance of privacy by looking away.
                She could say nothing more, so did not.  She kissed him, and
headed down the stairs.  The walls seemed strong.  Impenetrable even.  Tall,
thick, something she had seen all her life.  It had been a constant throughout
her life, something solid she felt she could rely on.  Would that be gone too?
She continued on.  Everyone else seemed to feel what she had felt.  It was so
quiet.  Shops closed early, and people kept their children close and shut
inside.  Everything was so eerily hushed, she reflected as she looked around
the street.
                There should be people here—a few scattered Qunari on occasion
(mostly those on scouting missions stopped to resupply or even Tal-Vashoth when
they dared), elves, humans, a couple of surface dwarves too.  They should be
selling their wares, laughing, telling stories.  They should be living their
lives.  This shouldn’t have to be.  Nothing like this should have to be.
                The Qun taught that if death was visited upon someone, that
that is their fate.  Was it their fate to die?  She didn’t want to die.  Didn’t
want anyone here to die.  Why couldn’t they just leave them alone?  They were a
peaceful farming village.  They supplied the Qunari with food, occasionally
warriors, mages when they cropped up, but they had never, never actively
fought.  She couldn’t understand what would drive a person to want to slaughter
innocents.  She couldn’t imagine a world where those people could be allowed to
exist.
                They denied everything of the Qun, and the Maker.  Why?  Mieta
couldn’t understand it.  Growing up here, she had been taught both ways, and
allowed to come to her own decisions.  There was never harm in knowledge, after
all.  She still wasn’t sure what she believed, and wasn’t sure it even mattered
any longer.
                She stopped walking, not suddenly but more as if she had
forgotten to continue her path.
                A shutter in the distance banged shut, and it echoed—echoed!—in
the lonely streets.  The sun was just beginning to spill its fires across the
distant sky, and it was already so…
                Abandoned, she thought.
                She looked around herself, as if seeing this place for the
first time.  In her mind’s eye, she saw the buildings ablaze, their smoke
blocking out the light of the morning’s sun.  The river would run red with
blood, and bodies.  It would be a city of decay, and death.  Crows and ravens
would flock to feast upon the carrion, where the bodies would simply be left to
rot in the elements as a warning to all…
                Calias had always said she was over-imaginative, but the
thought only caused a deep pang in her gut.  What if she was right?
                She could not bear to think of it, yet the thoughts still came,
and she wished they would stop.  She could not think like that; believing in
something could make it true—her Ma had always said that, both as a hopeful
wish for her to carry, and as a warning.
                The cawing of a crow startled her enough to jump.  She looked
up at the dark bird, perched on someone’s roof.  It watched her curiously from
its perch, clacking in a way that sounded to her like chortling at her
misfortune.  If she had wings, she could just fly away, after all.  More to her
folly; she did not.  The bird twisted its head to one side, its black shiny
eyes staring down at her.  She felt like it was waiting.  She had heard that
the birds went for the eyes first.
                Where are the gulls?  The noisy seabirds were always about,
even in the evening, looking for scraps.  She didn’t even see the pigeons, and
that bothered her more than anything else.  She looked back up at the crow. 
The birds know more than we do.  Or they just have more sense.
                She hesitated at the street she should take to get home, but
instead turned down another passage.
                The twist of the road led her through the town, and she was
conscious that she was heading downhill slowly.  The town sat on two large
hills, with a wall surrounding it, and even the harbor was cut off by the
wall.  In the past, it had been more to ward out predators, but with the war
going on, the fortification had been added to, again and again until they
became the high, strong walls they were now.
                They can’t be breached, she tried to remind herself.  The walls
were thicker than she was tall, and filled with sand.  The doors were bound in
iron.  Atop the walls were archers of skill, and boiling oil and tar.  They had
held fast in times past, against pirates, against raiders, and armies.  They
should hold fast now.
                But they had no mages.  No, the Qun dictated, and they gave
them away.  Oh, there might be one apostate—perhaps two at most—hiding in the
town, but she doubted it.  More than that, whoever they were would not dare to
reveal their existence unless it was already too late, and it would be nothing
but an act of desperation.  They would have waited too long to help—too little,
too late.
                She stopped at the market square, looking up at the statue.  It
was a work of smooth granite by a craftsman of great skill, one that had been a
slave years ago, then a freed man, and had died that way long ago.  The warrior
was clothed in magnificent armor, poised, dignified.  His face was hidden by
his great helm, and the armor and the helm kept all from guessing anything more
about him.  The artist may have intended him human, or elven, or even dwarven;
it was taller than a Qunari.
                The Warrior faced south, in stark opposition to the unknown
forces that would seek to suppress him, and the positioning was no
coincidence.  He watched the south, ever vigilante, never yielding.  He was a
figure of strength amidst the weakness all around that she felt all too clearly
in the air.  He was a figure of light amidst this darkness.  And, she felt,
life though he possessed none.  Sometimes, a thing didn’t need to have
something to make that thing real to someone else.
                Seeing the Warrior gave her a sense of resolve, a
determination.  She bowed her head for a moment, whispering a silent prayer to
the Maker for deliverance.  But even as she said the words, she knew they fell
to deaf ears.  The Maker had abandoned all of them years ago, even the Chant of
Light dictated that bit.  He had never heard her prayers before, or anyone’s,
she imagined.
                Why would he start listening now?
                Perhaps the Qunari were right; if it was meant to be, it would
happen.  Such is the way of the Qun.  It was an almost comforting thought, but
not one she liked.
                Her path led her down into the valley.  Superstition and a
sense of propriety kept it away, but it had become vast and sprawling out of
necessity.
                She went past the creaking gate, lost in her thoughts of
divinity.  She passed among the headstones, some so old they were crumbling,
others growing lichen.  There were a few larger monuments rising out of the
mists, but most small headstones.  She saw flowers on a few of the graves, and
seashells on others.  She saw crumbling tokens that had meant something in life
to the deceased, that meant nothing now to her.  They were forgotten, and lost,
except by their families and those that loved them.  And even so, they didn’t
care; they were dead and cremated.
                She found the small bend her family lay.  She knelt before her
parents’ grave, not knowing any words she could give them, nor what she could
ask.  Looking at their graves, she felt a sense of sadness in her heart.
                “I envy you, Mother,” she said gently.  The wind rustled the
dried grass, lifting her dark hair.  She tucked a lock of it behind one pointed
ear, twisting it in her fingers like she had when she was a young girl.  She
swallowed, thinking of the encroaching army.  “You never doubted if your
children would know where you lay to rest.”
                She touched her pregnant belly, trying to swallow past the
dryness she felt in her throat.  There was so much wrong with this world, and
it would not be content to leave them alone.
                Mieta clasped her hands, and resolved to pray.  Whether anyone
heard her or not, she felt better for having done it.
                When she finished, she made her way back up the hill, down the
streets, until she came to her street.
                She had left Leto at the neighbor’s for her visit, and they had
a daughter born not two weeks after he, and, being neighbors, had grown up
friends.  She hoped that they had locked them in the house instead of letting
them in the garden, though she had little hope for that.
                She went up to the house with the faded red door.  There was a
stain on it that to her looked rather like a ram’s head.  She rapped gently on
the door, and only a touch louder after a moment and there was no answer.
                She heard Sharall before the woman came to the door,
apologizing all the way.  The door opened with a modest squeak of complaint. 
She made a face at the sound.
                “Inrir!  You said you fixed this door!” she complained, calling
back over her shoulder at her husband somewhere inside the house.
                “Fool woman—of course I did.  The door just knows more than you
do,” he called back through the house.
                Like the birds.  But Mieta forced a warm smile on her lips,
though she feared that it did not touch her soft hazel eyes.  Sharall rolled
her eyes at her husband, but stepped aside to let Mieta inside.  She wiped her
feet gingerly on the matt.  Sharall closed the door behind her, and locked it,
she noticed.
                “Would you like tea?” she asked, wringing her hands nervously.
                Everyone was nervous.  Tea would do her some good.  “Please,”
she said.  She followed Sharall into the kitchen area, where she already had a
kettle of water on the stove.  Mieta had a seat as her hostess prepared the
tea.  The kettle was whistling before she was finished, and she poured three
cups.  One, she explained, for her husband if he ever decided to be respectful
to their guest and say hello.
                “How has my son been?” Mieta asked conversationally.  She held
her cup in her hands, grateful of its warmth and the pleasant aroma of the
steam on her face, even though the tea needed more time to steep before it was
worth drinking.
                Sharall laughed gently.  “He’s darling,” she replied.  “I love
having him, and Lura is just smitten with him—you should see them.”
                Mieta found herself smiling in spite of herself.  The muscles
felt good to use.  “And he’s as oblivious as ever, I assume?”
                The other elf took a tentative sip of her tea.  “As ever,” she
agreed.  Both sets of parents had been discussing having their children wed
when they came of age.  Arranged marriages were much less complicated than
leaving it up to their children to decide, after all, and the Qun taught that
it was much more efficient besides.  Well, the Qun didn’t actually condone
marriage as a concept, but the Qunari did agree that if they had to have
marriage, it shouldn’t be up to the children.  Though, they had also agreed not
to tell either of them for a few more years yet, for both their sakes.  Let
them enjoy each other’s company before they learn that they must tolerate it
the rest of their lives.
                If they lived long enough to be wed.
***** Shadow *****
Chapter Summary
     In Which Leto and Lura are in the Garden.
                “No!” the girl cried.  “Oh, please come down, Lady, please!” 
Lura stood at the base of the trunk, forlorn and miserable.  The apple tree
wasn’tthat tall, but she couldn’t reach, and she certainly couldn’t climb!  Her
lower lip quivered as the little ball of fur teetered on a branch.  The kitten
mewed piteously, trapped by its own curiosity.
                She never should have taken Lady outside to play.  Mama said
that the kitten wanted to climb into trees, and she had snuck her out in the
folds of her dress anyway.  Oh, she just couldn’t tell Mama!  Her little fists
balled at her sides.  She felt like flopping down in the grass and giving up. 
Lady was too scared to climb down, and Lura was too scared to climb up after
her.
                She stared up at her kitten, reaching her arms out toward her,
wishing the cat would just jump down into the safety of her arms.  She was
scared for Lady.  She shouldn’t be outside on a night like tonight, after all.
                “If you keep doing that, she’ll never come down,” Leto chided
her.  He was sitting on the little bench Papa had made, his legs dangling over
the side, feet not quite long enough to touch the ground yet.  He had been
watching her beg and plead with the cat intermittently, much more interested in
the bird’s nests, terrorizing the fish in the pond, and trying to catch the
frogs in the garden.
                Lura turned to him, lips curled in a pout, brows drawn down in
a petulant glare.  Her little fists planted on her hips.  “Well, what would you
do, Mr. Smarty-pants?”
                He smirked.  “Leave her there—she’ll come down eventually.”
                She stared at him, aghast at the idea.  “No!” she exclaimed
after a moment of stunned silence.  “She’s my baby!  I can’t leave her out in
the dark all alone.  What about owls?”
                He glanced up at the kitten, a ball of pale grey fur lost
amidst the branches.  He could hear it mewling occasionally.  “Um… Well, why
would anything want to eat Lady?  She’s more fluff than meat anyway—Hey!”
                She heaved a convenient rock at him.  He ducked, and it hit the
garden wall behind him instead.  She stuck her tongue at him.  He made a face. 
“Meanie,” she called him.
                His mouth twisted into a frown.  “If you’d ask me nicely I
might go get her, y’know.”
                She perked up at that, and walked over to him.  She batted her
long lashes up at him, just as sweet as you please.  Her bow lips curved into a
flattering smile, her eyes growing wide and hopeful.  “Oh, please—pretty
please—would you go rescue my kitten from the apple tree, my prince?”
                He started to scowl, then decided to make it a game.  He hopped
off of the bench, going to one knee, taking one of her hands in both of his. 
She giggled.  “And when I’ve rescued your kitten, princess, what would you give
your knight?”
                She scowled at this.  “You’re ruining it!  I want a prince!”
                He made a face.  “What do they ever do?  Knights slay dragons
and fight in tournaments and—“
                The kitten’s desperate plea for help cut him off.  Lura said,
“I would give my knight my hand in marriage, and make him a prince.”  This
seemed to appease both of them.  He climbed to his feet, and trotted over to
the base of the tree.  He seized it up, trying to work out the best way to
climb it.  He was very determined for a three-year-old, though elves are very
limber and acrobatic by birthright.  He found a bucket nearby, and carried it
to the tree.  He overturned it and climbed onto it so he could reach the first
low-hanging branch.  He gripped it tightly, near the trunk of the tree, and
pulled himself up.
                Lura watched from the ground with a growing sense of
apprehension.  What if he fell?  Or just knocked Lady out of the tree?  Would
she get hurt?  Would he get hurt if he fell?  She began to worry if she
shouldn’t have just told Mama.  If he got hurt, it would be much worse than
just getting in trouble for disobeying.
                She bit her lower lip, watching him climb up higher.  Lady had
never liked him overmuch though, and in her fright, she scampered away from
him, climbing out on to thinner limbs to evade his grasp.  A gasp escaped her
lips as the kitten tottered.  It squeaked, but Leto pursued it mercilessly. 
One small hand reached out toward it.  The kitten spat, regained its balance,
and bristled at the approaching hand.  Its ears laid back.
                “Watch out!” she called from below, but too late.  The kitten
raked its claws across his hand.  He hissed in sudden pain, recoiling briefly,
before darting his hand back out.  It skittered away to a lower branch, and he
climbed after it.  In its fright, it kept perching precariously on thin
branches, and sometimes had trouble finding footing.  During these moments,
there was a brief window of time in which the animal would teeter,
concentrating more on not falling than avoiding Leto’s reaching hands.
                She watched as his hand grasped a patch of grey fur, and yanked
the complaining creature off of the branch.  It spat furiously, and she knew
its little claws were sharp as it tried to claw up his hands and arms.  He
grumbled something, but she couldn’t quite make out what exactly.
                He looked about himself, then shrugged and dumped the kitten
down the front of his tunic, belted at the waist, it created a sort of pouch
for it, leaving his arms free.  He began the treacherous climb back down,
carefully, and occasionally flinching from what she imagined were tiny claws.
                He dropped to the ground, bits of twigs stuck in his dark
hair.  Looking none too happy, he reached into his tunic and unceremoniously
dumped the little ball of fur and claws into Lura’s anxious outstretched arms. 
The treacherous creature started purring almost immediately, rubbing its head
against her chin, grateful after its ordeal.
                Leto, on the other hand, glared at it morosely.  But Lura
smiled as if nothing could ever go wrong in the world, holding her tight.  “Oh,
Lady…” she breathed in relief.  “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
                Leto crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow.
                Lura remained blissfully unaware.  She spun about in a circle,
her skirts lifting about her knees.  They settled when she stopped.  “Oh, you
poor thing—you must have been so scared!” she went on, utterly oblivious.
                The boy’s lips pursed into a dissatisfied frown.
                “Was it scary stuck in that tree with a big monster grabbing
you?” she cooed.
                At that, Leto exploded, “Monster!?”
                She looked up at him, as if just having taken notice of his
existence.  “Oh, thank you for rescuing Lady,” she said quickly, and went back
to cooing over her kitten.
                He threw his hands up in the air, giving up on the matter.  He
stomped by her, grumbling something about “stupid girls and kittens.”  She
smiled to herself, rubbing the kitten’s little head.  She turned to her friend,
calling, “Leto.”  She smiled sweetly at him, eyes all for him.
                He turned his head, still looking just as displeased as
before.  She giggled, stepped closer, and kissed him gently on the cheek.  She
stepped back in time to avoid him shoving her away.  He wiped at his cheek as
if it were mud.  He made a face.  “Why’d ya do that?” he complained.
                She stared at him admonishingly.  “That’s what a real lady does
when a man does something nice for her.”
                His face twisted into a sour expression.  “Well, I’m never
doing something nice for a lady ever again!” he insisted, dashing away before
she got any ideas.  She scowled after him, shaking her head in despair, as if
she had some secret enlightenment that he did not.  Her auburn curls bounced as
she marched to the door.  She let her kitten into the house and quickly shut it
after her.  She chased after Leto, but didn’t see him.  She looked around
herself despairingly.
                “Leto?” she called, feeling alone.  She looked up at the sky. 
It was getting dark.  She took a nervous step back.  The shadows seemed so much
deeper, darker.  They seemed like they could hold maleficar and abominations in
their shadows, and other monsters.  Every rustle of the wind to her ears
suddenly sounded like something malevolent coming to devour her.  She felt her
heart race in her chest, pounding in her ears like a drum.  She looked about
herself.  Maybe she should go back inside?  She looked back toward the door to
the house.  It seemed so far, and there were so many shadows…
                She had heard the adults talking, whispering as if she couldn’t
hear them.  They said things, things that scared her.  They spoke of war, and
battle.  They spoke of things she didn’t understand, but things that frightened
her nonetheless.  They said that something was coming on the horizon, something
bad.  In the shadows, it felt like it could be all about her now.
                “Leto?” she tried again, now feeling desperate.  Something
touched her shoulder, and she jumped with a yelp of fright, whirling to face
it.  She was met with his grinning face, and he howled with laughter.  Her
hands fisted at her sides.  “Oh, you’re so mean!”  She kicked him in the shin,
and he barely seemed to notice.  She angrily stomped away, suddenly no longer
worried about the shadows.  They were just shadows after all.
                His laughter trailed behind her, but stopped after a moment or
two.  “Lura!” he cried, chasing after her.  They weren’t allowed in the garden
alone, after all.  She stomped up to the door, still mad at him.  She turned
and glared at him.  He frowned, not at all sure of what to do.  “It was…  I was
just joking.”
                She stuck her tongue out at him, crossing her arms angrily. 
She huffed, looking away.  “Hmph.”
                He started to roll his eyes, then stopped.  “Fine—I’m sorry I
scared you.”
                She stared at him for a moment or two, trying to judge if he
were really sincere.  His pretty green eyes were soft, not unkind, and so full
of life and promise.  She didn’t know how she could truly stay angry with him. 
“Well…”  She tried to be angry anyway, but he was looking at her with such big
puppy eyes that she couldn’t help but smile shyly.  “Oh, all right.  Let’s go
inside—it’s getting cold.”
                “Is not,” he countered, but got the door anyway.  As she passed
inside, she glanced back over her shoulder at the encroaching shadows.  The
garden looked like an entirely different place in the dark.
 
 
***** The Horns *****
Chapter Summary
     In which the bells of disaster begin to chime...
                Sharall of course invited them for dinner, and Mieta could
think of no good reason not to stay and enjoy the company of others for a touch
longer.  The children kicked each other’s feet under the table until the adults
put a stop to it.  They weren’t mad at each other; quite the opposite, in
fact.  Children will be children, after all. 
As her son sat beside her, she couldn’t help but pick all the bits of twigs out
of his hair, much to his chagrin.  He tried to dodge her hands, but she would
patiently wait until he went back to eating or kicking Lura’s feet, and took
the opportunity to pick another bit of tree out of his dark hair.  She swore
her son would be happily content to never bathe sometimes; boys will be boys. 
Though, she much preferred him spending time with Lura as opposed to some of
the other neighbor boys his age.  When he did that, he would come home
completely covered in mud most times, and even brought home a frog once or
twice, a small garden snake once too.
                Mieta attempted to help clean up, but Sharall badgered her into
sitting back down.  The two women talked, of mundane things mostly, while the
children listened in the other room, in rapt attention, as Inrir told them a
story—he was an excellent storyteller.
                Mieta glanced into the room over her shoulder in a lull in
conversation.  Inrir was making gestures as he talked, whispering when the
story called for quiet, and his voice boomed with the tale as necessary.  Lura
held Lady in her lap, and she sat on the floor, eyes wide with wonder.  Leto
lay on the floor, looking up at Inrir, but as if he weren’t really seeing
them.  He was living out the story more in his mind; he didn’t need all of the
gestures and effects.  As a girl, Mieta had been much the same; whatever she
dreamed up in her mind was always better than anything the storyteller could
try to paint with words.
                She wished she could dream up a different reality.  One without
this approaching battle.  She wanted to watch her children grow up, and get
married, and have children of their own.  She feared the next few days.
                A hand touched her arm gently, and she jumped, but it was only
Sharall.  The elf smiled down at the other.  “It will be all right,” she said. 
“We must not give in to despair.”
                Mieta could only shake her head.  How could she not give in to
the despair that was all around them?  Even the children could sense it; she
heard it in their uncertain laughter.  Despair clutched at her heart like a
cancerous thing and only crept in deeper, spreading its deadly touch to all it
came to.
                “I fear that despair is all we have left,” she whispered after
a moment of silence.  Sharall didn’t know what to say.  Mieta rose to her
feet.  “It’s late; I must get Leto to bed.”
                Sharall caught her sleeve before she left the room.  She looked
cross.  “Don’t you dare let Leto see you like this,” she hissed.  “You’re the
adult—act like it.”
                Mieta blinked as if she had been struck.  Act like what?  What
was she doing?  Giving in to her despair.  Her son would sense it.  She had to
be the adult, she had to be a pillar of strength and support to her son.  Else,
she was no mother at all.  She composed herself, nodded with thanks to her
friend.  “Thank you, Sharall.  I needed to hear that.”
                Sharall’s hand dropped away at her side.  “Don’t we all.  Be
safe.”
                “You too.”  Mieta hugged her farewell, and a part of her
wondered if it would be the last time.  They were all going to die, or worse. 
Her mouth felt dry at the prospect.  There was still a bit of tea left in her
cup.  It was cold by now, but welcome when she drained the cup.  She swallowed
her cold lump of fear and walked out into the parlor as if nothing at all was
wrong.  “Darling, it’s time to go.”
                “The story isn’t finished yet,” he complained, but began to
rouse from his spot on the floor.
                “You’ve heard the tale,” she told him, beckoning for him to
rise.  Lura clasped his hand as he passed, and he squeezed her hand back.
                “Bye-bye,” she called over her shoulder.  The others said their
farewells.
                As they walked back to their house, Mieta asked, “Did you have
fun?”
                He glanced back at the house with the red door, spying the
garden behind it through a small alley—just a glimpse in passing.  He looked
back up at his mother.  “We played in the garden, and Inrir taught us a game.”
                “What game?” she said, her real thoughts elsewhere.
                Her son either didn’t notice her tone of voice, or chose not to
acknowledge it.  He shrugged.  “Well—he made chores into a game.  We had to
fill a bucket, with water from the pond.  We each had a bucket, and cup, and
had to race back and forth to fill it with the cups.”
And probably got water all over themselves as a result.“What did you two do
after the game, when you were soaked to the bone?  I bet you’d look cute in
Lura’s dresses,” she went on.
                Leto fumed.  “I wore one of Inrir’s shirts—tunics--until my
clothes were dry, and we played inside.”  His eyes wandered off to the corner
of their small front garden.  There was a tiny grave marker, and that was what
he was looking at.  He sensed the despair and impending death, just like the
animals.
                A bird was in that grave, she remembered.  Leto’s cousin on
their father’s side had come over to visit, and his father had given them both
a sling shot.  The two had ran off happily to play, and had had a pretty good
time shooting at birds in the yard, until one of them actually killed one.  The
game had seemed fun, but when the two boys saw the tiny crushed body of the
sparrow, they had both fallen deathly silent.
                Ah, their first encounter with death, Mieta thought.  One
moment, the bird was alive and well, the next dead and cold, and the two had
witnessed it and caused it.  It was one thing to talk about something,
something else to do it.
                She unlocked the door, and stopped and looked down at him when
she saw him still staring at the grave.  “Leto?” she called to him.
                He looked up at her, slowly, as if being pulled from deep
thoughts.  What deep thoughts could a toddler have?  “Mama… are we going to
die?” he asked her.
                She felt her eyes threaten to water, a lump sticking in her
throat.  She didn’t know what to say.  She couldn’t answer him.  She just
couldn’t bear it.  She said nothing at all, and lifted him up, off the ground,
holding him close to her.  She wished she could hold him close to her forever,
and keep him safe forever.  She would do anything to keep her son from falling
into harm, do anything to keep him safe.  And she feared that she could do
nothing to prevent either from befalling him.
                What trials lay in his future?
                “Mama, don’t cry,” she heard him whisper as his little arms
wrapped around her neck.  She hadn’t realized that she had begun to cry.  And
he shouldn’t be comforting her.  A child should never comfort their parent.
                She sniffed, cleared her throat, and swiped at her eyes with
one sleeve, holding her son in the other arm.  She opened the door, and carried
him through.  She kicked it shut uncaringly, like she was always yelling at him
not to do.
                “You slammed the door!” he admonished her.
                She laughed, all her fears and grief forgotten for just a
moment, and she wished it would stay that way for an eternity.  She kept
laughing, then, desperately trying to never let go of the moment.  She swung
him around, dancing around the room, all the while laughing in the dark, and
soon he was laughing too.
                She sang when she couldn’t laugh any longer, for her fear. 
High, happy notes, and songs that were silly, all the while continuing to
dance.  She had always loved to dance, and she danced about the room with her
son, her graceful feet spinning in never-ending circles, figures, complicated
steps and simple ones alike.  “You’re getting a bath tonight,” she informed him
in a sing-song voice as she danced into another room.  She fervently hoped her
gift of dance would be passed to at least one of her children.
                He made a face.  “It’s late—don’t I need to go to bed?”
                “Nonsense.  Bedtime is for babies,” she told him, setting him
down on the floor.  “Help me with the water, will you?”  While he tried to
escape this chore, she naturally wouldn’t allow it, and he grudgingly helped
her haul water at the late hour.
                They put the water in the copper-plated tub and she had him
help stoke a fire under it to heat it, and while waiting, she pulled her child
up in her lap, listening to the night.  He yawned, and she rested her cheek
against the top of his head.  It was as if… by staying awake the night would
stretch longer and she could hold on to the precious things in her life for
that much longer.  Carefully, she tended the bath and sent Leto to get the
soap.  When he had taken longer than he should have, she went to look for him. 
She knew he had gone in to the supply room, because he had left the door ajar,
but the soap was still there.  She felt a ghost of a smile touch her lips, her
eyes shining with adoration for her mischievous child, but she made her voice
mock-angry.  “Le-to?” she called.  “Where’d you go?”
                She listened for some kind of response.  Three-year olds
weren’t known for stealth.  She heard a very muffled shuffling noise, around
the corner.  She wandered from the supply closet, and banged about a bit in the
kitchen, then tip-toed round the corner.  She heard it again, and, triumphant,
pulled the cabinet door open.
                “No!” he cried in alarm as she reached toward him.  She caught
him as he tried to escape.  She picked him up with ease.  He continued to
struggle, so she grinned maliciously and tossed him over one shoulder.  His
legs kicked, and he continued to yell as if the water was poison, but not so
loudly as to disturb the neighbors, or she would have given him a swat.
                She picked up a towel with her free hand, paying no heed to her
son’s kicking legs.  She hummed to herself to help drown out the sound of his
complaints as she went to fetch the soap.  She knelt and set him down on the
floor.  She snatched onto his collar as he tried to bolt again.
                “I don’t need a bath!” he insisted.
                She kissed him on the cheek, and pretended not to hear his
complaints as she unbelted his tunic.  He struggled, but not overmuch; he knew
better, he just didn’t like it.  When she had stripped off his clothes, she
held on to his wrist with one firm hand, and tested the water with the other. 
It had cooled enough by now.  She had to let go of him to roll up her sleeves,
but a glare kept him rooted to the spot.  She picked him up, and he kicked more
and tried harder to escape, but she had both hands on him, and she shoved him
into the tub before he could manage.  He crossed his arms, indignant.  She
giggled, and splashed him with the water.  He made a face, then grinned, and
splashed her back.
                She didn’t normally allow such nonsense in the house, but…
tonight…  She splashed, and laughed, and her son had her dress absolutely
soaked by the time they had both stopped.  She contemplated just peeling it
off, but, no; it was all right.  Mieta picked up the cake of soap and attacked
her son with it, making monster noises as she tickled him.  She dunked him
under, and he came up gasping.  She smirked from the edge of the tub.
                He scowled at her.  “Mama!” he complained.
                She shoved him playfully.  “When you have children, you can
dunk them too,” she told him.  He seemed thoughtful at that, then splashed her
for revenge.  She hauled him out of the tub, and toweled him off.  She shooed
him off to his room to dress in his nightclothes.  She mopped up the spilled
water on the floor, sighing when she saw that his clean clothes had gotten wet
as well.  Still wet herself, she hung them up outside to dry on the line—she
doubted it would rain tonight, and she would take it in later, best not to
leave it in a messy wet heap all night.  If it still mattered by then.
                She came back inside and peeled her dress off.  She stepped
into the tub, and sunk up to her neck.  The water was no longer steaming, but
the warmth felt good all the same.  Mieta closed her eyes, thinking about the
child growing in her womb.  She hoped it was a girl this time—she didn’t know
what she would do with two boys!
                She considered possible names for her as she enjoyed the
silence of the night.  Perhaps after her late mother?  That would be
nice—Varania.
                Varania…
                She heard little footsteps tromping over to her.  She sunk
lower in the tub, and decided to ignore him until he said something.
                “Hey,” he whined.  “Get up.”
                She opened one eye.  “Why?”
                He pouted, and she had to try not to smile.  “I want you to
tell me a story before I go to sleep,” he said, quite seriously.
                She smiled a little.  “Give Mama a minute, all right?”
                He huffed, and turned, running out of the room.  Why did
toddlers have so much energy?  She groaned, and washed off quickly, then got
out of the tub.  She toweled herself off, and wrapped herself in the towel to
get to her room.  She put on an old shirt and a pair of pants and called Leto
to help her empty the tub.  It didn’t require help, but she still pretended it
did.  It emptied itself into a drain outside, which would empty into the larger
gutter on the street.
                She wandered into her son’s room.  He had lit a lamp, but was
standing on a small stool to look out the window at the night sky.  She pointed
up at a constellation, the one he was looking at.  “That’s the warrior, my
love,” she told him.
                “I know,” he said.  He looked up at her, reaching his arms up
for her to pick him up.  She bent to lift him.  She carried him to his bed, and
set him down gently.  She curled up with him, holding him close, stroking his
hair, as she told him a story of knights and dragons, a witch in disguise.  She
told him tale after tale, until she sensed that he had fallen asleep.  She
kissed his brow gently, and eased away from him, making an effort not to
disturb him.  She rearranged his blankets, and closed the window, blew out the
light.  She looked back at him before she left the room.
                He slept so peacefully, dreaming.  She wondered, What of?  What
do you dream, my son?
                She smiled to herself.  To be like his father, she
imagined—strong, handsome, a warrior.  Not many elves were in other parts of
the world, she had heard, but this city was primarily elven.  As a result,
there wasn’t an alienage like in other places she had heard about, but it
sounded awful—a slum where elves were segregated from humans and dwarves.  The
Qunari wouldn’t have tolerated it anyway; all were equal in the Qun.
                That was one thing she liked very much about it—everyone was
welcome, everyone played a role, and everyone was, essentially, the same.  Race
made no difference, background made no difference.
                But then… she wondered if anything in life really made much
difference.
                She went to her own bed, weary and tired, but too fretful to
sleep.  It couldn’t hurt to lie down for a time though.
                But, though she tossed and turned, she did finally find sleep,
though her dreams were troubled, and frightening, and when she woke in the
night, she couldn’t recall what they were except for the fear it caused her. 
It made her rise from her bed, and check on her son, still fast asleep.  It had
been silly to be so frightened.  She listened to the quiet.
                She heard a click as the door unlocked, causing her to jump,
but when she heard the light footsteps, and a small sigh, she knew it was
Calias.  It must be earlier than she had suspected.
                She headed down the stairs to embrace him.  He looked bone-
weary, but welcomed the sight of her.  She held him close.  In his arms, she
felt safe, and only there.
                They kissed, and still he held her.  She leaned her head
against his shoulder.  “What do you think of ‘Varania?’” she asked him.
                He kissed the top of her head.  “For our next child?  What if
it’s a boy?” he teased, as he let go of her and walked farther into the house. 
She trailed after him.
                “Then we can call him ‘Vinathe,’” she said.
                He frowned.  “I have a cousin by that name—I think he’s dead.”
                She rolled her eyes.  “Died last spring, you lout.”
                He nodded thoughtfully, walking up the stairs.  “Either one
then.”
                Mieta felt like sighing herself.  He had no real opinion on the
names of their children.  He had allowed her to choose Leto’s name too—and she
had named him after his warrior great-grandfather, of course, a namesake he
delighted in hearing about oftentimes.
                Calias yanked his clothing off, leaving it in a messy heap on
the floor, and fell into bed without further comment.  She decided to lay with
him for a while.  It would be nice, for once.  She slid into bed beside him,
her arms wrapping around her husband.  She heard him sigh gently.
                “I love you,” he whispered, and she knew he was falling asleep
already.
                She kissed his shoulder lovingly.  “And I you.”  She slept for
only a while longer, then woke to make breakfast.  Leto woke as she started
cooking, and she put him to work immediately.
                Today is the day, she thought as the two breakfasted on
pastries and tea.  Calias rarely came down for breakfast; he normally slept
through it, but she saved him a few of the pastries.  She sent Leto out to play
after making sure everything he was wearing was matching, and went to her small
work room.  She was a tailor by trade, though her specialty was in hats and
embroidery.  She had a couple orders to work on, and doing something busy would
keep her mind off of the town’s impending doom.
                She watched outside from the window as Leto went chasing by. 
She had told him not to stray far, but had long ago resolved that children
didn’t always listen.
                The morning wore on into noon, and Leto came back hungry and
eager for lunch.  Mieta was already cooking, and had him wait, and she made him
recite a lesson while she set it out.
                By then, Calias came down and joined them for lunch.  Her son
adored his father, almost idolizing him.  And why not?  He was a good man. 
Mieta marveled at how alike the two looked.  To a point, all elves looked a bit
alike, but one couldn’t too easily be mistaken for another—unlike Qunari—they
all looked the same to her.  If Leto had had his father’s auburn locks and his
eyes were slightly different shade, they would look just alike.
                Rather, Leto had inherited his hair from Mieta’s side, which
all had dark hair, though rarely, if ever, the true black in his hair that was
so seldom found on a person.  Almost everyone on Calias’s side of the family
was a brunette—himself being an unusual exception.  In the summer, his hair
looked more red than auburn.
                They were just cleaning up from lunch when a deep, resounding,
desperate blast from the horns blew.  One blast for enemy sighted.  The sound
made her pause, made her heart be still for a moment in fear. 
But one sound of the horns meant that they were hours off still; plenty of time
to mount the defense—A second blast peeled through the air.  Mieta dropped the
plate she was holding, her face going pale.  The plate broke at her feet, and
she scarcely noticed it.  Leto peered up at his parents, searching their pale,
silent faces for an answer that wasn’t coming.  A second for attack.
                To her, the horns were sounding their destruction, their doom,
their defeat, their death.
                Calias, though, was moving before the echoes died, running
upstairs.  Mieta grasped her son’s hand, not knowing what else to do.
                “Mama, what’s happening?” he asked her.
                She licked her suddenly dry lips.  She wanted to lie to him. 
She wanted to tell him that it was nothing, that everything would be all right
and nothing in their lives would ever change.  But that wasn’t the truth.
                She turned to him, kneeling in front of him so they were both
of the same height.  “Whatever happens, I love you very much, all right?” she
told him.  That did nothing to reassure him of what was going on, and she could
see it in his irresolute eyes.  “Schavalis is under attack.”
                “What…”  His sentence broke off as Calias came rushing down the
stairs, and Leto broke from his mother’s grip, running to his father, who
paused at the sight of his son.  “Where are you going?”
                Calias looked pained at the question, but not at the asking of
it.  He bent to one knee before his son, his leather armor creaking.  “I go to
defend the city,” he told him, resting his gloved hand on top of his child’s
head.
                “But I want to go with you!”
                Calias shook his head.  “No.  You stay here, and look after
your mother,” he told him.  Leto looked at him, his eyes wide and frightened. 
Her husband forced a smile on to his face.  “You remember the story I told you
about your great-grandfather?”
                Leto nodded suddenly.  “The one you named me after,” he said.
                The warrior nodded solemnly.  “That’s right.  Did I ever tell
you that he wielded a great two-handed sword?”
                The child’s eyes were filled with wonder more than fear now. 
“How did he do that?”
                He smiled crookedly.  “A lot of strength, and practice.  But
before he did that, he had to learn how to wait, and when to attack, when to
defend, and when to wait.  It’s not always about attacking—sometimes knowing
the right time to attack is more important than anything else.”  He touched his
son’s nose.  “Now is the time to look after your mother.”
                Leto paused, considering the weight of his father’s words, then
gave a single nod of consent.  “I understand, Father.”
                He muffed his hair affectionately.  “I know.”  He hugged him
close suddenly, and looked to Mieta.  She rushed to her family, and embraced
them both.
                When he set his son down, he turned to his wife, and kissed her
tenderly.  He whispered “I love you” in her ear, and she did likewise.  One
last kiss, and he had to run from the house.  She locked the door behind him,
wondering if it would be the last time she ever saw Calias.
***** Nobility *****
Chapter Summary
     In which the city is sacked.
                Newlyn wasn’t part of the main assaulting force.  He was to be
held back, just in case.  It was all well enough by his standards.  He had no
taste for this insanity.
                He had listened in shocked silence when he had heard explained
what they were doing.  To his ears, it was all but madness.  Why?  Why attack
this place?  They had nothing worth taking.  They were not rich, not an enemy
outpost.  They were a farming and fishing community, nothing more.  If their
armies were ill-supplied he might even consider this attack, if not in the
right (was anything they did in the right?), at least justified in a sense.
                But that wasn’t the case.  They were attacking simply to
attack, to seize.  He understood that it helped to cut off the Qunari supplies,
but this was hardly a main supplier.  But, his superiors reasoned, they could
make up for this by capturing as many as possible from the battle and selling
the remaining as slaves.  There was a lot of coin in that, he knew.  And they
were funding a war.
                But…
                He wondered if it couldn’t simply be out of spite, considering
that the current elves living there were descendents of slaves—property that
couldn’t be reclaimed in the past for one reason or another.  Many of his
fellows saw it as simply that; going to reclaim lost property.
                Being of the Soporati class, he had grown up with slaves in his
household.  Maker, there were slaves in the army used to fight the Qunari, be
it as fodder for arrows, fletching arrows, or even wielding a sword in battle,
they served.  He had never thought much of it—and why would he?  He hadn’t been
raised to think for himself, hadn’t been raised to look at an elf and see a
person.  Rather, he had seen nothing at all, not really.  He hadn’t seen
because he hadn’t wished to see it.  He had been trained in the art of the
sword, horsemanship, and groomed for knighthood.  He had been anointed, even,
but it hadn’t meant anything, not really.  A knighthood didn’t make a man, and
certainly didn’t make him noble.
                But then he had met Kiersten.  She had a way of looking at the
world that he had never seen.  She told him that it wasn’t about the shell
their body inhabited; it was about their soul.  She said that everything had a
soul, and that the soul is what we should see, not the shell.  It was such a
beautiful thought, and she was so lovely, and her spirit and her heart burned
with such a passionate intensity that he could do nothing save fall hopelessly
in love with her.
                He so missed her.  When he returned to Tevinter, they were
supposed to be wed.  He could scarcely wait for the day.
                Newlyn watched the smoke rise from the city.  It was burning,
the light reflecting almost beautifully in the steadfast fog of Seheron.  He
could smell the acrid stench of the smoke all the way from here.  Horses pawed
restlessly at the ground, anxious by the sight of the fire.  Leather creaked as
men shifted in their saddles.  He reprimanded that thought—there were a few
women too.
                He couldn’t hear it from here, but he could imagine the
screaming, glass breaking, the sound of men and beasts dying.  And he couldn’t
smell it either, but he could imagine the stench of burning flesh, viscera,
blood, and shit that came with the smell of battle.  He didn’t have to imagine
the sights, though.  He had seen enough towns of similar size after a battle—it
was terrible.
                Kiersten had not approved of him being a soldier, not really. 
But he had told her that if they did not press the attack, the Qunari would
press their own, and the cities they claimed in Seheron had to be defended. 
She had consented, and told him to keep them from their homeland, but only on
those grounds.  He could not control what he was ordered to do though.
                The battle had gone on for hours.  It had to be mostly finished
by now; the town hadn’t offered that much resistance, not to a mage’s power.
                A small contingent, battered, came limping back to the force
scattered, seeking medical aid.  The two mages who had been held back were
slaves themselves actually, and saw to the wounded.  Newlyn was close enough to
hear some of the wounded complaining.
                “… then the apostate resorted to blood magic, and killed half
my men,” the man grumbled to the superior officer he was reporting to.
                “You apprehended her then?” he asked placidly.
                He snorted.  “She was a maleficar.  We killed her.”  So are
most of the magisters, Newlyn thought icily.  That was the rumor, at least.
                “Close enough,” he snorted with a nod, then gave the order for
the remaining forces to move out.
                Newlyn fell into line glumly, and mildly resented his horse for
being eager.  Why should anyone be eager for this?  It wasn’t battle any
longer; it was slaughter and plunder.  They weren’t brigands.  They were
supposed to be an army.
                He had begun to dream of serving noble lords, with noble
ideals, as a child.  Doing something that was right, even before he really knew
what “right” was.  Defending the helpless, he assumed.  This was none of that.
                He felt his soul become more blackened and corrupt by the day. 
He felt that he himself was corrupt and beyond redemption for the deeds he had
committed in the name of his homeland.
                Funny, he had once never thought about the war.  It had been so
distant to him, after all, and as a child, a thing that did not touch him.  His
father had been wealthy, wealthy enough to keep him from getting drafted, and
his other sons, despite Newlyn’s knighthood.  Well, that had all ended when he
had been killed outright, his property and finances seized.  Treason, they
said, but never really gave a reason.  Sometimes, Newlyn wondered.
                He had to join the army to survive.  He would get enough money
to marry his beloved Kiersten.  That was all that mattered—providing for her. 
Or, so he tried to tell himself.  It would be so much easier if he was as
selfish and unfeeling as his fellows seemed to be.
                There was a brief skirmish in an alley, and they joined the
fray in another, but his primary duty lay in helping end the skirmishes left to
the city.  Those were put down in short enough order.  A few captives were
taken, to later be executed, he suspected.
                He rode on, killing any too wounded to walk.  It was a
butcher’s work, and he wanted to be as dispassionate as he was supposed to be. 
As it was, he couldn’t look at them, and tried not to hear their pleas for
mercy.
                One man was dying in a pool of blood, coughing and drowning in
his life’s blood in a tragic irony.  He had ended it quickly, and moved on.
                At another place, he found a man—he didn’t know if it were elf
or human with the helmet and armor, and frankly, it didn’t matter—arm hacked at
the elbow, bleeding out, but whispering names.  He imagined that they were the
names of parents, a sweetheart maybe, perhaps children.  He killed that man
too.
                Maimed people, dismembered limbs, entrails strewn across the
road.  Some the townsfolk, some Tevinter soldiers—but they were all naught but
bloodied corpses now.  He saw charred bodies, the ones the mages had gotten to,
and others that looked like they had been encased in ice, their limbs just
falling off of them like the fastest of frostbite.  He saw one woman, barely a
woman at that, with her face caved in, an eye hanging arbitrarily from its
socket, the bone around her eye crushed.  At first, he only looked at the body
with a critical eye, and then saw the other eye track his movement.  He felt
something like fear, disgust, and horror clutch at his guts, making his stomach
tighten.  It was a mercy to kill this girl.  He could only imagine her pain,
her horror, at what must have happened to her in her desperate rush to flee to
somewhere safer.  Perhaps the afterlife was safer.  He thought he would have
nightmares of these horrors he had seen over the past two years to last him a
lifetime… but he hoped not.  How he slept at night, he didn’t know.
                Surely, the horrors of what he had seen would be enough to keep
him awake.  And if not those horrors, then surely the ones that he had had to
commit under orders.  But…  No; he slept.  He had tried not to see, and thought
of his beloved Kiersten whenever he could.  Sometimes, it was her memory alone
that got him through the day.
                Moving on through the city, he came across a woman, delirious
with the butchery, and covered in blood.  She staggered, but he wasn’t sure if
it was the delirium or if it was her own wounds; he couldn’t see.
                She saw him, and froze, her lips moving, but no words forming.
                “She’s mad—kill her,” his captain barked.
                Newlyn approached her, drawing his sword to slay another
innocent.  The dying were one thing to him, but he counted the innocent he had
had to kill in the name of duty, and tried to give them the dignity of
remembering them.
                Her hair was long, and tangled, and might have once been brown
if not for the blood.  Her eyes were haunted, and her lips continued to move. 
As he came near, she backed up a step, tripping and falling gracelessly to the
ground.  Her hand touched a man’s spilled entrails, and she shrieked away from
it, shivering with fear.  “No…” she pleaded.
                His heart panged with guilt.  He didn’t want to do this. 
Maker, he didn’t want to do this.  “I’m sorry,” he told her.  “Maker rest your
soul.”
                “No!” she cried, weeping now, her hot tears tracking through
the blood on her face.  “Please!  Mercy!”
                He hesitated, but knew that she was mad.  He would be punished
if he didn’t follow through his own orders.  And was death worse than slavery? 
He didn’t know.  He just didn’t know.  He looked into her terrified blue eyes
as he stabbed his sword into her chest.  He felt he owed her that much.  She
stared at the blade in open shock, and died as he ripped the blade free.  Her
body crumbled to the ground, her face falling heavily into the innards of the
dead man beside her.
                One more sin to add to the many, he thought, and turned away
from it, though the woman deserved more.
                They all deserved more.
                His secondary task, after the minor mess was cleaned up, was to
root out the living.  He was assigned a certain district, and went with a
contingent of other men.  All valuables would be heaped into a cart, all
potential slaves marched to a warehouse by the docks.  As sad as it seemed, it
was routine.
                Most of it was pretty methodical, and many houses were empty
already, so he just had to find any jewelry or expensive silks and heave it
into the cart in a manner of speaking.  He couldn’t bear it when he found a
person though.
                He wanted to tell them to stay quiet, to hide.  But he knew
better.  They found them eventually—always.  The army would stay for a few
days, patrolling and listening, the mages and the dogs alike hunting out any
who might be hiding.  Those ones were beaten, then brought with the others.
                Newlyn had learned that the hard way, and in the end, the
service he had thought he had given to one young girl had been no service at
all.
                And so it was.  He broke the lock on a house with a blue door,
a garden in the front.  Some of the herbs in it might be useful—he should check
them on his way out.  There was a tiny grave in the corner of the garden. 
Maybe it had been a child’s pet.
                He wasn’t destructive on his trek through the house.  Some
were; they smashed anything they couldn’t take, either out of anger, spite, or
just because they liked breaking what others had once called home.  He
respected it though.  This was a person’s home once.  It held memories, a
life—once.  But no longer, maybe never again.
                The ashes in the fireplace were cold, though he could smell the
smoke from the other part of town still, though the fires were mostly put out. 
Mages were useful—he would give them that.
                There was food here, and he would take anything the army had
said they needed to resupply.  He left the larder open.  The animals would get
to it eventually, and he supposed that was better than nothing, though he would
take whatever wouldn’t spoil quickly.  He opened cupboards, idly searching.
                The house seemed empty enough, he supposed.  He sighed deeply,
closing his eyes for a moment.
                Oh, Kiersten.  You would hate me if you knew what I did…
                His heart felt heavy with sorrow as he treaded through the
house.  He opened another door.  It was a child’s room, and that made him
swallow in grief.  Another child’s life, so full of promise and
hope—destroyed.  He wondered if the child could be dead.  He thought of the
other dead children he had passed, their tiny corpses cold and stiffening, some
held to their parent’s breasts, both dead in each other’s arms.
                Knowing he would find nothing, but didn’t mind stalling, he
fished through the drawers, and wondered what the child was like.  A boy,
obviously.  He imagined that if he were to hunt more, he would find secret
troves of things like bird’s nests and dried frogs—things he had collected as a
child.
                Kiersten wanted to have children one day.  She told him that
she’d like two boys and a girl.  He thought she even had names picked out. 
Sometimes she spoke of it in her letters to him, how she wanted so badly to be
married and begin bearing his children as soon as possible.
                Was it selfish?
                He shut the drawer, and put both his hands on the dresser,
inhaling deeply once, then twice.  He felt like he would be sick.
                It had to be selfish to do this to other people—shatter their
lives, their hopes, their dreams—and continue to hold and cherish his own.  Was
he no better than his fellow soldiers?
                He shook his head, as if to clear it of his troubling thoughts,
and stepped away from the chest of drawers.  He moved in to the other room, the
parents’ room, no doubt.  There were clothes on the floor, thrown about
carelessly, which hardly surprised him.  He found a bit of jewelry, and
dutifully stole it, as instructed.  Though he still felt like a thief.  They
called it the plunders of war, but it was still petty thievery, and no less in
his eyes.
                There was a silk dress here too—maybe a wedding dress once--and
he took that as well.  He took his bundle into the main room, and glanced at
the door he hadn’t explored.  He set the bundle down, and opened it.  It led
downstairs, into what he imagined to be the cellar.  Maybe there was some wine
down there—he could use a drink right now.
                He found a lantern, and lit it.  He carried it high as he trod
down the stairs, all the while weary.  People acted strangely in desperate
situations—even the most ladylike of women would attack when they were scared
enough.
                He heard a small muffled noise, and paused.  He listened
again.  Rats?  That was entirely possible.  The board he stepped on creaked,
and he heard it again, faintly.  He continued down, holding the light above his
head to cast as wide a spectrum as possible.
                He shone it in the corners, around the casks and trunks.  He
sorted through the trunks, finding nothing of particular import.  Supplies in
some cases.  One of the people living here had been a tailor.  Still, cloth was
valuable enough in war, for uniforms and bandages if nothing else.  He shoved
the trunk to the bottom of the flight of stairs, and checked the others.  The
one with the cloth was the only one worth taking.
                He almost left, then something seemed to nag at him.  He turned
back, and went around a dark corner.  His eyes softened when he saw the woman,
clutching her son tightly, under the stairwell.
                The boy turned and looked at him, staring at him innocently. 
They were both elves, which at one point in his life meant something—meant they
were a subspecies to humans at that point, and worth nothing of value, except
as slaves.  He didn’t believe that any more.  They were souls, just like
Kiersten said.  Souls that he was sentencing to slavery.
                He has no idea what’s going on, not really, Newlyn reflected. 
He could really use a drink right about now.  He has no idea what’s going to
happen to him and his mother.
               Newlyn kept his voice soft.  “Ma’am, please, get up and follow
me out.”  She didn’t move, just stared at him as if she didn’t understand his
tongue.  It was certainly possible but definitely not probable.  More than
likely, she was just too frightened to do anything.  “Please,” he found himself
pleading with her.  Be reasonable!  “The dogs will find you, or the mages. 
Please, ma’am.  I’ll try to keep you and your son together, but I can’t
guarantee someone else will do the same.”  He found himself wanting to choke on
his own words.  He must seem like such a… monster.  A murderer, a slaver, a
rapist, a thief—all those things and worse.  “Please, they’ll beat you.”  It
occurred to him, suddenly, that perhaps she did not speak Tevene.  While his
grasp of the Trade tongue was loose, he said in the other language, “Please,
ma’am, follow me.  I don’t want you to get hurt.”
                Her lower lip quivered.  Her eyes were unbelieving, either of
what he said, or of what was happening, but the end result was the same, so the
means made no difference.  Newlyn reached a hand out for her, to help her up. 
She didn’t even seem to see it.
                It was the boy who pried himself away from her grasp, and from
the looks of it, it wasn’t an easy task.  She made a small squeaking sound,
reaching out to him, but seemed otherwise frozen in place.  The boy stared up
at him, and Newlyn had the odd feeling that the child was judging him, weighing
his soul.
                It made him strangely uncomfortable, as if the child really
could see all of his faults that he felt so clearly.  Like all of his sins were
laid bare to the world.  All he wanted to do was cover them, hide them, bury
them so they could never be found.  Life didn’t work that way.
                “Mama, we have to go,” the boy said, looking back at her. 
Slowly, his green-eyed gaze went back to Newlyn’s face.
                She trembled, but her son’s voice seemed to give her the
courage to stand.  It seemed for a moment that she would stumble, but she was
surprisingly steady.  He ushered the two out, and carried the chest up the
stairs after them.
                He started to push them to the door, then stopped.  His sense
of morals was screaming at him to leave them be, but he had tried that once. 
It had ended in bloodshed and pain.
                He stopped and looked back at them.  “Get something to
eat—bring whatever you can carry, and change clothes—travel clothes, if you
have them.”  He closed his eyes, as if in pain.  “Please hurry.”
                The woman paused, and he felt her gently touch his shoulder,
reassuringly.  Why was she comforting him?  He was a monster, he was the one
ruining their lives…  “You’re a good man,” she whispered, and took her son down
the hall.  He followed them partway, but gave them the privacy to change their
clothing.  The elven woman helped her son into his clothes, and Newlyn paced
restlessly as he waited.  She took her son into her room while she changed her
clothes, and he trailed after them into the pantry.  She filled a pack with
breads and cheeses, and another smaller one that she gave to her son.
                She looked up at Newlyn, her eyes filled with dread and
despair.  He wished it were not him, but others might have raped her in front
of her son and cast them both out to be rounded up and brought to the
warehouses that they were keeping the captives.  In fact… it happened.
                He put his bundle—the silk dress and the jewelry, into the
chest, and carried it out the door, the two elves in tow.  It was only in the
light of the dying sun that he realized the woman was pregnant.  A new pang of
guilt washed over him.  Another life he had doomed, and right from the
beginning.
                The man in charge yelled at him about the packs of food he had
allowed them to bring, but Newlyn didn’t back down.  He defended his decision
to let them have it, and in the end, it wasn’t worth debating.  He volunteered
to be one of the four men taking the people found in this district to the
warehouse.
                Two of the others were downright cruel, the other simply unkind
but didn’t care enough to be cruel.  Newlyn tried to keep the pregnant woman
away from them by bidding her to walk closer to himself.  He didn’t know what
else he could do for her.
                But Kiersten would want him to do something.
                He took it upon himself to shepherd them into the warehouse,
and looked after them sorrowfully as he locked the door, putting the heavy bar
across it.  He sighed, shaking his head, and trudged to a different area of the
town for more pillaging and herding.
                They spent a few days there, collecting the rest of the
people—mostly elves—and questioning them.
                The questioning process was… gruesome, to say the very least.
                First, a random captive was selected.  It had been the humans
and dwarves first, who were normally in positions of higher power, and so it
was so here as well.  The one captured Qunari, naturally, had been tortured
separately and put to death when he wouldn’t talk.  The captain had little
patience for their kind.
                The humans, though, he questioned, relentlessly—over and over
again and especially any of those in positions of power.  Some disdain was held
for humans who lived together with elves, particularly when there wasn’t so
much as an alienage.  Elves, it was taught, were an inferior race.  But the
questions, overall, were simple enough, and frequently produced nothing of
value.  Were they hiding anything?  Were they hiding anyone?  Was there any
gold or jewels?  Resources?  What did they know?
                Two a day, perhaps three if one didn’t last very long, but all
the captives were brought out to watch, which cowed many of them and rooted out
the more aggressive of them.  It was… war, after all.  Information was
valuable, and they did have to feed the army, so anything of value was looted. 
From a logical standpoint, it almost made sense, and that was when Newlyn knew
he had spent too much time with the army.
                Newlyn spotted that pregnant elf and her son amongst the crowd
on the last day, the day they were executing captives.
***** Blood and Flowers *****
Chapter Summary
     In which nothing good happens.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Mieta had done her best to make sure that her son had not seen
the questioning of the past few days.  It was hard, though, to keep such a
young child still and in one place for hours while it went on, and he looked
every time the one being questioned screamed, or tried to; he was much too
small to see.  He asked her what was happening, but she simply refused to
answer, and that alone made him grow silent, left to his own imagination.  She
wondered if that were worse.
                In the crowd, she had seen little Lura and Sharall, but they
must have been kept in a different warehouse, because she never saw them
there.  She couldn’t bring herself to approach them in the brief expanse of
time that they were outside.  What, after all, was there to say?
                It was becoming so routine that she could have asked the
questions, and she knew all the answers.  No, they knew nothing, and that was
the most important thing.
                Though, rarely, they did find a few things of value—a silver
cup, and a couple of old gold and silver coins, a ruby ring, maybe a few other
trinkets—locations of people who might still be hiding, and the direction of
those who had fled.  But what the Tevinters really wanted—information—no one
had that.  One of the city officials did admit, under torture, that they had
been slowly converting their people to the Qun.  Nothing else though, nothing
worth staying and torturing people for—certainly nothing worth murder.  Nothing
the Imperials could not have just guessed by themselves.  But what did she
know?  She didn’t know if she… really knew much of anything anymore.
                And giving up these items never won the captives anything
either; they died in the end.  Everyone picked for questioning died.  She
prayed it was not herself, as she was sure that everyone else did as well,
including those that died.
                She had heard tales of such brutality, but it astonished her to
find that these things could be true.  She couldn’t believe that such a thing
was just… allowed to happen.  How could a divine Maker allow this to exist? 
How could the Qun condone it?  How could their simple souls bear what they were
doing?  Did they not see?  Did they choose not to?  How does a man look at
another living being and hurt them so, and kill them?  How?
                Early yesterday morning, a young girl, scarcely thirteen, had
been selected.  The mother had cried out in anguish, and pleaded to go in her
stead.  Rather, they took both of them, tortured the girl to make the mother
talk.  There was nothing to say, though—and that was that.  They were both dead
now, their bodies dumped in a ditch somewhere on the other side of town, where
the soldiers wouldn’t have to smell the rot quite so much.
                She supposed that the Tevinters, in truth, didn’t really care
that much if they gained or lost anything.  She supposed, with venom, it must
be nice to be in one place for a while, to rest their Imperial feet and their
Imperial horses on the townspeople’s land and houses.
                She wondered, at times, if these humans were any better than
darkspawn.  They drank, and cursed, and killed—and seemed to take such
pleasures in their corruption.  It was… madness.  Mieta felt as if the entire
world had simply gone mad.  Something like this… it just couldn’t be, could it?
                But she knew better.  She wished she could simply believe that
she was having a nightmare, or anything else, but this was real.  Real! And her
mind could only just grasp the idea that such ghastly things as she had
witnessed could be true.
                Mieta held Leto close.  It wasn’t so difficult this morning; he
was becoming more bored with the entire thing more than anything else.  Tired,
even.  He often just sat on the ground, leaning against one of her legs, and
picked idly at the dirt.  She didn’t know what to do.
                She knew, or at least had an inkling, of what awaited she and
her son.  If there was anything at all to be done, anything…  She had to stop
this from happening.  She had to escape somehow.  She couldn’t let them both be
cast into a life of slavery.  She looked down at her son in abject misery.  He
would never know anything else.  If she didn’t do something… there would be
nothing else.
                But what could she do?
                Today, the prisoners in another warehouse were taken.  These
were the captives from the battle, the ones wounded but not so much that they
could not walk of their own volition.  They were chained together, and she
could hear the heavy chains clinking as they were marched outside in the
morning sun, though seeing them through the fog before they got to the high
platform was difficult—she supposed that was why the Imperials had constructed
the platform though.
                The sun was bright that day, cheerful, its warm light playing
on the mists that rolled in from the sea, meeting the fog that crept in from
the forests.  The wind blew in a pleasant ocean breeze that helped with the
faint smell of rot.  The Tevinters had simply piled the dead somewhere.  Some
heads, they put on pikes after dipping them in tar, but most were just left to
rot, a feast for the birds and other vermin.  Those particular tarred heads
were the officials of the town, the ones in charge, of course.
                Those dead had been happy once.  Farmers, laborers, healers,
soldiers, wives, children, husbands, parents—all.  They had been leading their
own lives, with their futures a bright spark ahead of them.  Now they were
rotting corpses.  She hoped their souls found peace at least.
                She looked up at the men being led across the wooden platform
to be beheaded.  Some she recognized, and sorrow touched her heart to see it so
as they were put to the block.  Not all of them were truly warriors.  There was
the city guard, of course, but many were in truth farmers or laborers, and were
part of the city militia.  They had no full-time soldiers as such.  Still,
others were not even in the militia.  …The Tevinters emphatically did not want
slaves that could read.  They had asked Mieta if she could read too.  She had
been so terrified that she couldn’t even answer, and they had just passed her
by.  Now, she knew to pretend that she couldn’t.  It was hard to pretend to be
illiterate, but possible.
                The axe made a dull thumping sound that made Leto jump.  After
a while, he raised on tip-toe, trying to see as more people were stirring,
gasping, others weeping for their men.  The boy was frustrated.
                “What’s going on?” he asked her.
                Mieta shook her head.  “They’re executing people, baby,” she
told him, putting a comforting hand on the back of his head.
                He moved away from her, his eyes narrowing.  “Father?” he
wondered, half a whisper.
                Before she could stop him, he was running through the crowd. 
No one stopped him, and he was small enough to dart around and go where she
could not follow, though she tried, calling out to him desperately.  She pushed
her way forward.  Another thunk of the axe made her cringe inwardly, and a
second, quick thunk reminded her that the blade wasn’t as sharp as it had been
earlier.  Often, it took more than one strike to behead a person… and they felt
it.  She finally caught sight of his ebony hair through the crowd and the fog. 
She reached toward him, but someone stepped between them.  She wove around,
nearly panicked.  What if the Tevinters…?
                She could not bear to finish the thought; she had to find him.
                It felt like an eternity before her hand clenched tightly
around his arm, angry more than anything else.  She knelt beside him, down to
his level.  “Leto,” she hissed, but his eyes were on the line of chained men,
now that they were finally close enough to see.  There, four people back, was
Calias, and her words died on her tongue.  No…  She had thought he would have
died at the wall.  She had… hoped he had escaped, but death in combat would
have been better.  There was glory and honour in that.  Now, now he was a
martyr.
                His green-eyed gaze found them, and the three looked back at
each other, silent.  She couldn’t even hear the crowd all around her.  She was
scarcely aware of anything but his eyes, his face caked with dried blood and
dirt, his soiled hair, tattered clothing.  He looked bruised, cut, with a split
lip, and she did notice that he leaned more to one side as he stood, and limped
when he moved forward in the line.  Had they hurt him?  Had they tortured him
too?  She was frightened to think of it.
                Leto took a step forward, and her grip on his arm tightened. 
“But…  Papa is…” he looked at his mother, and she saw the first flicker of
understanding in his eyes, but a refusal to believe.  His eyes flicked to the
chopping block, widening at the sight of the bloodied axe, and back at his
father.  His mouth opened, then closed.
                Mieta wanted to cry for him, for that innocence that was
suddenly lost and shattered, and there was no way to bring it back.  No way to
hold on to it, to pick up the pieces and make it whole again.  The boy went
limp in her grasp, but she knew him too well to let go of him.  Rather, she
pulled him into her arms so she could hold him with both hands—for both their
sakes’.  He stumbled, his gaze locked on his father, who could only look at the
two of them.
                Mieta felt her eyes sting with tears.  She felt her throat
tighten, and the first of her tears spilled as he was unchained from his
fellows and marched to the block.  A Tevinter soldier pushed him down on the
block, his neck bare before the blade.  The block was covered in blood, fresh
blood, and pieces of flesh, maybe a bit of bone too.
                She didn’t want to watch her husband die.  She didn’t want to
watch the axe fall, the head drop with a dull thud to the platform.
                But she couldn’t not watch either.  She couldn’t look away, and
her mind was so numb that she didn’t even think to cover her son’s eyes and
spare him the sight.  It was foolish.  Any proper mother would have done even
that small a thing, but she felt so dizzy, so sick, that she never gave it any
thought.  But surely a child would look away?  Surely a child would close their
eyes?
                Not Leto.  His eyes were wide and unbelieving, a perfect
picture of shattered innocence, as the headsman raised his axe.  Calias took a
sharp intake of breath.
                She remembered his smile, the feel of his lips against her
own.  She remembered his strong arms around her, his callused hands against her
skin.  She remembered their wedding day, and how frightened she had been.  She
remembered their first coupling, so full of hesitation and shyness.  How she
had started to cry, and he had held her hands and told her that he was willing
to wait if she was too frightened.  She had never thought a man to be so
courteous, but he was.
                He was kind and understanding, logical and even-tempered, and
always did exactly as he said he would and lived exactly as he preached.  He
was a dutiful, faithful husband who had never so much as given her cause to
doubt him.  He was a loving father that adored his son, and had been so happy
when she had presented him with the news that she was pregnant again.  He had
been so gleeful that he had picked her up and swung her around, kissing her
until she was breathless, and whispering to her that he wanted three more, and
that they had best get started as soon as possible.  Elves bred only slowly,
she had been told, aware of the child in her arms and the one in her womb.  She
had been both lucky and uncanny to have two so close in age.  Lucky.
                The tears felt hot against her cheeks.
                The axe fell, and it seemed so slow.
                Blood blossomed on his neck like a flower as the blade bit into
his skin.                 
Lilies.  She had always liked lilies.  He brought her lilies every time he was
sent out scouting or on any other errand that took him away for a long time,
when it was the season.
It only took an instant, but it felt to her as if she could see every possible
movement.  The blade hit bone first, and it wasn’t sharp enough to push through
it.  To her horror, Calias was still alive, in obvious pain and shock, too much
so to make a sound, but she saw his eyes roll.  The axe was hefted free.  Blood
ran over his neck, and the block.  The axe was raised again, and it fell, this
time hacking through the bone.  The blade sank into the wood under his neck,
slicing through skin, muscle, sinew, bone, tendons, arteries, a fresh wave of
blood glistening on the block, just another red coat on the already bloodied
axe.
                Leto practically worshipped his father, doggedly trailing after
him whenever he was home, and his attentions were only too welcome by the man
in question.  She had always said that he spoiled him, and he did.  If their
child wanted something, he was only too quick to get it, though he may make him
wait for it for a while.  He had promised to take him hunting when he was
older.  He would chase him around the house tickling him until Leto yielded in
a fit of laughter.  So many memories, and yet… not enough.  Not nearly enough.
                The head dropped into the waiting basket below with the same
dull thud as before.  Leto didn’t jump this time, but he had gone utterly
still.
                Mieta seemed to suddenly regain herself as the body was tossed
carelessly into a cart of other headless bodies.  She averted her eyes as the
head too was taken, and snatched her son, pulling him into the relative safety
of her arms, pushing his face against her shoulder in an effort to spare him
anymore.
                There were other prisoners being led to the block, and she
watched all of them, and all of them seemed to be Calias to her eyes.
                It was as if he died dozens of times, and each time hurt as
much as the last.  Twenty-six, to be exact, and they were all dead.  A horse
pulled the cart away, and she watched the animal bear its dark burden, taking
away the body of the man she had loved so dearly.
                Calias, her dear husband, would have no grave and no pyre.  No
marker to call his own.  A plea had already been given for them to tend to
their dead, and it had been denied.  There was no reason that it would be
granted now.
                Leto had fallen deathly silent since the ordeal.  He said
nothing as they were led back to the warehouse, nothing as the door banged
close behind them, and nothing as they were fed a small bowl of rice.  He
stared at it without really seeing it, and only ate when she insisted that he
had to.
                She looked at her son, and wondered to herself if he would ever
truly smile again.
Chapter End Notes
     Well, wasn't that depressing?
***** The Road *****
Chapter Summary
     A short chapter, detailing Lura's perspective of what is going on.
                Lura looked around herself, one hand clutching her mother’s
skirts as they were marched down the road, driven very much like cattle.  The
fog, most days, was so thick she could barely see, but she knew she must keep
going.
                There were men with axes, and swords on either side, and many
of them were mean.  Some stared at Mama in a way she was sure she didn’t like,
but didn’t really understand.
                They had been walking for what Mama assured her was two days,
and her legs were already sore.  She wanted to stop.  She wanted to go home,
and didn’t understand why they couldn’t.
                Why must they walk?  Why?  What had happened?  Why couldn’t
they go back home?  But when she asked, Mama just told her to hush, so she
eventually stopped asking.
                Sometimes, she heard women screaming and crying at night. 
Maybe it was because they wanted to go home too; she knew that she cried at
night, when she was cold and hungry, and missed her warm bed.  She missed her
toys, and Lady.
                She even missed etiquette lessons.
                She missed the garden, and the apple tree.  She missed her
dresses, and her ribbons.  She missed Papa.  What had happened to Papa?  Some
of the older men were here, and young boys.  There were a few that were
adolescent, but not very many.
                “Where’s Papa?” she asked her mother again.
                Mama held her hand, squeezing it gently.  “Papa died in battle,
my love,” she said to her daughter.
                Lura blinked up at her mother.  Died?  She thought for a
moment.  Hadn’t Mama said that before?  She didn’t really understand.  What did
it mean, to die?  What happened?  Mama said that her grandparents were dead. 
She had asked when Leto’s grandparents came to visit him; she remembered that. 
So, naturally, she had inquired as to what that meant.
                Mama had explained that it was what happened when you got very
old, and you couldn’t get around very well any longer; your soul went to rest
at the Maker’s side in eternal bliss, and if she was very good, she would get
to meet them one day when she, too, got very old and died.  She hadn’t
understood then either.
                “What does that mean?” she asked insistently.
                Mama seems sad, she thought as her mother answered her, “It
means you won’t see him again.”
                She missed a step, aghast.  “But… but why?” she cried out.
                “Because he’s dead.”
                That just seemed to go around in circles.  She didn’t
understand.  What did that mean?  When someone died, what did that mean?  Why
couldn’t she see them again?  Mama said she could!  Mama said that they went to
the Maker’s side!  So why couldn’t she see them again?  It just didn’t make any
sense.
                Angry, she tore away, running, sobbing as she ran.  She
couldn’t go out of the line, but the soldiers didn’t care over much if she ran
within the line.  Sometimes, after all, they just had to move to the side to
make water; they didn’t stop often enough for that.  Lura would hold it as long
as she could, but she had to squat eventually.
                She stumbled, and as she did, saw Leto.  She ran toward him,
snatching on to his wrist.  He turned and looked at her, pulling her to her
feet as she started to crumble.  He held on to her, walking with her.  She
sobbed against his shoulder, unable to grasp what was going on.
                “What’s happening?” she demanded, wailing.  “What’s ‘dead’?  No
one will tell me!”
                Mieta gazed down at her.  “It’s when your soul leaves—either
because you’re old, or sick, or hurt too badly.”
                She looked up at her, lower lip quivering.  “I don’t
understand,” she complained.
                Leto remained utterly silent.  Why wouldn’t he talk?  Why
wouldn’t he tell her!  He always said things so that she could understand.  Why
wouldn’t he now?  “Darling, when your soul leaves, your body stops moving. 
It’s like being asleep, but you’re asleep forever and no one can wake you up.”
                Lura looked up at Mieta, trying to make her words make sense. 
How could someone sleep forever?  How could someone never wake up?  But people
still moved when they slept.  Mama said that she kicked in her sleep, and stole
the blankets.  “I…  But…” she stammered.
                Sharall took her daughter’s hand in hers.  “Thank you, Mieta,”
she told her friend.
                Mieta gave her a slight nod.  “Anything I can do, Sharall,” she
said softly.
                Sharall’s eyes softened as she looked down at the two children,
one in tears, and the other as silent as the dead.
                Lura held on to Leto’s arm for comfort as well as support.  Her
feet hurt so much, and Mama carried her as often as she could, but she knew
that she was tired too, so was doing her best.  “Do you know what’s going on?”
she whispered to him.
                Finally, he answered, “Yes.”
                She blinked in surprise.  Finally!  Someone who could explain
it to her.  “Then what’s going on?  Where are they taking us?”
                “I don’t know,” he said.
                His voice sounded funny to her.  Blank, like he didn’t really
care about what they were talking about.  If she weren’t so tired, so
frightened, she would have gotten angry.  “But you said you knew!”
                A slight, but uncertain, nod.  “I… heard some of the soldiers
talking,” he admitted in a low whisper.
                She blinked, anxious for news.  “What’d they say?”
                He glanced up at their mothers, who were engaged in their own
whispered conversation as they led their children down the road.  Lura stumbled
again, but her mother and Leto kept her from falling.  When she regained her
footing, he said, “They’re taking us to Tevinter.”
                Lura paused, confused.  The word was one she had heard before,
and she knew it as a distant place, but only as an abstract concept, one that
was far away from her.  “Why?”
                His brow furrowed in thought, and he fell silent again.  She
fumed for a bit, but was too glad of his company to march away from him in her
anger.  Maybe he would tell her later, after all.  She would have to remember. 
It was hard to do that sometimes.
                She sometimes forgot about her father as the days passed,
forgot that he had died.  Sometimes, she cried at her own failure to truly
understand.  She cried because her legs felt like they would fall off.  She
cried for her blistered feet, and because she was always hungry.  Sometimes,
Leto would give her some of his food, saying that he wasn’t hungry.  She didn’t
know if it were true or not, but he seemed so sad, and just stared at it most
of the time anyway.
                She tried talking to him about whatever was bothering him, but
he wouldn’t talk about it.  He wouldn’t talk about anything, not really.
                It seemed to her that her life in Schavalis had been nothing
but a dream that she had long ago woken from to face reality.  It felt like she
had been walking forever, and would continue to walk forever.  Her feet bled,
and her mother carried her often, but still she hurt.
                She wanted a bath.  She wanted hot food.  She wanted a warm bun
from the oven, and butter.  She wanted lamb stew, and pastries.  She wanted
cider, and apples.  She wanted her bed, her house.  She wanted the garden, and
Lady.  She wanted to play in the park.  She even wanted to practice
embroidery.  She wanted Papa to tell her stories by the fire after dinner.
                She wanted not to hurt any more.
                One night, a man took Mama away, and she had cried when she saw
how much Mama didn’t want to go.  Why would he take her like that?  What was
going on?  Why was Mama leaving her behind?  Leto had grabbed her arm to keep
her from running after them, and she had sobbed and asked him what was going
on.  He stared at her, and it seemed to her as if he knew more than he should,
but he didn’t answer.  Maybe he really didn’t know, or even just didn’t know
how to tell her.  Why not?  If he knew, why couldn’t she know too?  He hauled
her back down, and told her to go to sleep. 
                But how could she?  Why should she?  It wasn’t fair.  What was
happening to her Mama?  Why did everyone else seem to know so much more than
she did, but no one wanted to tell her?  Why did they want her not to know? 
She lay awake, crying for not knowing what was happening.  Would Mama even come
back?  Would she be dead too?  And then would Lura die as well as her Mama and
Papa?  She was afraid to die.  She didn’t really understand it, but it seemed
scary, and like it might hurt.  She didn’t want Mama to die either.  She didn’t
want anyone to die!
                No one but those soldiers.  It was their fault.  Their fault
they were going to die.  Their fault Papa was dead, and everyone else. 
Theirfault they were on this march and her feet blistered and bled.  Their
fault…!
                And her tears of fear turned to tears of rage.  She rubbed at
her eyes and lashes, hot tracks of wetness running heedlessly down her cheeks,
making tracks in the dirt caking her face.  All she felt that she could do was
cry.  She didn’t know if laughter was real any more.  She had heard the
soldiers laughing, but it sounded mean somehow.
                Mama came back soon.  She looked battered, and stumbled as she
walked.  She saw her crying, and tried to comfort her mother as best she knew
how, with a hug, and kiss on the cheek, and telling her how much she loved
her.  But the woman just hugged her, and said the same thing Leto had—just go
to sleep.  She curled up beside her mother and slept.
***** Escapists *****
Chapter Summary
     What the title of this chapter implies is anyone's guess...
     Kudos to anyone who gets the somewhat obscure reference in the
     dialogue below though.
                Newlyn looked out at the captives, feeling sorrow entrench his
heart, his soul crying out at the suffering he beheld, and was the cause of.
                When they got back to the main road, a smaller force would take
the captives into a port city where they would be sent back to Tevinter. 
Soldiers would draw lots to be able to escort them—and why not?  It was an easy
task, one where they could rape women as they pleased, were not usually harried
by attackers, and of course, rest at the city in the barracks was always
welcome.  The original plan had been to commandeer any ships in the harbor and
shackle the captives up like so much cargo and sail to port, but the docks had
been set ablaze and the ships were only so much wreckage.
                Newlyn saw the pregnant woman, exhausted and trying to carry
her son.  He looked about at the others.  They needed to stop.  They needed to
rest more, or many would just drop dead from exhaustion.  Couldn’t they see?
                But he kept his tongue.  He was no officer whose words would
make a difference.  He was no officer, no lord, or even a mage who had some
influence.  Just a hedge knight with no land, nothing but a “Ser.”
                That evening, some spoke that it would rain on the morrow.  He
was inclined to agree with that sentiment, and knew it made for miserable
traveling in the best of conditions.  But with the captives, who had no
shelter, and were on foot besides, many barefoot?  It was… cruel.  It was
intolerable—there were children.
                They would get sick, and die…  He didn’t know what else to do.
                He heard the sound of rutting, and a girl sobbing, from the
inside of a tent as he passed by.  He tried not to hear it.  He tried to
pretend that it was nothing.  He wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard the
sobbing—maybe it could have been a camp follower, after all.  Whores tended to
be wherever the money was good, and military men had plenty of need.  Then
there were the vultures—not the birds, but the sort that, once the army had
picked over the dead, they would take whatever scraps might be valuable.  The
slave boys that tended to the armor, horses, and carts.  The squires who
dressed their knights.  There were so many people.  Newlyn didn’t have a
squire—had no pay for one.  Just that same empty title.
                He tried to imagine these people if it were not a time of war. 
Would they still rape and thieve?  Would they be as bloodthirsty as they are on
the battlefield?  He almost didn’t care to think on it.
                He lay awake, listening to the sounds of camp at night, and
wondered if there was truly nothing to be done.
                There was no justice in the world.
                He woke to the sounds of morning—the scent of cooking, and
people stirring.  He dressed quickly, and clambered from his tent.  Everything
he owned, he carried.  A slave would take care of the tent.  Why did things
have to be this way?
                He supposed… if someone could get someone else to do something
for them, and they didn’t have to pay for it—Well, there were a lot of lazy
people in the world, a lot of greedy people, and sometimes those things
coincided.
                But why should he make someone else do what he could do for
himself?  He looked at the tent, and hesitated.  He would be mocked for doing
it himself.  The thought of the ridicule made him shy away from it.  He took
his armor, and his sword and shield, and stood in line for breakfast.  He
couldn’t say he remembered what it was after he had eaten it, so occupied were
his thoughts on the waiting day’s trials.
                It was raining before they had finished breaking camp, and he
knew the road would soon turn to mud under the hooves of the horses, the wagon
wheels, and the dogs.  He was so sick of Seheron, and its rainy weather, the
everlasting fog that made everything difficult; he was so homesick, and wanted
to go back to Qarinus.  Newlyn was instructed to take his bow instead of his
sword and shield and go hunting.  He supposed it was his turn.
                He wasn’t necessarily hunting for game, though that was part of
it; he was to also look for signs that they were being followed, or anything
out of the ordinary.  He was stationed with two other men who were just as
enthusiastic as he was about breaking away from the easy trail on horseback and
trekking after game.  He left his heavier armor in a cart, and wore leather to
hunt.  He had a warm cloak, and sturdy boots, and felt guilty about it when he
looked over his shoulder at the miserable captives.
                It nagged at him all day as he stalked through the forest.  He
thought about it when one of his fellows brought down an elk, and the four of
them had to lug the big animal all the way back to camp.  And, he thought, at
least they were eating decently, and had shelter at night, and cloaks.  The
captives didn’t even eat well.
                He thought of the children amongst them, the pace the army was
setting, and it just made him sick.  Too sick to eat that night.  He was a
guard of the captives the day after that, and wondered when the first of them
would begin to die.
                The thought gave him pause.  He just couldn’t bear this any
longer.
                He looked up, and saw the pregnant elf.  She stumbled, and fell
in the mud.  He pulled his horse to a stop in alarm.  The column kept walking,
but she stayed.  He swung down from his horse.  It was a war horse, well
trained, and he commanded it to stand.  It stayed in place, watching him as he
moved amongst the captives.  They gave him a wide berth as he passed, and he
came to the fallen woman.
                He knelt beside her, concern etched in his profile.  Her boy,
the dark-haired child, was staring at him with that same look, like he measured
his soul and found it wanting.  Newlyn looked back at the boy.  “Would you let
me help her?” he asked, seeing how the child stood—back rigid, legs parallel to
his shoulders, suspicion marked in his features.  The child seemed grudging,
but he took a step back, but watched him with all the trust a deer had for a
lion.
                The woman looked up at Newlyn, fearful as a doe.  He didn’t ask
for her permission, for something told him that she was too proud to accept
it.  Rather, he lifted her into his arms, not knowing what else to do.  He
walked back to his waiting horse, who had strayed but a little.  The boy
trailed behind him.  The horse was indignant—I am a destrier, not a palfry--but
when he set the woman down on it, it stayed steady.  She looked at him, fearful
still—either of what he was doing, or of the animal, he couldn’t say.  He took
the horse’s bit and led it.  He knew someone would report it, and he may even
get into some kind of trouble for it, but…
                He couldn’t just leave it be.
                When the boy was struggling to get through the mud, he stopped
and lifted him too, placing him beside his mother.  As he did, she finally
spoke.  “You do a noble thing, ser,” she told him.
                He looked up at her, and felt his eyes threaten to water. 
Noble—he?  No, and it even hurt to hear her say that, after everything he had
done to her and her town and everyone she knew.  “No, my lady,” he whispered,
and feared his voice may crack like an adolescent’s.  “It is not noble to do a
good deed.”  He turned and began to lead the horse again.
                “Though it is noble to do a good deed when all else is wretched
and others would condemn the deed,” she called to him.
                He glanced back at her once, and looked down, leading on.  They
were wise words, words he should heed, but words nonetheless.  In the end, the
words hung heavy over his heart.  He knew he should do more to truly be noble. 
To truly be noble, he would help them.  To truly be noble, he would not falter,
or hesitate in that path.  But he didn’t even pitch his own tent; a slave did
that.  A slave whose name he didn’t even know.
                He was right; someone did confront him about letting her sit
atop the horse, and sooner than he had thought.
                The mage rode up to him.  He was a red-faced man with a big
beak of a nose that he had always rather compared to some kind of bird.  He was
clearly angry, and he could tell that from his disposition from a distance,
though he could only watch as he came closer, and drew up the reigns as he came
beside him.  “What do you think you’re doing, Barker?” he squawked.
                Newlyn didn’t look away with some effort.  “Walking, as you can
observe,” he answered testily, his anger at the entire situation with the
captives for the first time truly beginning to surface.  How dare this man? 
Couldn’t he just leave it be?  He was hurting no one, after all.
                The mage’s gaze flicked to the woman and her son.  The boy was
peering around her curiously, though she looked very much like she would rather
be nearly anywhere else.  “Letting the captives ride your horse while you walk
is not something you were instructed to do, nor why you have a horse, Barker.” 
He left unsaid how ashamed he should be of his actions, how it shamed the
entire military force, undoubtedly.
                Newlyn pressed his lips shut into a thin line to keep from
exploding in a mess of anger.  He let out a long breath through his nose before
he answered.  “Look more closely.  The mud comes up to the boy’s knees, and his
mother cannot carry him; she’s pregnant,” he insisted.
                The mage paused, looking at her swollen belly.  Four months, he
guessed.  “If she dies, she dies.”
                Newlyn had to approach this in some other way.  “You said we
were to do the raid to capture slaves.  What good does it do us if half of them
die and the rest are sick?” he demanded.
                The mage glanced out at the captives, as if seeing them for the
first time, not as a mass, but as individuals.  The mass moved on, but the
individuals fell, shivered, leaned against each other, carried their children. 
They trudged at a pace they couldn’t hope to maintain, and were not making it
in the high mud, the constant drivel of rain just making it worse.  The mage
paused.  He wasn’t unreasonable, Newlyn decided.  Just pig-headed.  Or bird-
brained.
                He glanced at the woman, who stared at him meekly.  “I’ll see
what I can do,” he said, and turned, trotting his horse through the mud. 
Newlyn sighed, and continued slogging.
                Later on, they called an early camp.  Some of the wagons were
rearranged, and two empty ones were brought up.  Select captives were put in
it—the weakest of them, and the pregnant woman, he noted.  Any child under ten
summers.  They were packed close, but at least out of the mud and the wagons
had tarp canopies that helped keep out the weather.
                Newlyn watched the goings-on, and thought, some good can be
accomplished in the world.  It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was something.
                But as the day wore on, and the rain came down harder, he
wondered if he couldn’t have done more somehow.  Maybe that was all that could
be done.
                There was a storm that night, and he lay awake, shivering in
his tent, cold.  He wondered how cold the captives must be, and his conscience
bade him to rise, and so he did.  He took his cloak, and sought out the
pregnant woman he felt so much guilt for.  They had made their camp just off
the road in a field, which wasn’t so bad as the mud on the road.  The captives
were watched constantly, but he could walk amongst them, and no one thought
much of it.  He found her half-asleep, her back against a wagon wheel, her son
in her lap.  He knelt beside her, and felt he should say something.  But what
was there to say?  An apology, begging for forgiveness.
                He didn’t deserve forgiveness.
                He pulled his cloak from his shoulders and spread it over them
both.  He could reclaim it in the morning before anyone saw that he didn’t have
it any more.  He saw her eyes flicker open as he turned, and knew she watched
him go.  He came back at first light, and she quickly gave it back to him
without a word, but her eyes were wet with gratitude.
                As he turned to go, she caught his sleeve.  “No matter what you
believe, you are a noble man amidst beasts,” she told him.
                He stared at her, and wished she could see that he was really a
monster.  “No, I fear that I am a beast too.”
                She reached out a hand, and tenderly cupped his cheek, scratchy
with stubble, grimy and unwashed.  She looked at him so sweetly that he found
himself missing Kiersten all the more, for she would look at him like that
sometimes as well, and tell him that she saw all the good in him.  Did this
elven woman see what Kiersten seemed to see?  “That you fear it means you are
not it,” she told him.
                He looked at her, not even knowing what to say or how to
respond.  Why didn’t she see?  Why didn’t she understand that he was a
monster?  “No—No, look what I’ve done to you,” he cried, voice soft.
                “It’s not what you have done,” she told him.  “You were given
an order, and you followed it.  You are not the monster; it’s the one giving
you orders.”
                He shook his head in disbelief.  “Ma’am, you are kind, but…”
                “It’s like a knife,” she said gently.  “A knife can kill
someone, or slice vegetables, but its purpose is not up to the blade.  Or like
mages, who have the option to be a more powerful maleficar, but that is still
their choice and not all of them do.”
                He felt like she must be delirious.  “Ma’am…” he began.
                She raised a finger for silence.  “It’s the same as you.  You
have the option to be a monster, but are you?”
                Newlyn felt his heart aching.  It wasn’t like that.  It wasn’t
that easy.  It wasn’t nearly so black and white.  “I…”
                She didn’t wait for him to finish.  “You’re like a knife,
Newlyn,” she said again, as she lovingly stroked her son’s hair.  A son who, he
realized, was listening intently.  Whether he understood or not was a different
matter.  “A knife can be used to cut bread, or stab someone in the heart.  But
the knife isn’t evil.  It just is.  It’s just a tool—like a soldier following
orders.”
                He searched her eyes for any sign that she might be being
unkind, but found none.  “You are wise beyond your years, ma’am,” he said, and
hurried away without a further word.  She was wise, he knew.  And he should
listen to her.  The boy was fortunate to have a mother so wise.  Maybe he would
grow up with half her wisdom.
                If he lived that long.  If something horrible didn’t happen to
him, or to her.  If they weren’t separated and sold off.
                If, if, if!
                To Newlyn’s eyes, it just wasn’t possible that the child should
live to adulthood under these circumstances.  What would be the odds that a
child so young would survive without its parent?  Even if she didn’t die on the
long trek to the city, she was pregnant.  What if she died during childbirth? 
What if they were simply sold to different people?
                That child, and all the others, had such a frightening,
uncertain future ahead of them, and he found himself praying for all of them.
                More days passed.  The weather lightened and the sun broke from
the clouds again, but there were stirrings amongst the men.  They were getting
indignant that their looting was going towards funding the war effort, and not
lining their own pockets.  In Newlyn’s opinion, they weresoldiers not reavers
but that changed nothing.  People were greedy no matter what, and a few of them
even sounded very convincing, even to his ears.
                He stopped and listened to one of them speak.  He spoke of how
hard they worked, the pace they set, how they hadn’t been home in years and
weren’t paid enough for the work and life and limb they risked (and cut down),
and so deserved a fair share of the gold and jewels pillaged.
                When their words started making sense, Newlyn knew that it was
time to move on, lest he start believing in them.  He had no need to report it;
the officers knew, and tried to hush the speakers whenever they could—sometimes
with warnings, sometimes with chores, and a couple times the aid of a whip, but
it didn’t help.  Instead of shouting, they whispered, and that was the only
real difference, and the officers attempt at silencing them only influenced
them, and not in the direction intended.
                Newlyn suspected some kind of uprising soon, and indeed, one
eve as the watch changed, he was right.
                The fighting didn’t start like a battle he was accustomed to. 
It was suddenly everywhere—madness, the conspirators acting at what must have
been a set time.  Apparently, someone had killed one of the mages by taking him
by surprise.  The woman mage was protected by the time he stumbled out of his
tent with his sword and joined the fray, half-dressed but determined to fulfill
his duty, and earn his pay.
                It was the only time he had really felt very good about
fighting.  Fighting Qunari was one thing, but he had seen little enough of that
lately.  They were vicious, and treated mages—who, despite everything, he still
viewed as people and souls first and foremost--worse than animals besides, even
if they weren’t attacking them.  But fighting in an uprising was something
else.
                Then, an idea occurred to him.  The fighting would be a perfect
time…
                He broke away from the fight, stole between the wagons and wove
around skirmishes, desperately hunting for the roped off area.  It wasn’t
defended right now; there was too much going on.  He saw some of the
slaves—mostly the young men and girls—were already fleeing, some in groups,
some individually.  They may be cut down in the fighting, and many would simply
be caught again or die in the elements.  Others were too frightened to try.
                He had to do this, or he would regret it forever.
                He remembered that boy’s eyes, his mother’s words.  Could he
live with himself knowing he had had a hand in selling them into a lifetime of
slavery and hardship?  Kiersten would be disgusted with him if she knew. 
Maybe, before he had met her, he wouldn’t be doing this, but the girl had
changed him—for the better, he hoped.
                He crept back to his tent, and donned his armor, listening to
the chaos outside.  He snatched up his weapons and ran for the horses.  Many of
them were already taken.  He whistled, high and shrill.  His horse’s head
snapped up, ears pricking forward.  He whistled again, and she came at a brisk
trot.  He kept whistling, running now.  She kept after him, to the place her
tack was.  There was no boy to do it for him this time, and it was hard with
the armor on.  Nearly impossible, more like; he had to take the gauntlets off,
but he managed to get both saddle and the bridle on.  He slid his hands back in
to the gauntlets, sliding his bow and quiver into their place on the saddle,
and pulled himself into the stirrups.  He heard an unholy scream as someone was
set ablaze.  The mages…
                He looked back, over his shoulder at the blaze.  It wasn’t
wide, but it was high--a fiery beacon that could be seen for miles around, and
people screamed, melting in its fury.  He could smell burning hair even from
this distance.  His horse whickered nervously as others screamed, and there was
no worse sound than a horse in pain.
                He wheeled her around, and kicked her into a gallop.  She
vaulted forward, eager to be gone from the fire, and leaped the rope pen.  Her
hooves skittered in the grass, and she charged forward.  He engaged as few as
the rebel soldiers as possible on his mad dash for the captives.  Someone
stumbled in front of him, with no time to turn.  The horse leapt, but her
hooves crashed against his unarmored head.  He heard a sickening thud when bone
broke.  She stumbled as she landed, but was running again in a moment.
                He had liked Bluebell since he had met her.  The horse always
seemed to make better company than the men in the camp.  Not to mention that
she not only tolerated his most recent of shenanigans, but seemed only too
happy to oblige them.
                She dashed around a corner, barely slowing to accommodate the
turn.  Her hooves slid over the earth, but the mud had dried days ago, or she
might have fallen.  She slowed to make another turn, and took up speed again. 
He leaned forward in the stirrups, knees tucked in as she leapt, over the other
rope barrier.  She landed in the grass, and he pulled her reigns so she may
slow to a trot.  He brought her up to the wagons the captives had hidden
under.  He scanned them, looking for the pregnant woman.
                He didn’t even know her name.
                But the boy recognized him.  He saw a child partially crawl
from the wagon, kneeling in the grass as he looked up at him.  Newlyn brought
Bluebell to an impatient halt when he saw the ebony hair.
                “Where’s your mother?” he called to the child.
                The boy glanced back under the wagon, then back at him without
speaking, but the glance was enough.  Newlyn sprang from the saddle as lithe as
a cat, running to the wagon.  He saw her, and she looked up at him.  He held
his hand out to her.
                “You have to run—this is your only chance!” he told her.
                She hesitated, looking around her, then took his hand.  He
helped haul her out, then called to the other captives.  “All of you—this is
your only chance to run!” he screamed as he grabbed the reigns to his horse. 
“If you stay, you’ll be slaves, and your children will be slaves, and their
children.”  He left unsaid that if they chose to run they may die.
                He set the woman in his saddle, and the boy in front of her. 
Bluebell was strong enough for two passengers, but it would slow her down.  He
swung up behind her, conscious that his armor would slow them down too.  He
slid his feet into the stirrups, his arms encircling the two elves.  He kicked
Bluebell into a canter.  The woman yelped in fright, the boy silent as the
grave.  He couldn’t say if others followed, for he dare not look.
                The horse couldn’t jump the rope with passengers, so he rode up
beside it and cut it in twain with his sword—an awkward blow with two
passengers, but possible.
                They ran on.  Some saw him, others called out to him, told him
to stop, but they had their own problems right now.
                He let Bluebell run free, giving the horse her head.  It didn’t
matter where they went, just that they went, for the moment at least.
                But long-term?
                He would be worse than a deserter; he would be a traitor.  And
his beloved Kiersten?  He would be lucky if he would ever see her again.  He
hoped that she could one day learn the truth of what he had done, and not that
he was simply a deserter and a traitor.  And a thief—the captives would be
considered slaves after all, property.
                He hoped…  No, it didn’t matter any longer.  He had made his
decision, though a part of him wondered if he would grow to regret it.
                As he rode, and the horse slowed, he came to realize what he
had given up in a moment of rashness.  He had given up Kiersten.  He had given
up his country and his home.  His life as a soldier.  He had given up…
everything.  Everything he was, who he was.  And for what?  His conscience? 
Some elves?  Was it worth it?  He didn’t know.  He could have just left it be. 
He should have just left it be.
                He climbed off of the horse to lighten her load, and walked,
leading her.  Walking in such armor for long periods of time and at night was
troublesome, but there was nothing else for it.  All was silence—or rather,
close to it, as they could still hear the remnants of the battle far behind
them.  The forest swallowed much of the sound, but the wind did carry it.
                They came to a stream, and he helped the two down to drink.  He
drank a bit himself, but only let Bluebell have a couple swallows before he
pushed her away.  She didn’t need to drink too much yet, and shouldn’t.
                If he had been wise, he would have grabbed food,
supplies—something.  But he hadn’t.  At least he had his bow; he could hunt. 
And, he supposed, eat roast as there was no other way to cook anything.  Or
carry it.  Or anything really.
                The woman washed her face, and her son’s—a bit against his
will, and she made him wash his hands too.  He waited, and gave them some time.
                She approached him, and bowed her head.  “Thank you, serrah,”
she told him, and looked up at him, grateful beyond words.  He didn’t deserve
such a title.
                He glanced away, not knowing what to say.  “I…”  But he looked
at her, saw the gratitude in her eyes.  He looked to the child, so full of hope
for the first time since he had seen him.  Yes.  Yes, it had been worth it.  If
he could only help two people… it would be worth it.  “It was the right thing
to do.”
                “Yet so few people would have done it,” she told him, and
smiled warmly.
                He glanced back the way they had come.  It would likely be past
midnight before the camp was back in order.  Someone would have reported him
running off, and he had no doubt that they would come looking for him.  He
would be executed if he were caught.
                He needed to put as much distance between himself and the
encampment as possible.  The woman put her son on the horse, but herself
walked, saying that the poor beast needed a break, lest they break her wind
between all the running and her heavy passengers.
                Newlyn led the horse, and a sort of comfortable silence fell
over them.  It was several minutes longer before he realized that he still did
not know their names.  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, then back
at the deer path they followed.  “I’m Newlyn Barker,” he told her, dropping his
title.  It was a corrupted title.
                He saw her smile again, this time in satisfaction.  “Ah, it is
good to know the name of our rescuer,” she mused.  She was silent for a moment,
and he thought she would not return the courtesy at first.  “I’m Mieta.”
                “No last name?” he inquired, and wondered if it were rude.
                She laughed gently.  “I hardly think that matters any longer,”
she told him.  She was right; it didn’t.  As a slave, she wouldn’t have one,
and if they were to be free, they would have to join the Qun.
                He glanced back at the boy.  “What’s your name?” he asked him,
trying to sound cheerful.
                The child regarded him with outright suspicion.  Under the
circumstances, it was understandable, but it was troubling to see a child so
jaded.  “…  Leto,” he answered curtly.
                “Were you named after someone?” he asked idly.  “I was named
after my father.”
                Leto paused.  “My father’s dead,” he said, very matter-of-
factly.
                He wondered if perhaps his father had died quite a long time
ago, maybe before the child could remember, but that thought didn’t last long. 
“He was executed.  Shortly after your army sacked Schavalis,” Mieta said, a
hint of bitterness in her voice.
                There was nothing he could say to ease her sorrow--nothing.  He
couldn’t apologize; it wasn’t his fault, and he had already tried anyway.  He
could give her no comforting words; he was no priest or poet.  “Your husband
died bravely.  They all did,” he whispered.
                “Dying bravely is hardly something I would wish for anyone,
ser,” she said, her voice tart.  “I would rather have him alive and a coward.”
                There was nothing more he could say, so he fell to silence.  He
told them the necessity of continuing on their path even after night had
fallen.  He had thought the child would complain, but he did not.
                “Do you speak Tevene at all, ma’am?” he asked her.
                She frowned a little.  “Some.”  She was quiet a moment.  “I
suppose it lost value when we started trading with the Qunari, and most people
just speak the Trade tongue.”
                They would have to learn it if they were ever captured, he
knew.  Drilled harshly into them, beaten for speaking in another
dialect—probably the same way the ancient elves lost their language, come to
think of it.
                They had to both be hungry, and weary, but they slogged onwards
anyway.  The two adults took turns riding on the horse throughout the night,
and he found a place that was at least easily defendable to lay up by day, at
least for a little while.  He picketed Bluebell, and let the two elves sleep
while he tended his armor and sword.
                He had thought the child was asleep when he started cleaning
his sword with a handful of earth, but he was watching him intently.  Newlyn
looked up at Leto, then back at the blade, continuing to scrub it clean.
                “What are you doing?” the elf asked.
                He debated over telling him to go to sleep, or just answering
his questions, but he remembered being a curious child too, and also recalled
what hell the boy had been through over the past few weeks.  It prompted him to
a kindness he would have not otherwise offered.  “Cleaning the blade,” he
answered.
                The boy sat down beside him, quite curious.  “With dirt?”
                Newlyn snorted a laugh.  “I don’t have anything else,” he
explained.  “And ‘dirt’ works pretty well for getting blood off of a blade.”
                He frowned.  “Why?”
                The human almost regretted answering him the first time. 
“Because it cleans the blade—see?”  He demonstrated, and the boy fell silent
for a bit as he watched.
                “Why do you kill people?”
                He paused in his scrubbing, debating the answer to that
question, then continued.  “Because I’m told to,” he said, flipping the blade
over to get to the other side.
                Leto cocked his head to the side in thought.  “Why?”
                He felt like smacking his palm against his forehead, or shooing
the boy away, but guilt kept him from either.  “Because some people think other
people need to die, so have other people go kill them.”
                He could have asked the next question himself:  “Why?”
                Newlyn’s lips pressed together in a thin, mildly irritated
line.  He was exhausted, and hungry, and really didn’t need this nonsense right
now!  “Because some people are bastards,” he answered, glancing up at the child
for a reaction.
                The boy’s nose wrinkled.  “What’s a ‘bastard’?”
                He glanced toward Mieta, who was fast asleep.  “A word you
won’t repeat, got it?”
                “But what does it mean?” he pressed.
                Newlyn sighed to himself.  “Someone who’s mean, wicked—evil.” 
He shrugged.  “A child can also be a bastard when their parents weren’t married
when they were born.”
                Leto’s brow creased in thought, trying to make this new bit of
information make sense.  “Why is someone evil when their parents weren’t
married?”
                The soldier took a long breath through his nose, wishing a stop
to this inane line of questioning.  “Here.”  He handed the boy his dagger.  In
the child’s hands, it seemed a lot bigger.  The boy stared at it in silent
wonder.  “Keep it, and go to sleep.  When you wake up, I’ll show you how to use
it.”
                The knife would be more use to the boy than anything else he
could think of.  He may be three, but Newlyn had been five when he held his
first dulled blade, but he hadn’t faced the danger this boy did.  Mieta might
not like that, but Newlyn didn’t want the child defenseless—or her for that
matter.  No worries—he himself liked and collected knives.  He had two more,
and he would give one to her as well.
                He shooed the kid off to sleep, and he actually trotted off
this time, and did go to sleep.
 
                He and Mieta changed shifts.  He put his armor on the ground
regretfully and laid down with his cloak.  Newlyn could say that he dreamt, and
knew his dreams were nightmare-memories of war.
                Battle was so terrible.  Severed limbs, blood covering the
field, soaking the ground.  Scorched earth, dying men, dogs, and horses.  It
was so terrible, he had once wondered how anyone could bear to do it again
after having lived through it once.  He supposed because they had to, but he
knew that some people actually liked it.
                He couldn’t for a moment imagine liking bringing death to
others, but he remembered the first man he had killed.  It was a Qunari,
actually—but that mattered little to him.  Did being a giant with horns make
him less of a person?  No, not to Newlyn.  He had been sick over it, and when
it was over, had vomited until there was simply nothing left.  He had lied and
said it was the smell.  A senior soldier told him that he would get used to
it.  In a way, he did, but he had had to learn to forgive—both the one he
killed, and himself for doing it.
                It had been a hard lesson, but it helped.
                By the time he had woken, Mieta had found edible berries, a few
nuts, and a couple mushrooms.  It wasn’t much, but they divided it as best they
could.  The elf woman had curried the animal as best she could with her
fingers, but she really needed a good comb if they were to keep saddling her. 
If there was a rock, she could get a saddle sore, and they wouldn’t be able to
ride her.
                They pressed on.  Neither had slept nearly enough as they would
need, but it was time to go on anyway.  “Where are we going?” Leto asked after
a long silence had passed, he and his mother on the horse and Newlyn leading.
                It was a good question, and the adults looked at each other in
silent question for a moment.  “You know this land better than I,” he told her.
                She frowned in thought, and her lips drew into a thin line. 
“Northward—toward the Qunari encampments; they will give us refuge.”  There
were a few well-guarded ports along the northernmost shores of Seheron that the
Qunari used to ferry troops and supplies from Par Vallen in the north.  They
would find the Qunari to the north; she was certain of it.
                Newlyn looked up at the sun, and oriented himself that way. 
Thankfully, they had gone north and west when they fled, rather than south. 
South would lead them nowhere save the sea, and that was a dead end to them.
                They had to stop toward nightfall.  They had been foraging
intermittently as they passed, but Bluebell needed to graze and drink.  Mieta
took the work of gathering edible foods upon herself, and he trusted her to be
light on her feet and nimble.  All elves were.
                Newlyn unsaddled Bluebell, and removed her bit so she could
graze on the tall grasses.  He himself took out his knife and found a long
green branch that he began fashioning into what his grandfather had called a
“rabbit stick.”  It would do for hunting small game, and they needed all the
help they could get.  Arrows were expensive, and could be ruined easily, and
considering what they were doing, he’d rather carry the stick than a drawn bow
for hours, even if he had one.
                He barely got to it though before he felt more than heard the
boy lurking over his shoulder.  Why were elves so damned quiet?
                “Whatcha doin’?” he asked, peering over his shoulder curiously.
                Newlyn frowned, slicing off another twig.  “Making a rabbit
stick,” he said casually.
                The boy watched him for a moment, then asked the inevitable
question:  “What’s that?”
                “A stick.  For rabbits.”
                The boy mulled that thought over for a moment.  “For killing
rabbits?”
                “Do you like rabbit?” he asked him.
                He blinked.  “Uh-huh.”
                “Then sit down and be quiet so I can finish it,” he said.  The
boy scowled, but did as bidden, crossing his arms.  It didn’t last long, but
the silence was golden while it lasted, and he was about finished anyway.
                “You said you’d teach me how to use the knife,” he said,
holding out the small blade in one hand.
                Newlyn scowled at him, in a friendly sort of way.  He ignored
him until he finished, then set the stick away, and sheathed his hunting
knife.  “No I didn’t,” he admonished him.  “I said I’d teach you how to use the
dagger.”
                “Oh,” the boy said, voice flat.
                He touched the small blade.  “That’s what this is.”  He turned
toward him.  “First lesson—are you ready?”
                The child grinned anxiously, nodding.  “Uh-huh!”
                He would have been just as excited at his age.  “Good.  Keep it
hidden—that’s the first rule.”
                The boy nodded, blinked when Newlyn didn’t go on, and then
connected the dots in his mind.  He searched about himself for a moment, and
Newlyn let him continue for a bit, then he helped him tuck it into the back of
his pants, in his belt.  His tunic covered the small dagger.
                “Good—now draw it.”  And he let him practice drawing it.  He
was awkward at first, but Newlyn was careful not to let him hurt himself,
always reminding him that it was sharp.
                Mieta came back with a bit of the same stuff as last time, and
they ate briskly, then hurried on throughout the night.
                Newlyn let the horse lead more than himself; it had better
night sight.  He walked along beside it numbly, listening to the sounds of the
forest, and trying not to trip over a root or something.
                Suddenly, Mieta jerked the horse’s reigns to a halt.  He
stumbled in surprise, looking up at her.  “I hear dogs,” she whispered.
                Newlyn paused, straining to hear whatever she heard.  Leto
said, “I hear them too.”
                He scowled.  He didn’t hear anything.  “I don’t,” he muttered
darkly.
                She frowned.  “Of course you don’t; you’re human,” she said
matter-of-factly.  “We need to lose them.”
                “Do you hear water?”
                Leto pointed, off to the east, absolutely certain.  They
turned, and Mieta got off of Bluebell, smiling warmly at him.  “Elves have
better night vision than humans—you ride Bluebell, ser knight.” 
He scowled.  “How did you guess my knighthood, ma’am?”
He heard her kind of chuckle.  “How could I not, with the arrogant way you
carry yourself, and your fancy suit of armor with its embellished crest?”  He
dropped the matter, and let her walk while he road, as he saw no way around it.
What she said must have been true, for she stumbled less or not at all, and was
more sure-footed than Bluebell was.  The stream was ankle deep, and he offered
to let her ride the horse, but again she refrained, saying that he couldn’t let
his armor rust.  It was true enough, and so they forded upstream.  The night
was cool, and the water must have been cold, but she never complained, nor did
she stumble, though occasionally picked and chose her path.  The thick mists
helped to lose the trackers, but Newlyn worried about getting lost in it.
                They pressed on relentlessly, desperately.  Eventually, it grew
too deep, and they had to get out of the water.  They climbed up on the east
bank and Mieta covered their tracks by sweeping them with a pine bough.
                She smiled up at him with some pride.  “My husband was a
scout,” she explained.
                Newlyn only nodded, the sick feeling in his gut making him
cringe.  And it was his people’s fault he was dead now.
                The night wore on, and they were all tired by morning, but
Mieta would not let them rest; the dogs worried her, and so they pressed ever
onward.
                They stopped little or not at all, only picking up anything
edible as they passed.  The horse was a strong, loyal creature, but little
rations and fewer breaks were taking a toll on the poor beast.  Newlyn had to
remove the bit and let her graze as they walked, or she might never have eaten
enough to keep her going.  The longest they allowed themselves to rest was to
make water, which was a necessity that could not be neglected, and unfortunate,
because to a dog, it left a trail, so they stuck as close to streams as was
convenient, both for the water source as well as waste.
                They just kept walking, legs weary and heavy, and so tired. 
They let Leto stretch his legs on occasion, but mostly he rode, and shifted
uncomfortably in the high seat, too small for the big animal really.  But
despite their run, Newlyn felt that he couldn’t neglect teaching them about the
knives they carried; knowing what to do, even a little, could be more
advantageous than a bit of distance, when it came down to it, and the horse
needed to rest, for she never got the same breaks they did.
                They hadn’t slept in days, except for occasionally drifting off
in the saddle.  Leto was the only one who could sleep, with an adult holding on
to him to keep him from sliding, though he did not sleep well, and from the
faces he made, his dreams seemed troubled, though he made no mention of them;
perhaps he didn’t remember them.
                Newlyn prayed that if they survived this that the boy wouldn’t
remember this any more than the dreams.  Mieta had whispered to him while her
son slept lightly that he had seen his father die.  No child deserved that, and
it would haunt him if he didn’t forget.  He may be young enough to forget with
time, not yet old enough to truly form memories in the way Newlyn knew them. 
Did he remember being three?  No, not really.
                If the boy did forget, it would only be a blessing:  His
father’s death, his home sacked, everyone he knew enslaved, the brutal march to
the slave ships…  No, he didn’t deserve to remember it except perhaps as a
story his mother may one day tell him.
                He prayed it would only be a story.  A brilliant story—of their
escape from those that would enslave them to make her children’s eyes widen in
wonder, and later smile in admiration of the bravery, wit, and vigor their
mother had shown.
                He remembered that statue in the village square.  He had seen
it before it had been pulled down and smashed, and he had thought it was
subtlety, quietly, magnificent.  It was strength, and courage, and everything a
man needed—not only of body, but also of spirit and mind.  That was the sort of
thing he wanted for the child.
                Despite all their efforts, they eventually were forced to
rest.  Bluebell suddenly stopped walking one late afternoon, digging in her
feet, shivering, and refused to move.  Newlyn tried coaxing her, gently.  He
pet her, and hand-fed her, cooing and caressing her, but still she would not
move.
                He knew she had to be sore.  Leaving a horse in the saddle for
so long was practically a crime, and she was tired besides, and hungry.  There
was nothing for it but to let her rest.
                The passengers got off of her, and he was able to coax her into
a bit of shelter.  Mieta stayed with the horse while he scouted for a likely
campsite.  He found a small alcove—almost a cave, with a ditch on one side,
ferns on the other two.  It was good enough, with plenty of cover if not so
defensible.  He was able to lead Bluebell to it, and hobble her to a likely
tree.  He unsaddled her, dropped it a distance away from her, and she seemed
grateful to have it off.  She looked very much like she would like a good roll
on the ground, so he sighed, and removed the rope from her holster.  She
stretched, arching her neck.  Watching a horse roll was comical.  In any other
situation, he may have laughed, but he only looked on in silent contemplation
while she rolled on the earth, enjoying the feel of it against her back.  She
finally climbed to her feet, suddenly more interested in the fresh green
grasses.  While she munched, he hobbled her again, feeling a little less guilty
about it now.  He scratched her cheek affectionately.  She had put up with a
lot in the past few days, and she was tired.
                Newlyn took the first watch, and watched for rabbits as well as
men and dogs.  He waited, and watched, and saw nothing through the Maker-
blasted fog.  Then—A quick reaction on his part, a deft movement was all, and
the stick flew through the air.  It buried itself in a young rabbit’s haunches,
and he hurried after it.  It was still alive, so he quickly took his knife to
the poor creature’s throat.  He pulled out the stick, and let it bleed out. 
Now how could he cook it without anyone seeing that he was?  That was the
biggest puzzle.
                He stared at the rabbit.  Maybe he should skin it for now, and
think about it while he kept watch.  He paused frequently as he worked,
listening and watching as the others rested, and wondered how they could cook
it.
                If they were on the beach, he would wrap it in large leaves and
mud, and bury it in the sand—it would become an oven, and cook over a long
period of time, slowly, if it were a hot day.  But it was too cool in the
forest and they didn’t have the time anyway.  The way he saw it, they really
needed a fire, and a fire was just too risky; smoke could be seen for miles
after all.  He strung it up anyway, hanging it in a tree to keep animals away
from it.
                They didn’t have any salt either, to preserve its meat.  He
wondered if the creature had died for nothing.  …Like so many other things, and
people.
***** Alone *****
Chapter Summary
     Out of the frying pan and into the fire...
                The fighting had scared Lura, making her cling tightly to her
mother’s skirts, and want desperately to be held, picked up, told that
everything would be all right.  But no one said that, no one did that.  Her
mother held on to her, but her grip was painful, and Lura was too scared to
tell her so.
                She had seen Leto and his mother run at the first sight of the
mage’s fire, seeking shelter.  Her mother, though, must have been braver.  A
few others saw that the soldiers watching them had turned on one another, or
were running to aid their comrades.  No one was watching them, and even Lura
could see that.
                Her mother looked about her, and finally lifted Lura into her
arms.  From her elevated position, the girl could see more of the smoking
fires.  The very ground shook with the force of the mage’s might.  She could
hear shrieks of pain, and it sounded familiar.  Just like back in Schavalis,
when…  She dared not think of what had happened in Schavalis.  It gave her
nightmares, and there was no comfort from them.  Most nights, she just
pretended that it didn’t happen, that that had all been a dream.
                They had been on the road for so long, she wondered if it might
have been.  Walking was what felt like all she had ever known.  Maybe Schavalis
had been a dream.  It felt like a dream.
                The stench of burning hair filled her nostrils, making her
cover her nose.  Her mother was suddenly running.  The ground swept by them,
and she clutched Mama tightly, eyes wide with fright.
                But as her mother ducked under the rope, and into the chaos,
she quickly squeezed her eyes shut, but sometimes she opened them without
meaning to.  Her mother continued to run, to duck, and weave, and she knew not
what happened, but she could hear everything, and caught occasional glimpses.
                Images danced in her mind, of the blood she had seen.  A man
with missing fingers, bloody at the stubs, screaming in rage.  A body, an arrow
sticking out of his eye.  A horse lying in a pool of its own blood, its rider’s
leg crushed under its bulk and pinned.
                She smelled a scent like slaughter day at a butcher’s, and
imagined that it was people.  The thought made her sick, and very scared.
                Would she be dead too?  When she died, would she smell like
that too?
                She could hear her mother’s heavy breathing, her panting.  She
stumbled once, and Lura’s eyes snapped open, then immediately closed as a sword
struck another man in the neck, creating a shower of blood.  Her mother kept
running.  No one seemed to impede her.
                She ran madly, and for what felt forever, before she set Lura
down on her own feet, and told her to run with her, as fast as she could.  Lura
did her best to keep up with her mother, but she tired quickly, and her mother
soon had to carry her again.  Before long, she too had to slow, and the two
hurried along through the forest, well into the night.
                “I’m tired,” Lura complained, huffing and puffing to keep
going.
                “Baby, you have to keep moving,” her mother urged her, and she
did her best.  She really tried; she did.  She hurried, and panted, and
scrambled.  She pushed herself, and her mother told her that if they didn’t
hurry, they would be caught.  Lura wondered what was so bad about that, given
that the alternative was the scary forest and wild animals.  What would they do
in the forest anyway?  What would they eat?  Who would protect them from
wolves?
                But they kept running anyway, stumbling, scrambling.
                Hours more passed.  In full dark, Lura fell, and tried to get
up, but her shaking legs just wouldn’t hold her any more.  She had walked all
day, and ran as best she could all night, and her legs wouldn’t go any more.
                She looked up hopelessly at her mother, who only scooped her up
once more.  She carried her in her arms, then moved her to her back, hunting
her way through the forest, determinedly.
                Lura’s little legs were aching with pain, and she made soft
noises of hurt whenever something hit them, like a low-hanging branch, as they
passed amidst the trees.  They splashed through a stream, and up a muddy bank. 
Toward dawn, they didn’t even stop.
                Lura had once tried to stay up so late, but had fallen asleep
far earlier than she had intended.  Now, it felt like no great accomplishment,
but rather a terrible curse.  She wanted so badly to sleep.  She had a soft bed
in Schavalis, if it were true and not a dream, with thick blankets, and a
pillow.  She wanted so much to just curl up under the covers with Lady and fall
asleep, to dream.
                She wanted to just lie down, just for a little while.  Walking
hurt.  Riding on her mother’s back hurt, and stretched out her legs
uncomfortably.  How had she ever thought this had been fun before?
                She walked, stumbling in exhaustion after her mother as long as
she could before her mother picked her up again.  To herself, Sharall seemed
strong and powerful.
                To one more learned, the woman would look desperate and mad
with her desire to flee.
                “I’m hungry,” Lura complained toward noon, her voice a low
whine of grievance.
                “Hush, baby—we have to keep running.”
                Lura looked about the forest.  There was deer clover, and that
was edible—Leto had said so, and he had learned from his papa.  There should be
berries too, and nuts, she bet—and roots.  She struggled to keep up with her
mother, stumbling more and more often between her hunger, her fatigue, and her
pain.
                Lura fell and scraped her hands once, and had to be comforted
to keep going, but she sniffled in her pain.  She wanted a bandage, and water
to clean it, but they had none.  She was so thirsty, when they came across
another stream, they both stopped and drank deeply.  Lura washed her hands
before they passed over it.
                The water only seemed to sharpen her hunger, and the water she
had splashed on her face only seemed to remind her of how tired she was.
                She wished that she had stayed with Leto.  Or that he were with
her.  She wondered if he were all right, and she certainly hoped so.  She
wondered, too, if she would ever see him again.  The thought that she might not
filled her eyes with a new set of tears.
                She felt that she had been crying intermittently all day, at
every hurt, and because of how very sleepy she was.  She wanted so badly to go
to bed.  Her bed.  It did exist, didn’t it?  The pretty memories of her own
real bed, her toys, and her house—that couldn’t have been a dream, could it?
                She hoped not.
                Lura hurried uphill after Mama, who climbed with strong, sure,
long legs.  Lura had to crawl like a bear to climb up the hill, her hands
getting covered in soil.  Once, she put her hand on a worm, and cried out in
fear and disgust.  Her mother had looked at her as if she had broken something
valuable at her loud shout, and told her to be very quiet, in a kind of mean
voice that made Lura afraid.
                As they fled, Sharall had to carry her daughter over a fallen
log, and place her back down on the ground.  Her feet sank in the muddy soil,
and she frowned miserably as she slogged after her mother, wanting to cry for
all her sorrows and trouble.
                They came to a decline, and Sharall forded down it steadily. 
Lura, however, tripped and fell with a sharp cry, tumbling down.  Sharall
caught her, halting her descent.  Lura sniveled in fear, shaking, lower lip
quivering in what felt like a brush with death to a three-year-old.
                Sharall placed her back on the path, and continued downwards. 
Lura’s eyes watered.  It was unfair!  She was hurt, and scared, and wanted to
be comforted and held.  She wanted her Mama to tell her it would be all right,
to kiss her, and hug her, and tell her she loved her.  And she wasn’t!
                She sniffed, sad and angry.  She wished Leto were here.  He
would help her.  He would hold her hand as she climbed, and he wouldn’t let her
fall.  And if she did fall, he would help her up and smile encouragingly.  He
would tell her to be careful, and brush off the dirt, and tell her not to cry.
                At one point, she had believed her mother would do the same. 
But she felt betrayed; she wasn’t.  She questioned her mother’s love then, as
children are wont to do when they feel neglected.  Distracted by her
discouraging thoughts, she tripped and fell again, tumbling into the dirt for
the umpteenth time.  This time, her mother did not come back to pick her up. 
Rather, she looked back, and waited anxiously for her to pick herself up, and
only made a motion for her to hurry to keep up.
                It felt like they had been going for an eternity by the time
she collapsed again, in tears at her own weakness.  Her mother came back for
her, lifting her into her arms.
                Then she froze.  Lura looked up, listening.  She heard… dogs? 
It was the braying of hounds, and she saw her mother go ghost-white.
                She fled, carrying Lura in her arms, running as quickly as she
could, desperately.  She tripped, and stumbled.  Branches seemed to pull them
back, whipping at their faces, catching on their clothing.  Her dress ripped
and tore, and she continued on.
                They raced.  Twigs snapped.  A rock tumbled down a slope,
striking another rock.  The sound was so loud Lura felt that everyone could
hear it.  The dogs certainly did, and it sounded like they were getting
closer.  Their braying was getting clearer.
                Her mother ran on, her long legs pumping, her feet striking
against the earth in a desperate, mad rush to get away, tears streaming down
her cheeks as she strained against time, against the limits of her own body,
with everything at stake.
                She stumbled, and fell.  Lura tumbled out of her arms.  She
could see the hounds, just down the slope, and behind them, their handlers, the
soldiers, on their mounts.  Her mother’s eyes widened, and she scrambled to her
feet.  She stumbled, and rushed headlong down the slope.
                Lura stared after her in wide-eyed disbelief.
                She… had left her.  “Mama!” she cried out, as if in pain.  The
tears streaked down her face as she watched her mother disappear under the
trees.  Her lower lip quivered, and she sobbed.
                She was abandoned.  Mama didn’t love her.  Mama didn’t want
her.  She had abandoned her!
                The dogs were upon her.  One was called to hold her, and one
man dismounted; the others pressed on after her Mama.
                She sniveled, scared of the dog, and scared of the man, but
heartbroken over what her mother had done.
                She heard the dogs, heard a woman she knew to be her mother
screaming.  Abruptly, the scream cut off.  The soldiers and the dogs returned,
but not with her mother.  One of the men was cleaning a bloody knife, and her
eyes locked on the blade, an icy sensation of dread welling up in her stomach. 
And she began to realize…
                “What happened?” the man who had been left behind inquired.
                “When the dogs got her, she tried hitting them with a stick,
and then fucking attacked me!” the other scoffed.
                A third man, the one with the knife, chortled, “I slit her
throat—the woman was mad.  We don’t need to deal with no madwoman right now.” 
Lura heard a small noise escape her lips in something like a gasp, but the
tears wouldn’t come.  Her eyes hurt from all the crying she had done throughout
the day, and it was just like there was simply nothing left.  Her heart cried
out in agony as she felt that she finally understood.  The cold rationality of
what death truly was touched her young mind, and the result was not as
enlightening as she had assumed.  The adults were right to not truly explain it
to her.  Death was scary, and painful and bloody, and meant that you would
never see the person that died again.  It meant you were alone, and somehow
that her mother had abandoned her right before she died made it all the worse.
                She would never get to say goodbye.  Never get to kiss her
mother’s cheek again, or be held in her arms.  She would never have her mother
brush her hair again, or tell her stories, or sing songs.  She wouldn’t hold
her hand, or stroke her cheek.  Papa was dead too.  No one was coming back.
                Lura was alone in the world, and no one cared about her.  No
one loved her.
                “The whole story, now,” the man huffed the order.
                One of the men visibly rolled his eyes.  “We were about to
overtake her, and she… went mad.  Started yelling and throwing dirt and rocks,
and got a hold of a tree limb.  She started swingin’ it, and we got it away
from her, but she kept kicking and clawing.”  He shrugged.  “She was mad.”
                “A mad woman can still sell.  You don’t have to be sane to work
a field,” the other hissed, taking a swipe at the man’s head.  His gauntlet
connected with his helmet.  He looked to the others.  “Who killed her?  Who
gave the order?”
                One person reluctantly stepped forward.  “I did, ser,” he said,
bowing his head in shame.  Lura heard the words, but not really.  Like she saw
the forest around her, but it was only trees.
                The person took a swing at him.  He saw it coming, but didn’t
try to dodge, or even block it.  He took the gauntleted fist to the temple, and
went down.  He coughed, rolling in the dirt, dizzy.  “I’ll deal with you
later,” he growled, then looked to the others.  He sighed, glancing down at
Lura.  “The child won’t keep up with the horses—you take her, Boris.”
                The third man grumbled, and snatched her by the wrist.  She
cried out, and screamed in terror.  This was the man who had killed Mama.
***** The Hounds *****
Chapter Summary
     In which the daring escape comes to a rather sad end.
                Four days.  Four days they had been living off naught but nuts
and berries, and they were all bone-weary and hungry.  The rabbit had spoiled,
unable to eat it, so they had left it for creatures with stronger stomachs than
they; something would eat it, she assured Newlyn.
                The pace they needed was not something they could attain with
one man, a pregnant woman, and a child, with but one horse between them, and
little food.  And Newlyn was in plate mail, for a while.  By the third day, he
just couldn’t manage it anymore.  The walking, sleepless nights, all of it—and
it was simply too much to ask of the destrier to bear without fodder too.  He
tried to manage walking in his heavy mail, but they both knew it was doing
naught but slowing them down, and they needed to be lighter on their feet.  He
kept the gauntlets, the bracers, the boots and leg armor, but the good
breastplate with the family crest—all that remained of his family’s tarnished
honor--he had to leave behind.  He hid it, but she feared that it was not well-
hidden enough.  It would be like a flag to their pursuers, but what else could
be done?  He looked strange to her, in his padded leathers he wore under the
armor, but he moved much more quickly, more fluent.  Though, she wondered if he
should not have abandoned it days ago so they may have put more distance
between the Tevinters and themselves.  In time, maybe soon, he would need that
breastplate.
                He was a very kind man, and nothing if not thoughtful.  She
wasn’t sure she liked the lessons he was giving Leto, and only a few weeks ago,
she would have insisted against it, but now…  He had given her a knife too, and
had also been teaching her—“just in case,” he said.
                That “just in case” seemed to be always at their heels, driving
them to flee ever farther at a rate that was approaching too much for them. 
The poor horse had about had it—she was a war horse, after all; she was a
ferocious thing for charges, a cavalry horse.  She could bear a man in full
armor for a time, but run through the woods with limited breaks, little to eat,
and no sleep was approaching too much for the girl.  Mieta feared the horse
would soon stubbornly dig in her hooves and refuse to move.  She had heard that
there were some horses that would run until they were dead, but Bluebell was
the sort to stop moving when it became too much for her.  The poor thing
desperately needed that saddle off, but they didn’t dare give her the break she
needed, and leaving her saddled for so long was naught but cruelty.  What would
they do when the horse wouldn’t move?  Leave her if they had to, she supposed.
                She had been listening to the dogs for nearly an hour now, and
knew they were gaining on them.  Elves had sharper hearing than humans, and the
dogs were anything but quiet, and they echoed.  And when she at first hadn’t
heard the dogs themselves, she had heard signs of them—suddenly fleeing birds,
the stillness of the forest, and how wrong everything had felt when they were
gaining on them.  The forest, to one with trained eyes, always gave signs of
wrongness.
                She had no doubt in her mind that they were on their trail,
knew they would catch them, and so saw no point in running their horses where
they could break a leg just to catch them more quickly.  With the failing
light, it was a good plan to move more slowly.  That almost made it worse.  She
had no illusions that they didn’t know precisely where they were, and no
illusions that they would outrun them.  Their only real hope lay in reaching
the nearest Qunari encampment, or even a hunting party.  It was a slim chance,
that.  But possible, Mieta had to keep telling herself, or the despair would
make her simply give up and submit to slavery.  If it were only herself, it
would be something else.  But she had to keep going for her son’s sake, and for
that of her unborn child.
                She looked down at Newlyn.  “They’ll be upon us soon,” she
warned him.
                He nodded.  “Then we need to find a place to make a stand.”  He
looked about him, and continued purposefully forward.  He led them up a winding
path as if he knew this forest—maybe he had been through pieces of it when he
had been hunting--up to a precipice that Bluebell liked not at all.  He gave
the reigns to Leto after helping Mieta down, and insisted the boy stay on the
horse, no matter what.  “She’ll protect you,” he told him.  His eyes were wide
with fear, but he nodded bravely.  Mieta was proud of her son.
                For a child, he was proving incredibly steady, and cried a lot
less than any other child his age might have.  Mieta saw Newlyn go to his
knees, for a moment, hands clasped together in prayer.  Leto peered around the
horse’s head, watching him with faint curiosity.
                Mieta went to her son.  She had no words to say to him, but
hugged him nonetheless.  He hugged her back, dutifully, but she felt like
something in him had changed since he had witnessed his father’s death.  She
feared something about him was fundamentally cracked ever since that moment,
though she prayed that wasn’t the case.
                “You’ve been very brave, darling,” she said to him.  “But I
need you to be braver still.”
                He said nothing, but looked at her.  He could hear the dogs,
too, after all.
                Newlyn rose to his feet, watching.  She looked back, over the
ledge.  The dogs had appeared from under the trees, three of them—hunting
hounds.  They brayed at the bottom of the ledge, looking up at them, their
forms just barely visible through the mists clinging to the ground.  Their prey
was cornered, and their job at least was done.
                The knight turned his head, only slightly, keeping his eyes
below, and said, “Mieta.  If they catch you, remember this:  Slavery is not a
state of being; it’s a state of mind.  Tell your children.”  He swallowed. 
“Tell them every day, and let them never forget it.”
                She was too terrified, and tired, to puzzle through his words,
but she remembered them.
                Their handlers came first, followed by the collection of
soldiers.  Mieta paled when she saw the long pale blue robe.  They had sent one
of the mages after them.  Newlyn grew pallid, and glanced over at the other
side of the ledge.  Mieta followed his gaze.  The ledge continued, and there
was even a narrow path.  It was too slender for a horse, and would have to be
taken on foot, inching along sideways, and it disappeared around a bend.  There
was no telling if it continued past that or not.
                But Newlyn, she knew, was no Templar that could hope to defeat
a mage.  They were all nothing but a few drops of water to a raging fire.
                The soldier’s jaw set, and his eyes had gone hard.  Mieta knew
what he meant to do, but she didn’t want to abandon the one who had risked so
much to help them.  It just didn’t seem fair.
                He glanced back at her, once, as he watched the soldiers slowly
make the ascent.  She even saw them joking and laughing.  The mage stayed back,
as was appropriate, looking up at them from astride her horse, a slight smirk
adorning her face.
                It just didn’t seem fair.  They had worked so hard to get away,
risked so much, been through so much, and they were already upon them.  It just
wasn’t fair.  After everything they had been through, they would only be
captured again, and sold off as slaves, she assumed, or killed.
                “Run,” Newlyn hissed through gritted teeth.
                Mieta looked at the approaching soldiers, and the mage,
nervously backing up toward the horse.  “I won’t abandon you to die,” she
insisted.
                “I die either way.”
                “Come with us,” she insisted.
                He shook his head, firmly.  “Can’t.  There won’t be anyone to
stall them while you escape.”  She looked up at her son.  She lifted him from
the saddle, and placed him down on the ground, reluctantly.  “Could you take
off Bluebell’s saddle?”
                She nodded, and unbuckled it.  She shoved it off and simply let
it fall.  The big horse sidestepped away from it, her tail flicking, but she
tossed her head appreciatively, chomping at the bit.  Newlyn picked up the
saddle in one hand, which might have been impressive, once; it was heavy, but
Newlyn was a pretty big man.  She wondered what he was planning on doing with
it.  He shoved his sword, point-first, into the earth beside him, and took the
saddle in both hands.  He looked down at the approaching soldiers, and they
backed up upon seeing what he had planned.  He waited, and the mage yelled at
them, so they reluctantly continued.  She realized he was intending to heave
the heavy thing at them.  She wished him the best of luck at it, and hoped he
knocked at least one of them off the slope.  There was no point in going for
his bow; they were in armor, and had shields.  While an arrow could still cause
some bruises against such things, it would be almost completely a wasted effort
for all but a master archer, and Newlyn was not that.
                The horse seemed relieved to be out of the saddle at long
last.  Mieta scratched the mare’s neck affectionately, and hesitated before she
left.  She looked back at Newlyn, his brow drawn down seriously, and knew
without a doubt that he was going to die.
                “I will remember you always,” she told him.
                He looked back over his shoulder, just a quick glance.  “As the
man who failed you.”
                She shook her head a little.  “No.  As the man who risked
everything for someone he didn’t know nor had any obligation to.  You are a
noble man, Newlyn,” she told him.  She took Leto’s hand in hers, and led him
across, slowly and carefully, over the narrow ledge.  Her back pressed against
the wall, she breathed deeply, trying not to notice the huge gap between her
feet and the ground below.  She tested each step before she took it.  Once, a
bit of earth crumbled away, and her stomach tightened in fear.  She wondered if
facing the soldiers would be better.
                That was when she heard the first clash of swords, the
yelling.  She heard something heavy banging against something else, a sound of
an animal in pain.  They were fighting, and Bluebell had joined her master in
the fray.  She tried to hurry, as much as she dared.  They had just rounded the
bend, and the path opened, when she heard the horse’s death scream.  She
shuddered to herself, and she felt Leto’s hand tighten briefly.
                They could walk, while not side by side, at least a bit more
comfortably now, though it was quite steep, and at times, it was easier to
crawl.
                The earth suddenly seemed to quake, the ground shivering,
making her hug the path as she crawled down, for fear of being shaken loose. 
Something told her that this was no natural quake; this was the wrath of the
mage.
                The fighting had stopped though.  That must mean that Newlyn
was dying or dead.  She closed her eyes for a brief moment in his honor, and
kept going.
                The path drifted down into a fog-ridden ravine, and there they
could run, so they did.  They raced along the bottom of the ravine, eyes wide
with fright, but dark with lack of sleep.  Newlyn had told her that the only
reason they would pursue them for so many days could only be to bring himself
to justice, and had assured her that, maybe if she and her son could get far
away enough should this ever happen, they may not feel inclined to give chase
if she could only put enough distance between them.  After all, their primary
concern was in dealing with the deserter, not two runaway captives.  He
commented that chasing after only two of them, and having the entire army held
up for a few runaways would cost them more than it would earn them.  He had
also, late at night when Leto was asleep, cursed himself in a low whisper for
not sending the pair on ahead with Bluebell, and leaving himself behind.  At
the time, Mieta had had none of that nonsense.  Now, she only wondered if he
had been right.
                With two captives being a meager prize, they still had a
chance.  Maybe they would leave herself and her son now that Newlyn was dead. 
She mourned his death; he was a good man.  But if his death could save her
life, and her son’s, it was a sacrifice well-worth the cost.  One life for two,
three if she counted the form growing in her womb.
                But she dared not wait to find out.  They had to flee, and get
as far as possible.  They would know soon enough if they followed.
                The ravine gradually flattened until they were again winding
amidst the trees.  She had thought, for one brief, shining moment, that they
had done it, that Newlyn’s prediction had rung true.
                Then she heard the dogs.
                It was the dogs that ran them down, but they weren’t war hounds
to tear out their throats, just hounds used to pin their quarry, but they still
barked, and snapped, and snarled—ready to pounce if need be, but content to
hold.  The soldiers came, and the handlers, the mage.  Mieta tried to keep
running, but then they were all around her.
                Her hand went to her knife as a man in studded leather armor
approached her.  He had a bit of blood on him—probably Newlyn’s blood; it was
fresh—and seemed more bored than anything else.  “You’ve led us on a merry
chase,” he said, quite annoyed.  “Time to head back to camp.  I’m sure you’re
half-starved anyway, so it couldn’t be that bad.”
                Her eyes narrowed.  She’d rather be starving and exhausted than
fed and captive.  She didn’t know how the knife came to be in her hand.  One
moment, it wasn’t, and the next, the steel flashed through the air.  Her hand
sailed, and six inches of steel plunged into the man’s unarmored neck.  He
sputtered, gasping.  He slid off of the blade, slumping to the ground.  Blood
pooled around him, soaking his shirt.  Her hand was bloody.  The knife dripped
blood.
                Her eyes widened in horror.  Mieta had killed someone.  A man
was dead, and it was her fault.  Not someone else’s—her own.  His life was
gone, snuffed out for an eternity, because of one quick, unthinking motion. 
The knife dropped from her trembling hand.  She was barely aware of her son
beside her staring at the dead man.  She dimly heard another of the soldiers
curse.
                They didn’t beat her for killing him, maybe because another
soldier pointed out her obvious pregnancy.  The mage commented that she hadn’t
liked him anyway, and bound Mieta’s wrists in a cord.  They put her on the dead
man’s horse, and tied her to the saddle.  Leto they put in front of her, and
didn’t bother tying him.  There wasn’t much point when the boy couldn’t even
get down without help, after all.
                She tried not to look when they rode past the place Newlyn’s
body should be, but she saw Leto’s head turn toward him.  She pushed his face
away, whispering to him not to look.  He said nothing, but seemed annoyed that
she wouldn’t let him see.
                A child didn’t need to see so much death.
                She wished she could take it back.  She wished that she could
take back her decision to kill that man in front of her child.  He had just
seen his mother kill someone.  Her hands had drying blood on them, from a dead
man.  She shivered at the thought.  She wished…  There were a lot of things she
wished, and all were unattainable.
                But, regardless, she did wish she could do better for her son.
***** The Shadow of the Imperium *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Mieta tries to give hope to a crestfallen child on a voyage
     into a life of slavery, misery, and woe.
                Lura felt so numb.  Her eyes hurt, and she felt like there just
weren’t any more tears left.  When they had gotten back to the camp, the men
had beaten her with a long stick, and thrown her back in the mud.  She had
cried, cried for days she thought, but it didn’t help.
                Lura was alone.  Mama and Papa were both dead and they were
never coming back.  She would never see Lady either, or her home.  Even the
people she recognized and knew by name seemed different enough to be strangers
now.  They offered her no comfort, no salvation, no hope.
                She spoke not at all, and ate mechanically.  One time, a girl a
few years older than she stole her food.  She only let it go.  If she didn’t
eat, she would die too, she knew.  But Mama and Papa were dead.  So maybe… 
Maybe it would be best if she were dead too.  If she were dead, she wouldn’t be
so alone, would she?
                She sat, and watched.  Eventually, the wagons began to move
again, but even more slowly than last time; there were injured soldiers, and
the mages healed where they could, but apparently serious wounds took a long
time to heal, and animals had been killed in the fighting as well, so a lot
more people had to walk.  The camp followers had suffered as well, and they
lagged behind even further.
                By the third day of traveling since the in-fighting (the sixth
since Mama died), she saw Leto again.  He walked, sullen, tired, and dirty
beside his mother, who faired no better.  She noticed that they didn’t beat
her, but seemed to want to.  That didn’t stop them from beating her son though,
and it seemed like that was far worse for her to Lura.
                She cried out as if it were herself, and begged to be hurt in
his stead.  Lura watched on, feeling cold, and numb.  They had done the same
thing to her, after all.  She knew what that stick felt like.  She imagined
that it might be the same one too.  Her back still had welts.  A woman said
that it might even scar.  Leto was bloodied by the end of it, and shaking, just
like she had been, his voice having abandoned him.  She had stopped screaming
too.  It was like her voice had just given out, like floorboards rotted away
beneath her feet.  The tears hadn’t stopped though.
                But at the end of it, his mother picked him up, cradling him
against herself, and he held on to her tightly.  Lura’s fingers curled tighter,
hugging her legs to her chest.  She begrudged him that.  His mother was alive
to hold him afterwards.  No one had held her.  People had tried not to see her
hurt and in pain, and stole her food.  Mieta had gotten some water from a
puddle and did what she could to strain the dirt from the water as she washed
off her son’s back of the blood.  No one had helped Lura.
                As Mieta walked to the wagon on staggering feet, she saw Lura
sitting on the grass alone.  She went to her, and knelt beside her, still
holding her child.  Leto looked back at her over his shoulder.  His eyes were
wet, and red.  “Lura, darling, you look terrible,” Mieta cooed, and opened one
arm in an inviting hug.  Lura had thought she couldn’t cry any more.  Had
thought she had cried all her lifetime’s tears already, but she found there
were still some left.  Wetness tracked down her cheeks as she flung herself
against the woman’s chest, and sobbed into her shoulder, her tiny fists
clutching her blouse.
                It felt so good to be held.  Just to have someone who noticed,
who cared.  Why couldn’t Mama still be alive?  She had felt so… so wicked.  She
had been angry, angry that Mieta was still alive when Mama was dead.  It hadn’t
felt fair, but that was wicked to think.  She couldn’t think like that—it was
wrong to think like that.  She couldn’t say why exactly, but it felt evil to
think that way.  Surely it wasn’t someone else’s fault that their mama was
alive when hers was dead?  Besides… her mama had abandoned her and tried to run
away without her.  She just couldn’t make it make any sense.
                “Mama…  Mama!” Lura screamed into Leto’s mother’s chest. 
Mieta, a mother herself, understood the child’s desperate cries, and held her
more tightly for her loss.  Lura wept for all the things wrong in the world,
even the things she didn’t understand, or couldn’t know.  She cried for her
hurt, for Leto’s hurt, for Mieta’s hurt, and all the other people still alive,
and dead, and who would die.  She cried, and wondered why this war was so
important.  She wondered why this could happen, why would anyone let it happen?
                When the two children finally let go of her, she held them both
out at arms reach, and gently wiped away their tears.  Lura reached out, and
took Leto’s hand.  He glanced back at her.  He didn’t smile, not even a little,
but he did squeeze back her hand, and she felt, even just a little bit, better.
                Mieta’s smile looked forced even to Lura, and it faded
quickly.  “You’re both so brave,” she told them.  Lura didn’t feel brave.  She
felt cowardly, and miserable, and wretched.  She felt filthy and hungry, and so
tired.  But she didn’t voice her thoughts; it was nice to hear someone praise
her.  “You know the spirits of those who have died can still hear you?” she
told them.
                Lura’s eyes grew wide with wonder.  “They can?” she asked,
wanting to believe.  She wanted to believe that Mama and Papa could still hear
her.
                Mieta nodded seriously.  “Yes, and they’re watching over you
too,” she said, and touched Lura gently on the nose.  She tousled her son’s
hair as she was wont to do.  “So remember that always.”  She sat back,
straightening her back.
                “But if they can hear us, why don’t they say anything?” Lura
asked.
                But the woman only smiled at the child’s innocence.  “They do,”
she insisted.
                Lura frowned.  She had prayed, and cried, and even screamed for
Mama and Papa, but it certainly felt like no one ever heard her, much less
answered her.  Maybe Mieta was only making it up after all.  She felt her heart
fall.  “But…”
                “Darling.”  The woman cupped her cheek gently, lifting her head
to see into her eyes.  “You have to listen, and be very quiet, or you won’t
hear them.”
                And Lura felt the tears begin to well again.  “But…  But I’ve
been talking to them, and they don’t answer!” she heard herself sob.
                “Were you very quiet?” Mieta asked her, her voice dropping down
to a whisper.  The two children listened intently.  “You have to be very quiet,
because they have very soft voices, because it’s coming from far away.”
                Lura’s lower lip quivered, and her stomach twisted in knots. 
Had she missed their messages?  Had they been speaking all this time and she
had missed it?  Had she been too loud?  “But…  But…  What if I missed it?” she
asked, her eyes welling with fresh tears.  She wondered at her ability to
produce tears.
                “Don’t worry.  They’ll always try again, but you must listen,”
Mieta told her.
                Lura paused, and nodded.  “I’ll listen,” she promised.  Mieta
hugged them both again.
 
                Lura whispered her prayers at night, and told her Mama and Papa
how frightened she was, how much she missed them.  She lay awake at night
straining the darkness for their answer.  She often drifted to sleep before she
heard them, though felt she heard their voices sometimes as sleep claimed her.
                The road was long, and the wagon was cramped, but walking was
hard.  If she walked, and some days, she had to, her feet were sore and she was
so tired at the end of the day that she didn’t want to move.  But riding in the
wagon meant that her legs were cramped, and she couldn’t stretch all day, and
she had to squirm and try to hold her bladder until it stopped in the
afternoon, or all the way until dinner.  Either way, she hated it, but it soon
passed into a terrible routine and became all she knew.
                She took some solace in Leto, though he had changed a bit.  He
didn’t speak very often, but he let her curl up against him at night for
warmth, and Mieta held them both as best she could.  She was glad of Leto’s
mother.  No one stole her food with her around, and Mieta sometimes carried her
when they had to walk, so that made it better.
                Lura felt like everything in the world had been taken from
her.  Her family, her home—everything.  She didn’t feel like Lura anymore—she
felt like someone else.
                The soldiers seemed excited about something, and she wondered
what it could be, and continued wondering until afternoon the day after, and
she finally saw the city.  There were big walls, just like in Schavalis, with
high turrets, and towers.  Men patrolled the walls.  It was a city by the sea,
and standing on the hill as they were, she could even see the ships in the
harbor.  They stopped early, and were given food.  The adults were tied
together with rope, and everyone was marched into the city.  Lura stayed close
to Leto and Mieta.  She wanted to ask questions, but something kept her silent.
                A smaller division of soldiers marched along with them, leaving
the main body behind.  She was tired and footsore by the time they had made it
to the city.  Mieta couldn’t carry her with her wrists bound.  She looked up at
the rope around the woman’s neck.  She couldn’t say what she thought of it; she
didn’t understand it.  Why would someone do that?  She just… didn’t understand.
                There were people who came and spoke with the soldiers, and
then they were ushered along by a different, less scruffy but no less menacing,
group of men.  The few remaining older male captives were separated and brought
elsewhere—all those from about eleven summers and up, she judged.  What she
didn’t know was that they would be briefly trained, and then sent to fight
against the Qunari.
                The others were brought to a different place, and put in
another warehouse, with cages.  Lura was grateful when they put her in the same
cage as Leto and his mother, and unbound Mieta’s wrists.        They were
promptly ignored.  Mieta told them stories to pass the time, and she saw other
people listening to her stories as well.  Sometimes, another adult would tell a
story, and Lura strained to hear.  They fed them a bit more now, but they were
there for days and it quickly stunk.  Lura and Leto were not the only children
there, and all of them, including Lura, asked what was going on frequently, but
none of the parents were inclined to answer.  The questions, though, as many
children as there were—over a dozen—never seemed to cease, from one to the
other.  One day, one of the teenage girls yelled in a vicious voice, “They’re
taking us to Tevinter, you stupid child!  We’re going to be sold and auctioned
as slaves!”  The venom in her voice had made even the boldest of the children
hush, before the inevitable questions continued, and the girl was only too
happy to sadistically explain what “slavery” meant in scathing tones, even as
the other adults tried to make her stop.
                “Some of you will work in fields in chains for the rest of your
life,” she said with the cruelest smile Lura had ever seen.
                “Please stop…”  An older woman.
                “You stop, old hag—What good will you be for?  Nothing, that’s
what.  You’ll be fortunate if they send you into the coliseum, and you’ll be
consumed by lions,” she hissed, then cackled somewhat madly before she
continued on her rant.  “And some of you will be sold to brothels—and wouldn’t
you all like to know what that means.”  She laughed again.
                “Stop it, please…  Rhinesse, stop,” another teenage girl who
seemed to know her pleaded.
                The girl, Rhinesse hissed a laugh at the other girl’s expense. 
“You.”  She sneered.  “I bet you get sold to some magister and you’ll be
scrubbing floors the rest of your life.”
                The other girl stared at her as if hurt.  “Rhinesse, you
can’t…”
                Rhinesse laughed again.  “Oh, and all of you will have to call
someone ‘Master’ for the rest of your pathetic lives.  And don’t even get me
started on the breeding process for slaves—have fun with that.”
                “What do you mean?” a six-year old inquired.
                “Don’t listen to her,” his mother said.
                “But what does she mean?”
                Rhinesse sneered.  “And you better hold onto your mommies while
you can.  Most of you will be sold to different masters, and you’ll never see
your ‘mommy’ again.”
                This made the youngest and most sensitive begin to cry.  Leto
was eerily silent on the matter, and stared straight forward as if he were not
listening.  Lura was quiet, as both her parents were dead.  “Stop it—look what
you’ve done!” one of the mothers snapped at the girl.  “What right do you have
to do this?  You’re acting like a spoiled child.”
                Rhinesse gave her a malicious grin, as if she were actually
enjoying tormenting all of the youngsters like this.  “What would you know?  A
wrinkled thing like you didn’t get used by the soldiers every night.  What do
you know?”  And she crossed her arms angrily, and glared at all the children. 
“It’ll happen to most of you, you know.  Even the boys, I bet.  One day, a man
is going to force you down and—“
                Mieta had finally had enough of her, and being that they were
in the same cage, stalked over to her and slapped her across the face.  “Shut
up,” she whispered, her voice low and dangerous.  “Just shut up.  No one wants
to hear it.  I’m sorry about what happened to you, but what we need right now
isn’t horror stories—it’s keeping these children calm, and you are not helping
so be quiet.”
                With that, she went back to Lura and Leto, and sat down as if
nothing at all had happened.  Rhinesse fell silent, nursing her cheek where
Mieta had slapped her.
                Later the next day, they were marched back out, down to the
harbor.
                Lura stared down at the tiled streets in quiet wonder.  They
were mosaics!  There was one in the market square too, but this was just an
ordinary street!  She wished she could stay and figure out the picture, but
they just kept going.  She stared around the city.  It seemed strange.  There
were so many humans here.  She had seen humans of course, but there were many
elves in Schavalis, and their numbers had been about equal with the humans that
had lived there.  She guessed that humans had lived in this place.
                Brightly coloured flags whipped at the top of buildings, the
sun beat down on them, the ocean breeze carried the scent of salt and fish. 
People went about their business and didn’t even give her a second glance. 
Seeing all the people in their fine, clean clothing only reminded Lura that she
had been in the same dress for weeks now, and it was dirty and travel-worn,
ripped and tattered.  It wouldn’t last much longer, she thought.  She felt
gross, and dirty, and scratchy.  She wondered if there were fleas and lice on
her, the way she kept itching.
                The docks were a busy place, and somehow felt open, and lonely,
even with all the people and the towering buildings, the ships, and the cargo
stacked all around.  They were put in what she heard someone call “the hold,”
which was a large open space, but inside cages with straw piled on the bottom
of them.  She was put in a cage with Mieta, Leto, and one other elf, an older
girl who stared out at the world as if she were already dead.
                The tossing of the boat out at sea made her sick at first, but
she ate so little, she didn’t throw up.  She laid with her head in Mieta’s lap,
and the woman stroked her hair gently, and she felt better.  She heard people
crying at night, and sometimes, she heard herself crying at night, though
couldn’t always name why.  Someone screamed over a rat before someone else made
the screamer shut up.
                Sometimes, a couple of the sailors would come down with the
keys and take someone out.  They always brought the girls back, though.  Lura
wondered what they could be doing to them.  Once, it happened with the quiet
girl in the cage with them.  She went quietly.  Rhinesse always screamed and
fought when they did it—some of them did.  They always came back beaten and
bruised.
                Lura knew what that was like.  Her own beating had only just
healed, and she knew it had scarred, though she couldn’t see all the marks on
her back.  Leto hadn’t scarred, and she was almost angry about that.
                The girl was brought back and shoved into the cage.  She fell
on her knees, and Lura watched her quietly.  The girl was shaking, and crying.
                Mieta tried to comfort her, but the girl shoved the woman
angrily away, and slunk in her corner.  Lura thought of it as being the girl’s
corner anyway—she rarely moved from it, except to go to the other corner, to
make water or something.
                They tried to keep their waste confined to one area in the hay,
but with the ship’s rocking, it just wasn’t possible to do it completely.  It
stank at first, but Lura became accustomed to it after a while.  There was
little choice but to accept it.
                She also became accustomed to the little amount of light, the
creaks and groans of the ship, the way it moved.  She became accustomed to the
sounds the others made, and knew them by voice if not by name.
                A man came down, and took the girl again.  She sobbed when she
was led away.  Oddly, that time, she didn’t return, but she heard two sailors,
as they came down into the hold for something in one of the cargo boxes,
talking about how “one of the slaves jumped overboard and drowned”.  Did they
mean that girl?  Had she jumped overboard and drowned?
                Lura had nearly drowned once—she remembered.  She had slipped
and fallen into the deep end of the pond, and Papa hadn’t realized in time.  He
had dove in after her, but not before she had swallowed a lungful of water, and
it had hurt—bad.  The memory was hazy, but she remembered the pain of breathing
the water.  Was it like that to die from it too?  Or was it worse?  Was
drowning better than what was happening to her, to them all?  It must be, if
she had truly jumped.  But what was happening that that pain and then death was
better?  The idea that pain and death was better than wherever they were going
was terrifying.
                Lura couldn’t say for certain, but the girl never came back all
the same.
                It was nighttime when the ship docked again, and the adults
were brought out one by one, and tied together.  Lura stayed close to Mieta,
afraid again.  They were brought above deck, and her first glimpse of starlight
after so long in the meager light seemed blinding.
                She kept a hold of Mieta, and walked with her.  As they were
led down off the ship, and through the docks, she looked up at the city, and
gasped.
                The first thing she saw was that it was enormous.  There were
bigger buildings than she had imagined were possible—not just towers, but big
soaring buildings with windows, but were long like a house could be, and
bigger.  And they were painted, and there were statues, and carvings—not just
in a few places, but everywhere.  The street they were led on was paved, and
clean.  The air smelled like incense.  They were given a few buckets of water,
and told to strip and wash with a harsh lye soap, to help with the vermin. 
Mieta helped both children first.  Leto was more independent and refused
assistance with anything.  They were dressed in their rags again shortly,
shivering and damp.
                They were put in another warehouse, in other cages.  At least
these ones had clean straw, and chamber pots.
                She wondered what this place was, but remained silent until the
men had gone, and Mieta rubbed her previously bound wrists.
                “Where are we?” Leto asked before Lura could.
                Mieta seemed reluctant to answer, and at first Lura wondered if
she had heard him at all.  “This is Minrathous,” she whispered, and something
about the tone of her voice made the children fall silent.  “The capital of the
Tevinter Imperium.”
                Lura had heard about this place, of course, but had never
imagined to see it.  Naturally, she knew next to nothing about it.  She
supposed… she had plenty of time to learn.
***** The Flash of a Blade *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Leto begins to write his own fate...
                Raith trailed after his master dutifully, but to be honest, was
bored out of his mind.  He understood that a magister had to do these errands
sometimes, but he really didn’t like walking.  Why did they have to walk
anyway?  Couldn’t the slaves carry a litter?  Or a carriage even?
                The apprentice slogged along, to all looking unhappy to be out
in the sunshine of the day.  He would rather be studying, or doing something
useful.  He reprimanded himself immediately:  Of course this was useful.  There
were certain investments with the ship captains, certain investments with the
slave traders, certain bribes to be made, and Raith had to learn them all if he
were really going to be a decent apprentice, let alone magister one day.
                Still…
                Surely this could be done from the sanctity of an office room
at the manor, maybe while sipping a cool glass of gin?  That would be nice.
                And fitting—making the lesser creatures scurry to him to do
business.  But his master had said that if he didn’t physically see these
things, at least sometimes, they could lie and cheat him.  Don’t even trust
spies and never trust friends for a magister had none, he had told him—that was
how one stayed alive in a world governed by politics and magic.  And the
backstabbing, assassinations, and duels were just another facet of it, and not
even something he should consume too much energy worrying about at that!  The
political backstabbing was the worst of it.
                Frankly, sometimes Raith wondered if it was a life he wanted at
all.  As a child, it was a dream-come-true.  As a teenager, though…  Well, he
really wanted to go meet a girl or something sometimes, and he was under such
strict rules and regulations, had certain protocols to adhere to…  He wasn’t
even allowed to get drunk lest it tarnish his most esteemed master’s name.  And
the one time he had decided to ignore that particular rule, his master had… not
been happy, to say the least—and neither had Raith by the end of it.
                He had been twelve at the time when he started apprenticing. 
He hadn’t even been at an age where he truly knew what he was doing—just that
it meant a better life.  Money, power—what more could a man want?  Sometimes,he
thought ruefully, a man just wants to get drunk at a cheap bar and go to bed
with a whore.
                Surely, that wasn’t such a bad thing?
                His master was brilliant, in every meaning of the word, and
frequently made him feel inferior, despite their scant difference in age—not
even ten years.  Part of his master’s brilliance, after all, lay in that he was
one of the youngest magisters in history, as far back as the Storm Age, due to
a series of unfortunate familial events as well as passing all the tests ahead
of time, and assumed the title at a mere twenty winters.  He, though, had grown
up with the idea, been trained for its inevitability, though he could have made
it by apprenticing as well—and would have; he was talented.  That alone made
his mark, even if it were a small scar along the path of history.  But he
wasn’t content for that; he was striving to achieve greatness, something to be
remembered for.  Raith just wondered if he ever rested.  He wondered if his
master ever just… well, did anything for the sake of the action, and not a
plan.  He wondered what he had been like as a child.  Just as serious?
                Most of the business of the day had already been attended to,
though, so they really should have been leaving back to the manor soon, but
were taking a severe detour through the slave market.  Danarius was always
looking for something new.
                He trained slaves to fight in the coliseum, not personally of
course—that would be silly—but he had his own team.  There was good coin in it,
if they won, and it certainly won the crowd’s approval when a much-liked
champion won, and they had a higher resale value when he inevitably sold them
to the army additionally.  In short, it kept the commons happy, while getting
them to like their magisters as well.  Entertainment did that.  Raith saw some
point in that, but, frankly, disliked the coliseums overall.  They were noisy
places, outside.  Why would anyone want to watch a bunch of half-naked, oiled
slaves hack each other’s limbs off anyway?  Coin, he supposed—but the commons
came.  They made bets too, though, but they certainly did cheer at the sight of
blood.
                Blood.  Great power came from blood—that was one of his
lessons, and why it was important that he remember the point of the coliseums. 
Blood can not only be used to amplify his own power, but it can be used to
control others.  Blood could heal grievous wounds and revive failed crops—it
was one of the reasons for his country’s success.  And, not only just through
magic.  He remembered the roar of the crowds, the way they went wild at the
sight of first blood, like there was something truly mystical about it.  There
wasn’t, but that didn’t stop them.  The coliseums slaked a person’s bloodlust
too, and it proved a decent way to get rid of criminals.
                Raith’s lips curled into a tired frown when Danarius had
stopped, and was looking at a group of slaves.  The merchant was boasting about
how they came from Seheron.  Raith rolled his eyes.  That wasn’t a boast—that
meant they were half-wild and not to be trusted!  Still, they were always
useful to throw into the coliseum; it wasn’t always about false battles and
fighting; sometimes it was just about dying:  Bears, tigers, lions, wolves—the
slaves were thrown in to them naked, and the crowd would place bets on the
outcomes…  Which would be eaten first?  How long would they last?  Would they
scream?
                He glanced at the “half-wild” wares.  Well, they
certainlylookcowed and subservient, he thought disdainfully.  Danarius was
looking with some interest at a pregnant woman toward the back of the cage. 
Elves could be difficult to breed sometimes, even with herbs to help with the
process.
                “Have her step forward,” he commanded.  His tone was one that
was used to being obeyed—instantly and without question, and woe to the one who
was not quick about it.  The little merchant scurried around to the side.  He
used a long cane to prod her in the thigh.
                “You—get forward,” he snapped.  She jumped, and hesitantly
stepped closer, head down, and frightened.  Two children clung to either of her
hands.  All elves looked alike to Raith, but neither really looked like her own
children to him.  The boy (was it a boy?  It was so hard to tell at their age!)
had a shade of blue-black hair he had never seen before, and sage green eyes,
and looked little like the woman.  The girl was doe-eyed with what promised to
be curly reddish brown hair if it were washed and brushed.  The pregnant woman
had straight nearly black hair and frightened hazel eyes, more green than brown
or blue.  He wondered if the two children hadn’t simply clung to the first
person around them, but by her stance, she seemed protective of the two.  Raith
noticed that she leaned more in front of the boy though.  If either was her
real child, it was the boy.
                Elven children had all the beauty of the adults, with the
natural charm of the young of any species.  Pleasant enough to look at or
observe, but overall useless really.
                Danarius looked down at the boy, who stared up at him blankly,
before his eyebrows drew down in, not fright, but a suspicious glare.  The man
was amused, if nothing else.  He looked back at the woman.  “Does she have any
skills?”
                The merchant fumbled, and removed a roster.  He ran through it
briefly, stuttering a bit as he did so.  But Danarius looked back at her.  “Do
you?” he addressed her instead.
                She swallowed, and looked down without saying anything.  The
merchant jabbed her immediately with the cane, in the back this time.  She made
a small sound of pain, but otherwise didn’t move.  “Answer him, bitch!”
                She blinked, and continued staring downwards.  “I was… a…
tailor… serrah.  I’m very good at embroidery… and hats,” she added, voice so
soft that Raith had to strain to hear it. Her poor accent suggested that, while
she did speak some Tevene, it was not a tongue she often used, which may have
been the reason for her long delay in speaking.
                Danarius was looking at the child beside her.  “Is he yours?”
the magister inquired, switching to the Trade tongue with relative ease.
                The boy stared up at him, defiantly, but still was pressed
close to his mother’s leg.  “Yes, serrah,” she squeaked.  The little girl was
all but hiding behind her.
                “The girl?”
                A pause, then, “No, serrah.”
                His eyes strayed back to her pregnant belly.  Raith judged her
to be… five months along, give or take.  Considering they were caught in war,
he was surprised that she hadn’t miscarried.  The child would be strong, he
assumed, considering all it had been through without even having been born. 
And for an elf to have two children so close in age… It wasn’t unheard of, just
unlikely; they reproduced slowly.  That had been a problem for slave-owners for
generations, though, and a frustration.  But it was why there were still plenty
of human slaves available.  If she were fertile enough for that, it could prove
worthwhile.
                He looked back at the elf-child with the black hair, who had
only continued to glare up at him.  Raith wanted nothing more than to smack the
child across the face, and teach him some manners, but Danarius…  Danarius was
just amused as ever that the child would dare.
                He turned back to the merchant.  “How much—for the pair?” he
said, gesturing to the mother and child.  The girl held on closer to her
surrogate.  The boy reached toward the girl, comfortingly.  The pregnant woman
was shaking, and starting to cry.  Pathetic, really—but typical.  He wondered
what his master could possibly want with a three-year old and a pregnant
tailor.  He supposed there was always tailoring work to be done, though.  And
the boy… the boy might be rather pretty when he was older, he supposed.  His
master owned several brothels—he could put him in one of those; he would
probably fetch a decent price too in a few years.
                The haggling began, and the woman shivered.  The boy looked up
at her, and back at the magister.  Raith saw the connection being made, but
thought nothing of it.
                It happened so fast; no one saw it coming.  No one knew.
                One moment, all was normal.  The next…
                The boy’s arm flashed.  Raith caught a glimpse of steel in the
sunlight, but at first couldn’t make his mind understand it.  He thought he
must have been seeing things, because it wasn’t possible that…
                Then there was blood, a gasp of pain.
                The boy jumped back, away from the cage bars, stumbling
backwards.  Danarius cried out in obvious pain, and fell.  The small knife was
buried to the hilt, deep in his thigh.  He could bleed out from that.  Raith
knelt beside him, magic tingling around his fingers already.  He dared not
remove the blade yet—it could be the only thing slowing the bleeding.  He
worked quickly, and he heard men yelling and calling for help around them. 
There was no need; Raith was fair at healing for his age; apprenticing under a
magister for nearly two years and he had learned much.
                He sought the core of magic within him, merged himself with
it.  It wasn’t so much like drawing water from a well as releasing a floodgate,
a restraint on the magic all mages learned to have.  But it wasn’t as simple as
dumping a bucket of water into a glass to fill it.  He had to let it trickle,
gently, lest it overflow or lest he spill.  His magic raced along the other’s
body, seeking out the trouble, the ills, the pain.  Only when he was confident
that the bleeding had been sufficiently halted did his fingers wrap around the
hilt of the blade.  He gently drew it out, and dropped it beside him, away from
the cage.  Flesh knitted, muscle wove back together.  But one thing had
changed—there was a pale, thin scar across the place, for which he felt a pang
of unease.
                He felt like he wasn’t good enough to be his apprentice.  A
good mage could heal anything without a scar.  He had been told, of course,
that only the most skilled healer could do that, especially for a mortal wound,
but he felt like he had to be that.  He felt like he had to be the most skilled
at everything.
                The robe was ripped, and stained—possibly ruined.  Raith glared
over his shoulder at the boy.  The mother had her arms around him, but the boy
didn’t even seem to see her.  He was watching them with wide eyes, as if he
hadn’t really grasped what he had been doing, and only now realized the
implications.
                He had expected Danarius to react with anger, rage—kill the
boy.  Raith wanted him to.  In fact, the words flew out of his mouth before he
could reign them in.  He glared at the merchant, and pointed at the child. 
“Kill him,” he hissed.
                But Danarius rose, slowly, and putting most of his weight on
the other leg, to his feet.  “No,” he said.  Raith blinked.  No?
                He rose, quickly and full of anger.  He gestured to the
bloodied dagger at their feet.  “But that brat could have killed you,” he found
himself arguing.
                The mage didn’t answer, but looked at the pair cowering in the
cage.  The mother looked so terrified for her son’s life.  The merchant was
completely pale, stricken.  The magister could have him killed, after all. 
“I—I’ll give him to you, and the woman,” he added quickly.  “Just…  P-please…”
                “Have them sent to my manor,” the magister said, dismissing him
in the same breath.  He turned, not even limping as he moved on, back to his
manor.
                The merchant shouted to his own apprentices, taking out his
anger on them.  Raith picked up the small blade, and quickly followed after his
master.
                What was he thinking?  Or maybe he just wanted to kill the boy
more slowly?  Or use his life in a spell?  At least some good would come out of
the brat’s worthless hide!
                If Danarius had died…  If he hadn’t gotten there in time…  A
person could die from a wound to the leg.  They could bleed to death in mere
minutes.  If he had died, Raith’s life might as well be over.  He would be a
dead magister’s apprentice.  He couldn’t amount to much like that.  He didn’t
know what he would have done.
***** Reality *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Mieta despairs, and Leto has a much-delayed breakdown.
                She had never realized that he still had the blade.  Why hadn’t
she seen it?  Why hadn’t she thought to take it from him?
                But the answers whispered themselves to her, in her own voice
no less—she knew the answers.  Because Newlyn had told him the importance of
keeping it hidden.
                Why had he acted?  Why had he stabbed that man?  She couldn’t
make herself understand why her son would do that.  The man had frightened her,
yes, but others had as well.  But something about the man made Leto glare at
him where he hadn’t others.  Something had made him act.  Why?
                Then that other man had performed magic, and she realized—that
man was a magister.  A mage—maybe a blood mage, like the Qunari spoke of so
gravely (were any of their words not grave?).  Children, she knew, often sensed
things others could not, or dared not.  He had sensed something, something
about the man that he felt needed to die.  He hadn’t acted with anyone
else—even men who had hurt him, or hurt her, or those around them.  But he had
acted with this man.
                And now…  Now that same man who Leto had tried to kill was
their master.  She trembled at their fate.  They were slaves to a magister—a
man who could kill them, use their blood in spells, and now had a reason to,
out of more than a simple need for blood:  Vengeance.
                She feared for her son’s life.                             
                They were brought to a manor, but she scarcely saw the path
there in her fear.  She remembered the terrified look on Lura’s face when they
were led out.  The way her little hands clutched the bars, and she had cried at
being left alone again.  The way she had screamed when Leto let go of her hand,
and she had ran after them, stopping just short of the cage door by a menacing
glare from the merchant.  The poor child was all alone now, and who knew what
would become of her—the poor thing?  But what could Mieta do?
                Once they arrived, three women left the manor and took them,
and brought them around the back of the manor.  They were brought into a wide
stone building outside of it, and made to strip out of their tattered, stained,
stinking clothing.  It was disposed of—the last few shreds of her life, the
pair were made to wash in tepid water with a harsh soap.  They were toweled
off, and Mieta was given a plain undyed shift to wear, her son the same.  The
material was coarse, and uncomfortable.
                The women discussed amongst themselves things Mieta wasn’t
listening to.  She was too distraught with worry for her son.  What had he
gotten them into?  What was going to happen?  She prayed, no matter what, that
her son would live.
                The slave compound was behind the manor, past what she
recognized as a training ground, with men in armor hitting each other with
dulled blades in an enclosed area—the sound of the steel on steel was loud. 
They were marched past an orchard on her right, and she heard a babbling brook
somewhere within it.  The compound was walled, and there were high walls all
around the estate as well.  She wondered if it was so much to keep trespassers
out, or the slaves in.
                They told her to report to a woman named Sadie in the morning,
who would be outside the servant quarters, by the garden gate.  Mieta had seen
it on the way in, and thought she knew where it was.  Just after the sun was
risen, they told her—and don’t be late.  They told her that no one could be
bothered to watch after her child, so he could either watch himself, or she
could leave him in the courtyard, which was near where she would be working
anyway.
                Later on, she would find that this wasn’t entirely true.  There
was one old elven slave woman, too old for any practical work, who was kept for
the sole purpose of watching the youngsters.
                The compound was clean at least—a man of… her master’s… stature
would have it no other way.  Anything less was an offense to the eye, she
assumed.  There was a series of small wooden huts, identical, and orderly.  One
of the women pointed to the longhouse at the end of the short dirt path.  She
informed her that it was the dining hall, and if she missed a meal, it was her
own problem.
                Mieta was brought to a small hut by the gate to the compound,
and one of the three women opened the door, giving a cursory glance to what was
inside.  She seemed satisfied, and they left her standing there.  Mieta felt…
lost.
                She heard Leto walk bravely into the little hut, but she
herself stayed rooted to the spot.  Her knees buckled, and she fell in the
dirt.  She stared down at the path.
                Will I have to walk up this path every day of the rest of my
life?  Will I have to call a man “Master” for the rest of my life, just like
that girl said?  Will my children be slaves for the rest of their lives?
               That last thought was worse than all the others somehow.  It
hurt more, and somehow it felt like it was all her fault.  They could never
escape—not now.  They were trapped… forever.
                Had her ancestors felt this same despair centuries ago?
                “Mama?” she heard her son call from the doorway.
                She turned, realizing her eyes had grown wet.  She blinked it
away before she let her eyes rest on him.  He was standing with the door open,
one hand against the doorframe.  He was staring at her inquisitively.  “Yes,
baby?” she asked him.
                He made a face at the term, but made no mention of it.  In the
past, he had complained.  He seemed so sad, so forlorn.  Like he was alone, and
lost.  He looked how she felt.  “I’m sorry, Mama,” he said, and looked down.
                He was in her arms in seconds, and he hugged her back
fiercely.  “I’m so sorry!” he cried again.
                “Hush,” she told him.
                “It’s my fault!” he cried, as if in pain.
                She didn’t know what to say for a moment.  But saying nothing
would only confirm it for him in his mind.  “No, baby.  It’s not your fault,”
she told him, her fingers burying in his thick jet hair.
                He shook his head against her shoulder.  “No—it’s my fault!” he
screamed into her shoulder.  “I’m so sorry—so so s-sorry!”  Finally, finally
her child broke down in tears, the last words ending in a strangled sob.
                “Shh,” she whispered.  “Hush now; it’s not your fault.”
                He shook his head miserably.  “It’s my fault,” he continued to
sob.  “I… I thought…  You were so scared…  A-and…  I…”
                “It’s all right,” she told him.  “I’ve got you.  It’s all
right.”
                He sobbed again—once, but it was a pitiful, heart wrenching
sound.  It was the sound of a heart not only breaking, but being shattered.  It
didn’t matter what she said; he still thought it was his fault.  But, no, the
end result could only be the same, she imagined.  Either way… they’d be
slaves.  It wouldn’t matter who their master was exactly, only that such a
person existed.
                And, more importantly, they weren’t sold off separately, but
were given together.  It could have easily been so much worse, she knew.  In
that light, maybe it was the best thing that could have happened.  Maybe they
weren’t totally forsaken by the divine.
                She lifted her son, conscious that someone might be watching,
and carried him into the little house with its hard-packed dirt floor.  It
reminded her of her grandparent’s farm actually.  As a child, she had liked to
play there, and they had had a dirt floor in a small room, quite similar to
this one but more like a real home.  She took no time to look about.  Rather,
she closed the door, and knelt, setting Leto down.  She held him by the
shoulders at arm’s length, looking at him seriously, until he raised his head
to look at her.
                “I want you to remember something, all right?  Promise me that
you’ll remember,” she said.
                He blinked up at her, perhaps grasping the seriousness of what
she said.  Unlike most children, he considered, and nodded once after his
consideration.  “I promise,” he said confidently.
                She wiped away the remaining wetness on his cheeks.  “You may
feel like you don’t have a choice, or any say in your life anymore,” she said,
her voice gentle.  She cupped his cheek in one hand.  “But you do.  You always
have a choice.  Even if that choice is death, you always have a choice, and
it’s always your decision to make, not someone else’s.  Do you understand,
darling?”
                He paused, as if mulling over her words in his head, then
nodded again.  “Yes, Mama.”
                She forced a smile.  “Good.”  Though there was no way to tell
if he really understood, but she prayed that he would in time.
                Whoever had been in this place last had been unnecessarily
tidy.  Seeing it so empty sort of bothered her at first.  Someone had obviously
lived here, for at least a little while, a few someones.  There were actually
four cots here, and a small clothespress, as well as a precious few other
amenities in a haphazard cabinet.  What bothered her the most, though, was that
there was clothing in the drawers.  Not a lot, but for a couple different
people.
                A creeping feeling trailed up her spine.
                What had happened to them?
                She shivered at the implications, and decided it might be best
not to know.  She heard Leto yawn, despite the early hour.  She picked him up
off the floor, and set him in the bed by the one window, the shutters open to
let in the light.
                Real beds at least.  For that, and that alone, she was almost
grateful for this.  She hadn’t slept in a real bed in so long…  The stories
said that slaves slept on the floor.  She supposed that was either exaggerated,
or this man was so incredibly wealthy that his slaves got beds.  She supposed
it was, in reality, an investment:  A person worked better when they were
healthy and rested.
                “Tell me a story,” he said, staring up at her through half-
lidded eyes.
                Mieta sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the blanket up to his
shoulders, knowing he would just push them down to his chest.  He shifted,
rolling onto his side as he listened to her voice.  She told him a story she
knew, about a boy, and a wyrm.  She told him about how the wyrm was plaguing a
village, and the warrior-boy came to slay the wyrm.  She told him about their
battle, and when the wyrm’s head was cut off, a beautiful princess spilled from
its corpse, for she had been set upon with a terrible curse.
                “Is magic really like that?” he asked dubiously, already half-
asleep.
                She shook her head.  “No, darling.  It’s not.”  Even she knew
that.
                “Then why do we have stories like that?” he wondered.
                She kissed his brow affectionately.  “Because they’re
stories—it’s just something someone made up about people who never existed, and
things that never existed.”
                “But why?”
                She laughed again.  “Go to sleep, darling.  Sweet dreams.”
                “But…”  His eyes slid closed.  He was exhausted, she knew. 
True, they had done very little of anything sitting in that cage, but somehow
it had been a trial.  At least… it was over.  She hoped to never again be on
the inside of a cage.  But she still felt trapped in one—in the cage of
reality.
                She looked around her.  This was reality.  It was her reality,
her children’s reality.  She shook her head.  She had seen a well on the walk
here, and imagined there must be a privy somewhere near too.  Mieta hesitated,
then snuck out of the door to find it, and learn where things were here.
                It was eerily devoid of life, and it made her not at all
comfortable.  Everyone must be elsewhere—working, she imagined.  She found what
she had set out to find, and came back.  She closed the door quietly behind
her.  She sat on the edge of one of the beds, finger-combing her hair as best
she could manage.  She supposed she would never see a proper comb again.  Maybe
she should cut it if she was able to do so.
                She decided to take a nap too, but she fell asleep, not
weeping, but with a heart so full of sorrow that she feared that she might. 
***** Life and Love in Darkness *****
Chapter Summary
     Wherein Leto becomes a big brother.
                In the months that followed, Mieta developed a sort of routine,
and in routine, she found some amount of solace.  Still… to no longer have any
say in her life, or her child’s life…  Her spirit felt shattered, and the
shards seemed to lodge themselves in her mind.  Call it dramatic, but she felt
very much like she was bleeding out her soul.
                Leto was young enough to be excused from doing any kind of
work, because he was little enough to really only get in the way.  From the
look of things, they didn’t really begin to do any kind of work until they were
a couple of years older.  That may be for the best.  When she had time, she
tried to keep up with his lessons, despite everything—in secret, in the quiet,
but it was hard, and she was so tired at night that oftentimes the lessons were
skipped.
                Slaves weren’t allowed to learn much of anything anyway—which
was why it was secret.  They had never asked her if she could read except that
once, but she had found out very quickly that it wasn’t allowed.  It was easy
to pretend, though, and a lot of people couldn’t read in Schavalis, as they
were all descendents of slaves, so of course no one thought anything of it, but
her father had been a shopkeeper, and she had helped out often enough that it
was important to at least write out a receipt. 
                As it happened, people talked over her a lot, as if she weren’t
there.  At first, it bothered her.  Later, it only amused her, and some of it
was even useful to her—the better to avoid her master mostly, and keep her son
away from him.  She didn’t like the way he looked at her—or at Leto.  He viewed
them both as nothing so much as…
                She wasn’t sure.  She wasn’t even sure that there was really a
term for it.  Blood?  Nothing but a fresh source of blood?  After four months,
she was suspect that he was a blood mage, but only suspect, and that mostly
from comments made and a few odd things she saw here and there.  Mages should
be collared, like the Qunari said.  This is what happened otherwise.  One
person, and so much power?  No wonder they were all mad.
                One evening, Mieta noticed fresh bruises on Leto.  His arms,
and one on his cheek.  His knuckles were scraped too, and she suspected why
almost immediately.  She inspected his knuckles.  He looked away as she did. 
“You’ve been fighting,” she admonished him, in the language she knew, and not
the one she was being forced to learn.  She was hit when she spoke anything
else, but she struggled for the words and she had trouble learning the new
ones.  Leto did not have the same problem; he was eager to learn the new
language, frequently talking in it so quickly she could barely follow.
                His lips drew down in a pout, and he stared up at her with very
serious but oh-so large pretty eyes.  She thought they were so deep that
someone could drown in them.  Once upon a time, she had thought that when he
grew up, he’d break several hearts with those pretty sage eyes.  “They make fun
of me,” he said grudgingly, and glanced away again.
                He was getting bad at making eye contact, she noticed.  Four
months of slavery, weeks of captivity, and he no longer met a person’s eyes for
very long before he looked away.  She supposed… it was… proper… for a slave; he
wasn’t supposed to meet the eyes of his betters—ever.  Her heart ached seeing
the habit begin to form already.  She hoped this was easier for him than for
herself, because it felt like it was killing her in the most painful way, and
she did not want that for her son.  “Why?  Who?” she asked, cupping his bruised
cheek gently.  He flinched, and she withdrew her hand.  It must be tender.  She
had better try to get him cleaned up.  She had since acquired a small bucket,
and her neighbor helped her carry the cold water to the hut every night, since
she was so pregnant.  She went to it now, and found a clean cloth—relatively
clean anyway, but good enough.  She dunked it, wetting it.  She rung it out,
and noticed that her son had yet to answer her.  It was hard rising back to her
feet.  She put her hand against her stomach, letting out a long breath through
her nose.  The growing babe was so heavy.  She was eager to give birth again. 
Leto had been an easy labor, she had been told.  Four hours, and with no
complications.  She imagined that this child, too, would be much the same.
                She blinked, feeling a small pang as the babe kicked.  She put
her hand where its foot pressed against her.
                “Mama—is she kicking?” Leto asked anxiously, blinking up at her
swollen belly.
                He had been so interested in how her stomach had swelled so
quickly with her pregnancy.  She smiled down at him.  “How do you know it’s a
girl?  What if it’s your brother?” she teased him, ruffling his hair with one
hand, and wiping at his dirtied face with the other.  He scowled, but didn’t
try to run away.  He put his hands up against her stomach, laughing with
delight when the child kicked again.
                “Is not!” he insisted.  His father had always said her baby was
a girl too—saying that they already had a boy and he didn’t know what they
would do with two boys that would no doubt fight.  Which is likely where Leto
got the idea from.
                Mieta took the opportunity to clean his knuckles of the grit he
had neglected.  He made a face while she did it.  “We’ll see,” she told him. 
“Now, tell me, who did this?”
                His jaw set tight, unwilling.
                “Leto,” she warned him.  When he got like this, she used to
always threaten to tell his father, and despite that the man was very warm and
inviting, and rarely if ever punished the boy, that always seemed to work.  She
thought that her son just had a fear of disappointing his father.  But… she
couldn’t do that any longer.
                He sighed, and crossed his arms, defeated but angry.  His
temper had… become much worse since they arrived here.  His entire attitude had
changed in degrees.  She wondered, sometimes, how much different he would be if
none of this had ever happened.  She hoped…  Well, it didn’t matter what she
hoped, did it?  “The other boys,” he said reluctantly.
                “Which other boys?” she said crossly.  There was a few other
slave boys about his age—three actually, all older than he was though.  She
knew that for a newcomer, that was often bad.
                “All of them,” he grumbled.
                “Hey,” she said, tapping him roughly on the shoulder.  “Don’t
mumble.”
                He snorted, “Hmph.”  He glowered.
                She frowned.  “Why did they do that?” she pried.
                “Because they’re stupid,” he answered.
                She swatted his behind as she walked by him.  He jumped, and
turned around, scowling.  “That’s not an answer,” she reprimanded him.
                “But it’s true!”
                She swatted at him again, but he jerked away.  She caught him
by his shirt, and hauled him backwards.  She gave him another swat, and set her
rag down.  She turned back to him, arms folded over her belly, jaw set. 
“Leto,” she warned.
                He kicked at the packed earthen floor, making bits of it come
up.  Before she reprimanded him, he pushed it back in place with his bare feet
as he spoke.  “They make fun of me, ‘cuz I’m from Seheron,  And they say that…
Papa was a Qunari…” he said in halting fragments.
                Her eyes narrowed.  “And?  When did they hurt you?”
                And he fell silent again, which was really the only
confirmation she needed.  “If I go ask their mothers, what will they say,
Leto?” she went on.
                His arms crossed, and he fumed for a moment.  “I…  I hit
Erron.  And…”
                She raised an eyebrow.  “So you started the fight?”
                His arms fisted at his sides, angry suddenly.  “No!  I did
not!” he insisted with all the righteous faith of a child.
                She sat down on one of the beds.  It was trying to stand for a
long time with it being so close to her time, and she was tired besides.  “You
threw the first blow, my son.”
                He tried to argue for a moment, sputtered, and then went back
to silently fuming.  “They… they were making fun of Papa,” he said, and looked
up at her again, his eyes mournful this time instead of angry.  “And… they said
bad things about you…”
                She wanted to punish him.  She knew it would be the right thing
to do, but…  She opened her arms instead, inviting him.  He ran up to her,
climbing onto the bed, and threw his arms around her neck.  He didn’t cry.  She
hadn’t been expecting him to, but she knew he was in pain nonetheless.  Not the
bruises, nor the scrapes.  She held him until he squirmed away.
                He sat beside her, staring down at his feet.  He had a look on
his face like he was thinking of something dark.  She put an arm around him. 
“They better have more bruises than you do,” she told him, kissing his temple.
                He laughed, a child so easily pulled from his thoughts and
distracted.  “Mm-hm!  They’re bigger than me, but I’m faster.”  He looked at
her, all sadness seemingly forgotten or at least pushed aside.  “I got a stick,
and used it like Papa and Newlyn showed me.  I hit Erron really hard and he
fell!”
                She wanted to tell him not to fight.  She knew it was the right
thing to do, to tell him that picking fights wasn’t the way to resolve their
differences.  But at the same time…  She tickled his ribs until he squirmed
away in a fit of giggles, slithering to the floor and running away, because he
knew she couldn’t chase him.
                Sadly, it didn’t get much better with the other boys.  They
avoided him for a little while, but only came back with rocks and sticks of
their own.  She wondered how it was that Leto didn’t come home more bruised
than he did, and she did have a word with the boy’s parents, who were more than
kind to her, and promised they would try to do something about it, but she knew
that boys would be boys.
                Weeks later, her labor came in the morning—later than expected-
-before she had actually begun her work.  She had been told that she would have
a midwife of sorts and a couple of the slaves to assist with the birthing, and
that was true enough.  Another small truth was that the labor lasted for about
four hours, then her washed bundle was presented to her.
                The women cleaned up the mess, took the bedding away too.  Her
neighbor, Marlance, assured her that, because their master was so very wealthy,
they had it a lot better than other slaves.  In most places, she wouldn’t have
had such luxuries.  But no one ever made any mention, or even spoke about, the
ones who had disappeared before she had been brought here.  Maybe they had
simply been sold away?  No one ever talked about it though.
                Mieta requested that Leto come inside.  Marlance went to get
him, and the women left them alone.  Leto climbed onto the bed to better see. 
“Is it a girl?” he asked, peering at the newborn.
                Mieta smiled lovingly at her son.  “You were right, Leto,” she
told him.  “Meet your baby sister.”
                He looked at his mother then, and back at his sister.  “What’s
her name?”
                She paused, feeling pained.  Not like a sharp, stabbing pain,
but more an ache of an old wound.  Calias had never had any desire to discuss
names with her.  He just went with whatever she said about names, and she,
unfortunately, wasn’t very creative about such names, which was why they ended
up named after other relatives.  Calias…  “Varania.”
                He blinked.  “Var…” he started to say, then stopped.
                She laughed a little.  “Var…a…nia.”
                “Var… a… nia,” he echoed, then looked back at her.  “You’ll
never be able to say your name, will you, sister?”
                She had half a mind to shove him off the bed, but was too weak
to do it.  “You brat,” she said instead.
                It was hard with the babe at first.  She got fussy a lot, and
was very whiny compared to how Leto had been.  He was a help as much as a child
could be, she supposed, but she still had to work, and she couldn’t leave
Varania with someone else.  So, the child came with her.  Mieta’s work was
slower going than before, and she was scolded for it, but there was little she
could do when the babe needed nursing.  As a result, she had to quit as soon as
Varania could start eating mashed foods.
                Leto liked to play with her.  He liked the idea of being a big
brother, and he could watch her more when she was old enough to crawl, which
was a help, though he was really too young to do very much.
                Mieta liked to watch them when she could manage, from the
window.  Leto helping her learn how to talk, and holding her hands as she
walked with his assistance.  She was missing her children’s lives.  Missed
Varania’s first steps, her first word.  Leto had that, and it pained her
unimaginably.
He commented often on how fast she was growing, but to Mieta’s eyes, he was
growing up quickly too.
***** Stories in the Sky *****
Chapter Summary
     Just some cutesy sibling love.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Varania giggled, dashing over the lawn.  Her copper braids flew
back as she ran, caressed by the wind.  Her sun-kissed cherubic cheeks dimpled
as she laughed.
                “Can’t catch me!” she called back to her older brother, who
loped after her with all the intent of a wolf that knows its prey can’t outrun
it.
                The girl might be faster, even at a young age, but he could run
for a long time without tiring, at a slower pace.  She darted around the big
magnolia tree, gaining a temporary reprieve.  She bent, her palms against her
knees as she panted to catch her breath, her heart thumping in her chest.  She
jumped when she heard a twig snap, and bolted like a rabbit before he caught
her.
                Her brother was nearly four years older than she, so she felt
like she had a lot to prove to him.  She liked it when he praised her, when he
told her that she could run really fast, or that she was good at skipping
rocks.  She had never shied from dirt like some other girls.  She adored her
older brother, and had doggedly trailed after him since she was able
to—exploring rubbish, and climbing in trees, scraping her knees in the dirt,
and catching frogs of course.
                Mother disliked that last one most of all—for she had snuck one
into the hut before.  She had received a scolding for that, but Leto had
laughed (he also got in trouble though).  They had since been forbidden from
catching frogs, but they did it anyway—they just let them go quickly.  Leto
spent as much time with Varania as he could, but as he was getting older, more
and more chores were assigned to him—things like fetching items, delivering
things around the manor, and other such simple tasks, as well as a few
exercises he never really talked about.  For example, he was made to stand for
sometimes hours at a time, unmoving, and if he dropped the heavy stave he held,
or wavered, he was given a beating, same as a couple of the other boys.  But he
was still a child, and underfoot and not as strong as the adults, so he still
didn’t work the entire day.  She liked the days when they dismissed him early
the best—days like today.
                Varania rounded a bend, and felt a sharp, painful tug on her
braid, hauling her backwards.  She teetered, and fell back with a yelp of
pain.  She landed hard on her rump, and opened her mouth to complain, both
about the fall and about him pulling her hair, but the complaint died on her
tongue.  She stared up, with wide, anxious eyes at the magister.  She sensed
more than saw her brother standing behind her, and she imagined that he wasn’t
so slack-jawed as she.  Her mouth snapped closed, and she scooted back, and
bowed her head respectfully.
                But the human man didn’t move on.  She counted another set of
feet too—that must be Raith, his apprentice.  She had never actually been this
close to either of them, and she had little enough experience with humans too. 
Her heart hammered now for a reason other than physical exertion.  Were they in
trouble?
                “Leto, is it?” he asked.  Varania’s eyes flicked upwards, then
she looked back at her brother for his response.
                “Y-yes, Master,” he answered, still staring downward, at the
dirt path.
                “How old are you, boy?”
                Varania started to look at her master, then averted her eyes
back to her big brother, wondering what was going on.  “Seven, Master,” he
answered.
                “Has it been that long?” he mused to himself, and Varania felt
his eyes shift to her for a moment.  The magister looked back at Raith. 
Varania risked a glance upward, but neither of them were looking at the two
children; they might as well have disappeared for all the notice they gave
them.  “See to it that the boy starts training for the coliseum tomorrow,
Raith,” he instructed him.
                “Done,” Raith said as the two resumed their walk.  The two
children were quiet until long after the mages had passed, and Varania looked
up at Leto.
                “What does he mean?” she asked him.
                His eyes were wide with disbelief.  His expression was a blend
of confusion, fear, shock, and even… excitement?  “I am… to fight in the
games,” he said, voice tinged with wonder.
                Varania blinked.  “What does that mean?” she asked, her nose
wrinkling.  She rubbed at the back of her head where he had pulled on her
braid.  She would complain about it, but it had kept her from running right
into the magister—that would’ve been bad!
                He looked down at her.  “I’m going to learn to fight,” he said,
as if he could barely believe it.  Then he grinned suddenly.  “I knew it!”  He
laughed aloud, a hand covering his grin.  “I knew it!”
                Varania frowned.  “Knew what?”
                He helped her to her feet.  “Remember the coliseums?  I told
you about it.”
                She tried to remember.  Had he told her?  She couldn’t…  “Oh!”
she said, the memory finally awakening, but not well.  “Something about… people
watching people fight?”
                His mouth twisted into a frown, then he shrugged.  “Close
enough,” he said.  “But I’m going to get to fight.”
                Though Varania didn’t exactly understand, it meant that instead
of a life of cleaning, cooking, and doing chores, he would fight in
tournaments, winning prize money for his master, or losing and dying.  The
latter of which was exactly why when Leto mentioned it to their mother that
evening, she began to shake with terror.
                “No…” she quaked.
                “Mama?” Varania wondered, afraid.  She had never seen her
mother like this.  It frightened her to see her so scared.
                Mieta hugged her son close to her.  “No…  You…  You can’t!” she
cried.
                Varania saw her brother roll his eyes, and she found herself
reassured by his attitude.  “Mama, I’ll be fine.”
                “You could be killed!” she insisted, shaking her head, and not
letting go of him.
                He snorted.  “I won’t be fighting for almost ten more years,
Mama!” he told her.  He made a face.  “I have to learn how first.”
                “You don’t think you can be hurt with a blunted weapon?” she
demanded of him, angrily.  Varania clutched her arms in her hands, as if it
were cold.  Seeing Mama like this bothered her.  “And do you know what happens
when they decide you’re too old for the coliseum?”  She shivered in horror. 
“They’ll send you to fight the Qunari.  That’s what they do.”  Ironic, really,
if one thought about it:  Taken from the Qunari and trained to fight, then set
against them.  How tragic, how terrible—and what little choice they really had.
                He seemed terribly annoyed as he disentangled himself from her
embrace.  He crossed his arms stubbornly.  “It’s better than… than any other
kind of work.”  He glared down at the floor.  “At least it sounds fun.”
                “Some things are more important than having fun, Leto—“
                He glared up at her.  “Nothing is fun here!  And it’s your
fault we’re here!  You should’ve killed me!  You should’ve killed me before you
let them take me!” he yelled.  Mieta was stricken to silence, her jaw dropping
in open astonishment that such words could leave her son’s mouth, that he could
even think such things.
                Leto’s eyes filled with unshed tears, and he turned on his
heel, and ran.  He left the door open, swinging.  Before Mieta could tell her
not to, Varania was running after him, as fast as she could.  He was already
halfway down the path though, and was showing no signs of stopping.  “Leto!”
she shouted to him.  He didn’t stop, or even slow.  He didn’t even look! 
“Leto!”
                He just kept running.
                Varania heard her mother calling out to her from the doorstep,
to both of them, but her children just kept running.  Her hand reached out to
them.  To Mieta, it felt like her children were slipping farther and farther
away from her.
                Due to her life as a slave, she hadn’t been able to devote the
time she should have to her children, and the two had grown up with an absent
parent, with only one another.  It had created a deep bond between the two, but
undermined their mother’s role.  To Varania, it seemed normal, but Leto
resented Mieta for it.
                Varania’s legs pumped, her feet pounding against the packed
earth.  Leto had disappeared around the bend.  She slowed.  She knew where he
was going now.
                She heard him clamber onto the roof of the shed before she saw
his head appear over the top of it.  Twilight glistened, the sky darkening into
night.  The first stars were already out, and the moon.
                “Leto,” she called up to him, climbing onto the wood pile,
weary of splinters on her bare feet.  Dutiful as ever, a hand reached down from
the top of the shed, and he helped pull her onto the roof.  The two climbed to
the highest point, and sat, watching the light fade.
                Varania unbraided her hair, putting her ribbons in her lap. 
She finger-combed her hair, enjoying the way it felt unbound.  The ribbons were
one of the few pleasant commodities of having their mother be a tailor; she
often ended up with scraps that Sadie would have just thrown away.  “What did
you mean—when you said Mama should’ve killed you?” she asked.  “Who took you?”
                His jaw set, angry.  His legs pulled up against his chest, his
arms wrapped around his legs.  “The Tevinters,” he said dully.
                “You mean… when Master bought you?” she wondered innocently.
                He shook his head, his fingers clenching.  “No,” he said, but
offered no more than that.
                She paused, wondering if he would go on.  She waited, and he
seemed like he would sit there forever without telling her any more.  “What
didyou mean?”
                He looked up at the moon.  “Mama and I weren’t born slaves,
‘Nia,” he said.
                She blinked at him in wonder.  She had never known that!  “You
weren’t?” she echoed.
                He shook his head.  “No.  We’re from Seheron.”
                “What’s that?”
                His eyebrows drew down, his lips curling into a frown, as if
struggling to remember.  “A country.  We were from a town by the sea…”  He
shook his head slightly.  “There was a battle, and the Tevinters took the town,
and enslaved us.  They killed…”  His voice choked for a moment, and he cleared
his throat.  He continued, but his voice was so low she had to strain to hear
it, even though she was sitting right next to him.  “They killed Papa.”
                She blinked.  “I—we—have a father?”
                “No,” he said, angry again.  “He’s dead.”
                Varania frowned.  “But we still have one,” she said.
                He glared at her, and for a moment, she was afraid that he
might strike her.  Then he calmed.  “They beheaded him, and left his body to
rot,” he said bitterly.
                Varania stared at him, and her lower lip began to tremble in
terror.  “But… why?” she sobbed.
                His glare was petty.  “Because he was a guard.”
                But then the girl had a thought.  “But you’re going to be a…a…”
                “Gladiator,” he said glumly.
                She nodded, glad that he had supplied the word for her. 
“That’s the closest a slave can get, right?  So that’s good,” she said, trying
to make him feel better.  “What was Papa like?”
                His chin sunk between his knees.  “It’s not ‘good.’  If Mama
had been smart enough to run away before the Tevinters came, we wouldn’t be
here,” he said angrily.
                Varania felt frustrated that he wasn’t answering her.  “But
what was Papa like?”
                He stared up at the moon, the sky, the stars.  “He was strong,
and kind, and I wanted to be just like him.”
                The girl considered this.  “Did he have black hair too?” she
asked.
                He snorted in disdain.  “No.  He had reddish brown hair.”
                She looked up, at what her brother was looking at, and
wondered.  What would it have been like, to be born free?  What would it be
like to have a father?  And grandparents?  Would she have had toys?  And pretty
dresses?  “What was your house like?”
                He struggled to remember.  “There was a garden by the front
door, and the house was blue, and we had a basement, and a second floor.  We
had our own kitchen, and a yard.  Mama had a room that she sewed in, and I had
my own room…”
                She stared at him as if he had just said that he used to know
how to fly.  “Are you sure you aren’t just imagining it?” she asked him.
                He shoved her playfully.  “Oh, shut up,” he told her.
                She stuck her tongue out at him.  “Bully,” she said.
                “Oh yeah?”  He turned and tickled her, pinning her down, and
tickling her sides until she felt like she was going to wet herself.  She told
him so between fits of giggles, kicking and trying to squirm away, but unable
to do so.  This only seemed to emphasize the name she had called him, though. 
He let her go, and looked back up at the stars. 
                Varania looked up too, panting as she caught her breath.  She
pointed to a cluster of them.  “That one looks like a bunny—see?”
                He turned his head, trying to see what she saw, then blinked
when he saw it.  “Oh, yeah.  Look, that one’s a lion!”  The two made a game of
it.  He said that his lion was going to eat her rabbit.  She told him that the
rabbit was much too fast and clever to be caught by a big lion, but there were
other animals in the sky too.  A duck, a mouse, and even a dragon.  Leto told
her that people were up there too, and they looked for faces.
                He said that the stars told stories, but she couldn’t hear
them.
                “They do not,” she said, scowling at him for lying.
                “Do too,” he said, and pointed at a particular group.  “Mama
told me once, when you were a baby, that this is a knight, and he’s going to
slay a dragon—see?”
                She frowned, trying to see a knight.  “I think you’re making
that up.”
                He glared at her.  “Am not.  Look, there’s the knight, and a
spear, his horse.”  He outlined it, then pointed to another group of stars
nearby it.  “See, that’s the dragon’s neck, poking out of a cave.”
                Varania stared at it.  “But that’s not a story—that’s a
picture!”
                He sighed, as if she were daft.  “That is the story.  A knight
going off to slay a dragon.”
                “Tell me?” she said.  He sighed, and told her, as best he
remembered, the story of the knight and the dragon.  What he couldn’t remember
exactly, he made up to the best of his ability.
                When Varania had started yawning, tired, Leto helped her down
and he held her hand on the way back to the one-roomed hut they shared.
                Mieta was still awake, but didn’t know what to say to her two
children when they came back.  Varania hugged her, as if nothing in the world
was wrong, and Mieta put them both to bed.  Varania requested a story, of
course, despite that her brother had already told her one, which he pointed out
helpfully.  When Mieta had fallen asleep, and Varania lay awake, she climbed
out of bed, and prodded her brother gently in the arm.  He rolled over, looking
at her in the dark.
                “What?” he asked, his voice a hushed whisper.
                “Can I sleep with you?” she asked him, her chin resting on the
top of the bed.
                He made a face, but scooted over.  “If you wet the bed, I’m
sleeping in your bed,” he warned her.
                She glared at him.  “I do not wet the bed,” she scolded him
under her breath.
                “You did too,” he told her as he helped her climb up.
                “I was a baby,” she shot back, wriggling into the blankets.
                “You’re still a baby,” he muttered, eyes closing again.
                “Am not,” she insisted, yawning.  She felt herself drift off to
sleep before she heard his retaliation.
 
                The next day was boring for Varania.  With her brother gone
training, she had no one to play with.  She stayed in the courtyard, but it was
tedious all by herself.  There was one other girl about her age, but she stayed
with the old woman who watched the other children in the compound, and she
never seemed to want to leave.  Leto had always tried to avoid the other
children, and thus had little do with the woman.  Varania supposed that she
could go make friends with the girl, and have someone to play with.  Maybe she
would ask Mama if she could do that tomorrow.  She would see the girl tonight
at supper, so maybe that would be a good idea.
                She drew pictures in the dirt with a stick, thinking on the
things Leto had told her yesterday.  She had a father!  And they once had a
home too, a real one.  And they were born free…  She drew a picture of what she
imagined the house would look like.  She drew a fence, and a garden with
flowers.  A door, and windows.  She imagined that it was sunny, and thought
that if she had a house like that, she would want a cat or a dog—maybe both? 
She was feeling whimsical—why not both?
                She drew the animals, and drew stick figures beside everything
for her family.  She drew herself first, with her braids and in a dress, and
imagined that it was the sort of dresses she had glimpsed on the wealthy women
who came to the manor—with lace and bows.  She drew that too, and then drew
Leto beside her.  What would he be wearing?  She giggled to herself, and drew
him in nice clothing too.  She drew Mama next, imagined her in something
pretty, with her hair done up fancy.  Maybe they hadn’t been rich, but it was
nice to pretend.  She wondered what Papa had looked like.  Leto said he was a
guard or something, so she gave him a sword.
                She was so caught up in her stick drawing that she didn’t
notice someone walk up to her.
                “Nice drawing,” a voice said behind her.
                She jumped, whirling around.  With despair, she realized that
she had destroyed the garden and part of the house when she jumped.  She looked
up, and recognized Raith.  She blinked, and averted her eyes, like she had seen
the other slaves do when they spoke to anyone of any higher station—which was
nearly everyone.  “Thank you, Master Raith,” she said, bowing her head
slightly.
                Raith looked back at the drawing.  He seemed very interested in
it for some reason.  She wondered why.  It wasn’t that good…  “Carry on,
child.”
                He moved away.  She watched him go, wondering what was going
on.
Chapter End Notes
     I really wanted to get the point across that Leto and Varania were
     quite close growing up. I think this gives you a pretty good idea.
***** Mages and Magic *****
Chapter Summary
     The pieces are beginning to fall into place, but not every piece is
     there yet.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                “Come down!” Varania cried helplessly from the ground as she
watched her brother climb.  “Just leave the cat alone, and come down…  Please?”
                But Leto just kept climbing, muttering to himself.  She thought
she heard the name “Lura” a couple times, but she wasn’t certain.  The little
white ball of fluff had climbed pretty high up the big magnolia tree in the
courtyard.  How Leto had even gotten to the branches still seemed almost
magical to Varania.
                “You’re going to fall!” she said, biting her lower lip with her
worry.
                He looked down at her, scowling.  “Thanks,” he shot back at
her.
                “I don’t want you to get hurt—just leave the cat alone!” she
begged him, but he wouldn’t listen to her.  They had listened to the cat crying
all day today, and all day the day before; it was stuck and starving to death. 
Stupid thing.  Varania was worried that her brother could break his legs, or
his back or something if he fell.  The thought filled her with dread.
                But Leto just kept climbing.  He reached out toward the cat,
but was still just a little shy of where he needed to be, so he climbed up
higher.
                She saw him reach for the cat, and it was too tired to move,
and the cat knew him anyway.  The siblings had been there shortly after the
kitten had been born—they had heard the mewling in the courtyard, and gone to
investigate.  What should they find but newborn kittens?
                The white one was Varania’s favourite, but it was still just a
kitten.  It wasn’t worth Leto getting hurt over.  But he had been so confident
that he would be just fine.  She didn’t really believe him though.  Something
about it scared her something fierce.
                He snatched the kitten, and stuffed it into his tunic, and
began to make the climb down.  Varania held her breath, praying to a god she
didn’t know for his safe return to the ground.
                He was almost out of the tree when he slipped.  Varania
screamed when he lost his balance, and fell through the branches.  Something
fell in the grass, but Leto had grabbed onto a branch, and dangled.  He
strained, and, gasping, pulled himself up.  He took a deep breath, and
continued his steady descent.
                Varania heard a buzzing sound, and dismissed it just as
quickly; her eyes were on her older brother.  She didn’t think she would rest
easy until he was safely back on the ground.
                He dropped the last couple of feet, in the grass.
                The buzzing was getting louder, and something stung her arm. 
She swatted, and looked about her.  Her eyes bulged.  “Bees!” she shrieked, and
with that, forgot her brother and the cat entirely, and ran.
                She shrieked, and they stung, and she sensed her brother
running near her too, yelling at her not to scream, because it attracted their
attention.
                Later, they sat in the compound, Old Lolette putting mud on
their stings to ease the swelling and the pain.  It felt better that way, but
it was a tell-tale for their mother.  She scarcely scolded the two, but did
inquire as to their adventures.  Mieta agreed with Varania that Leto had been
reckless.
                “But I saved the cat,” he argued.
                “She would have climbed down when she got hungry enough,” Mieta
said.  “I told you that yesterday.”
                He made a face.  “I did it, didn’t I?  And I’m fine.”
                Mieta pursed her lips.  “You stay out of that tree from now on,
Leto.  Varania, you tell me if he tries to climb it again,” she told her
daughter.
                Varania nodded, pleased.  “I will,” she promised
treacherously.  Leto shot her a scowl.
 
                “That slave girl from the other day is a mage,” he said bluntly
to his master.
                Danarius looked at him, raising an eyebrow.  His face gave away
nothing of what he was thinking, save the single eyebrow, and that could mean
anything.  A good trait of a magister was a good poker face, after all.  “What
makes you say that?” he inquired.
                Raith neither hesitated, nor questioned himself, for which he
was rather proud.  In this, he was certain.  “She was drawing in the dirt, and
I watched her for a moment…”
                “Many children do that,” he said, beginning to dismiss his
apprentice.
                Raith shook his head, insistent.  “She held a stick, and I
don’t think she realizes it, but she’s not drawing with the stick—she was
drawing with magic.”
                “Is the child so talented that it seems like magic to you,
Raith?” he said, his tone bordering on mocking.
                Raith disregarded it; he had to make him see.  It was
frustrating sometimes.  He knew that he had blundered before, and he was eager
to make up for it, but didn’t want to make a fool of himself to do it.  “It’s
simple earth-based magic, and she’s using it to shape the drawings.”
                Danarius paused.  “Are you certain?”
                Raith nodded, and felt he was never more certain.  His own
parents had discovered that he was a mage under similar enough
circumstances—just small things that they had noticed now and again, just like
that.  “Absolutely, Master.”
                The magister frowned in thought.  “Let’s watch her for a while,
to be certain.  Maybe later, we’ll devise a test for her.”
                Raith’s lips turned into a frown.  “A… test?”
                He waved a hand dismissively.  “An impossible task—something
infuriating, like filling a tub with holes in its bottom, or something. 
Something to make her angry enough to use magic.”
                “I’ll devise a way, Master.  Shall I instruct the servants to
watch her?”
                He shook his head.  “No—the girl will notice and fear can drive
the ability inward as quickly as out.  Leave her be.  If you see her again,
simply pay attention to what she does.”
                Raith gave a slight nod of his head.  “As you say, Master.”
                A stab to the leg, and he had received a free seamstress, a boy
that would grow into a gladiator (a good one at that; Raith had observed the
boy hold off three older boys with a stick in the past, and had reports of it
happening on more than one occasion), and a mage on top of it.  A most… skilled
family, he would have to say.
                Still, the girl had better be damned grateful she was born a
slave instead of in the Qunari territory (for that matter, they should all be
grateful—the Qunari were barbaric).  He shuddered at the thought of what Qunari
did to mages.  Stitch their mouths shut, cut out their tongues, bind them.  He
imagined that they must castrate them too—the barbarians.  It was why winning
this long war was so important.  The very nature of the Qun would drive the
Qunari to keep attacking, even should Tevinter relinquish its hold on Seheron.
                Raith couldn’t imagine which was worse—being Tranquil, or being
a Qunari mage.  He imagined the latter.  If he were Tranquil, he at least
wouldn’t care.  Though, his gift and his personality being burned from his mind
were horrifying in itself.
                As a child, when he first heard of what the Qunari did to
mages, he had had terrible nightmares.  Nightmares of having his mouth stitched
shut, of his tongue cut from his mouth with a knife, or his hands cut off.  A
mage without hands was useless.
                If the boy did as well in his training as Raith suspected he
would, that would be quite profitable.  The games were an important part of
their culture, after all.  It gave the populace something to think about
besides the war, and the fact that sometimes… people disappeared—a neighbor, a
friend, a family member.  The war needed so many bodies, after all, to fight,
to fletch arrows, sharpen swords, any number of menial tasks, but also for
blood.  Blood was the essence of life—the games honored that small truth, in a
way.  There was great power to be had in blood.
                Not to mention that it was a good way to make coin if one had a
skilled team.  The gladiators, of course, were all a collection of slaves,
captives, and sometimes a few criminals—mostly for execution of the latter
two.  It was all good sport, he supposed, but watching sweaty men try to kill
each other grew quite dull after a while.  He reminded himself that there were
women too, of course, but far more men than women.  Not to mention that,
oftentimes, the gladiators were practically naked—he’d much rather watch oiled,
athletic women running around in the sands naked and killing each other than
men, but never mind that.
                When he was a magister, he planned on investing less in the
tournaments, and more in… brothels perhaps.  Brothels didn’t sink, didn’t go
out of fashion, didn’t die or lose and humiliate him.  Not to mention they had
a few other uses…
                  Raith had been instructed to go see how that elf was doing
with a wooden sword sometime today.  He gave his master a report of what he had
seen, which was just that the boy seemed to be doing well.  He had no idea why
he would be so interested in a slave, but he supposed that Danarius did have a
tendency to sink quite a bit of money in the tournaments, so of course he would
be interested in the boy’s development.
                The apprentice still thought he should have just killed the
boy, maybe used his life’s blood to fuel a spell, and be done with it.  It was
no less than the little brat deserved, but maybe he could make up for that scar
in the tournaments.  Raith snorted to himself.  More likely, die in the first
bout!
                Of course, there were knights who competed in more upscale
tournaments.  Those were only to the yield, and it included more than just
fighting and swordplay, but jousting as well.  Still, those were rare with the
war going on and most of the knights away, so they made do with the gladiators.
                He might like to see that little brat get cut down in his
prime.  He almost snickered at the thought.  Hamstrung—that would be
delightful.  Crippled for life, however long that might be.  He’d be worthless
at that rate, and then he’d likely just be bait for the lions, like he should
have been years ago.
                Oh, or perhaps sell the boy to a brothel?  All elves were
pretty enough for that, of course, but the child had such rare hair, they’d
probably get a good price on him, even if he did end up crippled so long as
nothing happened to his face…
                Well, no matter; it wasn’t his decision yet.  Yet.
                Raith still felt like the boy had nearly cost him everything. 
Everything he had worked for, everything he had earned, and his fears had
nearly caught up to him.  The fears that he wasn’t good enough, that he would
never be good enough to be a magister.  All those years of hard study, the
people he had stepped on, and betrayed to get into this position—all gone to
waste because of some elf-brat with a knife.  Where would he be now if Danarius
had died?
                He shuddered to think of it, and frankly, preferred to avoid
the thoughts.  To say he was contemptuous was to say that water was wet—when it
came to that brat at least.
                Wouldn’t anyone be angry with someone if they had nearly,
unthinkingly, shattered their hopes and dreams, their lives?  Wouldn’t that
person bear a grudge of hatred towards the one who had nearly cost them
everything?  Wouldn’t you never forget it?
                Raith didn’t.
                He continued the experiments Danarius had assigned to him.  It
was important, a breakthrough if they succeeded.  It would guarantee not just a
place in the histories of the magi, but a hallmark of their ability.  It was a
privilege that he, Raith, was allowed to study it, let alone perform the
experiments.
                One of the most trying parts of the experiments were the
riddles.  It was using pieces of knowledge that had been lost, testing
theories, testing limits.  One of the most trying riddles was—what was the true
center of the body?  Was it physical?  Metaphorical?  Spiritual?  Was it
mental?  Was it all of these?  None of them?  It had to branch from that, start
from that.  It needed a beginning point.  Every arc, every curve, every small
line, was not just art, it was science; it had exacts, and it had to be done
exactly, at exact times.  One second off, and all would go to ruin no matter
the precautions.
It was dangerous work, and he had to be careful.  So far, the subjects they had
used died, or they went mad.  In the best of cases, one subject simply acted as
if they had gone through a lobotomy.  It needed more testing still.  Sentient
subjects were used only when absolutely necessary for testing, when more of a
reaction was needed.  Animal subjects substituted far more frequently, but
acted oddly after the point.  They were trying to get just the right ritual,
just the right steps, to retain a person’s mind, at least mostly intact, or be
capable of picking and choosing what was lost.
Lyrium was known to make a person quite… addled.
Chapter End Notes
     Aaaaand, that concludes Part One.
***** Shackled *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Leto makes a new friend, Varania is training as a mage, and
     the siblings are growing up.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                                   Part_Two
 
                Varania ran.  She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, but
no matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t outrun them.  A lot of the stones
missed, but many others did not.  Tears streaked unchecked down her face,
making lines in the dirt from when she had fallen.
                It was worse when she fell.  When she fell, it gave them
opportunity to catch her.  She dare not let them catch her.
                She heard yelling behind her, but not the cruel taunts and
jibes she had heard before.  She chanced a glance back, and slowed to a stop,
turning.
                Her heart soared with joy, and she even smiled through the
tears, despite herself.  She was so tired, and felt all the little bruises from
where the stones had hit her, but she felt triumphant suddenly.  Her brother
had caught up to the children chasing her.
                He was outnumbered, that much was plain.  There were the usual
three boys that taunted the siblings, but this cruel children’s game of stone-
throwing was something different; others had joined.  It was because she was a
mage, a mage and strictly forbidden from hurting people with her magic, and
didn’t know enough to shield herself from the stones.  And nothing could shield
her from their pitiless words.
                Even the girls would join in, but only one of them gave chase
today with the boys to continue throwing stones and mud at her, but she ran
away when Leto showed up—likely to get an adult.  That made Varania angry; the
girl would lie, and she knew it.
                Leto grabbed onto one of the boys by his collar, and swung his
fist with the other.  It connected with the side of his face, but didn’t have
the force behind it to do any serious damage as another boy tried to pull him
back as he did it.  Leto whirled on the other boy, but the one he had punched
hit him in the shoulder.  The third kicked him.  A fourth boy, younger and
desperate to prove himself to his elders, joined in the fray.
                The boys cursed, and yelled at one another, except for Leto who
wasted no such effort.  All of his concentration was on coming to Varania’s
rescue.
                “Go after the mage,” one of the older boys yelled to the
youngest, shoving him rudely away.
                The younger looked to Varania, and ran after her, ready to hit
her, a rock clenched tight in his fist.  She yelped in fright, and started to
go.  But just at that moment, Leto broke from the other boys, and tackled the
youngest, who let out a pig-like squeal of terror.
                The two boys fell to the ground in a heap, skidding knees and
palms on the hard fall.  The younger boy let go of the rock in the tumble. 
Leto managed to hit the youngest boy once before the others hauled him off of
him.  Varania’s eyes went wide in horror when she realized that two of them had
a hold of Leto’s arms, and, try as he might, he couldn’t free himself.
                The third boy smirked, and hauled back his fist.
                Varania couldn’t let this happen.  He had come to rescue her. 
She couldn’t let them hurt him!  She would never let someone hurt him, no
matter what!
                Her hands balled into fists.  She had just barely learned to
control the magic, even a little, but she could save her brother!  Her gift
flared to life in her, greeted by her anger and her fear.  She felt heat around
her palm as the fire sprang to life, but oddly, as ever, no pain from the
flames.  A mage did not hurt themselves with their own magic—that was one of
the first lessons she had been taught.
                She was about to attack before the boys hurt Leto, but an adult
voice cried out for them to stop.  Her fist lowered, the fire extinguished. 
She hoped no one had noticed what she had been about to do.
                The boy who had been about to hit Leto suddenly looked alarmed,
and put his hands behind his back automatically.  The other two still held onto
his arms, stricken at what they had been caught at.  The fourth boy still lay
in a crumpled heap on the ground.  To Varania, her brother only looked angry.
                “What’s going on here?” the woman demanded.  Varania recognized
her as Lolette, a woman too old to do any practical work any longer, but she
did tend the slave quarters, and she looked after the smallest of the children,
which was useful to the adults.
                “I—we—that is—“ the girl stammered.
                The woman rounded on the child.  “Raenya, you said Leto was
‘beating up your brother and his friends.’”  The woman raised an eyebrow at the
goings-on.  The two boys holding on to Leto abruptly dropped his arms, as if he
were suddenly burning.  “Were you lying?”
                “I was… no!” she insisted, and pointed to the gang of boys. 
“See—he hurt them.  See?”
                It seemed that all the boys were talking at once, about their
bruises, the scrapes, all trying to tell the story from their own point of
view.  Varania only looked down.  No one would believe her.  She was a mage,
after all.  No one would even ask her what happened.
                Lolette quieted them down, and had each tell his story in
turn.  She listened patiently, and then, much to the five’s chagrin, asked Leto
for his version of the story, which was met with complaints from the others.
                Varania looked up to listen.  “They were throwing rocks at
Varania, and she tried to run away, so they chased her,” he began.  “And I came
to help her.”
                “He’s lying,” two of the boys blurted simultaneously, lying
themselves.
                The woman frowned sternly, but ignored the other two, all her
attention on Varania’s big brother.  “By getting in a fight?”
                Abashed, he looked down.  “There…  There wasn’t any other way.”
                “There is always another way, Leto.  All of you—you should be
ashamed of yourselves.”  She let the silence fall over the seven gathered
children like a mantle of shame.  “I’ll be letting all of your parents know,
and in the meantime, I think it’s high time the walls in the longhouse were
washed.”  For some of them, it was an empty threat—they might have a foster
parent, as it were, but some had been purchased and hadn’t seen their true
families since they were toddlers.  “All of you, get to it, and don’t fight.” 
She shooed them off.  Varania trailed along behind, or rather, tried to, but
Lolette caught on to her, and ushered for Leto to go on ahead.  He did,
reluctantly.
                The old elf looked sternly down at Varania.  The young mage
imagined that Lolette was the oldest woman she had ever known, simply too
stubborn to die.  She imagined her already old at the dawn of the world,
scowling at the sun as if to say “About time you showed up.”  “And you, young
lady, were about to use magic.  You know you’re not supposed to,” she said once
the others were well out of earshot.
                Varania’s brows drew up, outlining her consternation.  “But… 
But I can’t fight, and Leto was about to get hurt…”  Her words died out.  She
knew it was wrong.  She looked down miserably.  “I… I’m sorry—I was just
scared…”
                “You bet you’d be sorry, if you’d hurt or killed one of those
boys.  They can hurt each other with those fists, even kill one another given
time, but you can kill easily and by accident,” she warned her.  Varania looked
away, fidgeting uncomfortably through the scolding.  “Now, hurry after your
brother—you have to scrub the walls too.”
                “Yes, ma’am,” she sighed, and turned on her heel to trot after
the others.
 
                Mieta knelt on the floor in front of her son, a bucket of water
at one side.  Varania leaned against the bed, watching with rapt attention.
                Her son had come home with more than just bruises today; they
had given the boys sharpened weapons for the first time, something Mieta
personally feared, and this was why.  They were not practicing with them yet. 
Their instructor was teaching them proper respect for the weapons
first—cleaning and care, mostly.  In short, that meant an entire day of
sharpening and polishing all the weapons and armor in the armory—a process that
Leto described as “maddening and tedious” (words he had learned from paying too
much attention to what the adults around him would say) but that was the life
of a slave.  Leto had slipped while sharpening a blade and sliced open his
hand, and it had just gotten dirty throughout the day.  The fighting afterwards
certainly hadn’t helped the matter.  True, Lolette had cleaned all the
children’s bruises and scrapes, but the truth of it was that after the
punishment, the others had only cornered Leto and Varania again.  Leto had
cleared a path for her, and she had run, but he had to fall behind to keep them
away from her, and ended up with just more bruises and scrapes.
                “Didn’t Master Bruce attend this at all?” Mieta demanded.
                Leto squirmed uncomfortably as she scrubbed at the grit that
had built up in the cut with a bristle brush she had borrowed from the storage
shed; the lock on it had broken last winter in a storm, and no one had bothered
to replace it—and the slaves certainly didn’t mind that so much.  “He… did,” he
said, reluctantly.
                Mieta raised an eyebrow, tapping his open palm with the brush,
watching him wince every time it hit the open wound.  “That so,” she said.
                “Oh, all right!” he cried, and she stopped, and went back to
scrubbing.  He hissed sharply in pain.  “He treated it—with a salve, and
wrapped it.  But Erron and his friends…”
                Mieta sighed.  “It’s always ‘Erron this’ and ‘Erron that.’ 
Can’t you two get along?”
                His dark brows drew down in a scowl.  “No.  I hate him,” he
said, very matter-of-factly, the same way he might say that grass was green and
trees were wooden.
                Varania butted in, “He’s a jerk.”
                Mieta looked to her two children in dismay.  “You two certainly
don’t make it easy on yourselves, do you?”
                The girl made a face.  “Erron makes fun of me, and throws
stones at me—‘cuz I’m a mage.”  She blinked, trying to think of what to say. 
“So Leto protects me.”
                “It’s true,” the older brother insisted.
                “Erron’s mother tells that you two attacked him,” Mieta said.
                “He’s lying!” Varania cried.
                Mieta knew the truth of that, sadly enough.  She just shook her
head and didn’t press the point.  “Was this on a two-handed sword?” she asked
her son.
                He hesitated.  “Yes,” he admitted.  “We are to care for which
weapons we want to wield.”
                Their mother sighed.  She felt like she sighed a lot lately,
like there was nothing for it but to sigh.  She couldn’t control her children,
didn’t have a say in their lives.  “Why do you insist on those big weapons?”
she wondered, setting the brush down and dabbing at the cut with a cloth.
                “I like them,” he muttered darkly.
                “You’ll hurt yourself,” she told him, voice gentle.  “Elves are
lithe and dexterous—we’re faster than humans.  The great sword will just slow
you down.”
                “I can wield it!” he cried stubbornly.
                She looked up at her son, her incredibly gifted son.  She
didn’t doubt it.  He was stubborn enough to do whatever he set his mind to,
more stubborn than smart.  “Some of those blades are bigger than you are.”
                “I’ll get taller,” he countered.
                “Elves don’t get as tall as humans,” she told him.
                His mouth twisted into a frown.  “You said Grandfather wielded
a two-handed sword,” he snapped.
                She rolled her eyes.  She had hoped he had forgotten about
that.  Apparently not.  “He was… tall for an elf.”
                “I could be,” he said.  She gave him three years before she was
looking up at him, though, all the same.
                “Keep dreaming, kid,” she said, as she began to wrap the
bandage around his hand.  “Why don’t you pick a different weapon?  Bows and
knives have always worked well for the elven.”
                He made a face.  “And look where that got us,” he said, his
expression grave for a twelve-year old.  She didn’t know what to say to that. 
                “Lighter weapons are better suited to a lighter body,” she told
him, and poked him on the tip of his nose.  He made a face.  “You’re quicker
than a human, and more dexterous.  You should use it.”
                He huffed.  “I can be stronger than a human, not just quicker,”
he said, with all the seriousness and determination—or plain stupid
stubbornness—that he could muster.  Mieta gave up on the matter.
                An angry scream ripped through the air, from somewhere
outside—a young girl’s scream.  Varania looked toward the door.  “What was
that?” she wondered, voicing what everyone else was thinking.  Leto rose, and
stepped toward the door.
 
                The girl kicked, and screamed, and fought, and if her legs were
not chained together, she would have ran.  She had to be carried, slung over
the shoulder of a big man, who looked like he might be able to snap her tiny
frame in two.
                She continued to scream, thrashing, using her manacled wrists
to bash against his back.  It resounded off the plate armor, and she wasn’t
even sure he felt it, but she kept at it anyway.  She had bitten someone
already, and broken someone else’s fingers when they bathed her.  They had
beaten her too—a pretty severe lashing, but that hadn’t done much to dampen her
spirit; it had only made her angry.  Her temper was as fiery as her hair.
                Despite her kicking and screaming, she was actually paying very
careful attention to the details of the place, and especially to the city
outside the manor.  All these things she would need if she were to make her
escape.  It was evenfall, and people were looking out their windows carefully,
to see the commotion that was going on inside the slave compound.
                The big man suddenly dropped her.  She landed hard, on her
rump.  She flinched, and grumbled a curse in the old tongue—something they hit
her for doing.  Her cheek stung, but she didn’t regret it.
                “There’s a lot of fight in this one,” the man said, kicking her
onto her back, his armored boot pressed down on her stomach.  She coughed,
sputtering.  “I think the games would do well for her; we should use that
temper.”
                “I agree,” the mage Raith said, looking down at the girl as if
from a great distance.  “Girl, you are to report to the training ground in the
morning.  Is that clear?”
                He should have known better by now.  She coughed, as if she
couldn’t breathe.  The big man eased up on her stomach, precisely as she wanted
him to.  She spat.  Her older male cousins had taught her to spit one
afternoon, years ago.  She had a terrific aim, and could get some decent
distance.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t work any snot into it, but the spit
landed well enough on Raith’s robe, on the emblem of his station.  She smiled
triumphantly, not at all caring what they might do to her.
                If she died, good; they had wasted money buying her, and then
she wouldn’t have to live as a slave.  She would rather die.  She just… didn’t
want to do it herself.
                Raith kicked her, hard enough to drive the wind from her
lungs.  She tried to curl up, to cradle the blow, but with the man’s foot on
her chest, she couldn’t.  He kicked her again, and again until she felt her
side bruising.  She gritted her teeth and refused to give him the satisfaction
of hearing her cry out.  The man knelt and took the chain out from her wrists,
but not the manacles themselves.  The two men left, talking heatedly.  She sat
up, slowly, in the dirt path, watching the gate clang shut ominously.  She
heard people hurrying back inside, away from the wild girl.
                All except one.
                A boy came, slowly, out of one of the small huts.  She watched
him come, and he knelt beside her.  His hair was the blackest she had ever seen
on a person, so dark there were shades of blue in it, when the light caught it
just right.  “Are you all right?” he asked, in fluent Tevene.  She blinked, and
stared at him, not understanding what he had said.  He realized that she didn’t
understand the tongue, so struggled, but only briefly, and repeated the words
in the King’s Speech, hoping she knew that one.
                She considered that for a moment, once she understood his
words.  “No,” she said bluntly.  “Would you be if your clan was beset by
slavers after the Templars took away your Keeper?”  She paused, miserable. 
“They wouldn’t even let us plant trees for the dead.”
                He blinked, cocking his head to the side.  “I don’t…”
                She sighed deeply.  “Flat-ear,” she called him in her thick
brogue.
                He frowned at her.  “Well, you talk funny,” he said.
                She stuck her tongue out at him.  “You look funny,” she
countered.
                Surprisingly, he laughed.  She blinked at him, and judged him
to be maybe a year older than she—so about twelve perhaps.  “I heard Raith
talking.  In the morning, you can come with me to train.”
                She frowned at him.  “Train to do what?  To talk like a damned
Imperial?”
                He scowled.  “To be a gladiator,” he reprimanded her.  “It’ll
beat scrubbing floors.”  He stood up, holding a hand out to her.  She stared at
it as if it might turn into a snake, and bite her.  He raised his eyebrows. 
“Come on.  We have an extra bed—you can come with me.”
                Hesitantly, she took his hand, and was almost surprised when it
didn’t bite her.  He helped haul her to her feet, and blessedly said nothing at
all about the chain between her ankles.
                His name was Leto, and she was nothing if not grateful to him,
but his mother and sister were a different matter.  Mieta was a kind woman, but
she disliked her once she learned that the woman had been born a city-elf and
free, and never even triedto escape, which was a concept she grasped simply by
talking to her—the woman was too crestfallen to have been born a slave and not
know any different.  How could one live in slavery and never take the chance to
run?  She supposed that Mieta had two children—but surely she could have
managed?
                And Varania was a sweet girl, but the Dalish found herself
resenting her somehow too.  Maybe because the girl was clearly a mage, and
still showed no signs of desiring any kind of freedom.  Worse still, Varania
barely knew the common tongue, only speaking a few words at all because both
her mother and brother did.
                “What’s your name?” Mieta asked her when she had seen to her
many small hurts.  Mieta spoke the Trade tongue better than Leto did.
                The Dalish made a face, her lips pressed tightly together.  She
looked away.  “It doesn’t matter anymore.  That person might as well be dead.”
                Mieta blinked in surprise, then her eyes softened in sadness. 
“I understand.”
                The girl’s jaw set.  “How can you say that?” she practically
shrieked.  “How can you say that you understand?  No one understands!  How can
anyone understand?”  She shoved her away, and ran, as fast as she could with
the chain, out the door.  Leto was quick at her heels, and caught her before
she had ran too far from the house.  “Let me go!”
                He shook his head, keeping the small girl off her feet, so she
couldn’t run, and her arms pinned so she couldn’t flail.  “No,” he insisted.
                “Put me down now!  I hate you!” she cried, as if in pain, and
kicked, biting, thrashing, and… crying.  When she began to sob, her body going
slack with her grief, he eased her onto her feet, and her knees when her legs
gave out.  He knelt with her when she cried for her loss.
                “What’s it like to be Dalish?” he asked her after she had begun
to still, perhaps just to get her talking.
                She looked up, her eyes still glistening.  She wiped at her
tears, suddenly embarrassed to be seen crying in front of a boy.  “I was
happy,” she confessed.  She told him about the clan, how everyone was a big
family, and how they rode on halla, and about their land ships.  Talking
helped, helped her sort her thoughts, helped her regain herself.  She missed
her clan, and taking care of the deer-like halla, and traveling.
                “What can I call you?” he asked her, gently this time.
                She jerked her head away, angry again.  “Make something up,”
she told him.
                “Odd-eyes,” he decided.
                She hit him—hard.  He knocked backwards, laughing.  She threw
herself at him, throwing her fists towards his face.  He blocked, still
laughing.  She was quite sensitive about her mismatched eyes, thank-you-very-
much.  One brown, one green, and forever marking her as different from everyone
else, not to mention her red hair on top of that!  And, as if all of that
wasn’t bad enough, she was so covered in freckles that she could never count
them all.  The Creators had not favored her, she knew.  “Don’t you dare!” she
said, hitting him one final time, and that one landed on his shoulder.  She
pulled off of him, fuming.
                “What about ‘Ginger’?” he asked her.
                “Really imaginative, aren’t you?” she snorted, then found
herself smiling.  “I guess I can learn to respond to ‘Ginger.’”  She extended
her hand, helping him to his feet.
                His lips curved into a small smile.  “You tired?”
                She sighed, and nodded once.  “Yeah.  I’m… Will your mama
forgive me?”
                He shrugged as he began to lead her away.  “Ask her yourself.” 
She hesitated, and followed after him like a lost puppy.  She came back in the
same way, with her metaphorical tail between her legs.  She looked up at Mieta.
                “I’m… sorry, ma’am,” she told her.
                Mieta smiled, and it seemed kind of sad to her.  “It’s all
right.”  The extra bed was next to Leto’s.  She slept with her back to him, and
woke before dawn.  She crept outside, and found the privy pit, and by the time
she had come back, they were all getting up.
                Varania had tons of questions for her about the Dalish, which
she asked in her broken Trade tongue, and her eyes shone with wonder when she
talked about it, especially the Keepers.  Ginger hoped that it instilled some
kind of will into the girl, but wondered if that were possible.  If she had
been a slave all her life…  Well, it would be nearly impossible to be anything
more.
                She walked sullenly with Leto to the training grounds. 
Everyone else was a boy, and seemed to think that because she was so much
younger, and a girl besides, that she would be easy to beat up.  Well, no one
could hurt you if they couldn’t touch you, and that was what she prided herself
on—speed and agility.
                But Leto hit her.  He wasn’t cruel about it, but he did land
bruises on her, despite the protective armor.  Fact of the matter, she was
rather astonished at his fighting skills.  He would be such an asset to the
Dalish…
                But there was really nothing she could do with these shackles
on.
                However, rather than blame the shackles, she grinned at him. 
“You’d make a great Dalish warrior,” she declared.
                He rolled his eyes.  “Don’t they tattoo their faces?” he asked,
making a face at the idea.
                “It’s a right of passage—a mark of adulthood.”  She frowned. 
“But, really:  If you were Dalish, you’d be greatly honoured.”
                But he didn’t seem to take the hint.  He only snorted and
continued on, totally missing the fact that she had just offered him a place in
her clan, when she finally ran away.
                As the days passed, she grew more and more disheartened, but
was determined not to give up.  Giving up would make her a slave, for real. 
Giving up was to admit defeat, and it meant she would never be free again.  So
she did her best to remember and at least think in the old tongue, and even
taught Leto and Varania a few words here and there.  She remembered her
training to become a Dalish warrior, and used that when she fought on the
training grounds, more than what the instructor taught.
                She would be hit when she spoke in the King’s Speech, and
especially if she spoke any of the elven tongue, but she reasoned that learning
Tevinter—Tevene they called it—wasn’t by itself a bad thing.  Knowledge of any
kind was never inherently bad, no matter the sad reasons for gaining it.
                Varania asked, and Ginger told her about the places she had
seen, the animals, the countries she had passed through.  But the one she was
most excited to hear about was a place in Orlais, a big lake hidden in a lush
forest, between cliffs, twin waterfalls pouring into it, a natural bridge of
earth and stone forming over one of its tributaries.
                “Wow,” Varania said, eyes wide as she listened to Ginger
elaborate.  “I wish I could see that.”
                Leto rolled his eyes.  “Keep dreaming,” he muttered.
                His sister shot him a glare.  “Why couldn’t I ever see it?” she
demanded.
                He shook his head, but didn’t answer.  Ginger crossed her arms,
knowing perfectly well what he had on his mind.  “You could go,” she told
Varania.  She inclined her head toward Leto.  “He’d like it too; he should take
you there.”
                “Really?” she said.
                Ginger nodded, pleased.  “Mhm.  It’s really beautiful.”
                He seemed annoyed.  “That’s impossible,” he insisted.
                “Is not,” Varania countered.
                Leto’s lips curled into a dissatisfied frown.  “It is; we’re
slaves,” he said with finality.
                “Ginger!” Varania cried.
                Ginger’s fingers curled into a fist and she punched Leto in the
arm—aiming expertly at a pressure point.  He staggered, and she was quick to
hit again, and she kicked him in the knee.  He rubbed his arm where she hit
him, sulking.  “Keep that up, and you’ll be a slave long after you’re free.”
                “What does that mean?” he demanded.
                It made her kind of sad to realize that her friend really
didn’t get it.  “Slavery is a mentality, Leto.  Not a state of being,” she
said.  Mieta had told her that, when the woman had seen how saddened the Dalish
had become.  It had become a mantra for her, and she believed it, fervently and
with all her heart.  She wasn’t a slave; she was a captive.  But this wasn’t
the first time she had repeated it to Leto, and he had yet to take it to
heart.  He didn’t understand it.  She hoped that he would one day, or her
prediction would be only too true.
Chapter End Notes
     Ginger was a character that I originally had no intention of making,
     but she forced her way into the story, and now I could not bear to
     remove her. Her story needs to be told, of how it intertwines with
     Leto's and molds the person he becomes. She became a favourite of
     mine against my will when I originally did not want her included; she
     inspires those around her to be the best they can be, she believes in
     her friends and most of all herself, and I admire her. She turned out
     to be exactly what Leto needed, and what this story needed: A friend.
     Which is why writing her story became so difficult toward the end...
***** All Wrong *****
Chapter Summary
     The kids are growing up, and barely realize what it means for them,
     or for their future.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Varania kicked a rock, upset for reasons she didn’t entirely
understand.  Raith and her master were the only other mages at the compound
(aside from one servant), and Danarius had deemed it appropriate that she
apprentice under Raith.  Raith hated it (and herself), and made no secret of it
to Varania.  It made learning from him a torture, and he was unspeakably cruel
about it.
                He mocked her when she couldn’t get a spell right, or when she
burned herself once the fire was no longer “hers.”  He hit her when she
couldn’t recite something completely accurately, or didn’t draw something
correctly.  It was humiliating, and hard.
                She was later coming home than usual tonight too—Raith had kept
her late, because the lesson had apparently ran late, but she wondered if it
wasn’t so she would miss the meal and go to bed hungry.  She sighed, looking
over at the orchard with its green apples in the early fall.  Surely no one
would miss… but they would.
                Her stomach growled, and she sighed to herself.  Well, maybe
she would fall asleep quickly; she was tired too.  Casting magic wore her out,
and some spells gave her headaches.
                “Sis!” a voice called up ahead, and she looked up.  She found
herself smiling, and waved back at her brother.  She started running to meet
him, and skidded to a halt.  “Mother sent me to look for you.”
                She cocked her head to the side.  “When’d you start calling her
‘Mother,’ Leto?” she teased.  “Is it ‘cuz of Ginger?”
                His face heated, arms crossing.  “Is not,” he denied.
                She giggled.  “She’s pretty,” she told him, walking beside him
now.  But Ginger, truth be told, was more attractive because of her personality
than her looks.  She sighed wistfully.  It sure would be nice to fall in love… 
But why would anyone ever love a mage?  An elven mage, that was a slave? 
Sometimes, she just wanted to cry.  She looked up at the twilit sky.  “I wish I
weren’t a mage.”
                Leto stopped, and looked at her.  She glanced back at him,
pausing.  “Why?” he asked her.
                She looked down, scuffing the earth with a bare foot.  “Why
wouldn’t I?” she insisted, and crossed her arms.  “I heard from Mama—the city
we’re—you and Mama’re—from might have held out ‘til help arrived, under a
siege, if it weren’t for mages.  And our master is a mage.  A-and…”  And her
eyes began to glisten with unshed tears.  “And I have a phylactery, and they’ll
always know where I am, and… and…”  And Raith was so mean, and the spells were
too hard!  “And I hate being a mage!”
                She wiped at her eyes, trying not to cry.  She was too old to
cry!  Only babies cried like this, so why was she crying?  She felt his arms
wrap around her, pulling her close to him.  She sobbed against her brother’s
chest, her tiny fingers wrapping in his shirt as she continued to cry.  The
embrace only made it worse.  She really did hate being a mage.  She hated being
something that caused so much sorrow.  It felt like she were betraying her
family in every way, and could not make it stop.  She had tried so hard to make
it stop too.  She had fought it, tried to hide it, and tried so hard to make it
go away.  She had prayed every night for the Maker—for anyone--to take the
magic away.  The Maker never heard her prayers.  No one did.
                “But you can use it to help people,” Leto’s voice soothed her.
                She sniffed, peering up at him through thick lashes.  “How?”
she mumbled.
                “You heal mine and Ginger’s bruises, and when Mother has
trouble with her hands.”
                She sighed, hiding her face in his shirt again.  “I hate it,
and I’m not even good at it,” she insisted.  “All I can do is hurt people.” 
Before she had begun her lessons, she had hurtLeto of all people!  They had
been fighting.  He had pulled her hair, she had called him names, and she had
been so angry…  She shivered, thinking of what might have been if he had not
reacted so quickly.  Varania was grateful that her brother's hair had only been
singed and nothing more.
                “I just said you can heal, sis,” he reiterated.  “And then, you
can do something that only you can do, right?”
                She sighed, not knowing what to say.  He had known for years
how much she wanted to be special, how she wanted to be something special, like
how he was good at fighting.  She wished that she could be good at fighting
too.  She wished she could do that instead of be a mage.  “No,” she muttered
under her breath.  “Lots of other mages can.”
                “You’re the best mage I know,” he told her.  “And you’re still
my little sister.”
                She wiped at her drying tears.  “Really?”
                He hugged her tighter for a moment.  “Really.”
                She smiled again, as if everything in the world was finally
right.  “I love you, big brother,” she told him, meaning every word of it.
                “I love you too, sis.  C’mon,” he said, and ended the hug, but
he took her hand, as he had when they were much younger, and led her back to
the compound.
 
                Her lessons were cancelled the next morning, for reasons she
would likely never know--and did not honestly care.  She went down to help
mother as best she could (something she was instructed she should do whenever
that happened).  Therefore, she picked up scraps, and tidied the room, but her
stitches were not very straight, so she did not help with the sewing yet. 
Rather, she was made to practice on the scraps, something she especially
hated.  She stabbed herself with needles, and worked hard at sewing a pattern
onto the fabric, but she was not even very good at using the embroidery hoop.
                Eventually, Mistress Lana just sent her away when there was
nothing left for her to do but practice.  So she put her things away, and
Mistress Lana criticized her stitches, as usual, and sent her out.  She sighed
to herself, feeling miserable as ever.  Everything she ever seemed to do was
wrong.  Spells went awry, and stitches were not straight.  Everything was just…
all wrong.
                I’m a failure as a mage, and a tailor.  Can’t I do anything
right?
                She looked down at her hands.  The tips hurt from where the
needle had lanced them by accident.  Sometimes, they shook from all the spell
work she had to practice.  Was it that she had clumsy hands?  She sighed
miserably.  People were always looking down on her.  She was never good
enough.  Her mother was a great tailor, and could sew so quickly too! 
Moreover, Leto was good at swords, and running, and climbing too.  Ginger was
quick, and witty, and she could scale walls that Varania had thought impossible
to climb.
                She went into the courtyard, and sat beneath the magnolia
tree.  Her knees tucked under her chin, she wrapped her arms around her legs. 
She wondered if she would ever find anything she was goodat.  She did not even
need to be the best at something—just to be good at something!  She liked to
draw, but she knew she was no good at that either.
                Varania liked stories too, but Ginger was much better at making
up stories than she was.  She seemed to have a new story every day, for that
matter.
                The Dalish had been here for three months, and they had removed
the chain on her legs, but not the manacles, of course.  And while Varania
would never tell that she had overheard, she had overheard Leto and she
talking.  It had been late one night, and Varania had been coming back from the
privy.  The two were behind the house, talking in hushed voices.  She was as
quiet as she knew how to be, and crept up close enough to hear what they were
saying.
                “…  I know how to get out of the city—come with me!” she was
pleading to him.
                Varania had been frightened.  Was Leto going to leave?  He was
going to leave, and she would be all alone with Mama?  “Ginger, they’ll catch
us,” he was saying instead, and Varania felt relieved to hear him say it.
                “They will not,” she said, but suddenly seemed doubtful at the
sure tone of his voice.
                “You really think the city guards won’t notice two elven
children—one of them in manacles running through the city streets?” he hissed. 
“They’ll catch us, and do you know what they do to runaway slaves?”
                Ginger was silent for a moment.  “No,” she admitted
reluctantly.  “Not exactly, anyway.  That bastard Danarius said—“
                Varania heard the sound of someone being slapped—a harsh
slapping of a hand against a cheek.  It made her jump, and for a moment, she
feared that their silence was because they had heard her.  What’s a
“bastard”?Varania wondered, and filed the word away to inquire upon later. 
“Don’t ever say things like that about the magisters,” he growled.  “They’ll
know.”
                Ginger was silent for a moment, as if weighing the weight of
his words.  Whether she believed in them or not, she corrected herself,
“Anyway, he said that they cut off their foot.”
                “The left one,” Leto clarified.
                “That’s… terrible,” she gasped.
                Varania actually heard her brother chuckle.  “Then you’ll
definitely be scrubbing floors.”  Ginger laughed at that, as if it were some
private joke between the two.
                And that was the end of that discussion.  Varania pretended as
if she had just walked over to them, and asked what they were doing.  They
brought her back to bed, and whispered to each other again before also going to
bed.  Ginger, Varania knew, would run once escape looked promising.  Right now,
to her, not having the chain looked promising.  Thankfully, Leto was there to
talk her out of it.  Varania would hate to see her with only one foot; she
would be so depressed.
                But she worried for the day Ginger left.  Would Leto leave with
her?  The thought made her sad; she would not be able to go.  They would catch
all of them if she were to go with them.  She looked at her hands, remembering
the cut they had made to get the blood for her phylactery—blood that would
always lead her pursuers to her, no matter where she went.
                Suddenly, the girl sprang to her feet, and trotted out to the
empty expanse the gladiators trained.  There were a few roped-in practice
rings, but the one she was most interested in was the third one—the one for
those who hadn’t actually been in the arena yet.  She followed the sound of the
blunted swords, and sat at a fair distance in the grass, watching.  Her brother
was not fighting, but Ginger was—a boy she knew by the name of Erron.  He was
older, and bigger, but she was so small and quick, he just couldn’t seem to hit
her.
                Varania liked to watch.  She wished she could do things like
that too.  And Ginger was so self-confident, and graceful.  She would grow up
to be really pretty, odd eyes, freckles, and crooked smile and all, she bet. 
Well, if she did not end up horrifically scarred fighting, anyway.  She laughed
to herself.  Maybe Leto and she would get married some day.  Oh, she would love
to have a big sister—that would be wonderful!
                Slaves were not officiallymarried, of course, but the act was
observed all the same, false titles of husband and wife still given, amongst
themselves if no one else.  She knew nothing else.
                “What are you doing?” someone asked, casting a shadow down over
her.
                She looked up, and grinned at her older brother.  “Watching,”
she said.  “They told me to leave, ‘cuz I was in the way.”
                He glanced back at the ring, watching Ginger duck and weave,
rolling around on the ground on occasion.  She had a fighting style like none
Varania had ever seen.  He sat down beside her.  “You’re always in the way,” he
agreed.
                She hit him in the shoulder.  “You’re such a jerk,” she
pouted.  He just laughed, and sat in silence, occasionally commenting on the
fighter’s forms.  When Ginger landed a solid kick to Erron’s chest, knocking
him back, she drove her weapon to a “kill,” which drew the blunted blade close
to his neck.  Their training master called the fight to her, and Leto got to
his feet, and ran back to the circle in time for his match.
                When Ginger spotted Varania, she waved to her.  Varania waved
back enthusiastically.  Ginger took a long drink of cool water, and went to sit
with her in her brother’s place.
                “What’re you doing?” Ginger asked her politely, running her
fingers through her short-cropped ginger-colored hair.  Long, it was stringy,
and the Dalish claimed it looked like nothing so much as an old broom, so she
kept it short.  Ginger said that Varania’s red hair was prettier than her own,
but the mage thought she was just being polite; it was so straight it had no
body at all, and so fine and thick that it tangled if she did not keep it
braided.
                She smiled up at the older girl.  “Watching Leto,” she said,
looking back at the fight.  “My big brother is amazing—don’t you think?”
                The redhead laughed gently.  “He’s something.  Not sure what,
but something,” she said with a slight nod.
                Varania frowned, not quite sure that she had understood, but
let it go.  “When you’re older, will you and he get married?” she asked
innocently.
                A wry grin broke out of Ginger’s face, and the girl laughed so
hard she fell over, clutching her sides and kicking as if Varania had said
something really funny.  The young mage felt like she was being made fun of
somehow.  Her lips curled into a dissatisfied frown, and when it continued for
what seemed quite a while, she felt most indignant.  She crossed her arms,
fuming silently.  What was so funny?  Was she really stupid, to say something
like that?  Raith was always saying that she was stupid.  Was it true?  Was it
a clumsy thing to say?
                Ginger gasped for air, clawing her way to a sitting position. 
She chuckled again, the grin looking like it had become painful plastered to
her face, but she was so mirthful that she could not shed it.  “I sure hope
not!” she cried, finally answering the girl.
                Varania pouted.  “Why not?” she asked her.
                Ginger looked at Varania, cocking her head to the side.  “Well,
for one, Leto’s a boy.”
                The mage blinked, not understanding, and it showed by the
confusion on her face.  “But…”  But didn’t girls marry boys?  Wasn’t that how
it worked?
                The Dalish giggled again.  “He’s kinda pretty for a boy, but
he’s still a boy,” she said, shrugging one shoulder dismissively.
                Varania felt horribly lost.  She didn’t understand what the
other was saying at all, though she tried.  Her head hurt thinking about it. 
She wished she knew what she meant.  She tried so hard to impress Ginger, after
all.  Now she felt as if she had gone and made a fool of herself, and it was
even worse for not understanding.  “Please, Ginger, what do you mean?”
                She just shook her head, and muffed Varania’s coppery hair
affectionately.  “You’ll understand some day, kid,” she told her.
                She batted her arm off her head.  “You’re not that much older
than me!” she exclaimed defensively.
                “Old enough,” she said with a grin.
                Varania still did not understand, though she spent all day
trying.  She finally gave up on it and disregarded the whole matter in the way
only a child can do.  She supposed that it wasn’t important anyway.
 
                Ginger had acquired a small carving knife—Mieta couldn’t gripe
at her about it, because she had technically found it in the rubbish heap, and
she had saved it.  It just need to be reset was all, and the blade sharpened. 
The tip was pretty far gone, and it wasn’t pretty, but it worked pretty well
otherwise.
                She fixed it and sharpened it, and Varania found her a thick
stick to whittle at—nice, buttery walnut, actually.  She had spent hours
watching the clan craftsmen carve intricate figures into pieces of wood.  They
had told her that it was not they shaping the wood—they simply cut away what
had no place there.
                So she thought about Leto, and carved.  It took her a full turn
of the moon, as she had little time to work on it, but she managed to finally
carve out the little wolf.  Varania’s carving had been her first one—a halla,
but it wasn’t very good and one of the horns fell off.  Varania had laughed and
said that the halla had been in an accident.  Ginger had agreed with her, and
said it gave it character.  The wolf was better, but it had been easier.
                Ginger had seen a wolf once.  She had wandered away from camp,
and been running back, and it had been on the path.  She was alone, and had
never been so scared.  The wolf had only looked at her, and she had realized in
that moment that the animal didn’t care if it killed her, or if she went on. 
It just didn’t care.  She had heard a howl behind her, and when she looked, she
had seen a big black wolf, standing on the hill, looking down at them with dark
eyes.  The brown wolf loped after the other, ignoring Ginger.
                She had had a different name then, a different life.  She hoped
to reclaim it all again one day.
                … But that dark wolf in the forest—that was what she wanted for
Leto:  Freedom and beauty, and all the things he had never had.  She wanted him
to look out at his surroundings, with no worry in the world—wild and free with
no master, no tragedy… just the heat of the moment and the rapture of the wild
world.
                She gave him her little carving—small enough to fit in the palm
of his hand.  When he was grown, his hand would totally eclipse it, but she had
poured her heart and all her passion into it, and he had smiled and thanked her
all the same.
               
                Ginger woke to the crash of the lightning.  She felt her heart
quicken, her eyes open in the darkness, but it was not fear that made her
wake.  She slid from bed, and wriggled into her trousers under her shift.  She
belted it, and thought about just running out like this, but changed into her
tunic too—Mieta would scold her if the shift got dirty, after all.
                The hard-packed earthen floor was damp.  In the right season,
it would flood, which was awful.
                She tiptoed, barefoot, out of the hut, and shut the door as
quietly as possible.  She gleefully rushed out in the rain, looking up at the
night sky, and the rain dripped down on her, cleansing her, washing away her
sorrow, her fear, and her hate.  The mud sunk up to her ankles in places, and
she actually enjoyed the way it felt, the way it thickened and squished between
her toes, reminding her of the earth and its blessings.
                She loved the rain.  Always had, especially storms.  She found
herself smiling as she waded through the mud, and her legs were so tense, and
she felt she just had to run—she could barely contain herself, barely restrain
herself to a walk.
                She heard footsteps behind her, more careful ones--ones that
might not like the mud so much as she did.  She turned, the rain already
dripping from her short hair.
                It was Leto, of course—suspicious of what she was doing.
                “I wasn’t going to try to run—honest,” she said, and it was
only half a lie.  She did not have a mind to run right then—mud left tracks,
after all—but eventually, sure.
                He raised an eyebrow, arms crossed and shivering in the rain. 
“Let’s go back inside—before we get sick,” he said insistently.
                She huffed.  “I won’t get sick,” she told him, absolutely
certain.  “You only get sick because you believe it will make you sick.  So you
go back inside.”  With that, she spun on her heel and raced off through the
mud.  She didn’t slow as she approached the gate.  The lock had been broken for
the better part of the year—something about the key getting stuck, and it was
just more convenient for everyone not to fix it.  All the same, she sped up,
digging in her toes, pushing forward, and leaped.  Her fingers gripped the lip
of the stone wall.  She kicked against the side, finding purchase on the stone
and climbed upwards.
                She stood on the slender wall, and felt a desperate need to
climb higher.  She looked up, listening to the distant thunder, expectantly
waiting for the lightning—the roll of the drum and the clash of the symbol. 
She felt that she had to get closer to it; she had to embrace the storm.
                Leto stood at the bottom, stubbornly.  She looked down at him
with a frown.  “Go back inside, flat-ear,” she told him, and leaped to the
other side.  She heard the gate groan open—no one would hear it over the wind
now, and when she was running again, she heard him behind her.  She ran.  No
one would stop her.  No one was out here to see.  She ran, to the westernmost
wing of the manor, the servant’s quarters where no one would notice.  She ran,
leaped, delighted in the landing, and the wind whipping at her hair, the rain
pounding against her skin and soaking her to the bone.  She felt like she could
run faster, leap higher and farther.  She felt invincible in the storm.  Her
mother had told her, once, that she had the spirit of the storm--and how she
loved it.
                She did not hesitate.  She found handholds in the stone, and
climbed, leaving Leto at the bottom.  She heard him call out to her, and
thought he called her “stupid” or something along those lines, but she didn’t
pay him any heed.  She just kept going.  Climbing ever upward, without
hesitation or thought.  If she fell, she died, her journey in this life ended,
and a new one would begin.  By the Dread Wolf, she wasn’t sure if she wanted
that or not.  She knew that, if she had to live all her life as a slave, she
would rather throw herself from the tower.  But at the same time, suicide
frightened her.
                But if she fell, that choice was removed.  And she did not mind
dying on the night of a storm, with the lightning to ferry her soul to the
Beyond.
                So she climbed, utterly relishing the feel of her muscles
working to keep her clinging to the tower like a squirrel, finding handholds,
straining, working her entire body to keep going.
                She only stopped when she shimmied onto the roof, and stood,
balancing precariously, on the tile.  She looked up at the storm, defiant and
welcoming.  This was the highest place she could get to, the highest peak.  She
couldn’t get any closer to the storm, feasibly.  And it was so beautiful.
                The city stretched out below her like a squat beetle in refuse,
but the bay stretched ever farther, dark with the night and the storm.  The sky
was alight with the lightning strikes in the distance, booming with the rolling
thunder.  And all around, the rain—the beautiful, glorious, life-giving,
essential rain.
                She let it wash over her, ecstatic and free.  She felt, for the
first time since she came here, that she was free and nothing in the world
could take this moment from her.  It was freeing, and beautiful, and divine,
and she opened her arms to embrace it, as if she could seize all of it, all
there was.  The storm was all for her and no one could ever take that away from
her—not the Imperium, not the slavers, not even the magisters.
                She was cold, dripping wet and soaked through, her hair stuck
to her skin, and she had manacles on her ankles, but still she smiled.  The
thunder boomed.  Lightning arced across the sky, illuminating the clouds and
she shouted back to it in something akin to glee and kinship.  She felt like
her soul was soaring amidst the clouds and the lightning, like she belonged in
the storm.
                By the time she climbed down, Leto had retreated to the partial
sanctity of the trees, and was leaning against the big magnolia tree in the
courtyard.  He walked beside her.  She was breathless and tired now.
                “What were you doing?” he demanded, a little angry with her.
                She was smiling, though, like she could never stop.  She felt
light, and clean, and like nothing in the world could ever be wrong. 
“Experiencing the storm,” she said, unsure of how to properly convey how she
felt about it.
                He stared at her, clearly annoyed and as though he thought she
were daft.  “You’re an idiot.  We could still get sick, or you could have
fell…  Maker, you’re a fool.”
                She rolled her eyes as they walked back to the compound.  “I
never asked you to come.”
                “And let the old gardener get a heart attack when he finds your
cold corpse in the flower bed?  No, I don’t think so,” he said matter-of-
factly.
                “I’m alive, aren’t I?” she huffed.
                “In a manner of speaking.”
                She kicked him in the back of the leg.  “What does that mean?”
she demanded.
                He rolled his eyes.  “Sometimes, I think you want to die.”
                His tone was not sarcastic, or playful.  Despite the situation,
he was being completely serious.  She looked away.  “It’s better than being
here.”
                He shook his head.  “’Where there’s life, there’s hope,’” he
quoted, half-sarcastically.
                She frowned to herself.  It did not sound like his words.  “Is
that why our ancestors surrendered?” she muttered darkly.  “Who told you that?”
                “I don’t remember any more,” he said.  “My mother, probably.”
                Ginger nodded sagely.  “Your mama is actually very wise, I
think.”
                He sighed, and didn’t say anything.  They walked in a
comfortable silence back, broken only by the quaking thunder, but that was
fading away as the storm passed.  The dawn would come, and the sea would be
calm again.
                That was how life worked.
Chapter End Notes
     I guess it's really only sad to think about when you realize that
     Varania and Leto don't know how awful their lives really are. I like
     Ginger for that--it's a nice point of comparison.
     This is also one of the chapters where I most sympathize with
     Varania. Haven't we all felt like there was nothing in our lives we
     could ever do right? And haven't we all needed someone we cared about
     to tell us that we were special, and we could do things "only we
     could do," and were the best kind of person they knew?
***** Wine's Lashes *****
Chapter Summary
     Leto and Ginger get into some trouble.
                Ginger stared up at the moon, thinking.  Been here fortwo
years!  Two fucking years! Soon to be three, at that.
                And each time she had wanted to run, Leto had seemed to
intuitively guess what she was up to, and convince her that it was a bad
decision.  But screw him—he was just a stupid boy anyway.  She thought of him
like a brother, and admired him as such, but he was still a stupid boy.
                “What are you doing in here, Ginger?” Raenya demanded.  She was
alone in the kitchen, rolling bread at this early hour.  Ginger had always
prided herself on her ability to wake up repulsively early.
                “I came to see you, of course,” she said, batting her eyelashes
prettily at the girl.  Too bad her eyelashes were thin and stubby.
                Her flirting did not even seem to register with her
though—unfortunate.  “Well, go away; I’m busy,” she insisted.  She was elbow-
deep in flour and wrist-deep in dough.
                “Gimme one of those,” she said, nodding toward the tray of
pastries.  She had picked up some of the slang the slaves use, slurring her
words together.  Combined with her stubborn accent, sometimes the others didn’t
even understand what she said if she spoke too quickly.
                Raenya glared venom at her.  “Those aren’t for you,” she
snapped.
                “There are three dozen here!  No one will eat that many
anyway!” she insisted.
                The slave girl kept kneading her dough.  “Don’t even think
about it, Ginger,” she admonished her.  “And I’ll know who took them if any of
them are gone.”
                Ginger rolled her eyes.  “Are you really happy doing this?” she
asked, as innocent and sweet as she could make her voice.
                It was not a question you really asked a slave.  Happiness was
not a concept they understood, she knew.  Leto did not even grasp what it
meant, not really.  She wondered sometimes if it were worse that he was born
free; he had been just old enough to know the difference.  Ginger never thought
of herself as a slave; she was a captive and was certainly forced to do things,
but that did not make her a slave.  Not to her anyway.  “It beats shoveling
manure.”
                Ginger thought differently.  If she could work in the stables,
she might be able to steal a horse and get away on the animal.  Couldn’t be
that different from riding a halla.  She had seen people using reigns; she
could figure it out, she was certain.  “Smells better,” she agreed.  Raenya
barked at her to leave again.  Ginger laughed, and left, two scones safely
tucked in her tunic.
                She had been stealing from the kitchens for ages (among other
things).  She never took anything that would be missed, and kept her little
stash buried near the wall in the compound.  Not inside the compound, but
around it.  She thought that Leto at least suspected it, but he had never said
anything if he did.
                She met him early by the well.  No one was around, so she
pulled out the two scones.  She offered him one, already biting into hers.  It
was hot, the crust was flaky, and it was filled with fresh peaches.  Her eyes
rolled in obvious delight.  “If you don’t want it, I’ll eat it,” she threatened
him playfully.
                He glanced at it.  He had taken to talking as little as
possible while his voice was cracking.  She thought it was quite adorable when
it did crack all the same.  It made her sad to think of it, though.  Her red
flower had bloomed in captivity, and she missed her mother horribly that week. 
However, there must be something wrong with her; she had gone an entire year
without another one.  If things were right with the world, she could have gone
to her Keeper and asked for advice if her mother had none.  Mieta said that
sometimes things like that happened, and she should not be afraid.  Ginger
wasn’t certain.  It was just one more thing she hated about this.
“This is why the Dalish are known as thieves, in case you were wondering,” he
said, enunciating everything very carefully, to keep his voice from getting
away from him, no doubt.
                “It’s good,” she taunted him, waving it just under his nose. 
He finally accepted the bait, and snatched it from her hand.  She of course
shared most of her thefts of food with her friend.  Before she had come along,
he had never had anything like the tasty scone—at least not since he was three,
he said.  The first time she had come cheerfully over to him and presented him
with a stolen treat, it had been a small sugar cake.  He had stared at it
incredulously, and said, “Do you know how much trouble you’ll be in if you’re
caught?”
                She had grinned at him.  “Nope, and please don’t tell me—you’ll
ruin it.  Here.”  She had shoved it into his hand, wrapping his fingers around
it so he had to hold it.  He stared down at it as if it was something
dangerous.  Maybe, in a way, it was.  “Don’t just stare at it; eat it.”
                “Ginger…” he had said, his tone a thin warning.
                She had made a face.  “Don’t question it; just enjoy it.” 
Eventually, she had gotten him to eat it, and he had mostly given up trying to
convince her that theft would get her in trouble one day.
                She waited until they had finished the pastries before she told
him the rest of her news.  She licked her fingers.  “They’re hosting a feast
tonight.”
                She saw him sigh in some kind of inward pain.  Since he turned
fourteen, people had thought he was becoming quite handsome.  Sometimes he was
drafted to help with serving food—which meant oils that made his skin glisten,
and a rather scanty outfit she had done nothing but make fun of, and talk about
how great his ass looked, of course, though seeing the front of him made her
feel awkward.
                She poked him in his stomach, something that hurt her finger
more than him; his abs were hard.  Sometimes, she wished he were a girl…! 
Maybe Varania would grow up like this…  “Hey, I think you look good enough to
eat in that little silk thing they have you wear,” she teased.
                “You wouldn’t,” he said, self-satisfied.
                She laughed, nodding in agreement.  “Oh, definitely not—women
are much better looking than men.  Still, you look nice.”
                He made a face, and looked off at the manor.  He seemed
somewhat pale to her under his dark tan that nicely complimented his hair. 
“I…  Sometimes… my master looks at me that way,” he said, his voice barely
above a whisper.
                She frowned, wondering if she had heard him correctly.  “Leto?”
she asked him, but he did not seem to hear her.  “Looks at you… like what?”
                He blinked, as if being pulled from dark thoughts.  “Like he
wants to… eat me,” he said, and shivered, holding his arms as if it were cold. 
It wasn’t cold.  It was almost never cold in Minrathous at this time of year.
                Ginger decided to tease him; maybe that would drive him out of
this mood he was in.  “You know, if I like girls, you know that means some men
like other men, Leto,” she drawled.
                He took the distraction, and a swing at her.  She ducked just
in time for the blow to sail over her head.  She kicked him in the shin, and
darted around him.  He whirled after her, and his hand missed her by a scant
inch.  She ran back down the path, and he chased after her.  The others were
just coming out, to go eat in the longhouse.  She ducked behind Mieta.
                The woman jumped out from between them, chuckling at their
mischief.  “I want nothing to do with this,” she said, marching briskly onward.
                Ginger wove around, behind Varania instead, who looked at the
two inquiringly.  Ginger laughed at her friend.  “Does that bother you? 
Getting all oiled up and looking pretty?” she teased.  Varania darted from
between them, knowing better than to involve herself.  Leto grabbed on to
Ginger’s wrist, hauling her backwards.  He glared at her.  She grinned back at
him, and whispered in his ear, “Lubrication increases penetration.”
                His face went bright red.  She twisted her arm, making him
break his hold on her.  She skipped off after Varania, and knew he was going to
give her a big nasty bruise sometime today, but seeing his face get so red was
definitely worth it!
                Well, she didn’t think so after the bruise was administered,
anyway.  She limped after him from the training ground.  Practice was cancelled
early, because a lot of them had duties elsewhere.  Leto ended up being drafted
to chop firewood, instead of serving, which made him happier anyway.  Ginger
herself ended up in the kitchen.  She was kind of pretty in a freckled sort of
way, but with her mismatched eyes, not something to present.
                They had taken off the manacles a year ago, but sometimes she
felt like they were still there.  Elbow-deep in scalding water and soap, she
was grateful they were not; they would rust.  Dish after dish, pan after pan. 
She felt like her work would never end.
                As the night wore on, she managed to slip away.  She stole a
mostly full bottle of wine from a neglected cart, and hid it in her tunic... 
There was a lot of room in her tunic, something the boys and especially other
girls mocked her about endlessly.  Until she and Leto beat them up.  She walked
briskly out, and found Leto outside, stacking firewood.
                She helped him finish the task—he was nearly done anyway--and
showed him the bottle with a big grin.  “Come on—we’re getting drunk tonight,”
she told him, grabbing on to his sleeve.
                “Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked, and clamped his hand over
his mouth when his voice cracked on the last word.
                She snickered.  “Nope,” she answered.  “Live a little, will
you?  C’mon.”  She led him into the darker corners of the orchard—a place no
one ever went at this time of day.  No one would miss the pair anyway—they were
much too busy to notice a whole lot, and the people who were paid to work could
do whatever needed doing anyway, and that was what they were for.  The thing
about being a slave—captive, in her case--she had learned, was that no one ever
noticed you, and if you were gone, people had a tendency to assume that you had
been drafted to work elsewhere so long as she made sure no one saw her at all.
                She pulled the bottle out of her tunic, and glanced at the
label in the moonlight.  She couldn’t read—not well anyway--but she recognized
the bottle anyway.  “Agreggio pavali,” she said, prying off the stopper. 
“Cheers.”  She put it to her lips and took a long swallow.  She handed him the
bottle, already feeling dizzy.  She wished she had thought to snag a few
pastries or something too--that would have been nice!
                He stared at the bottle for a moment, as if in some kind of
indecision, and then put it to his lips, tilting his head back.  She felt like
cheering for him.  She did clap when he swallowed, pulling the bottle away.  He
blinked several times, suddenly dizzy.  Neither had ever drunk before.  Well,
Ginger had—a few sips as a child, but that was all.  This should be fun.
                “Why would anyone drink this?” he wondered, handing it back to
her, holding his head.  “Ugh.”
                Ginger was feeling giggly.  She took another swallow of the
wine.  “It’s good,” she insisted, handing it back to him.
                He glanced at the label, recognizing the seal on it if not the
letters.  He looked at the stream, watched the water roll over the rocks.  He
looked like he was contemplating dumping it out—likely on her head.  She
thought that would be a terrific waste, not just of her pilfering ability, but
of the effort it had taken from the slaves who made the wine.  Instead, he took
a long, long swallow, and handed it back to her wordlessly.  She felt horribly
dizzy, and it took her a moment to realize how much of the bottle was gone. 
She stared at the meager contents left to it.  “You drank half the bottle!” she
exclaimed.
                “So did you,” he countered.
                She made a face, and tried to think of something witty to say
in return, but nothing came to mind.  She let it drop, and finished off the
bottle.  She let the empty bottle sit beside them.  She leaned her head against
his shoulder.
                “When I leave, I’m going to tell my clan about you,” she
promised him.  “We’ll find a way to get you out of here; I promise.”
                He sighed, and said nothing for a long moment.  “To what
purpose?”
                She heard herself laugh, and she struggled to sit up, but only
fell into his lap.  He stared lazily down at her.  She grinned up at him,
giggling again at her own lack of coordination.  She decided to stay like this;
it seemed easier than moving.  “I think you’d make a great Dalish warrior,” she
told him.
                “I don’t know about that,” he admitted.
                She climbed into his lap, trying to get him to see her point of
view.  She sat facing him.  “No, really.  See—“  She burst out laughing as she
tilted, falling backwards.  He grabbed onto her shirt, yanking her forward, to
keep her from falling into the stream.  He lost his balance and they both
fell.  She landed not entirely on him, but beside him, one leg thrown around
his mid-section.  She sat partway up.  He rolled his head to look at her.  A
long silence passed between them.
                “I’ve never kissed anyone,” she admitted.
                He cocked his head to the side.  “Neither have I,” he said.
                She leaned down, and her lips covered his.  It was… not bad,
she guessed.  Even though he was a boy.  He was pretty enough, if she did not
think too much about it.  Why did she only like girls again?  She couldn’t
really remember…
                His lips were a little chapped, and clumsy with their first
kiss.  She imagined that she was no better, and she felt herself overcome with
something, a longing in her loins for a connection with another person.  Her
mind cried out in agony that he wasn’t a girl.  She imagined a woman’s heaving
breasts, a damp wetness between her legs, that gorgeous curve of the waistline,
slender hips…
                “I’ve never been with a man either,” she whispered, her lips
inches from his.  She hadn’t meant to say that aloud!  Wait—had she said it
aloud?
                He stared up at her, the drink swimming in his eyes.  “It
doesn’t mean anything, does it?”  Yes, she had definitely said that aloud!
                She laughed.  “You know I like girls, same as you,” she said
dryly.
                He kissed her again, and it still felt weird to her.  She
turned her head away, shaking her head.  “No, I don’t like that,” she said,
making a face as if she had bitten something that tasted off.
                “Shame,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he were joking or not.
                She hoped that he was just teasing.  “I’m willing to try it
with a man, if it’s you,” she added, but had not intended to say that aloud
either.
                He hesitated, and seemed to consider it.  “So long as…  We can
still be friends, right?”
                She laughed, and nodded.  “Yeah.  Let’s not make it weird.” 
So, because neither of them had ever been with another, and because nothing
would ever happen between them even after the point, they began drunkenly
peeling off the other’s clothing.
                It was easier said than done, and there was nothing romantic
about it either.  There was lots of fumbling, and laughing at each other.  Lots
of staring drunkenly at buttons, and trying to untie knots.  Fingers were not
nimble enough for all of it, and it took some time.  Time and alcohol were
funny things.  Enough of it, and one became sober.  However, in a smaller
amount of time, one only becomes more drunk as the alcohol seeps through the
veins, saturating the brain.  And, of course, telling the inebriated person in
question to do things they would most likely not normally do.
                Once they were finally both stripped of their clothing, said
articles haphazardly strewn about them, and lying partly on top of someone’s
tunic, Ginger climbed on top of Leto with all the confidence of a frightened
rabbit.
                She shook her head suddenly, springing off of him, shivering at
what she had almost done.  She scooted away, drawing her legs up against her
bare chest.  “Oh, Mythal, you’re a man and I can’t do this!” she cried in
terror, and realized that at least half of the words had been in elvhen and the
other half in the King’s Tongue.  “I’m…  I’m really sorry…”
                She heard him sigh, and sit up.  Thankfully, one of his legs
pulled up to hide himself, for which she was grateful.  “That’s fine, Ginger,”
he told her, knowing what she had meant even if it were halfway in another
language; they were good friends.
                She felt like such a fool.  How could she have thought they
would go through with this?  By the Dread Wolf, he had a penis!  “I’m… such an
idiot.”
                Unfortunately, neither of the two remember any of the events
that happened after that moment, or so fervently denied the events and insisted
they did not remember that whatever happened after that was never mentioned.
                Fact of the matter, they could have just as easily passed out
naked, and assumed they had sex, considering how little they actually
remembered about that part.  It was also possible that they had passed out
during it—an unfortunate but, sadly, typical event.  Or, perhaps they had
simply both passed out without their clothes on—all of these things were
possible.
                They dressed awkwardly in the wee hours of the morning,
drinking from the stream, and asked each other how they were feeling.  Neither
of them said “well” to put it mildly, and Ginger asked Leto if he remembered
anything that happened last night.  They both agreed that something had
happened, though were a little sketchy on the details.  In conclusion, they
could not say exactly and decided between themselves that even if something
happened or if it did not, it didn’t change anything.
                And when it fully dawned on poor Ginger that she might have
done such things with a man, she promptly fell ill, and vomited.  She made him
promise to never mention that night—ever, and he agreed to do this thing, on
the agreement that she do likewise.
                No matter what happened, the Dalish was incredibly sore in the
morning, and wanted nothing so much as to sleep the day away.  But practice
called, and she was even sorer by the end of that day, because she couldn’t
dodge as well as normal.  She felt like she had slept all night in an awkward
position, while lying on a rock.
                And, worse, Leto seemed to be suffering from a hangover.  He
sat at the side; his head between his knees with his fingers digging against
his scalp, eyes squeezed shut.  He ended up being hit a lot too, and almost
didn’t care.
                The question, though, was—was it worth it?
                In conclusion, the answer was…  No, no it definitely was not. 
Not in any way, shape, or form.
                Mieta seemed to know what had happened, and little Varania only
wondered where they had been all night, and why Leto just fell into bed and
pulled the sheet over his head.  Thankfully, Mieta did not scold either of them
for it, or that was just something that was going to happen later.
                Ginger was right.  Mieta sent Varania out early in the morning,
and stood in front of the single door, arms crossed and looking impenetrable. 
The two teenagers stared at her, waiting for what they knew was coming.
                “And where did you two acquire the alcohol to get so drunk?”
she demanded, looking from one to the other.
                Leto’s eyes flicked to Ginger, and she could have kicked him
for the subtle gesture.  Mieta’s gaze shifted to her.  The woman raised an
eyebrow, waiting.  Ginger knew that she was quite content to sit there staring
at someone until they talked, and under her scrutiny, she was quite
uncomfortable.  “I… stole it,” she admitted.
                “I could report it, and have you both whipped for this,” she
said under her breath.
                “They won’t notice it’s missing,” Ginger insisted.  She had
gotten the bottle to the rubbish heap, after all, so they would not even find
the bottle in the orchard.
                “Like no one noticed that you two were hung over yesterday?”
she demanded.  The two shifted uncomfortably.  Thankfully, most people did not
care enough to punish them, and their master-of-arms was content to have them
both beaten and bruised in the training ring as a lesson.  “The two of you
could be in a lot of trouble, you know.”  Ginger would have retaliated, but
Mieta did look genuinely concerned for the two of them.
                “I’m sorry, Mother,” Leto whispered.
                “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the Dalish said, hanging her head.  “It
won’t happen again.”
                Mieta stared at them, as if they had missed the point.  “It’s
not me you need to be afraid of.  You’re children; if it were up to me, I’d do
exactly what you did—make you both go about your day instead of nurse your
pain.”  She shook her head.  “But you just be grateful if you don’t get beaten
for this.”
                Ginger realized that, if that were to happen, today would be
the day.  Yesterday, someone would have reported it, maybe by evenfall at
latest.  Which would mean…  With that, Mieta let the two go.  The pair was
silent, and both were reluctant to break that silence.
                It did not need to be spoken of anyway; they were both
wondering if anyone had noticed enough to report it.
                They were distracted during training, and worrying throughout
the day.  Toward late noon, Ginger saw a page say something to the master-of-
arms, Bruce.  He nodded, and the training bout continued, but he pulled Ginger
and Leto away a couple hours later, dismissing everyone else early.
                “I’m disappointed in the two of you,” he muttered darkly, and
signaled for the two elves to follow him.  They did--quietly.  Ginger touched
Leto’s arm, seeking to give and receive some small measure of comfort.  She
gave a slight squeeze, and her hand dropped away.  “Leto, you’re first.”
                There was a post shaped rather like a doorway, and one wrist
was lashed to either side, above head height.  His shirt lay a short distance
from him.  The human was compassionate enough to them, most of the time.  He
had a tendency to be harsh, but not cruel, and one had to know one’s students,
after all.  He gave him a thick tube of leather to bite, telling him that it
helped.  Even to Ginger, Leto looked scared.
                She flinched at every crack of the whip, and he told her to
count, and told her that she had better not lose count.  She didn’t, but she
did find herself stuttering, her eyes watering in heartache.  This was her
fault.  It was all her fault.  Every one of those twelve lashes had been
because of her.  No one else; just her.  She should have taken those lashes,
not him.  Not him!
                He was sagging in the bonds, whimpering in obvious pain.  Blood
trailed down his back.  Her eyes had been fixed to his bare back, but she was
suddenly aware, as her friend was being untied, that someone was watching—had
been there the whole time in fact.  She turned to look, and took a step
backward in surprise.
                It was that man that bought her—Danarius.
                He was studying Leto, just like he said; as if he might want to
eat him.  She prayed Leto would not look up, that he wouldn’t see him.  She
prayed that he would keep his head down and stumble off, and fall, and stay
down.  It was shameful enough to have this done.  Worse, to have an audience. 
Worse still, to have their master watching, and looking at him like that.
                But Leto did look up, and see his master.  He stumbled a
little, looking dizzy.  Ginger started to move to help him, but a glare from
Master Bruce kept her in place.  She felt helpless, and rooted to the spot. 
Leto kept his gaze stuck to the ground, and focused entirely on walking.  She
could tell that every step hurt.
                If she could take it all back, she would.  It made her want to
cry.
                When he came to a stop beside her, and did not even look at
her, she felt her eyes water.  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.  “I’m so, so
sorry, Leto.”
                He only nodded once, a slight movement of the head in reply. 
Maybe he was in too much pain to talk.  Or was too angry.  Master Bruce made
her remove her shirt, which was embarrassing.  She knew that she deserved it
though.
                She wondered if Danarius was still watching.  She hoped that he
had gone.  She glanced over her shoulder, back at Leto as Bruce tied her wrists
in place.  Her eyes widened, her stomach tightening.
                Leto was cringing, in obvious discomfort.  Danarius had his
hands on his back, and she saw one of his fingers drag—painstakingly
slowly—across the open wound.  As her other wrist was hoisted above her head,
she saw her friend’s knees buckle, and he fell, on his hands, unable to take it
anymore.  To her utter horror, she saw the mage put his bloodied finger to his
lips, and tasted the blood.
                The mage sauntered up to Bruce, and Ginger was close enough to
hear what they said.
                “I want Leto sent to the infirmary; I don’t want him scarred. 
I don’t care about the girl,” he said, and with that, turned on his heel, and
left.
                Bruce put the bit of leather to her lips, and gently told her
to bite down on it.  She did so, despite that it had been in Leto’s mouth a
moment before.  She had tasted his spit just the other day anyway.  This time,
Leto counted.  Twelve lashes.  Each one was worse than the next, and even her
throat was raw by the end.  Leto had to help her put her shirt back on.  Bruce
told him to go to the infirmary, on his master’s orders, and muttered that
Ginger should go as well.
                The two helped each other walk, their shirts bloodied and
sticking to their backs.  Blood ran down their backs, mixing with their sweat
and dirt of the day.
                A page had gotten there before them, and a mage, a servant, was
waiting for them.  She saw to Leto immediately, cleaning out his wounds, and
applying an expert skill to his back.  Ginger was simply cleaned off by another
servant, and told, rather disdainfully, that she may wait in the corner, out of
the way.
                She did so, watching from a distance the mage healing Leto’s
back.  When she was finished, there wasn’t so much as a scar.
                The pair had to relinquish their bloodied clothing, and
received different shirts.  They walked back.  She still hurt something
terrible, and knew she would for some time yet.  She looked up at Leto and
wondered, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, why it was that Danarius had
not wanted him scarred.
                She was reminded of how Leto sometimes had to serve food and
drink at formal occasions.  Maybe that was why.  But she remembered some of the
looks that he had given him.  She liked to tease her friend, but she sincerely
hoped it was just an aesthetic reason…
 
***** Hemming a Heart *****
Chapter Summary
     Wherein there is some aftermath to the previous chapter, and the
     characters try to be happy and come a little short.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                All was silent at the worn trestle table, in the corner where
Mieta, her two children, and Ginger sat eating.  Usually, Leto and Ginger would
banter, tease Varania, or Ginger would tell one of her outlandish stories she
was so famous for.
                Varania had been unnaturally quiet, though, since the
whipping.  She had seen the blood on Ginger’s back, saw Leto help her to wash
it every day, and never knew what to say.  Ginger was usually a pretty happy
person by nature, always trying to make the people around her laugh—which they
did, despite everything.
                “Why did they hurt you?” Varania finally asked Ginger, peering
up at her.
                The older girl and her brother shared a look, and Mieta raised
an eyebrow.  But Ginger said, “I got caught stuffing pastries in my mouth.” 
She grinned impishly.  “But I ate about twenty of them before I got in
trouble.  You should have seen me—I looked like a chipmunk with all that bread
stuffed in my mouth.  I would have denied it, of course, except that I was
still chewing when they caught me.”
                Varania laughed, a little uncertainly.  It sure sounded like
Ginger, but Mieta wasn’t laughing, and Leto’s smile was forced.  Varania felt
like it was a lie.  It probably was.  As young as she was, she was actually
quite accustomed to the idea of people older than she was lying to her; they
did it all the time.  But not Leto.  Leto was the only one who ever always told
her the truth. 
                “Once upon a time, there was a… goat,” Ginger said, as if she
were just spitting out words to divert the conversation, which is exactly what
she was doing.
                “’Kay,” she said.  “It’s off to a good start.”
                Ginger thought for a moment.  “And the goat… decided he didn’t
like being a goat.  In fact, he hated it.”  She seemed pleased with herself for
a moment, and Varania knew that she was just making  this story up as she
went.  “So, the goat went into the forest and found the magical winged…
kitten…  That lived in a sycamore tree.”
                Varania stared at her as if she were mad—an expression Ginger
was so accustomed to that she scarcely noticed it.  “What’s the kitten’s name?”
the young mage inquired.
                “Octavion the Great, Hero of the War of Birds, General of the
Felines, Slayer of Canines, and Lord of the Dance,” she proclaimed with a self-
satisfied nod.  That finally got a chuckle out of both Varania and Leto, which
only spurned Ginger on.  “The goat said to the magical kitten, ‘I do not wish
to be a goat any longer.’”  Ginger gave the goat in the story a gruff voice.
                Leto raised an eyebrow.  “Why does the goat talk?”
                Ginger hit him in the shoulder.  “It’s a story.  Everything
talks.”  She cleared her throat and continued.  “So anyway, the Hero of the War
of Bards replied—“
                “Birds,” Varania reminded her.
                Ginger nodded.  “Yes, ‘Birds.’  My bad.  The Hero of the War of
Birds replied, ‘What would you like to be then?’”  She mimicked the sort of
voice she imagined a kitten having if it could talk—which in her mind meant
unnaturally deep and manly.  “The goat thought for a moment and replied, ‘I
would like to be a man.’”  Ginger grinned.  “And so the winged kitten said,
‘Very well.  You are now a man.’”  She looked at her audience, and noticed that
some of the people nearby were listening, and giving her odd looks, more things
she was more than accustomed to.  “The kitten continued, ‘Go down to the
village, for that is where men go.’  And so he left, quite happily.  Upon
arriving at the village, he pranced about, quite merrily.  A young boy
approached him, and his first instinct was to headbutt the boy, so he did.” 
She elbowed Leto for emphasis.  He scowled, but she continued on as if
oblivious.  Varania giggled.  “He climbed on things.”  Ginger propped her arm
on her friend’s shoulder, and jabbed him in the neck with her fingers.  “And
stepped on things.  He went places he had never gone before.”  She jabbed her
finger in his ear for further emphasis, which set Varania to a fit of giggles
when Leto shoved Ginger away.  But the redhead grinned back at him.  He raised
an arm preventatively, to keep her from further illustrating things on him. 
“And he chewed tin cans and weeds.”  Ginger leaned forward and very casually
bit Leto’s arm.  He stared at her, a look of strained tolerance on his
features.
                Varania was laughing in fits now, and even Mieta was smiling. 
Ginger pulled back, and Leto wiped his arm on her shirt in an effort to get rid
of the saliva she had left on it.  “Ew,” she complained, then looked back at
the young mage.
                “So he still acted like a goat?” Varania inquired.
                Ginger grinned back at her.  “Listen.  So the winged kitten
Octavion came to visit him and asked him, ‘How do you like being a man?’  To
which he replied, ‘It’s wonderful; I’ve never been so happy.’  And the kitten
smiled—not an easy feat for a kitten, mind you—and said, ‘Good.’  And he bid
goodbye to the goat, and went back to his sycamore tree.”
                Varania blinked.  “What?  I thought he was a person…”
                Ginger shook her head fervently.  “Never said that.”
                Varania laughed all the harder, and even Mieta chuckled.  Leto
smiled.  On the way to the training ground, Leto commented, “A good story needs
a moral.”
                Ginger nodded.  “Yeah, and I thought of one, but I didn’t want
Varania to hear it.”
                Leto looked at her, raising an eyebrow.  “Well?”
                The girl sighed and looked away.  “Sometimes, you need to lie
to someone to make them happy.”
 
                Mieta suspected more than she had let on.  Leto and Ginger were
close.  They spent most of their time together, after all.  She had no doubt
that they were friends, and Ginger flirted and teased a lot for a girl her age.
                But, two kids—a boy and a girl—alone all night, drunk?
                She thought they were too young.  Thirteen and fourteen?  They
were not even developed, let alone mentally mature enough, in her opinion.  As
a parent, she wanted to confront them and demand the truth.  Similarly, she
knew that the truth would do no real good.  What was done was done, and who was
to say that the two had not simply gotten themselves drunk and passed out
somewhere?
                Even if something had happened, what would she do about it? 
Punish them?  She sighed to herself.  This life was a punishment enough, she
felt.  What could she do?
                No, that was not the answer anyway.  Why punish two people for
doing what felt natural to them?  True, they were too young to understand the
implications of their drunken actions, but they had such few pleasures in life,
she could not bring herself to take that away.
                Maybe that was why she felt like such a failure as a parent;
she just could not punish her children.
                Leto seemed to punish himself, though—every moment of every
day.  But Varania?  She had barely raised the girl; Leto had done that,
something that would weigh forever on Mieta’s heart.  Her son had done a decent
enough job, when he could, but she had been so young when Leto was pulled away
to start practicing for the gladiatorial arena, that little Varania had had to
watch after herself.  It hadn’t been fair, and it was appallingly cruel, but
that was how it had to be.
                She sensed a hurt brokenness inside her son.  She saw it in his
eyes when he was angry or upset.  When he had told her that it was her fault
they were here, so many years ago.  That was a moment she didn’t think that she
would ever forget.
                It was her fault that they were here.  Her cousin had told her,
begged her in fact, to come with her deeper into Qunari territory when they had
first gotten word that the Tevinters were headed their way.  She had not
listened, to her own misfortune, and that of her children as well.  But she had
thought, their walls had never fallen before, and she was pregnant and should
not travel, and she did not want to abandon her husband to die alone either. 
But everyone died alone, she knew now.  And the outcome would have been the
same for him anyway, and maybe her children would have had a chance… except for
Varania.  The Qunari leashed their mages.  For her, maybe slavery to a Tevinter
mage was better than the Qun, but perhaps Leto would have been happier.
                Sometimes, she still thought about poor little Lura, all
alone.  She wondered if the girl were even still alive.  The poor thing. 
Should she have tried to lie?  Say that she and Leto were twins?  They looked
nothing alike, and Lura was too little to know to lie.  Still, if Lura could be
bidden to stay silent on the matter, it was not so uncommon that twins were not
identical, and some humans honestly could not tell the difference between elves
too.  It was too late for regrets anyway, though she did wish…
                No, wishing would not change anything.
                She wanted a future for her children—something, anything.  But
there was nothing.  She had nothing she could hope for them, except escape. 
She knew that the Dalish girl was very resourceful, knew that Ginger had every
intention on escaping someday.  She prayed that Leto would go with her when she
finally ran.  Varania had a phylactery now, and could never escape, but maybe
Leto could.
                But she wondered if her son, who was so painfully loyal to his
little sister and mother, would seize the opportunity when it was finally
presented to him.
                A sharp prick of the needle scattered her thoughts.  She
studied the bordering on the gown.  Danarius had a niece that the dress was
for—a pampered thing a bit younger than Varania.
                She tied off the thread, finished with the bordering on the
neckline, but it needed to be hemmed before she could start on the embroidery
at the bottom.
                Lana looked up from her own work.  She was a rare headmistress,
the sort that worked alongside the slaves under her care.  She was relentless,
but not unkind exactly.  More like, she expected everyone else to keep up with
her despite anything else.  She had replaced Sadie some years back, and the
change had been a good one at least.
                Mieta stretched her fingers.  She had been sewing for so many
years, she was beginning to develop a pain in her hands.  Varania was just
skilled enough to take the pain away when it was bothering her overmuch, but
not so much yet to heal it completely, so it always came back.  Her daughter
was more skilled at what she called “entropy.”
                “That needs to be hemmed, doesn’t it?” Lana said, mostly to
herself.  She set her work down and went over to her.  Her thick auburn hair,
speckled with bits of grey, was pinned back, out of her face.  She inspected
the needlework, smiling down at it.  “I don’t know why I ever inspect your
work, Mieta—you’re better at embroidery than I am!”  She kind of laughed. 
Mieta smiled a little at the praise.  She frowned to herself.  “We don’t have a
form close enough to the girl’s size—the child one is getting repaired.”  Her
brow creased in thought, and she snapped her fingers as an idea came to her. 
“Mieta, is your daughter done with her lessons for the day?”
                Mieta looked out the window.  The day was just growing dim. 
Usually, the girl was home alone right now.  “She should be, yes,” she said,
wondering what the woman intended.
                “Great.  Go fetch her, will you?” she said, and dismissed her
to return to her stitches.  Mieta set her needlework down and left to get her
daughter.  Did she intend to use Varania as a form?  Varania would love that.
                As she walked, she looked off to her side, watching her son
drill.  It seemed curious to her that his lashes had been healed so perfectly
with magic, and Ginger was left to suffer the healing of her own.  She knew
that her son was sometimes drafted to pour wine and such at formal occasions,
and the scars would ruin his skin, but…  Perhaps when he was older or started
fighting, he would not have to do that anymore.  She hoped so; Leto hated it
passionately.
                When Mieta came into the house, she saw Varania sitting on her
bed, her legs dangling over the sides.  Her hands were about five inches apart,
and a light was glowing between them.  The girl was in such deep concentration
that she didn’t notice her mother until she stood beside her.  Abruptly, the
light fluttered and died out between her hands.
                Mieta put a hand on her daughter’s head.  “It was pretty—like a
night wisp.  Did I ever tell you about the wisps?” she asked her, lifting her
off the bed.  Varania was a tiny, frail little thing, and she could still
easily lift her.  She set her down on the floor.
                “No,” the mage-child said, eager to hear more.  “Tell me?”
                Mieta took her hand and led her out of the hut, closing the
door behind her.  She inspected the girl first.  Because Varania had lessons
inside the mansion, she was required to bathe more often than she liked, so she
was relatively clean, except her feet, which were bare.  Mieta distracted her
with her story as she led her out of the compound and down the path to the
manor.  She told her about how night wisps, with their ephemeral beauty, could
only be seen at night—usually in swamps.  She told her how they lured travelers
deeper into the swamps, to their deaths.
                The girl was so distracted that she at first did not notice the
path they were on.  “Where are we going?” she asked suddenly as they approached
the door.
                Mieta smiled.  “You’ll see.”  They wiped their feet on a mat,
and went inside, and down a hall.  The room’s windows faced the courtyard, and
it was not far from the door.  The room’s door was ajar, and as soon as Lana
saw Varania, she stood up again.
                “Excellent.  Now, Mieta, get your daughter into this dress; I
think she’s about the right height,” she said, picking up the gown.  The girl’s
eyes went wide with obvious delight. 
                Mieta helped her daughter out of her clothes, and into the
dress behind a curtain.  Varania was positively glowing, and lifted the skirts
carefully as she walked.  Mistress Lana looked up at her when she came out, and
she smiled in satisfaction, nodding to Mieta to continue.  She let Varania look
at herself in the mirror as she pinned the dress to hem it.
                Varania only stared in silence for quite a while, giggling as
she looked down at the dress, and maybe even daydreaming.
                Mieta found that her heart felt heavy.  It was not the nice
reprieve she had hoped to give her daughter—not at all.  It was just something
she could never have.  Maybe doing this had been worse than trying to guess on
her own, but it was Mistress Lana’s decision, after all.
                When Mieta was finished, she called Lana over to check the
work.  Lana looked at the hemming.  Varania was maybe a scant inch taller than
the girl the dress was made for, so Mieta had made it a bit shorter on purpose.
                “Another quarter inch—if it’s too short, we can add lace to
it,” she decided.
                Mieta nodded, and helped her daughter out of the dress.  She
sent her away, and made a mark to re-pin it, though that would have to wait
until tomorrow morning; Lana even agreed on that.
                Varania was all aglow at the experience, and bragged about it
to Ginger.  Leto commented that she probably looked ugly in it (what are big
brothers for?), and Ginger punched him in the arm for his remark.
                The dress was finished by evenfall the next day with both the
seamstresses working on it, and Varania was happy to come work on her stitches
that day, which was rare.  She asked to see the dress, and Lana was nice enough
to show it to her.
                Mieta wished she could tell Varania that one day she would have
something so pretty.  But…  Well, there was nothing for it.
                The life of a slave just did not permit it.
 
                The gathering was a simple and intimate affair with a couple of
other magisters and higher-ranking magi while they discussed business. 
Apprentices had been left behind, and Raith had complained, but the boy would
get over it, Danarius knew.
                The courses had already been served, complimented, and eaten,
and taken away.  They had since retired to a lounge.  One of the magisters was
smoking a cigar, the open window drafting most of the smell.  The aroma mingled
with that of the cherry wood fire, and the subtle scent of his slaves waiting
in attendance, covered in aromatic oils.
                The magisters spoke primarily in Ancient Tevene for this latter
part, as they talked about such important matters of state.  Over the past
month, the Qunari had beaten the Imperials back to the southernmost coast of
Seheron, and other countries were afraid to trade with Tevinter from the sea
route.  The gathered magisters were discussing land routes and the risk of
guarding ships.
                Danarius gestured as he spoke, adding his own opinions—which
was that for trade to work at all, they needed a safe sea route, so guarding
the coast was well worth the effort.  One of the magisters made his money in
ships, and emphatically agreed with this statement, and would speak on it with
feeling.
                The matter would be brought to court in three days, and one did
like to know one’s allies, after all.  The five in the room usually sided
together after debate, which was what this gathering was about.
                The only elven magister in Minrathous argued vehemently against
trying to open the sea routes, and he and the other were at one another’s
throats about it.  He was insistent that trying to beat the Qunari back in the
seas would be too costly, and was very much against raising taxes to cover the
cost.  “You just can’t control your peasants, Vyeth,”Philanthe said.
                The elf shot him a lofty glare—which was difficult when you
stood head and shoulders below someone, but there was something about the
particular glower that made taller men feel shorter.  “They need to keep enough
coin to live and work, you daft old fool.”
               Danarius decided that he had better put a stop to it before it
actually came to blows, amusing as the two of them could be.  “You both have
excellent points, of course.  But consider…”  He went on to discuss, instead of
clearing the Qunari from the waters, of hiring escort ships—possibly Rivaini
ships, if they could be trusted.  This topic was discussed with fervor and
somewhere the subject strayed back to an ever-present issue—a desire for more
slaves.  The Tevinter Imperium lived off of the blood of slaves.  Slaves raised
their children, slaves grew their food, cleaned their houses, and fought their
wars.  There was always a thirsty need for more bodies.
                He made a signal for more wine as he listened to a high-ranking
Circle mage, Vanessa, talk.  She was fairly young to come of the rank of Senior
Enchanter, and very ambitious.  She was being considered for the rank of
magister in another Circle—no small honor for a Laetan mage such as herself. 
She supported this idea with the same ambition.  Out of the corner of Danarius’
eye, he saw his slave very carefully step, and very quietly fill his glass. 
His hand reached up, resting on the elf’s wrist lightly.  The boy did not move,
and was quite possibly terrified.
                “Even a Qunari-raised child is still a child,” Danarius said,
this time in the modern Tevene.  He took the bottle from the dark-haired slave
and set it beside the glass.  “I bought this whelp from Seheron—captured from
Qunari-friendly territory.”  A slight exaggeration, but it proved his point. 
He smirked at Leto.  “Kneel.”  The boy knelt, eyes fixed to the floor as the
magister’s hand idly stroked his hair, the same way someone might a dog.  “Once
these places in Seheron are back in Imperial hands, where they belong, it will
be nothing to subdue these ‘Qunari subjects.’”
                His short speech was met with general approval, and a toast to
the idea.  Danarius drank to it, but did not give Leto permission to stand and
go back to his duties.  He looked at the boy, considering that thin serving
outfit, nothing but a few pieces of silk really, held together with delicate
silver chains.  He ran his fingertips through the dark hair, cupping Leto’s
cheek.  His thumb brushed against his eyelashes.  The boy’s eyes were closed. 
He touched his lips—a little bit chapped.  His hand trailed down his neck,
tracing the curve of his shoulder.  Leto was barely breathing.  Danarius ran a
finger over the silver collar around his neck, which all the silver chains
attached to in one way or another—which was symbolic, really.
                He did all of this without really looking at Leto, and all
while commenting on the conversation.  He beckoned his slave closer, until it
was quite comfortable to continue petting his hair as if he were a dog.  Leto
was very obedient in these situations.  The first time he had done this to him,
he had made a little, kind of endearing, whining noise, and the saddest look in
his eyes he was capable of.  Of course it only influenced Danarius to do it
more often.  The first time had only been because he knew that Leto and another
of the slaves had quarreled in the kitchens, and he wanted a stop put to it. 
Ordinarily, he would have had someone else oversee the matter, except that both
the slaves were gladiators, and he needed them both to work as a team, so the
situation was more… delicate.  He had made both of the slaves kneel—for over an
hour.  When they were getting shaky and uncomfortable, he had slapped the one
and sent him sprawling.  Leto had braced for the same blow, but instead, the
magister had touched his face, bent closer to him and had whispered to him that
he had best never quarrel inside the manor again.  Now Leto barely spoke in the
serving outfit.
                He traced the curve of the boy’s jaw, considering how he was
just becoming a man.
                He let Leto go back to his duties after several minutes, but
kept him long after everyone else had gone, and watched him pick up the other
glasses, and set them on a tray.
                “Leto—that’s your name, isn’t it?” Danarius inquired over the
rim of his glass.
                The boy gave a nod of the head.  “Yes, Master,” he answered,
his words a little clipped.
                The magister watched him a while longer.  He rose and set his
empty glass down himself, reaching around the boy to do so.  He ran a hand
along his back, thinking about all those dripping wounds from the whip on his
back not so very long ago.  His fingers trailed from his shoulders down to his
hips, where they rested.  Danarius knew it was the alcohol, but he leaned in
close to Leto’s ear and whispered, “Say yes, my little pet.”  As he spoke, one
of his hands trailed past his hip, to his thigh, feeling the firmness of his
muscles, stroking his leg suggestively.
                Leto’s eyes closed, and he looked away.  “I don’t… know what
you mean, Master,” he said, and Danarius heard notes of denial in his voice. 
And a little bit of a cracking tremble that would mark puberty.  The boy’s face
heated a little at that.
                The magister let go of him, walking away.  “Oh, I think you do,
elf.  I really think you do.”  He left the room laughing, and did not look back
to see Leto cross his arms as if it were cold, his legs shaking at what he had
narrowly avoided.
Chapter End Notes
     One day, one of my coworkers wanted me to talk. I asked her, "What
     about?" and she replied, "Anything. Tell me a story." So I made up a
     story on the spot--which is Ginger's story about the goat and the
     magical kitten. All of Varania and Leto's lines throughout it are her
     reactions to the story.
***** Flight *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Leto is faced with a difficult decision.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Ginger woke one night, in the dead of the night.  A sound was
bothering her.  She looked around the small room, but no one else was awake. 
Why did it bother only her?  Her throat felt dry, and she was suddenly
restless.  Maybe she should go to the well…
                She slid out of the bed.  Her night shift always seemed to
twist and bunch up around her waist in her sleep.  When Leto was around, she
had felt self-conscious enough to try to squirm it down lower before she rose,
but he was dead asleep, so just let it fall down when she rose.  Besides, he
had seen everything anyway!
                She finger-combed her hair absently as she tiptoed to the
door.  It creaked slightly as she opened it, and she stole out into the night.
                There was a long silence in the dark as she walked alone to the
well.  The stars were shining, and the moon was waning.  The night of the
formal dinner, when the magister’s brother came to visit, would be moonless.
                She rubbed at one of her eyes, yawning as she approached the
well.  She shoved the lid off it with some effort, and let the bucket fall into
it.  It was kept at least partway open during the day, but someone usually
closed it at night.
                She turned the lever, hoisting the bucket up from the depths of
the well, briefly annoyed that someone had left it in there all night--again. 
The sound pierced the night again, and this time rather than a dim memory, she
placed it.
                A birdcall that was not a birdcall.  Had her ears deceived
her?  She hesitated, and then called back to it, mimicking the cry.  Hers was
not as good; it sounded too much like a person’s throat to her ears, but she
doubted anyone else was paying too much attention.  Sure enough, it echoed
again.  Her eyebrows rose.  Hope flared anew in her breast.
                She followed the sound of the call, over the low wall around
the compound, to the high stone wall that surrounded the manor grounds.  She
pressed her ear to the wall, and hoped that her voice would carry.
                “Are you there?” she asked in the old tongue, in elvish.  She
had made sure not to forget it, teaching Leto and Varania a few words here and
there too, which helped to remember.
                “Viscaria?”
               Her heart hammered in joyous hope, in something close to what
she knew to be salvation.  “Yes,” she breathed.  She knew the voice, even after
two, almost three, years, she remembered the voice of the hunter.  “How did you
find me?”
               “Why do you think it took so long, sister?”
               She wasn’t really his sister, exactly, but they were all like a
big family, so she was sort of a sister, in a fashion.  She wanted to laugh, to
dance, to sing.  “I’m so glad you’re here.”
               “When can you escape?”
               She hesitated, and thought seriously.  When would be a good
time?  She supposed…  “Come back two nights from now, at this time.  I’ll be
ready.”
                “Be ready,” he echoed.  She parted from the wall—quickly, lest
anyone see her.  She took her drink from the well, and put the lid back in
place.  She went back to bed, but wondered if she would even be able to sleep. 
Excitement thrilled through her.  Three long years, and she would be
free—free!—in two night’s time.
                The hardest part was keeping silent about it.  She knew not to
talk about it.  She knew to pretend as if everything was absolutely normal, and
she acted accordingly.  She jested, and sparred, and talked as if nothing at
all were out of the ordinary.  She was certain that not even Leto suspected
anything.
                The night she had planned, she slept in her shift of course
lest she draw attention, but neglected to put her clothes in the drawer; it
creaked.  She lay awake, counting down the seconds, the hour, and slipped out
of bed just before the appointed time.  She changed as quickly and quietly as
was possible, stuffing the shift under her old blanket.  She paused at the
door.  She knew she could not bring them all with her.  Knew that Mieta could
not leave, for Varania.  Knew that Varania had to stay, for she had a
phylactery.  But Leto…
                She knelt by his bed, and touched his shoulder.  She put a
finger to his lips to keep him from saying anything.  She inclined her head
toward the door, and he followed her out.
                Safely behind the hut, away from anyone who might wander
outside, she whispered, “I’m leaving.  Tonight.”
                His eyes widened at the implication.  His eyes reflected, not
joy, but horror.  She knew why; he had told her what they did to runaway
slaves—if they caught them.  “Ginger…”
                “They won’t catch me; my clan is here; they’re going to help
me.”
                He shook his head in dismay.  “I don’t want you to be hurt.”
                “I won’t,” she promised him, and took one of his hands in
hers.  “I want you to come with me.”
                He looked at her.  She looked into his eyes, trying to discern
his thoughts.  He was so expressive.  His eyes and face always betrayed his
emotions, and she had found it both endearing and infuriating.  Now, it just
saddened her.  She knew he wasn’t going to go; she could see it in the set of
his jaw, and she knew it pained him, by the sadness in his eyes, and the
regret.  “I can’t,” he told her.
                She wanted to make him see.  “Leto, the Dalish will help
you—you’ll see.”
                He shook his head, and looked back at the hut, where his
sleeping baby sister and mother lay.  “I can’t leave them,” he said, and looked
back at her.
                Was that what his family meant to him?  Were they worth more to
him than freedom?  Of course they were, she reflected.  He had not known
freedom since he was a child; he must barely remember it.  If slavery was all
he had really known, what did freedom really look like to him?  But surely, he
must see that freedom was better, and he must know that if his mother and
sister knew he had a chance, they would urge him to go too?  “They would want
you to go,” she told him, gently, a hand against his upper arm.
                He looked away.  “I won’t,” he said.  “What would my mother do
but worry about me?  And it would crush Varania, to have me abandon her.”  He
shook his head.  “I just can’t.”
                She had wasted too much time as it was.  She sighed sadly,
seeing there was no way to convince him to go.  She threw her arms around him,
hugging him tightly.  “I’ll never forget you, Leto.  And I promise, I’ll find a
way to rescue you—and your family.”
                When she pulled away, she saw in his eyes that he did not
believe her.  But he smiled all the same as she left, and she knew he watched
her leave.  She went to the wall, and watched for anyone near.  She had to
hunker down and wait for someone to pass by some distance away, and then she
called like a bird.  There was a brief pause, and then something landed, hard,
a short distance from her.  She crept up to it, finding a rope dangling over
the edge, with a rock tight to one end.  She untied the rope; hauling it back
up would make the rock bang against the wall—people noticed that sort of thing.
                She scooted the rock away, and wrapped her hands around the
rope.  She scaled the wall with some small measure of difficulty, and climbed
down with relative ease.  It was too smooth for her to climb it like she had
the tower; there were no handholds.
                There was a brief reunion with the two hunters, and they took
the rope and stole away into the night.  She only looked back once, thinking of
Leto.
                It was brave of him to stay.  It was a hard choice too,
especially knowing everything he could have had.  She had told him about her
clan, about what they did, and how they lived.  He had listened, and agreed
that it would be wonderful.  He was not as entranced as Varania had been, but
there had been a certain wistfulness to him.  It must have been hard to walk
away from the opportunity.  That required courage, and she admired him for it.
                Shame he wasn’t a woman; she would love him if he were.
                But if she had loved him, she did not know if she would have
left either.
 
Chapter End Notes
     It was a difficult choice: Would you pick your family, or your best
     friend? Leto chose his family. Would you choose your best friend and
     a life of slavery, or your clan and freedom? Ginger chose her clan.
     They each have different priorities, but I don't feel like that makes
     them any less of friends; just different people, and in a way, they
     both made the same choice.
***** Danse Macabre *****
Chapter Summary
     Leto's point of view and perspectives are changing as he gets older,
     Varania overhears some frightening news, and Mieta's health is
     failing, causing her children to worry.
                                  Part_Three
 
                A year ago, Leto had started fighting in the arena.  Their
mother had not liked it, but there was nothing to be done about it.  Each time
he left, Mieta wrung her hands, and bit her lip, terrified that her son would
not come back alive.
                At the end of the night, though, he always came back, and
whole.  The first night had been the hardest.  Varania had been twelve at the
time, but old enough to know, by the stone-cold look on his face that something
bad had happened.  When Mother had gone to sleep exhausted after a day of work
and worry, she poked and prodded her brother to wakefulness, and begged him to
come outside with her.  Unable to say no to his little sister, he followed her
out.  She walked over to the shed, and the two climbed onto the roof like they
had as children.  It was more than sturdy enough to support them.  It was a
cloudy night tonight, though, so there were no stars to see.  They had
suspected that it might rain tomorrow.
                “What was the arena like?” she asked him, tucking her legs up
against her chest, cocking her head to the side as she looked at him.
                He seemed vaguely haunted.  “It’s… big,” he said.  She rolled
her eyes, and made a gesture for him to continue.  “There are stands, and
they’re filled with people cheering, and the stadium is covered in sand, and
smells like blood.”
                “Do they fight to the death?” she asked him.
                He paused, and shook his head.  “No—just the prisoners.  But if
we kill someone with a blunted weapon—by accident—the crowd just… cheers,” he
said, and he stared off, but like he wasn’t seeing anything around them.
                She paused, and raised an eyebrow.  “You killed someone, didn’t
you.”  It wasn’t a question.
                He shivered, and paled.  “Someone’s brother.  Someone’s child. 
Maybe someone’s father, or lover, or husband,” he whispered.  He looked at his
sister.  “How would you feel if someone killed me?”
                She looked down, at her feet, and really thought about it. 
“I’d be… sad, I guess.  And angry.”  She nodded decidedly as she really thought
about it.  If Leto were to die…  “I’d hate whoever killed you.  I’d…  I’d be
really angry.”
                He nodded, as if in affirmation.  “Imagine how upset you’d be… 
Today, I made someone else—someone I don’t even know—that sad, and angry, and
they would hate me if they knew me.  And I could do it again.”
                She realized that his hands were shaking, and he was staring at
them.  Had they been bloody earlier today?  She reached out toward him, and
gripped his hand in hers.  He blinked, as if being pulled from dark thoughts,
and looked back at her.  To her, her brother looked lost.  “Do you hate
yourself, Leto?” she asked him, as soft as she could make her voice.
                He paused, and she saw his eyes begin to water.  “Yes,” he
choked.
                “Did you mean to kill him?”
                He did not look away.  “No…  I really didn’t,” he insisted.
                “It was an accident.  That’s all,” she said, her voice tinged
with grief for him.  “I don’t hate you.”  She scooted a little closer to him,
and squeezed her hand in his, then hugged him with both arms, dropping his
hand.  “I love you a lot.”
                He sighed, and hugged her back, then he let go.  She pulled
herself away, but he still did not look very convinced to her.  “Thanks, sis.”
                She frowned, wondering what she could say to him.  She imagined
that there was very little that she could say.  “Why do you hate yourself for
an accident?”
                He shook his head in despair.  “I could have… done something,”
he said, but as if he were floundering for an excuse for his hatred.
                Varania shook her head.  “It’s not your fault.  You didn’t make
yourself fight; our master did,” she told him.  “He killed that man, not you,
Leto.”
                He looked away.  “I wish I could believe that, ‘Nia, but he
didn’t have the sword.”
                Her brother had changed since that night.  He had already been
pretty melancholy, but that just made it worse.  With Ginger’s absence and
having killed someone, he changed.  Varania didn’t notice so much, at first,
but over the past year, there was something different about him.  A hatred that
had been sown when he was a child, and that seed had taken root, and began to
flower.
                He was still kind to her, of course, and she met him frequently
on the path back to the compound and walked with him, but he no longer said
much about the arena, even when she asked.  Sometimes, he came home and smelled
like blood, and there would be sand in his hair.  Most of the blood would get
on the armor and leathers he wore during the fighting, but sometimes he would
come home with dried blood on him.  It made their mother go pale, and Varania
had only watched in a mixture of fascination and disgust.
                In time, he even seemed eager to go.  Another time, he was in a
good mood after he commented that he had killed someone else.
                He had even come home before bragging about the coliseum, how
the crowd cheered, and a magister’s daughter had licked blood off of his cheek
and tried to kiss him before her chaperone yanked her away.  He had thought it
was quite amusing.  Mieta was not amused.
                One evening, he came home late, smelling like a combination of
blood, sweat, and this time, charred leather and hair.  Varania had gotten a
good look at his dark hair, and pointed it out.  Mieta looked closer.  Leto
smirked, apparently pleased with himself.
                “It’s a good thing your hair is so dark!  What’d you do?” Mieta
demanded, getting a look at her son’s lightly singed hair.
                He grinned wryly at her.  “I killed a dragon,” he announced
with more than his fair share of pride.
                Mieta’s eyes opened wide.  Varania rolled her eyes.  “A
dragon?” Mieta echoed, her voice tinged with wonder and fear.  “In the
coliseum?”
                Leto shrugged a shoulder.  “They caught it—someone bought it
and wanted to see it killed, I guess.”
                Mieta was astonished.  “But—the crowds…”
                The boy shrugged noncommittally.  “There were mages and
guards—more than usual.”  He seemed reluctant suddenly.  “The dragon was
chained in the Proving Grounds—to keep it from escaping.”
                Varania snickered, and he shot her a glare.  “It was
handicapped,” she pointed out to him.
                He made a face.  “It could breathe fire!” he argued.
                The girl smirked.  “By ‘dragon,’ brother mine, I think you mean
‘drake.’”  As his lips curved into a disapproving frown, her smirk widened to a
mocking grin.  “I heard the magisters talking; it was a baby.”
                “Adolescent,” he shot back.
                “It was barely big enough to do any real damage,” she scoffed.
                He scowled.  “It could have eaten me!”  Quite right,
actually—the dragon could eat a great deal of sheep, cattle, goats, and the
like.  An elf would have been nothing but a quick chomp—maybe about five big
bites.  Its teeth could cleave bone.
                At that, she laughed.  “So could worms, given time.”
                He fumed for a moment, then looked back at their mother. 
“Well, I was the one who killed it.  My sword cut through its neck—nearly in
two!—which is how I got close enough for it to singe my hair.”
                Something about the phrase made Mieta still, and fall silent. 
She smiled hollowly at her son, and spoke words of encouragement, but even
Varania could see that something about what Leto had said had struck a bad
chord with her.  To Varania’s horror, her brother seemed to connect the words
he had spoken with their mother’s sudden change in mood, for he addressed it
immediately.
                “It was a long time ago, Mother,” he said, his words bitter,
even angry.  “He’s dead, and nothing will change what’s happened.  This is our
lives now—Schavalis may as well have never happened.  So get over it.”  Mieta
stared at him, aghast that he could say such a thing.  His eyes widened, his
fingertips touching his lips, as if he had never intended to say it—a futile
attempt to pluck the words from history and banish them to the recesses of his
mind yet again.  His lips parted.  “I…  I…” he stammered, suddenly at a loss
for words.
                “I… need some air,” Mieta said, and walked past her son, and
out the door.  Leto had refused to tell Varania what that was about, and the
girl only felt excluded from whatever had gone on between mother and son.
                Varania wondered what was happening to him.  A sick feeling
twisted in her gut.  Her brother was changing, and becoming someone else,
someone she did not know, and was certain she would not like him if this kept
up; he scared her sometimes.
 
                Mieta stared up at the moons in the sky, watching Satina
glisten on high, her mantle of stars about her.  She heard the door open and
close, and was expecting little Varania, but was surprised to see Leto
instead.  She looked back at the sky.  These were the same stars over her on
her wedding night, the same stars when Leto had been conceived, the same stars
when Varania had been conceived.  The same stars that had watched over her
life.  She would die under these stars, and she feared with every fiber of her
being that she would never be free again, and she barely remembered what it
felt like.
                “Do you remember Schavalis?” Mieta asked her son, in the tongue
they had used when they lived there as she began to walk from the door.  He
walked beside her.
                She watched Leto struggle with the words, and was disappointed
when he did, though not in him exactly.  “Mother, I don’t even think in the
Trade tongue anymore,” he said, his Tevene as perfect as if he had never spoken
another language.
                Her heart felt heavy at those words, but she had known that
long ago.  “Did you know what I said?” she asked him, this time in her
shambling Tevene—her accent something he would tease about, and try to help her
pronounce things.
                He considered.  “Something…  about Schavalis?”
                “Do you remember it?” she repeated, sitting down in the grass,
her back against the low wall.  He sat down beside her.
                Leto was quiet, looking up at the stars, his eyes tracking the
constellations she had taught him, the pictures he knew.  “I…”  His lips
pressed firmly together, and his eyes slid closed in memory.  “Papa coming home
in the early morning… I’d try to stay up and wait for him to come home…”  The
King’s Speech came out halting and heavily accented, but she understood his
words.  “I never could stay up that late.”
                She smiled, just a little.  “You’d fall asleep by the door
sometimes, and I’d carry you to bed.”  She looked at her son, as adoringly as
she had when he was an infant in arms.  They were quiet, and she started
humming softly to herself, a lullaby that she had used to sing him to sleep. 
He shifted closer to his mother, his head resting on her shoulder, and sometime
between then and halfway through the lullaby, he was curled on his side, his
head in her lap.  She stroked his hair gently, and began to sing the rest of
it, in a quiet voice that was only for the mother and child.
 
Danarius froze, his gaze fixed to the scrap of parchment.  The Grey Wardens
would be at the games today… recruiting.  It was a valuable bit of information,
and one he had paid handsomely for.  He had lost two gladiators in his time to
the Wardens.  He simply refused to lose any more, so he paid spies and
informants to let him know what the Wardens were up to when they came into the
city.  It was a matter of pride at this point.
                The last gladiator they had taken was an elf.  He had heard
that the elf had since learned to read and write, among other things the
magister completely disliked.
                They took away what was his by rights.  He wouldn’t lose
another.  Some part of him knew, with a cold, iron certainty that if they saw
Leto fight, they would take him too.
                Leto had never lost.
                It was early morning, but the slaves should be just departing
for the coliseum.  He rose to his feet, shouting for a servant, a
slave—anyone.  A servant came careening into the hall, wide-eyed and fearful. 
“Run—tell Ser Darroll to send Leto back to the compound.  He is not to go to
the games,” he ordered.  “Now, go!”  The servant didn’t even take the time to
bow—he was frightened enough to spin around and dash out the door, quick as he
could move.
                Danarius went to the window, and watched as the servant barely
caught the wagon.  He watched the half-retired knight try to argue with the
servant before yelling at the elf to leave, which he did.  The knight grumbled
and climbed back on his horse, the slaves watching with mute interest as Leto
walked alone, somewhat sullenly, away.
                The magister sat back down, feeling more relaxed.  Any other he
could bear to lose, if he must, but not the best of them.  No, the best of them
he would keep.  For a while at least.
 
                Varania had been dismissed early, and kicked out of the
tailor’s room—they had a big project to do and didn’t want her about to muck it
up.  She fumed, and stalked off back to the compound.
                She threw open the door, muttered to herself about being
treated like a child, then saw her brother sitting on the bed meditatively,
with a wan smile on his face.
                She was tempted to throw something at him, but nothing was
readily available.  “What are you doing here, brother mine?” she said instead,
plopping down across from him.  “The other gladiators left.”
                There was supposed to be a match today, wasn’t there?  She
hadn’t gotten the days wrong, had she?  No, if she were wrong, he still
wouldn’t be here so early.  Leto’s smile faded.  “Before I got into the wagon,
a page came and said that I was not allowed to go.”
                Varania stopped, and thought.  Her lessons were cut early
because Raith and Danarius were going to the game.  And she had heard Raith
say…  She brightened.  “The Grey Wardens are in the city,” she offered.  She
had heard the two mages talking; they had mentioned the Wardens’ presence, that
they were in Minrathous to recruit.
                Leto frowned in thought for a moment.  “They sometimes go to
the games, and recruit from the… gladiators,” he said slowly, piecing the
puzzle together.
                The elven mage looked at her brother, and he looked back at
her.  Both realized, with a cold certainty, that Danarius had deliberately kept
Leto from the game because of that.  All the others had been allowed to go, so
it couldn’t be that he was dropping his gladiators or had some other errand to
attend; he was hiding Leto from the Wardens.  Even a slave knew a bit about the
Wardens, and the Right of Annulment.
                They could take anyone, from anywhere—even a slave.  It
happened—not often, but it did happen.  If they saw Leto fight, they may take
him too.  For Varania, that would be the end of her world.  She couldn’t bear
to lose her brother, who meant so much to her.  It never even occurred to the
girl that it would also mean Leto’s freedom.
 
                Raith had something to attend to, some experiment Varania had
seen him writing notes on.  She could not read, of course, but she could read
patterns, and spell-forms; she was good at it—the one thing in the world she
felt confident in doing.  It was what she used when she was doing embroidery. 
Embroidery was just a pattern of stitches, after all, and she was good at
translating it in her head, even if she couldn’t manage to make them straight. 
He left the room before she did, in a hurry to attend to something.  A page had
come, and given him a note of some sort.  He had hurried out so quickly that
she wondered if it were some emergency.
                If so, she would hear about it in time; rumors spread like
wildfire throughout the house, after all.  She had heard quickly enough about
the Grey Wardens.  She rose from her seat, and went to tidy the room, as was
expected of her.  She had been tracing glyphs to memorize.  The trouble with
training a mage and trying to keep them from learning to read entirely was that
it just didn’t work that way.  If you were going to teach a mage like that from
a book, you had better make certain it only had pictures, and that they never
watched the teacher read aloud from it.  She recognized a few words, here and
there, though didn’t know the names of all the letters.
                She had been reluctant to speak of this ability to anyone, even
Leto, lest someone overhear (she was always overhearing conversations that she
shouldn’t, after all).  She remembered her mother writing words in the dirt of
the hut, and trying to teach them to read when she could.  Leto had seen no
sense in it.
                His precise words had been, at about age eight, “Why should I
learn to read?  So I can read the name of the sword before it cuts off my
head?”
                Mieta had been appalled at the comment.  Varania had only asked
for him to explain what he meant, and he told her that many people named their
swords, and the names were forged onto the blade, usually in flowing script.
                She first wiped the stiff parchment she had been drawing on
clean of the charcoal with a small towel, then cleaned off her hands before she
put the parchment away.  It was expensive, and if cleaned properly, could be
used several times over.  She picked up the books and put those away next, more
through memory of what the filigree looked like and where it should be than
anything else.  As a child, she had thought of it as a game—trying to memorize
the places all the books went.
                She cleaned up the pile of ash, and the candles.  Learning a
spell was one thing, but learning to control it quite another; she had been
practicing how to light candles today, and eventually individual candles in
groups—that would come later.  Raith had a pile of papers on the desk—something
he had been doing today while she had been copying the glyphs.  He did expect
her to at least organize the desk, so she thought nothing of it.
                She put the books back on the shelf first, and cleaned the
quill pens, put away the inkwell.  She started picking up the papers, trying to
keep them in the order she had found them.  One slipped to the floor.  She set
the stack down and bent to retrieve it.  This one was a formula, pieces of
which she recognized.  She frowned at it, wondering what it said, but she did
understand a bit.  She understood enough of it to tell that it was some kind of
recipe for lyrium.  A different kind of mana potion--maybe something more
potent?  She couldn’t imagine what else it could be.  Lyrium could be used for
a few different things, but putting pure lyrium in, say, a ring would radiate
illness to the wearer, even a mage.  It just had to be tempered down to
something else.
                Working with it was dangerous; she had been allowed to work
with a bit of it, but really only dwarves and tranquil mages could put it to
any real use, like augmenting a weapon or creating runes.  She had been told
that Templars drank lyrium, and that gave them some of their abilities, but
they had to be given a steady supply of it or else they went mad—and the mind
fading and ultimately death was always the end of the matter.  She imagined
that someone who could devise a way for an alternative would be rather renown,
and even rewarded.
                There was a small diagram on it too, but she didn’t understand
all of it.  She frowned, and slid it back into the pile.  The first page, she
now noticed, was a map of the body—human, elf, dwarf, or Qunari—it made little
difference; the muscles and bones were primarily the same.  The first page
dealt with a skeletal structure.  She looked up, at the door, and her curiosity
drove her further, and she looked back down at the pages.  The second was a map
of muscles.  That had always made her uncomfortable, and she moved on quickly. 
The third was a map of nerves, which seemed odd.  Skeleton, muscles, and
nerves?  What would that have to do with the lyrium recipe?  Or perhaps it was
actually two separate projects; that was possible.
                She decided to set it aside rather than continue her snooping. 
She set the papers down in a neat pile, and pushed the chair in.  Work done,
she left the room.  She walked on the side of the hall, off the carpets, like
she was supposed to.  She had intended to go out the way she usually
did—through the servant quarters, but the path was blocked.  A maid glowered at
her, and told her that she couldn’t come down this way, because the floors were
getting waxed, and told her to go around.
                The girl nodded, and turned back around.  She hoped she
wouldn’t get scolded for going along the main parts of the mansion, but there
was nothing else for it.  If she hadn’t been dismissed so early, then she
wouldn’t have had to go out this way after all…  Still, her stomach churned
uncomfortably at the thought of someone yelling at her that she shouldn’t be
here.
                But no one even seemed to notice her.  Indeed, the few people
she did see were in such a hurry that they just rushed past her.  She wondered
what could possibly be going on?
                A door was slightly ajar down the hall, and as she approached,
she heard voices.  She wouldn’t normally have eavesdropped, but elves had sharp
hearing, and she couldn’t help but hear them speaking.
                “…  I hope the Dalish didn’t give you too much trouble,” a
voice said.
                Dalish?  Varania thought of Ginger.  “No more’n me’n my men can
handle, though they did lead us on a merry chase.”
                He laughed, and she suddenly recognized it as her master,
Danarius.  “Is that what you call it?  Those elves strung you around for nearly
three years.”
                “That they did, but I got ‘em in the end,” the man said.
                The young mage felt a lump grow in her throat, and realized
that she had stopped moving.  It felt like a chunk of something cold and
unyielding had filled her throat, stopped her heart, made her blood thicken. 
No…  “For your trouble.”  She heard the clinking of coins.  Her hands fisted at
her sides.  What had he paid to kill the Dalish clan?  And Ginger—what had
become of her?  As if he had read her mind, he asked, “Where’s the girl?”
                “In the dungeon—seemed a fitting place for her.”  That one was
Raith.
                “Very good,” he said.  Varania knew that she had best move
on—quickly.  She had better be gone before they came out of that room.  She
moved on, walking as fast as she could without making too much noise.  The men
continued to talk—idly, about the fight, and the hunt.  Did any Dalish escape? 
Yes, a few—but not many—most are dead.  How many did you bring back, including
the girl?  About six, we caught, serrah, but one managed to escape, and another
hung herself.
                She felt so cold suddenly, and sick to her stomach.  Her
master’s pride would murder so many people, just for one girl who wasn’t even
that important?  Did it mean so much?  She knew it did.  This was why escape
was simply impossible.  He would pursue the escapees to the ends of the earth. 
Why?   Because they were his property, and he would not allow his property to
escape him.
                She had to tell Leto.  It was abruptly the most important thing
in the world to her.  He had to know.  He needed to know.
                And once she was out the door, under the graying sky, she was
running.  She lifted her robes and ran.  Robes for a mage, robes to mark her
apart so all would know.  Sometimes, others picked on her for it, knowing she
was forbidden to use her magic outside of practice.
                She came skidding to a halt by the practice ring.  Leto wasn’t
here.  Where was he?  She looked around desperately, and no one even seemed to
notice her; it made her feel invisible.  Varania was so full to bursting with
her news that she almost fell to panic when she couldn’t find him, but he
eventually emerged from the armory, carrying a heavy hammer-looking thing as
big as he was.  Ordinarily, she may have commented on that, but she instead ran
up to him anxiously.
                He knew something was wrong almost immediately when he saw
her.  He frowned.  “Varania, what’s wrong?” he asked.
                She grabbed his elbow, looking around at the people nearby
earnestly.  She bit her lower lip, hesitant to blurt out what she had overheard
with so many people to hear her say it.  Leto seemed to sense her need, and set
the big weapon down, leaning it against the side of the armory.  He glanced at
Bruce, whose back was turned, and was shouting out commands to the combatants. 
It was two against one.  Leto had explained to her that things like that
happened often, and one had to be trained for it as well as anything else.
                He caught her sleeve in his hand, and the siblings hurried
behind the armory, where they were relatively alone.  He crossed his arms, more
to have something to do with them than to try to be intimidating.  “What’s
going on?”
                Varania thought she might burst into tears, and it all came out
in a rush.  “I overheard them talking--he caught her—he caught Ginger, and the
Dalish are dead or captured, and she’s in the dungeon.”  A tear tracked down
her cheek.  “Leto, he’s going to hurt or kill her!” she gasped.
                His face was as pale as she had ever seen it since he started
spending all his time under the hot sun.  His lips parted, as if he would
speak, but found no words.  He shifted, his back against the wall.  Slowly, he
sunk down, sitting on the bare earth.  He shivered, as if it were cold.  She
wondered if he felt as sick as she did.
                She remembered that Ginger had once asked him to run away with
her, and she realized that, if he had gone with her, he would be in that
dungeon too, waiting to see what their master would do with him.
                His hands raised, covering his face for a moment, then pulled
away.  He shook his head.  “Maybe you heard wrong,” he said, looking up at her
to catch any doubt in her eyes.
                She shook her head.  “They didn’t say Ginger’s name—just ‘the
girl’—but they talked about the Dalish, and…”  She floundered, hoping she
hadn’t misunderstood and to have caused her brother so much grief for nothing,
and at the same time… desperately praying that she had.  She hoped it wasn’t
Ginger, but she knew better.
                He glanced back, toward the general direction of the circle. 
“I need to go,” he said.  He got up.  He didn’t look at her when he left,
didn’t say anything.  His face was quite stoic, in fact, and he walked a little
woodenly.  Varania bit her lower lip, and decided that she had best do
likewise.  She changed clothes, and went to the tailoring room, and helped her
mother.
                She didn’t tell Mieta about the Dalish or Ginger.  Not just
because Mistress Lana was there, but because she couldn’t bear to see her
mother so upset.
                Varania and Leto had talked about it often enough—that their
mother’s health was beginning to fail.  Part of it was a gnawing despair at her
very soul, and the long hours she worked.  Her hands were giving her trouble
more and more frequently, and Varania did all she could, but there was no magic
for despair.  The despair was causing her stomach cramps, she imagined, and her
health to wane.  Both her children were worried about it.
                “If we could somehow get mother back to Seheron…” Leto had
said, his tone wistful.
                The mage had frowned.  “We would have to find a way to get her
out of slavery; she can’t just run away,” Varania had added.
                He sighed, as if in inward pain.  She knew, a little at least,
of how he felt.  He was supposed to be, well, the man of the house as it were,
and take care of the other two.  Abruptly, he said, “Do you know Mother used to
sing and dance?”
                Varania stared at him as if he had said that he could breathe
underwater.  “What?  No—I’ve never seen her dance.”  She frowned.  She would
hum sometimes, something soft—lullabies occasionally, but Varania couldn’t
remember her ever actually singing.  Humming maybe, halfheartedly more often
than not as of late.
                Leto nodded in remembrance.  “She loved it—she danced all the
time, and she was always singing.”  He paused, as if to simply consider his
words, then the moment stretched longer, and he seemed disinclined to continue.
                Varania was saddened to hear of such things.  Had it been
slavery to do that to her?  Perhaps she and Leto weren’t as affected because
she had been born into it, and he had been so very young.  “We have to do
something,” she heard herself whisper.
                He looked down at her, and she looked up, seeing his eyes
reflect her same sorrow.  “But what?”
                It was a good question.  It was still a good question.  But
there really was nothing that her children could do for her.  Varania could
help to heal her physical ailments, which was why she knew that Mother’s
stomach pain really came from her mental pains, not a real illness.  If that
were so, she could at least find the source of it, of that she was sure.
***** The Nightingale and the Wolf *****
Chapter Summary
     In which we see what atrocities or injustices people are capable of
     committing, for one reason or another. This chapter is about doing
     things you know are wrong, because you feel like you have no choice.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The magister sat in a high-backed chair of supple leather.  The
air was perfumed with the sweet scent of burning oils.  Behind him, the sunset
was a streak of orange across the sky.  He couldn’t see it from this particular
room, but the sea would be alight with the fading light.  The room was brightly
lit, making it look cheery.
                Today actually marked the anniversary of his late wife’s death,
not something he ordinarily thought about, and, usually, tried to make himself
busy to keep from thinking about it.  He sometimes  wondered how different
things would be had she lived.  Roschelle…
                He had been married for only the briefest of times.  It had
been an arranged marriage—something put together by his parents.  His father
had died before the ceremony, but he was honor-bound to go through with it.
                His bride was a few years younger than he, just of age.  It was
a smart match, they said.  And it did help him become a magister later in the
year—for that wasn’t something solely of inheritance, though his Altus status
did speed the matter.  They had been married by the Black Divine himself, in
his Chantry.  She had not been a mage, but had come from a line of mages, a
prestigious Altus family.  Roschelle had been what was called a “skip.”
                He hadn’t liked her at all from the moment he saw her—the first
time being on their wedding day.  He disliked her smile, and her nose.  Her
eyes were a dull brown, and frankly reminded him of horse shit.  She couldn’t
dance.
                She wasn’t Shallise.
                Still, he did his best to at least not hate her.  He spent
their wedding day with her, trying to find something he liked about
her—anything.  She was not shy, not really.  She was forthright with anything
he asked, and very open, which made it easier, though he barely knew anything
about her when they took their vows.  She was sharp of wit, and quick of
tongue, and she was incredibly intelligent; he saw that when she spoke to her
relatives on matters of politics.  The amount she seemed to grasp of it, and
how well she played the game was astonishing in a woman who wasn’t even a mage,
and he began to understand his father’s reasoning.
                But she was charming in her own way, and everything a bride
should be, and everyone she met was half in love with her.
                Three months later, and he thought he might be too.  She was
dutiful, and attentive, and smart enough to carry on a conversation, and
oversee the manor affairs—something he no longer had to worry himself with. 
She kept the books, and when he occasionally went over them, he noticed nothing
wrong.  He gave her a monthly stipend, and she always spent at least some of it
on something for him, absolutely delighting in it.  He liked walking into his
quarters after a long day—testing, and trials as the Archon tried to decide if
he should appoint him to the rankings yet—and find her waiting for him, naked
and lovely, wearing some bauble she had bought, and, calling no attention to
her nudity, would ask him if he liked the jewels.
                Of course he liked the jewels.
                He’d find little notes from her, stashed in the most ridiculous
places, about what she would do to him when he got home, about how she was
missing him and he had better be back soon.  Charming.  He was never annoyed by
it, to the contrary in fact.  When he didn’t find the notes, he felt oddly
disappointed.
                When she told him, late one night, her lips against his ear,
that she was pregnant, he had rolled back on top of her, and amidst their
lovemaking, made his own confession, “I love you.”
                And she laughed softly, and kissed him, and breathed that she
felt the same.
                Nine months of bliss followed.  He was appointed to a
magister.  Nothing could have been better.  He was busy and sometimes stressed,
but content—maybe even truly happy for the first time he could ever remember.
                Labor took her, and he had nearly forgotten Shallise.  But then
his lovely Roschelle’s labor lasted longer than was the norm.  He hadn’t been
tooconcerned, at first.  She had a mage there, and several attendants and the
midwife.  But when an entire day passed, his concern went to worry.  He
cancelled his appointments, and paced in front of the room, listening,
wondering if she was dying and dreading the answer.
                When the screams ceased, he had stilled, and paled, and his
heart had hammered in fear.  There was rustling, and voices, and the midwife
came out, and all he had to see was the look on her face to know what had
happened.
                Roschelle had died.  The babe was stillborn.  Did everything he
ever cared about die or leave?
                It was easier not to care, and he dared say he liked being
cruel and cynical anyway.  It was so much more fulfilling, so much easier, and
so much less stressful than caring.  Or so he told himself.
                He had given it some thought—more than a little, and this
scenario he liked best.  Earlier that day, he had the two remaining Dalish
executed, for the simple crime of theft.  Oh, they tried to say that she had
been captured, that she wasn’t property.  But she was his property; he had
bought her.  And he intended to keep what was his for as long as he wished, and
if he no longer wanted her, he would dispose of her in any manner he saw fit;
that was the nature of property, after all. 
                Dalish elves—they seemed to think they were equal to or even
better than humans.  Before they died, he had made them say things, do things. 
They had first said they wouldn’t, and had been very resolved to be resolute. 
Pain has a way of changing one’s mind, though.  First one, then the other, and
he took his time of course.  Pain was something that should be cherished, and
he let it run its course, let them cry, and beg.  Why not?  They wanted to
live, did they not?  If it took longer, they lived longer.  When he asked them
if they wanted to live, they said that they did, so he let them live for that
much longer, to give them that much more pain.
                It was nothing less than they deserved.  True, thieves
ordinarily were given to the arenas, and two Dalish hunters would have made
quite a rare spectacle, but he needed subjects to test too.  When the pair were
sufficiently cowed, he began his experiments.  Small, trace amounts of the
special lyrium mixture, carefully applied to the skin.  It was thick, and half-
solid, and had to be carved into the flesh.  It was a ritual of blood magic,
and he used their blood to fuel it.  Not all of it, of course, but some of it. 
They both lived obviously.  He had come to a point where he could at least keep
the subjects alive.
                The trouble was that they all seemed to lose their minds in one
way or another.  Much as corpses rotted differently, they always went mad in
different ways.  From the pain, he assumed.  Or maybe the demons—that could
be.  He did learn things, of course.  He was always learning things.  It needed
more tweaking.  Maybe more life, or maybe a Tranquil could work the lyrium
better than he could (perhaps that elven mage—Varania—would do if she kept
doing poorly in her studies?).  As the spell ended, and the second one’s mind
was waning, a demon whispered something to him, her hands running suggestively
over his robes, her sultry lips sensuous against his ear.  “You need one
willing,” she told him, her voice as tender as a lover’s, though he could hear
the double-layers of her voice.  It was a valuable hint, something he
remembered, and made note of later.
                A willing subject.  But he knew that wasn’t all there was to
it; it would require more than that.  But, still, it was a valuable bit of
information.
                He had the odd-eyed girl watch, her wrists bound above her
head, and listened to her scream when he had used one’s life force to
extinguish the other.  He had rather enjoyed that—seeing the horror in her
mismatched eyes, watched fresh tears streak down her face, a face that was
marked with the Dalish tattoos now.  It wasn’t something he would tolerate—the
tattoos.  He might have simply punished her, shackled her again, and used her
as an example, except for the tattoos.
                He had given her to Raith after that.  The girl was to his
taste, apparently.  She had been screaming when he left, but he had ordered
that he leave her alive, and relatively unharmed.  His plans wouldn’t work as
well if she were hurt too badly.
                The door opened.  Danarius watched placidly as Raith entered
first, followed by two guards and the elf.  Not the Dalish, though.  No, that
would come later.
                He felt a pull at the corner of his lips when he saw the young
man.  It seemed like it had not been so very long ago that the boy had stabbed
him, and nearly killed him.  Now, he served him.  He thought of him very much
like some kind of wild dog—one that would bite upon capture, but had since been
domesticated.  He was confident that the boy was now quite… tame.
                “Bring in the girl,” he said to the guards, who bowed and
left.  The elf, Leto was his name, should be rather confused right now, he
imagined.  He was growing up to be everything Danarius wanted in him—strong, an
excellent warrior (more than excellent—the brat had never lost), and obedient. 
He also looked splendid oiled down and in one of the sparse serving outfits
too.  Elves usually did though—they made terrific servants.
                How old was he now?  Elves aged so well, it was sometimes hard
to tell.  He considered for a moment.  Seventeen, he decided.  He felt old,
suddenly, momentarily.  He remembered Leto as a child, glaring hatefully up at
him.  If he still hated him, he had at least learned to school his expression,
but he doubted it.  The boy probably just didn’t care any more—any rebellious
nature in him had been beaten out years ago.  Still, it did make him feel old
to think that the young man before him had been a small child in what seemed
only a few short years ago.  Where had all that time went?
                Study.  He was close to the fruition of his experiments; he
could sense it.  He was missing some key element, but he would find it—soon.
                The boy could feel him watching him; he could see it in the way
he shifted uncomfortably, and flexed his fingers.  “Stop fidgeting—it’s
unbecoming,” Danarius snapped.  Truth be told, he liked watching him squirm
under scrutiny, but he liked obedience better.  The boy straightened, and
stilled.  He was getting tall.  Taller than most elves, anyway.  Most male
elves were about the height of, well, of a human female and usually shorter. 
One day, the boy might be able to stand eye to eye with him—not that he would
ever allow it.
                Danarius enjoyed the silence, knowing that it made others
uncomfortable.  Even Raith began to shift from side to side, and clear his
throat.  The mage was learning, he would give him that, but he was an impatient
one.  Though, he was good at his research, and in writing rituals.  He supposed
that if one must have faults, let them be something he could exploit.  Raith’s
impatience led to not only blunders and dead-ends, but discovery as well, after
all.  Sometimes, he could barely believe that they were only seven years apart.
                The door opened, and Danarius watched Leto look up, and took
some small amount of pleasure when he saw the girl Ginger being led by the two
guards.  She was bruised, her lip cut, covered in blood that wasn’t all her
own.  She really did look quite a mess.  Leto’s eyes were wide in horror, his
jaw dropping in astonishment.  He started to speak, then stopped.  Started to
reach toward her, just a slight motion of his hand, then stopped, rooted to the
spot.
                Danarius smiled to himself.  Obedience, as befit a dog.
                The girl had been in the dungeon since yesterday afternoon, and
he imagined that Raith had done what he would with her, before he gave her to
the guards, the servants, the slaves if they wanted her.  True, Danarius made
them go down to the dungeon if they wanted her, but he had no doubt they did. 
It had seemed to work; the fight was gone from her.  She sagged in the arms of
her captors, and stared at the world through dead eyes, only lighting when she
saw Leto, and perhaps a bit in confusion.
                Let her be confused.  Confusion added to horror, and horror and
fear both led to the same thing when tempered correctly—obedience.
                He had heard that the girl could sing like a nightingale—that
was what his hunters had said.  Matter of fact, it was the call she had used to
alert her clan.  Danarius pretended not to notice the glance the two elves gave
each other—he would give them that much at least.  Let it not be said that he
never gave anything freely.
                “Drop her,” he said, and the guards dropped her.  Her legs
buckled, and she fell to the floor.  Her wrists were bound behind her back, and
she did not catch herself when she fell.  Her knees hit the carpet first, and
she crumbled to the floor.  He watched her for a moment, and she showed no sign
of moving—ever.  Her chest heaved as she breathed, though he was suspicious
that her nose was broken, and had been broken for a few hours at least.
                He glanced at Leto.  “Do you know her, elf?”
                The boy blinked, and Danarius saw indecision in his eyes. 
Would he lie?  Would he dare to lie?  “Yes—once, Master,” he said after the
briefest of pauses.
                It was good enough, and true enough.  It had been years since
the boy would have seen her last.  It would be nearly a lie to say he did know
her, as well as a lie to say that he didn’t.  At least he could please his
master.  “I see.”  He let a silence fall, long and uncomfortable.  He let the
two elves contemplate their fate, just long enough to give them some time to
really think about it.  Thinking about something atrocious was often worse than
experiencing it.
                He nodded to his guards.  “Leave us.”  The two bowed and left,
closing the large door behind them.  His gaze flicked to Raith.  “You too.”
                His apprentice blinked, in obvious shock that he would be
dismissed so, but rather than argue, bowed, and excused himself.  The door
shut, and he was alone with his two slaves—one a rebellious runaway, and the
other an example of perfect submission.  He looked at the two, and made it no
secret that he was doing so.  And why not?  One could always look at their
property, free to marvel or criticize.
                “Leto.”  The boy turned toward him, but did not raise his
head.  Good.  “Come here.”  The teenager didn’t trudge, or drag his feet, or
make any indication at all of what he may be thinking, except for his face.  He
had a very expressive face.  He wondered, in a casual sort of way, if he would
be so expressive in bed.
                He stopped before him, a couple feet away.  Danarius watched
him for a moment, and glanced back at the girl.  Then, he lifted the item he
had stowed in a drawer at his desk.  He raised it to the boy’s hand-level.  It
was a dagger, the very one the boy had stabbed him with.  Leto’s eyes fell to
the blade, and seemed to recognize it, even after all this time.
                “Take it,” he commanded him.  Without question, he did, by the
hilt, carefully not touching his master even to do as bidden.  The human rested
his arm back on the armrest of the chair.  The elf was staring down at the
blade.  Danarius’ gaze shifted to the girl as she started to move.  She was
pulling herself up, and sitting on the floor.  She was staring at them both,
openly and with no regard to manners.  Well, that didn’t matter too much
anymore, did it?
                His gaze flicked back to Leto, and his mouth twisted into a
small, sadistic smile.  “Kill her.”             He saw the elf’s eyes widen,
his lower lip tremble.  The girl’s face had gone ashen, and she was trembling. 
It was a gamble, but a test—a necessary one.  The boy could easily choose to
draw the knife, and, if he were fast enough, he may even be able to kill his
master.  All it would take is one motion, one blow to the neck, the eye, the
chest—even the leg.  He was close enough if he acted very quickly.  Danarius
had seen him act that quickly before, watched him in the arena.  More than
that, he was a ruthless killer, and had more than enough physical strength to
propel the weapon.
                But would he?  Did he even realize that he could?  That the
mage simply wouldn’t be able to defend himself if he acted quickly enough?
                True, the two would never escape from the manor alive, but they
couldn’t know that.
                Rather, Leto turned.  He didn’t walk so much as stalk over to
Ginger.  She stared up at him like a bird trapped in a cage, in a room with a
cat.  No, he thought.  A wolf.  My Leto moves rather like a wolf, and often
behaves like one.  He thought of him in the arena.  Yes, he certainly behaved
like one.
                There was a sharp hiss of steel as the blade was drawn.  The
girl had fallen to begging.  “Please, Leto, no,” she gasped, her eyes
watering.  “Please don’t do this—don’t listen to him!”
                He froze, staring at her.  If the bitch hadn’t spoken, he would
have drawn it across her throat by now.  But Danarius was willing to forgive
this.  It was asking a lot of his slave to kill the girl—someone he knew, with
a weapon no doubt given to him to defend himself.  “Kill her.  Now.”
                “I have to,” Leto whispered, the weight of the order bearing
down on him, and everything he was.  Obey your master.
                “No you don’t!  Kill him!” she practically screamed.  “Kill him
for everything he’s done!  Think of your mother, your sister!”
                He shook his head.  Danarius would have insisted this end, but
the drama unfolding before him was… interesting.  How much did the whelp care
about his mother and sister, then?  “If he dies, what do you think will happen
to them?” he cried, shaking his head in silent dismay.  Ah, so Leto had already
considered that.  And did he realize that most other magisters would make
Varania Tranquil so she could work lyrium?  Did he realize that his mother
would be shipped off separately somewhere else?  And did he realize that he
would either be killed immediately, or thrown into the arena until he fell? 
“I’m so sorry, Ginger.”
                She fell silent then, staring at the knife blade as he held it
to her throat.  Tenderly, Danarius thought, like he cared for her.  “My name is
Viscaria,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.  The blade cut into her throat
then, and she gagged, eyes opening in shock, and the warrior made a quick
motion, opening her neck from side to side.  Blood rushed down her neck.  She
died in seconds, and the boy backed away from the corpse as it fell to the
carpeted floor.  Blood dripped from the knife’s blade—once, twice.  Leto was
shaking, his eyes transfixed on the blood pooling over the floor.  The knife
fell from his shaking hand, hitting the carpet with a dull thud.  From his
other hand, the sheath fell, landing softly at his other side. 
                Danarius sighed to himself.  Couldn’t he have simply stabbed
her in the kidneys?  Did he have to do the bloodiest thing, the most
melodramatic thing?  Of course he did—wolves always went for the throat, or the
heart.  It seemed like… in a way, he had gone for both.  He almost smiled.
                “A simple stab to the kidneys would have sufficed… my little
wolf,” he commented.  Leto said nothing, and didn’t even seem to have heard
him.  Danarius rose and went to the corpse, taking a look at the way it was
bleeding, and ruining the carpet for that matter.  “I am… rather pleased with
you, my pet,” he commented, rolling the term from his mouth like a candy, and
liked the sound of it.  If Leto was to be a wolf and was his own, then that
would make him a pet, would it not?  The boy started to look up, then back
down—a faint recognition that he had at least heard him.  He felt a desire to
touch him, to dominate him.  To own him in every conceivable way and meaning of
the word.  He cherished the desire for a moment, then let it go.  Now wasn’t
the time or the place, but his pet wasn’t going anywhere—ever, if he had a say
in it, which he did.  He had plenty of time to do whatever he wished to him,
and he had no doubt that he would.  He chose to be cross, and raised an
eyebrow.  “That was a compliment.”
                Leto blinked, jerking his head slightly, as if coming back into
reality.  “I… thank you, Master,” he said dutifully, but was still staring at
the bloody corpse like he didn’t quite believe in its existence.
                He had best do something about all that blood.  He considered
all the blood magic spells at his disposal.  Really, he only wanted to cast one
because blood used in magic smoked and evaporated, and then he might save the
carpet.  It was a priceless carpet… a wedding gift, actually, from Roschelle’s
family.  Of course he had it placed in a room he used frequently.  He knelt,
and touched two fingertips to the blood, and flicked his eyes toward Leto.  He
rose, and smiled to himself.  The elf was staring transfixed at the corpse as
if he would never move again.  The boy jumped when Danarius put his bloodied
fingers to his lips, then Leto stilled, but his eyes shut, and he cringed. 
Gently, the magister, with his other hand, guided Leto to kneel on the floor,
and he sank down to the floor with him.
                Leto was trembling like a newborn ewe, blood glistening on his
lips.  Danarius reached back into the puddle of blood, soaking his hand into
it.  He cupped his pet’s cheek, gently, letting the warm blood dribble down his
neck, and he pushed his fingers into his hair, against his ear, and he finally
heard the tiniest of sounds from his throat.  Danarius’ other hand was making
all the motions necessary for this most intimate of blood magic spells, and
something discovered quite by accident under… mysterious circumstances many
years back.  The spell cast, the blood began to smoke without heat, and Leto
shivered, eyes squeezing shut as he tried to fight it, then couldn’t.
                He moaned, somewhere on a perfect precipice of pain and
ecstasy, back arching, lips parted.  Danarius watched the rise and fall of his
chest as he struggled to keep breathing, then panting.  It stopped once
Danarius broke contact, and Leto’s eyes opened wide.  The spell gone, fear
leaked into those sage eyes.  Very calmly, Danarius touched his hand to the
blood again, already weaving another spell of the same variety.
                “And all I did was touch the side of your face,” Danarius
mused.  “Just think what I could do with the rest of you.”  He touched his lips
again, and left a trail of blood down to his clavicle, and caressed his throat
as the spell ran its due course.  This time, the blood around them sizzled and
dissolved as well as the blood on the elf, and Leto fought to stop the moaning,
and just barely failed.
                Danarius watched, in a detached sort of manner, the elf’s
member stiffen through his trousers, watched him gasp, and moan, and eventually
peak, in time for the blood to completely dissipate.
                At least he had saved the carpet.  Leto watched him timidly,
and when Danarius reached toward him again, he instinctively shrunk away.  It
hadn’t been rape, and the boy had orgasmed, but it hadn’t been in the least bit
willing either.  The magister knew that, and was dimly amused by it.  He knew
how it would affect the elf’s mind, how he would question himself, and
everything he knew.  If Danarius were very patient, and he was, he could
convince Leto to believe the lie that he had wanted it.  He knew it would work,
because he had done it to others before him.
                Danarius buried his hand in the elf’s thick, dark hair, and
watched the way he cringed—somewhere on the verge of tears, but trying too hard
to be a man to cry.  That was what would make those tears the most worthwhile
to work toward, though.  The magister rose, his hand falling from the elf’s
hair.  He strode back to his desk, and sat down, as if the entire episode were
forgotten.  “You are dismissed.  Call a servant to dispose of that corpse
before it starts to stink.”
                The elf shivered, and rose, glancing toward the bloodless
corpse again, before he fled the room.  He must have passed the message on,
because two servants came to collect the body a short time later.  Outside, the
rain had just begun to fall.
 
                The next day was another match, and he rather enjoyed watching
his little wolf fight.  He didn’t always go to the games, but he did enjoy it
when he did.  Something seemed… off, though, about him.  Something… not right. 
Was it over what had happened last night?
                He moved, too slowly to avoid a shield slamming into his
shoulder, knocking him down.  His head slammed against someone’s armor—hard. 
He watched his little wolf fall, and not get back up.  His eyes narrowed.
                The losers were punished for their loss, publicly of course. 
Humiliation and blood were something the magisters did enjoy, he most of all. 
One lash for every “enemy” left standing.  He watched his team receive their
lashes, one by one.  Leto nearly fainted again—four lashes, and he was
stumbling more than he should have.  He had his servant-mage heal him, and one
more he occasionally had serve at feasts, but the others would make do with
washing and poultices to keep from infection.
                Later, at the manor, he sat in his study and had Leto escorted
to him.  He dismissed the escort, and observed the boy for a moment.  He seemed
dizzy, and flushed, and his eyes were a bit glazed—pain, he recognized; he had
a headache.  His anger at the elf just as quickly vanished.  He had a
fever.      Who had made him fight in the arena with a fever?
                “You have a fever,” he said bluntly, getting right to the
point.  “Did you tell Ser Darrol?”
                He sensed a slight hesitation, then a simple nod.  “Yes,
Master.”
                Danarius’s fingers curled in anger.  “And he still made you
go?”
                “Yes, Master.”
                He could barely control his temper, his utter rage.  He had
risked Leto—his personal favorite gladiator?  A fever could kill him in the
arena.  Frankly, his little wolf made him entirely too much money for him to be
less than angry, but not with him.  “I see.”  He frowned.  “Don’t train
tomorrow—I want you in bed all day, and tell your sister that her lessons are
dismissed tomorrow so she may take care of you.  Do you understand?”
                “Yes, Master.”
                The boy left, and Danarius sat back in his chair.  He had been
prepared to question him and have him punished for his utter failure.  Rather,
it seemed he had someone else to punish.  Fine—Darrol would take the whipping
he had reserved for Leto, maybe a few extra lashes for his foolishness.  And if
the man dared try to extract some kind of vengeance for it on his pet wolf, he
might lose more than a bit of flesh.
                While the fever was more than likely the boy’s own fault, the
point still stood that he was ill.  The timing was far too coincidental.  He
had probably been outside all night alone somewhere, and gotten sick in the
cold and the rain.  Grieving perhaps—Danarius idly wondered what the boy looked
like when he cried.  Tevinter was usually pretty temperate all year around, but
in the winter, the nights could be cold, and it was fall, and it had rained. 
Hence, his fever.  He would see him punished eventually, but only when he was
well again.  Perhaps a couple licks of the whip would do; his little wolf made
such a delicious face when he was in pain.  Or pleasure, he recalled.
                He considered the boy’s apparent devotion to his family.  A
willing subject… 
                How devoted was he?
Chapter End Notes
     This was really difficult for me to write...
***** A Fever of Flowers *****
Chapter Summary
     Just Varania and Leto being siblings, for better or worse. No matter
     how much siblings might fight or bicker, they're still family at the
     end and they will still care for and look out for one another.
                “This is your own fault,” Varania accused her brother.
                He groaned from the bed miserably, curled into a ball.  His
skin was clammy and hot, and he had thrown up twice last night.  Mieta had made
him drink broth this morning, and he had so far kept it down, but Varania was
skeptical.
                She rung out the rag with both hands over the bucket of cool
water, and mopped his brow tenderly.  “This is exactly what you get for being
out all night,” she said hotly.  “What were you doing anyway?”  That question
was more to herself than to him.  Some of the other boys had snuck through the
wicker gate, to a neighboring manor.  Not to escape; they were after the slave
girls there.  Their masters didn’t care so much, though, so long as they were
back by morning.  Was that what Leto had been doing?  She contemplated hitting
him.  “Were you with a girl?”
                He paused, one sage green eye open to look at her, then slid
closed.  “Yeah,” he breathed.
                She stared at him in open dismay.  He was off having sex while
Ginger was in the dungeon?  How could he?  She hit him in the shoulder with the
wet rag.  He grumbled, and shifted.  She glared at him.  “You deserve it, you
bully,” she said heatedly.  “I can’t believe you’d do something like that right
now.”
                The eye opened again.  “Believe
it.”                                                                                
                She didn’t know what to say for a moment.  She was astonished
that her brother could be so… so…  “How can you be like that?  Don’t you care
about Ginger at all anymore?” she asked, her voice cracking.
                There was a short pause, and she wondered if he might have
fallen asleep, but then he spoke.  “There’s nothing to care about.”  His voice
was flat, uncaring, but not exactly cruel.  It just felt cruel.  How could he
say that?  How could he feel that way?  Was he just trying to be tough?  Did he
really think acting like he didn’t care made him more of a man?  It didn’t.  It
just didn't.
                She fumed, and contemplated leaving him to take care of
himself.  “I thought you two were friends…  Does that mean nothing to you?”
                He paused, seemed as if he would answer, then only sighed, and
said nothing, eyes closing as if to try to sleep.  She was angry enough not to
let him get away with that.  “You ass,” she huffed, and went back to mopping up
some of his sweat.  “I certainly hope it was worth it then.  Honestly…”
                He was silent on the matter.  She got him a cup of water, and
had him drink it.  When he finished and handed it back to her, she set it
down.  “I haven’t heard anything about Ginger,” she admitted under her breath. 
“I’m so worried about her.”
                He made a face, and rolled over, away from her.
                She stared at him.  Was that how it was?  He had seemed so
appalled the other day, so afraid.  But now he was indifferent?  Suddenly, he
didn’t care about Ginger?  Weren’t they supposed to be friends?  Shouldn’t
friends worry about one another?  What made him change his mind so fast?  How
could he not care?  Had he really changed so much?  Was fighting all he cared
about any more?
                “Fine,” she snapped, and marched away from him.  She sat on her
bed, and practiced ice spells—some ice would do his fever a bit of good, after
all, and it gave her something to do besides.
                Leto’s fever broke sometime that day, and he still wasn’t
completely well the next morning, but neither had been excused of that day’s
work, so the siblings went to it immediately anyway.  However, Raith’s first
question to her was after her brother’s health.  When she admitted that he
wasn’t well still, he immediately sent her back, and to collect her brother.
                They walked back to the compound together.  He went straight
back to bed, and she decided to clean up a bit while he was asleep.  They
didn’t have too much time for that ordinarily, so she had a lot to do.  She
cleaned everything, and swept, and when he still wasn’t awake, she took the
dirty clothes and went outside to wash them.  By the time she had hung them up
to dry near the house, he was awake.  She walked with him to the privy pit, in
case he got a dizzy spell again, and wandered away for a time to give him some
privacy, then walked back with him.  She got him some more water, and begged
the cook at the longhouse for a bit of broth, which was given grudgingly, and
she trotted back to him.  He drank it greedily, some of his appetite back.  She
washed the bowl and brought it back to the longhouse.  By the time she got
back, he was asleep again.
                She sighed to herself.  It was so boring sitting in here all
day.  She took all the bedding but his and washed that too, and hung it up to
dry after ringing it out really well.
                Her fingers were all wrinkled, but she decided to wash up
anyway.  By then, Leto was finally awake, and she sat next to him on his bed,
though he mostly ignored her.
                “You’re no fun anymore,” she commented.
                “I’m sick,” he objected.
                She made a face.  “In general.”
                “Hmm?”
                She shrugged a shoulder absently, beginning to wish that she
hadn’t brought it up.  “You’re kind of an ass.”
                “You’re kind of a bitch,” he said in the same tone.  She
flicked the tip of his ear with her finger.  He made a face.  She sighed, and
decided to drop the matter.  She held her palms out.  Flame sprang to life out
of nothing, dancing over her hands, giving a soft warmth and light.  Leto
watched it the same way someone might watch a venomous snake in the grass.  She
supposed she might do the same if it wasn’t under her control.
                “You remember the story you told me—about the knight and the
dragon in the sky?” she said.
                He considered for a moment.  “Oh.  Yes.”
                She smiled a little, and formed the flame with her will and
power.  The flame parted into two pyres.  The right one twisted, elongated,
changed into a dragon, with great wings, and a long neck and tail.  The left
was more difficult, but she managed; it altered into a knight, a banner flying,
a lance leveled.  She grinned.  Leto was watching with interest now, and not
just suspicion.  She carefully turned it toward him so he could see all of it. 
As he watched, she concentrated, and the knight began to charge.  The dragon
breathed flame, and it struck the shield.  The horse reared, the lance caught
in the dragon’s teeth.  The battle continued, and eventually the lance pierced
the beast’s throat, and the two molded into one flame again.  She clapped her
hands together, snuffing it out.
                “Pretty good, huh?” she said, quite pleased with herself.
                He kind of laughed.  “You’ve been practicing that,” he accused
her.
                She chuckled.  “Yeah, I admit it.”  Her lips curved into a
frown.  “Not all magic is practical, or even useful,” she commented.  She did
not say that manipulation of flame like that was an art form, and not every
mage could do it half so well as she.  She would be prideful of that, except
that she knew that most of the spells she was actually good at were not
especially useful or worthwhile.
                He laid back on the bed.  “Is anything?”
                She wondered if he might mean something else, but knew better
than to try to ask.  “Of course it is,” she said instead.  “I can do a pretty
neat ice sculpture too, but it melts fast.”
                “Can I see it?” he asked.  She wondered if he wasn’t just being
polite.  Regardless, she created her sculpture. 
                It started as a tiny pinprick of water, then snow, and it built
itself, shaping itself.  Cold winds caressed her hands as she worked, the magic
hovering over her open palms.  Building it up, shaping it.  “See?” she said,
urging him to look quickly.  He looked back at her, and certainly
seemedinterested to see it.  She had made a halla about the same size as her
head, from Ginger’s descriptions and her carving, and the pictures Ginger had
drawn in the dirt for her when she was younger.  One day, she’d be able to do
it in more detail, but it was accurate enough to tell what it was.  Deer-like,
with two spiraling horns on its head—Ginger had been emphatic that they weren’t
antler, but horn.
                “Can I touch it?” he asked.
                She shrugged one shoulder.  “I don’t see why not.”
                He reached forward, and touched the sculpture’s neck.  His
finger ran over its smooth, cold surface.  It was already beginning to melt. 
His finger came away wet.  She brought the sculpture to the water bucket, and
put it in it.  It could melt in that.
                She swiped her palms on her dress—she wore robes as little as
possible.  “Mama said that you were engaged once,” she said, over-emphasizing
the word.
                He groaned, and rolled over, his back toward her again.  She
rolled her eyes.  “So?” he muttered.
                She prodded him in the back.  “So.  What was she like?”
                “I don’t know—I was three,” he muttered.
                She frowned.  He was really no fun at all.  She knew he was
sick, but he was well enough to talk and carry on a conversation.  And he had
no sense of romanticism at all, really.  She really wanted to fall in love one
day.  But… she was a mage.  She didn’t think she’d ever meet anyone who could
see past that.  “What if you were to meet again, after all this time?” she said
dreamily.  “What was her name?”
                He groaned, wanting nothing more than for his little sister to
shut the bloody hell up.  “The girl I snuck out the other night to see’s name
is ‘Viscaria.’”
                She wrinkled her nose.  “Isn’t that a type of flower?”  She
wondered if he hadn’t been gallivanting somewhere and tripped in a patch of
flowers or something.
                “I don’t know,” he said.
                Varania had a strong desire to cover her face in hopelessness. 
Was her brother really this daft, or was he doing this on purpose?  “I think it
is.  I bet Mama knows what kind, and what it means.”
                Indeed, she did.  She told Varania that it meant “come dance
with me.”
                She had heard Leto laugh when she said that, but it hadn’t
sounded happy.  It had been a cold, lifeless, hollow sound that gave Varania a
chill to hear.
                The mage woke later that night, her lips cracked and her tongue
parched.  She tried to ignore it and simply go back to sleep, but found that
was impossible.  She tossed and turned a bit, then got up.  Her brother was
asleep, and Mieta had disappeared again, which happened from time to time. 
Varania never really questioned it, because she had been doing it since she was
three years old.  She was suspicious of what happened during those times, and
why, but neither sibling ever spoke of it—it was a rule unspoken.
                She heard her master’s dogs barking in the kennels, before the
servant watching over them shut them up.  She slipped out the door, and watched
a cat stalking a mouse down the path.  She watched the cat pounce, heard the
mouse’s little shriek of terror before it halted abruptly.
                She turned and walked barefoot down the path.  A chill wind had
picked up from the shore, tousling her hair and making her shiver in her
patched shift.  She went to the well, and heaved the lid off.  It made a loud
clanging noise, and she nearly dropped it.  She worked the lever and the
bucket, and finally quenched her thirst.  Satisfied, she replaced everything
and started on her way back.  She let out a yelp when she saw one of the rats
that so often plagued the slave quarters scurry by not three paces from her. 
She shivered, eyes glued to the spot she had last seen it.  She would need to
report it in the morning.  Rats brought disease, and killed infants, so they
would need to do something about it.
                She tread carefully, as if the rat might run across again.  She
gave a start when something stepped out of the shadow, and realized it was only
Erron.  Varania did not remember him fondly; he had been one of the instigators
in throwing stones at her, and he and Leto had been at one another’s throats
for years, though he was four years Leto’s senior.
                Erron smirked down at her—Varania was small for her age, though
she knew she wasn’t done growing as of yet.  “It’s late,” he commented dryly.
                “Go to hell, Erron,” she said, rather than engage in
conversation with him.  He was nothing but a bully, and talking to him was
wasted effort.  “I hope our master sells you to a plantation.  That’s where he
found you, after all.”  It was a sore subject on Erron’s behalf.  His mother
had been pregnant with him when Danarius had decided that she was very pretty,
and would make a good serving girl.
                Erron’s teeth clenched, and he shoved her roughly against the
wall of the hut.  “You bitch,” he said, and shoved her against it again when
she tried to step away.  Her heart pounded in fear.  She was forbidden to use
magic to harm someone, even in self-defense.
                Still, bullies fed off of fear.  “You’re nothing but a bully,
Erron.  And my brother will kick your ass again if I tell him to,” she snapped,
which was true enough.  She had come to Leto many times in tears because
someone had pushed her in mud, or were otherwise cruel to her.  And Leto’s eyes
had always narrowed dangerously, and he would come back to her looking self-
satisfied, while the offending party nursed bruises.
                “Your brother is a bitch too,” he snorted, and laughed aloud. 
“And wait ‘til he hears what I got to do to Ginger.”
                Varania shot him a contemptuous glare.  “You’re a bloody liar
and an idiot besides, Erron—go bother someone else.  We both have work in the
morning,” she said heatedly.
                He shoved her back against the wall instead, and laughed as he
kept her pinned there and she struggled.  Should she scream?  “You’ve gotten
kinda cute,” he told her, almost grudgingly, shoving a hand between her legs. 
She yelped, her thighs clamping tight together, but he was so much stronger
than she was.  Her eyes watered, and at his prying fingers, she screamed.
                Her scream echoed around the compound, and no one came out. 
Screams were too common.  Sometimes, the guards would rape the women, after
all—or even the men.  No one came.
                She started to cry, unsure of what to do.  She tried to fight
him off with her hands, struggling against him.  He threw her down to the
ground and before she could scramble away, he climbed over her, flipping her
onto her back.  She kicked, and fought, but without her magic, what could she
do?
                She cried out again, this time in terror.
                She heard Erron laughing as his hand went back between her
legs, shoving her shift up to her hips eagerly.
                Then he cried out suddenly in pain.  And everything happened so
fast that Varania barely understood what happened.  She saw her brother, and
Leto hauled Erron off of her, and punched him—once, twice.  He kept punching
him.  Erron fought back, of course.  He was older than Leto, but he wasn’t
enraged either.  But Leto was sick enough that he should not be up and about.
                The pair brawled, yelling taunts at one another, then the
taunts just gave way to grunts and noises of pain until Leto knocked Erron back
down to the ground.  His foot ground aggressively into the other’s neck. 
Leto’s eyes blazed with barely controlled rage.  “Name one reason I shouldn’t
kill you,” he hissed, but stepped too hard on Erron’s neck for him to do
anything but gasp in reply.
                “Leto,” Varania cried.  “Don’t…”
                Leto looked back at her.  She stood in her shift, trembling,
and he stepped away from Erron, and embraced his little sister.  She held on to
him tightly, sobbing into his shoulder.  He glared contemptuously back at
Erron, who sat nursing his bloodied lip and broken nose.  The other seemed to
debate his chances, then scampered away.
                “Are you okay, ‘Nia?” he asked her, his voice gentle and
comforting.
                She nodded her head against his shoulder, trying to hide her
tears.  She had almost been…  She shivered, holding on to him tighter still. 
She inhaled deeply.  He smelled like stale and new sweat, like freshly churned
earth and vaguely of blood.  “Thank you,” she told him.  Her voice cracked, and
she sobbed, and he held her tighter still.  She felt like, if her big brother
could keep holding her, she would be safe forever.
***** Remorseless *****
Chapter Summary
     Leto learns what it is like to truly hate and despise someone while
     Danarius reminisces about Roschelle.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Cillian woke to a stirring in the bed.  He rolled and turned to
look at Roschelle, already awake.  The grey light of morning was shining
through the window.  Why hadn’t the servants closed the drapes?  But he looked
at Roschelle as she leaned forward, and suddenly remembered precisely why.
                Her small, firm breasts mashed against his chest when she
kissed him, pushing him back down against the pillows.  She cuddled up to his
side comfortably, one of her legs draped over him casually.  “Were you named
after someone in your family?” she inquired.  “Cillian.”  When Roschelle spoke
his name, she liked to roll the l’s over her tongue like an exotic chocolate,
pronouncing it—or, more accurately, over-pronouncing it—like it was a word that
had more meaning than it seemed.
                He looked up at the ceiling.  “No,” he said.  It was a touchy
subject for him, but it was Roschelle talking, and he would let the matter
slide.  For her, he had found himself willing to do more and more things he
would not ordinary want to do—attend ballets for example.
                She leaned her head against his shoulder and he shifted to
better accommodate her slender frame.  Not so slender soon, he hoped, thinking
of the child growing in her womb.  It was appropriate for her to gain some
weight to be healthy during that phase, and he wanted her to be nothing but
healthy.  “I was named after my great aunt,” she continued.  “But perhaps you
were named after an historic figure?  Is there such a person?”
                He sighed inwardly.  “No,” he answered bluntly.
                She made a face.  “So… your parents just… liked the sound of
the name?”
                He sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment.  “Yes.  There’s no
story to it, no great person whose namesake they bestowed on me.  It’s a name
without a meaning or a purpose.”
                “Make your own meaning, and your own purpose.”  She leaned up,
and smiled.  “Cillian.”  She kissed him.  “Your parents gave you a great gift: 
No one predates you, and you are in no one’s shadow because of your name.”
                He supposed he could look at it that way, but somehow it still
left him feeling raw.  His brother was named after the first magister in their
family line—ironic, as he was born without the gift.  “I… suppose,” he said.
                “Tell me about your parents.  I never got to meet them,” she
lamented.
                Cillian was silent for a moment.  “My mother died when I was a
twelve.”  He sighed.  “A wasting disease.  She just… could never get better.”
                “I’m sorry,” Roschelle said, and meant it.
                The mage sighed, and pushed his face into her hair, seeking
comfort there.  It was an old wound, watching his mother’s life fade away at
the dawn of his teenage years.  “My father…  I barely knew the man.”
                “You did things with him, though,” she objected gently.  “He
taught you some magic, didn’t he?  And you both went hunting together.”
                His eyes closed.  “Everyone brings up the hunting,” he
whispered, thinking back on that bright spring morning.
                “But it’s true?”
                “Yes.  He gave me some tutelage on magic.  But I learned most
of it when I apprenticed under another magister.”  He frowned.  “And we did
hunt together.  But we didn’t really… talk.  No, I didn’t know him at all.” 
Sometimes, they would go on large hunts, with whole hunting parties—sometimes
family friends or relatives, knights, an assortment of slaves.  Most of the
time, though, it was on their land, and Cillian had always preferred to not be
so encumbered, and his father often felt much the same.
                She hugged him.  “I…  I’m sorry, Cillian.”  He wanted to say
something, anything, but no words would come.  But he knew she would ask if he
said nothing.  Yet still he said nothing, for nothing came to mind, and then
she asked:  “How did he die?”
                Cillian Danarius did not want to talk about it.  He hated
talking about it, because so few people ever believed him about it, even his
own family.  But…  He really couldn’t deny her anything, could he?  “A hunting
accident.  That’s what they called it.”  He kind of laughed—a harsh sound that
wasn’t remotely merry.  “Some people say I killed him.  I don’t feel like
‘accident’ does it any justice though, and I never had a hand in it—not
really.  And in some ways, maybe I did.”  He sighed, and knew he needed more of
an explanation than that.  “My father was always insistent that if I learned
nothing of magic, the most useful thing to know was healing magic.  Well, that
seemed, well, boring to a young boy—and who could blame me for feeling that
way?”
                “Is it boring?” she inquired.
                He shrugged.  “I thought so.  Hurling fireballs was more
interesting, to be sure.”  He paused to gather his thoughts.  “So I only knew
the most rudimentary of healing spells, of course.”  He made a face.  “At
Vinewood Manor, we used to have a flock of sheep—along with the grape vines,
horses, and cattle…”
                “’Used to’?”
                “That’s part of the story,” he assured her.  He cleared his
throat, and went on.  “We found signs of a bear near the estate.  Unusual, but
not unprecedented.  Anyway, one morning, we found a dead lamb in the
field—mostly eaten.  We sent a couple of the slaves to watch for animals.”  He
kind of laughed.  “Wolves, maybe they could have scared off—or a cat.  But the
bear attacked them, and they ran.”  He kind of laughed.  “I don’t even blame
them.”  He shifted.  “Anyway, the bear killed another of the sheep, and drug
its corpse off into the wood that time.  My father and I, upon hearing about
the incident, decided to track it down and kill it.  It seemed reasonable at
the time.”  He paused.  “We were both skilled hunters, trackers, both
accomplished mages.”  He sighed.  “So we had our horses saddled, and we went
out alone in search of this bear—thinking it would just be a bit of sport.”
                She had gone utterly silent as she listened to the story, but
he paused for a long time, as if he were reluctant to go on.  Roschelle peered
up at him.  “And the bear?”
                He swallowed.  His throat felt dry for some reason.  “The
bear…” he echoed.  “Well, we were tracking it, and talking to one another—not
about anything really.  I guess just devising strategies for dealing with the
creature—I don’t really remember anymore.”  He was quiet again for a moment,
appreciating the warmth of his wife’s body against him and the medium of
comfort it brought as he delved into dark memories.  “I remember…  I remember
hearing something in the forest—a crashing noise.  I turned to look and a stag
burst from the brush, nearly bowling right into my father’s horse.  The stag
bounded away, but the horse panicked, and threw my father—and ran.  My own
horse was unsteady, but I controlled it, and vaulted from the saddle.”  He held
her closer for a moment.  “He…”  Cillian didn’t know if he could say it all
aloud again, but the words just tumbled out.  “His neck was lying awkwardly,
and blood covered his hair, and ran down his face.  When I knelt beside him,
and cried for him to say something, to look at me—to squeeze my hand…  Nothing
happened.  When he had been thrown—his head had hit a rock—a big boulder of a
thing, actually.  Blood was all over it.  I thought he had died instantly, but
I swear:  His eyes turned and looked at me, and he tried to speak.  He tried to
say something!”  He didn’t know how he could ever convey the importance of
those words to someone else.  What had his father meant to say?  What were his
final, unspoken words?  “I don’t know what he tried to say.  But…  If I had
known at the time how to heal…”
                Roschelle touched his arm gently, and then held him tight. 
“You couldn’t have stopped the horse from throwing him, or the stag from
frightening the horse.”
                He knew that.  But maybe he could have still saved his father. 
Maybe then his father would not have died in his arms, and he would not have
had to walk back, his horse carrying his father’s broken corpse, bloodied and
unseeing—the remnants of the innocence of his childhood in tatters.  “The
bear’s skin is the rug on the floor.  And I had all the sheep slaughtered,” he
added.
                “You must have been eating mutton for a fortnight,” she
commented.
                He actually laughed.  “There are a surprising amount of ways in
which mutton can be prepared.  I sent most of it to the servants and the
slaves, though.”  He paused.  “I mostly dined on the bear.”
                “I’ve never had bear steak,” she commented, kissing his neck.
                “The next time I go hunting, I’ll hunt bear.  You’ll like it,”
he told her.
 
                Danarius woke with a start, and leaned back in the bed.  A
dream of a memory, nothing more—haunting though it was.  Would Roschelle’s
memory ever leave him be?  He didn’t think so, and a part of him didn’t really
want it to.  Strange thing—memories.  He barely remembered his mother, just a
series of events, but the woman herself?  Not especially.  And his father?  He
remembered him better, but the image of his corpse was more firmly burned into
his mind than that of him living.  Roschelle, though—his memory of her was as
if she had died yesterday, and sometimes his grief of equal value.
                He had never had a chance to hunt a bear for Roschelle.  She
had died before he could manage the trip.  He had thought…  He had thought that
they had all the time in the world.  What a fool he had been.  If he had known
she would die in childbirth, he never would have let her carry it to term. 
There were many things he would have done differently, in fact.
 
                He had been bragging to the other boys for days about taking
that red-headed bitch in the dungeons.  The others hadn’t gotten there in time,
so it was all to him, and he liked to talk about the way she screamed and
cried, especially after she had humiliated him so many times in the training
grounds.  She hadn’t been so arrogant then, had she?
                He had hit her, and watched her small breast bruise under the
grip he applied to it.  He bragged about how she had cried out when he wrenched
on her nipple, and how she sobbed when he took her like a dog.
                He told the other boys that she had sucked his cock too, but
honestly, he had been too afraid to try that—not that he would admit to that
aloud, no one would ever say otherwise!  She had bared her teeth when he had
tried, and he had no doubt in his mind that she would bite down until her teeth
touched if he did.
                Still, he had given it to the bitch good, for all the times she
had kicked him, hit him, walloped him with those swords, and called him names
with that funny accent of hers.
                Lot of good all that did her now.  It was satisfying to see her
tied up, naked and helpless, and waiting for him.  She may have pretended not
to like it, but he knew better.  That was part of the game, after all.  She had
to keep up appearances—couldn’t let anyone know she secretly liked it, but that
was all right with him; he knew how to treat her, and dominate her.  In the
end, she was just a whore really.
                He saw Leto, and wondered if he knew.  He had been sick the
past couple of days, after all.  He had never liked the bastard, either.  The
little free-born brat thought he was better than they were.  He had started off
with a better advantage to come with that smug attitude (that a real knight had
given him a dagger and that he came from Qunari territory, and they were great
warriors), and he was quick.  Erron felt like he could beat his pretty face in
though.  He had just been taken off-guard the other night, that was all.  It
wasn’t fair attacking someone from behind unawares like that.  His nose had
been set the morning after, but it was healing crooked, he feared.  Fucking
bastard Leto, anyway.
                Heh—maybe Leto was just as much of a whore as that bitch Ginger
was.  Was that it?  He thought Leto belonged more in a whorehouse than the
arena, and said so, to the laughter of his friends.
                He knew Leto had heard him, but he walked on like he hadn’t. 
That annoyed Erron—a lot actually.  In the past, he had always been able to
provoke him, at least to temper if not to attack.  And Erron had learned,
quickly, to have his friends gang up on the Seheron boy.  Erron bellowed,
“Where do you think you’re going, whore?”
                Leto froze, fingers clenching, then continued to the armory. 
Erron didn’t like being ignored.  His eyes narrowed with contempt.  His sister,
Raenya, had commented to him that she rather liked the way Leto looked, but had
also said, with a giggle, that so did the magister.  Erron had inquired what
she meant, and she had said that when she was serving food at a ball, and Leto
had been with her, how their master had looked at him.  Maybe Leto was taking
it from the magister.  It made sense to Erron.  Why else would he keep getting
called into the manor, and then go missing for two days?  Maybe he hadn’t been
sick, maybe he had been in bed, sure… but not sick.
                Whore.
                He made mention of his new theory to his friends, who quickly
accepted it as a fact, saying that it made perfect sense, that it had to be
true.  Whether it was or not made no difference; it was a good story, a fine
tale to spin about the brat from Seheron.
                As Leto came reluctantly back to the ring, waiting for Master
Bruce, a page came instead, before the master arrived.  He went right up to
Leto, and said something.  The elf showed no emotion at all as the page relayed
his message, then trotted off.  Erron watched the other sigh, and slog off
toward the mansion, after he put the sword away.
                Erron laughed, loudly.  “And the whore is called back to bed?”
he hollered after Leto.  He saw his fingers clench, but he didn’t look back. 
The others hooted, laughing, mocking.  Erron snorted.  He must be right. 
Surely, he’d do something about it otherwise.
                Master Bruce showed up next, and Erron took it upon himself to
tell him where Leto had gone.  He left out his own suspicions, and just said
that a page had come and summoned Leto to the manor.  Some of his friends
snickered at the inside joke.  Bruce glanced toward the manor, then nodded.  He
told the assembled boys that they were going to help train the new boy—a nine-
year old child, by demonstration.
                They did so, and the lesson was well under way by the time Leto
came back, his head down.  He trudged into the armory, and Erron saw the back
of his tunic, which was bloodied.  Punished for something?  For what?  He
glowered, recalling that their master always had the Seheron boy healed after a
taste of the whip.  The blood was fresh, but the wounds would be gone, he bet,
or would be later today.  Erron thought condescendingly, Did he not scream
loudly enough in bed?
                Leto came back out shortly, armed and armored, looking like he
would rather be almost anywhere else.  Bruce called him into the ring, and told
him to spar with Erron.  He told Erron to be the aggressor, and Leto was to
defend.  The point would be to not give ground, and force the aggressor to move
where he wanted him to, or vice versa if it could be managed.
                Leto stretched his arms, looking bored as he hefted up the
great sword.  Erron swiped at his brow with his sleeve, rolling the shoulder
that held the shield until it popped.  Bring it on.  He stood, and waited for
Leto to enter.  The big sword wasn’t a weapon for defending, not really.  Erron
grinned with confidence.  In this, he would win.  In this, he was confident,
and the whore was going to land on his ass and stare up at him in defeat.  It
happened frequently enough before when Leto had to defend.  The Seheron boy
just couldn’t defend very well with nothing but those big two-handed weapons;
they were not things of defense.
                “Hey, whore,” Erron spat.  He saw Leto’s brow draw down in a
glower.  “You like it from behind?”  He charged toward him.  Leto didn’t move,
but did draw the sword up to block, swinging hard—too hard.  His shoulder
caught the blade, and the force of the blow knocked him backwards, but beneath,
his armor was unharmed.  He kind of laughed a little—Leto was pissed.
                They exchanged a flurry of blows, stepping and side-stepping, a
dance of blades.  The clang of metal, their master calling out directions,
insisting that Erron needed to keep his shield a bit higher.  No matter—he knew
what he was doing.
                Erron brought his sword down.  Leto caught it on the cross
guard, and for a moment, they were locked in place, each pushing against the
other to give ground.  “You know that bitch, Ginger?” he said, voice so low
only Leto would hear it.  Erron grinned.  “I gave it to her hard from
behind—just like you take it, whore.”
                He watched rage fill Leto’s eyes, contort his face.  He heard
him scream, wordless in a fury, the tide of his rage finally breaking free of
him like a broken dam.  He broke the block and slashed forward, mercilessly,
and swung again.  Erron could barely block in time.
                “Leto—you’re the defender!” Master Bruce was shouting above the
din of the clash of swords.  His tone was angry.  Leto was furious.
                “You mother-fucking bastard,” Leto hissed, venom dripping from
his every word.  The sword swung again.  Erron caught it with the shield.  A
quick movement, a turn of Leto’s blade, and his own sword flew from his hand,
and he couldn’t remember how he had lost it.
                “Stop,” Bruce boomed.
                Leto didn’t even seem to hear him.  Erron looked up, eyes
widening in what he realized…  What he knew…
                Leto didn’t see or hear anything but Erron.  Nothing else
seemed to exist, and as the sword came down, it felt like an eternity, and that
Erron was frozen in place, unable to move, to blink, to breathe.  The sword
came down so slowly, and it felt like it would never reach him, like it
couldn’t reach him.
                No, this couldn’t be the way he died.  It just couldn’t be. 
This bastard killed him?  He would die because of some pretty boy that was
younger than he was got mad at him?  He couldn’t take a little teasing?  They
were just… they were just having fun.  That was all.  It wasn’t worth getting
so angry about, surely…  He had never meant any of it.  He had just thought… 
He didn’t really think Leto was…
                The sword came down.
                It struck.  The time had long since passed when they practiced
with blunted weapons.  They wore armor, of course, but mostly it was a test of
their own skill.  Usually, it wasn’t dangerous.  But Leto wasn’t practicing. 
He was trying to kill him, Erron realized, too late.
                The blade had found a chink in the armor, at the elbow.  Erron
felt everything.  He felt it slice through the leather padding, felt it slice
into his skin, through the muscle, cleaving the bone.  He felt blood spill out
of him, felt his heart pounding and pumping the blood out of him treacherously.
                He heard a child scream, heard someone else curse.  He stared
upward, and couldn’t remember having fallen onto his back.  When had that
happened?  Leto was staring down at him, glaring at him with all the
contemptible hatred he could muster, from the very fiber of his being—as if
Erron were the only thing in the world the boy had ever hated.  There is a
special kind of hatred when a person does not particularly hate anything, and
then finally finds something to hate; a special kind of way that that person
hates.  It is a righteous hate with lost innocence—and a hatred of itself, for
who does not hate the one who taught them the reason to hate?  He stared at him
as if Erron were a vile thing, a stain upon the earth.
                His blood stained the earth.
                Funny, he felt so dizzy.  He felt… light, buoyant even.  He was
aware of other people rushing toward him, of someone getting his armor off, and
trying to make a tourniquet.  Too late, he thought.
                He felt… cold.
                His eyes drifted back to Leto, who hadn’t moved.  Still held
the bloodied sword in fact, and showed no sign of remorse on his face.  A face
that, he realized for the very first time, had seen entirely too much for his
age, had been through entirely too much. 
                And he had never been anyone’s whore.
Chapter End Notes
     Wrote the word "whore" a lot here.
     I decided to make "Danarius" his last name, because the more I looked
     at and said the word, it sounded like a last name rather than a first
     name that he just prefers to go by. Besides, it makes it really easy
     to differentiate his past/present. If you don't like it, just ignore
     it.
***** Pain and Punishment *****
Chapter Summary
     The little family is ragged and hurt, but through it all love one
     another very much, faith in each other never faltering, always
     wanting to do their best for their family.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                It was impossible not to have heard about it—everyone was
talking about how her son had killed another slave.  She had heard so many
stories by the end of the day, she feared which might be true.  She had heard
that he wasn’t being punished for it, that he was being killed for it, that he
was being sold to someone else.  They obviously weren’t all true—though she
feared some more so than others.
                She ran all the way home, and was relieved to see him sitting
on the bed.  He was shaking, she noticed, slightly:  A distinct tremble
throughout his body.
                She went to her son and he looked up at her, still shaking. 
“Are you all right?” she asked him, knowing that nothing could ever be all
right.
                He nodded once, looking back down.  “I’m fine,” he lied.
                She bit her lip.  “Let me get you something to eat.”  She
turned to go, but he caught her sleeve.
                “No,” he insisted, shaking his head.  “I won’t be able to keep
it down.”  He spoke as if it pained him to do so.
                She stared at him, wondering what had been done to him.  Her
heart ached for him.  A mother shouldn’t allow her children to wallow in such
misery.  She wanted to do something—anything.  She started to embrace him, and
he hissed, as if in pain.  Her eyebrows raised in alarm, and she stepped back. 
“Darling, what’s--?”
                “I have three broken ribs,” he confided, still shaking
slightly.  As he tilted his face and looked at her, she saw a dark bruise
across his face, fresh.  “And I can’t lie down because… twenty-seven lashes.” 
His words were broken by pain.  For the first time, she glanced at his back,
and saw the blood that had soaked through his tunic.
                She paled a bit.  She had no bandages, but her eyes fell to the
spare bed, with its freshly washed sheets.  She went to it, ripping off the
sheet.
                “Mother, don’t,” he said, but he was helpless to stop her, and
she tore the sheet to strips, and helped him, gently, out of the tunic.  He was
so covered in welts and bruises that it made her want to cry to see her only
son like this.  The broken ribs were the important thing, and she had had to
tend to Calias once in the distant past when he had hurt his ribs.  It felt
like a lifetime ago, like it had happened to someone else, so long had she been
a slave. 
                She fetched some water, as swiftly as she could, and cleaned
the bloodied wounds, quickly but tenderly.  She wound the makeshift bandages
around his chest, gently, but firmly, making him gasp and cringe.  She saw her
son’s eyes water, and she felt hers begin to water as well.  It pained a mother
to see her child in pain, no matter their age.
                She didn’t want to see him like this.  Her heart ached for it. 
Maybe when Varania came back, she could…
                “Varania,” she said, looking to the door.  Her mageborn
daughter could heal all of this—why hadn’t she considered it?
                Leto gave a slight shake of the head.  “She’s confined to a
room in the manor,” he whispered.  “Can’t heal me until tomorrow night.”
                His punishment was to live with the pain until then, she
realized.  That was why they kept her daughter locked away.  Varania wouldn’t
be able to bear seeing her brother, who she so adored, in such pain.  As she
wound the bandages firmly around his ribcage, she thought, fourteen years. 
They had been here for fourteen years.
                She should be finding a husband for Varania.  She should be
seeing Leto married to Lura and looking forward to grandchildren.  Instead…
instead…
                “Mother…” Leto said, reaching out to her.  “Don’t cry.”
                She hadn’t realized that she had started crying, but she was. 
She couldn’t bear this.  She couldn’t bear that they should be here, that
anyone should have to live like this.  She wiped at her face, sniffing, holding
back her tears.  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, tying off the bandage, and
getting to work on the rest of his back, which was more difficult.  “I just…
hate seeing you in pain.”  In the end, she just had to dress the wounds as much
as she could, and help her son lay down on his back, because he couldn’t lay on
his stomach or side.  Every movement was an agony for him, though, and she knew
it hurt him to so little as breathe.
                His eyes shifted away.  “It won’t be for long,” he said, his
voice soft.
                She shook her head.  “Too long.”
                He snorted, and gave her a half-smile.  “Mother, if I had
killed someone in Seheron if we were free…”  He took a labored breath, then
another.  “It would be a crime.  I got off easy, don’t you think?”
                She cupped his cheek tenderly, wondering how he could smile for
her after all this.  She could barely smile for her children half the time. 
Why should he have to be the strong one?  He was a man yet, but she was the
parent.  It should be her responsibility, not his—never his.  “I’m sorry,
baby,” she told him, as if he were a child again instead of nearly eighteen. 
He looked up at her, and in her eyes, she saw him as a three-year old again. 
It made her eyes water to think of how hurt he was.  “I’m sorry I haven’t been
a good mother to you.”
                He seemed saddened to hear her say that.  “Mama, you’ve done
the best you could,” he said, and she smiled to hear him say ‘Mama’ again,
despite herself.  “And I love you.”
                She would hug him if it wouldn’t hurt him.  She kissed his
cheek instead, and he made a face, but seemed to generally accept it.  “I love
you, my son.”  She combed his pretty ebony hair off of his face with her
fingers.  “What happened—or are you not well enough to talk?”
                He sighed, gently though.  “I was just… really angry,” he
said.  “It was Erron.  He’s done nothing but mock and ridicule me since we came
here, and…  I’m so sorry, Mother.”  He paused frequently to breathe, and
flinched occasionally as he spoke.  She knew there was more to the tale, but
she would leave him his story.  If he wanted to tell her all of it, one day he
would.  Until then, she would leave it be.
                She had to leave him, though reluctantly; she was famished. 
They never fed them enough.
                Maybe… it was a training accident.  She didn’t know all the
details, exactly; it was an accident, and he had been too angry to properly
control himself?  As awful as it was, she was glad that it wasn’t her son that
had died.
                Though, she had counted thirty strikes on his back, not 27.  A
miscount?  Or had the extra three been for a different infraction?  She had no
doubt that her son kept things from her; he was almost 18.  If he wasn’t
keeping something from her, she’d be astonished.
                Still…  She left him, both to eat and because he probably just
wanted to sleep.  As she ate, alone and in silence, Erron’s mother and sister
giving her a vicious glare from across the room, she thought.  The extra three
could be for losing a match the other day.  That seemed likely enough.
                Her son was hurt.  His back was covered in slashes, and it made
her want to cry to think of it.  She tried to eat quickly, knowing full well
that she needed to eat, but scarcely tasting any of it.  Before she had been
enslaved, she hadn’t thought a body could subsist on the meager amounts of food
they gave them.  Rice and sometimes beans, and once a day a bowl of some
unidentifiable-looking brown liquid they called a soup that was composed
entirely of scraps and perhaps occasionally food that was beginning to turn. 
They were fed little better than most swine.
                Thinking about it too deeply sometimes made her weep.  How had
her children grown on this diet?  How?  How did anyone grow on this diet?  The
food, the living conditions, the patched, cheaply made clothing they counted
themselves fortunate to have, and her son hurt on top of it all, and nothing at
all she could do.  Not take him to a healer, not even properly care for the
open wounds.
                “I’ve known you for almost fifteen years now, and I don’t think
I’ve seen you smile once, except to your children,” a voice said from behind
her.  When Mieta looked up, she saw that it was Marlance.  The statement was
true; slavery had drained the life, the song, and the dance, from Mieta in a
way that nothing else could have hoped to, and all her smiles had felt oddly
vacant since coming to the Imperium.
                Mieta looked at the woman, and felt her heart hang heavy even
as her voice rang like a hollow bell.  “I’ll die in slavery.  And my children
will die in slavery.  How could anyone smile?”  It was a mystery to her that
despite all of this, some of them didn’t seem to care about it.  Was it truly
that they just didn’t know any better?  Could that really be all there was to
it?  She just couldn’t make herself believe it though.
                The woman looked at her for a long time, as if contemplating
something.  “It’s not as bad as you think,” she finally said, and sat down
beside her on the old bench.  It creaked slightly at the added weight, but it
wouldn’t give, not today anyway.
                Mieta stared at her, incredulous.  “How can you say that?”  She
had no words to convey her astonishment, the horror of that statement.  How
could it not be “as bad as you think”?
                Marlance shifted in her seat, and to Mieta it seemed as if the
woman were far away, in another place, another time.  She began to speak, “I
was born on a farm in the country.  We were not fed; we were given some seed
and a bit of land, and told to farm it on our own time.  Our own time marked
the hours we should have spent asleep.  We ate very little, because there was
simply very little food.  When I was nine, I was sold to a grape plantation,
and made wine.  We ate from the same trough as the dogs--I remember having to
fight over scraps with the dogs.  When I became a woman, at thirteen, my master
made the men mount me until I was begot with child.  They refer to it as
‘breeding.’  Some of the men refused; they were beaten until they submitted.” 
It was no huge secret that elves didn’t breed as quickly as humans.  For Mieta
to have had two so close in age was a rarity.  Pairing elven women with
multiple male partners was considered the “solution” to this “problem”.  And
didn’t Mieta know the truth of that.  Marlance’s voice was low and grave, and
did not carry far beyond Mieta’s ears.  No one else was listening; it was a
story everyone knew even if they hadn’t heard it.  It was quite familiar to all
of them, in one way or another.  “When I was older, I was considered pretty,
and I came here to be a serving girl.  I had a child, and I was not so
fortunate as to have my child come with me.  I imagine that she’s still there,
fighting over spoiled meat with a dog, getting raped by the overseer, and
making wine.”  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Mieta was shocked
to silence, not knowing what to say.  She imagined that there simply wasn’t
anything to say.
                Marlance looked at her, and raised a delicately arched
eyebrow.  “Your children will not outlive their usefulness and be sent to the
mines to work until they die.  Your daughter is a mage and will never be seen
as anything but valuable as a slave, and your son is a skilled swordsman.  Once
he has outlived his usefulness as a gladiator, yes, he’ll be sent to Seheron to
fight the Qunari, but is that so much worse than working a quarry until he
simply drops of exhaustion and dies?  And on top of that, you have a skill—a
learned trade; you will never fear for yourself the same way nearly everyone
else does.”  She rose, and her voice was still quiet, but somehow strong.  “So
stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
                Mieta’s eyes opened wide, not knowing at all what to say, how
to react.  Should she apologize for her actions?  Should she tell Marlance she
was sorry to hear her tale, and about her daughter?  Should she simply stay
quiet, and do nothing?
                More importantly, should she be more grateful for where they
had ended up?  Things could have so easily gone any other way.  She and Leto
could have been separated.  It could have happened so easily.  She might be
like Marlance, who ended up in one place while always fearing for her child,
and what became of them.  She had to be grateful, all those years ago, that
Leto had always looked a bit younger than he was.
                She remembered, when they were all separated and put in
different warehouses, that one of the first things they had done was separate
family groups.  But Leto had been too young.  They had said that he likely
wouldn’t survive if he were separated from her.  Lura had been simply
coincidence—maybe they had assumed the same.  There were so many things that
could have gone wrong.  She could have been raped on the march.  Being pregnant
had saved her from that; there had been plenty of other women who weren’t
spared after all.
                She returned quickly, though, despite that the others had begun
to ask her about her son, and the circumstances around it more importantly. 
She replaced the water in the bucket she kept in the house, and drank a bit
herself.  Leto couldn’t sit up to drink from the cup, so she wet another rag,
and ran it over his lips, drizzling a bit in his mouth.  No doubt, he thought
it very undignified, but he could deal with it; he had to drink something, and
he did admit that his throat was parched.
                She had a bowl of broth for her son, but he was dead asleep by
the time she had come back.  She was reluctant to wake him, so put the bowl on
the dresser, and covered it, somewhere within easy reach.
                She worried for her children, for both of them.
                She was loathe to part from Leto that morning, but she made
sure he swallowed the broth, and had water nearby so he didn’t have to move too
much, as well as a chamber pot, just in case.
                “I’m so tired of bed rest,” he muttered.  She knew it was meant
light-heartedly, but she just wanted to cry hearing him say it.  He wouldn’t
have killed someone if he wasn’t fighting.  If he weren’t a slave.  If she had
been strong enough to leave her husband, and take him north like she should
have. 
                If, if, if!
 
                She hurried home, running over the path in her worry, unable to
restrain herself to a more mature pace.  Something about the very air felt
wrong.  She had sensed it all day, a sense of something sinister at work,
something vile, like a taste in her mouth she could not banish.
                She slowed when she saw the slaves rushing by, giving the small
gathered group a wide berth as they headed into the compound, and tried not to
look.
                She froze in her tracks when she saw that it was her children,
and the magister and his apprentice.  Leto was in obvious pain; she could see
it even from this distance, his back straight so as not to crunch his ribcage,
but keeping it straight hurt his back.  He was naked to the waist, with nothing
but the bloodied bandage around his ribs on—the dressings on his back were gone
as well.
                Mieta saw Varania, too, between the two magisters.  Raith had a
hold of her wrist, and it looked like he was hurting her.  Raith shoved her
forward, and Danarius issued a command—to heal him, probably.
                She saw the way Varania stumbled, and lost her balance.  The
young girl fell to her knees, and Mieta found herself hurrying forward again. 
Her hair was tangled, her skin pale, and she looked sick.  Had…  No, it
couldn’t be…
                The girl wiped at her face and stumbled forward again.  Leto
caught her as she started to fall, and the movement caused him pain.  She
hauled herself up, trying to be strong.  She put her hands, carefully, just a
few inches from his chest.  Her healing magic was blue, the color of a clear,
still lake in the summer, and glowed like a fire.  It danced from her fingers,
burrowing into his chest, past the bandages.  It didn’t hurt, but setting the
bone did, pushing all the pieces into place did.  His teeth gritted, eyes
tightly closed against the pain.  She knew when the girl had finished, because
they both sighed in evident relief.
                Mieta was close enough now to hear what was being said clearly,
even past the beating drum of her heart.  “His back too—and don’t you dare let
it scar,” Danarius hissed at her.  “Use blood magic if you have to, but don’t
let it scar.”
                Varania bit back a sob, and nodded her consent.  She put
everything she had into the magic, as she moved to Leto’s back.  Sweat tracked
down her face in concentration, and the magic didn’t flow so much as was pushed
from her, everything that she had, everything that she was.
                It wasn’t enough, apparently.  Mieta couldn’t see from the
angle she watched from, but the mages could.  “There’s scarring—fix it,” Raith
barked.
                She looked at the two desperately.  “But, Master, I haven’t the
skill…”
                His eyes narrowed, dangerously.  He moved forward, as if to
strike her.  To Mieta’s surprise and horror, Leto stepped between them, keeping
his sister behind him, away from their master—always the big brother shielding
his baby sister from harm.  Danarius glared at him.  Leto averted his eyes, but
didn’t back down.
                But then the mage began to laugh, as if deeply amused by
something.  “Really, boy?  Does your sister mean so much to you?” he mused. 
“Varania.”
                She cringed, and tried to step around her brother.  He grabbed
onto her, hauling her back, shoving her backwards.  She let out a small yelp,
tripping over something, maybe her own feet, and fell onto her bottom.  Though
none of them could truly appreciate it, it was exactly the position the four
were in when Danarius had decreed Leto should be trained for the arena.
                “Varania, extend your hand,” the mage commanded.  Mieta saw the
knife in his hand.  The blade glinted in the dying light.
                Leto’s gaze flicked to it too.  “Don’t,” he hissed to his
sister.
                She held her arms close to herself, and looked up at her
brother, and shook her head, and mouthed something to him.  Mieta could imagine
what it was—It’s not worth it.  She held out her left arm, trembling so much
that even Mieta could see it from this distance.  The blade was quick, precise,
and the slash to her forearm coated the blade.
                Magic sprang from the wound like a spring, rushing over her. 
Not blue this time, but red and sinister.  Leto helped her to stand back up,
and she, weeping, poured the blood magic into the healing magic, mixing what
should never be.  But blood magic just fueled other abilities, Varania had once
commented.  She had said that she supposed there were blood magic-specific
spells, but that wasn’t all it was used for.
                When she stopped, Mieta noticed that the blood on her arm had
sizzled and evaporated, and she no longer bled.  Had the healing magic, by
default, extended to her as well?
                Danarius backhanded Leto—hard enough to knock him back a pace,
then turned and left.  Though the previous nasty bruise that had marred his
cheek was gone, a red mark from the slap took its place.  Mieta rushed to her
children.  Varania touched his cheek, tenderly.  A ring had cut into his face,
and blood was running down his cheek.
                “He’ll want me to heal that too,” she said quietly, and he said
nothing as she healed the cut.  It didn’t even leave a scar.  She was
trembling, and so pale.
                Mieta didn’t even know what to say when her two children looked
at her, with such horrible pain in their eyes.
                “Am I… does that make me a blood mage?” she asked, sobbing, but
instead of going to Mieta, she fell against her brother’s chest.
                “No,” he said gently.  Her legs gave out—either from the blood
loss, the stress of the day, or just everything.  Leto blinked in surprise, and
heaved her upward, as if she weighed nothing.  He cradled her in his arms like
he had when she was an infant, and the poor thing just kept crying.
                Mieta looked at her, really looked at her.  Her eyes were
hollow, as if she hadn’t slept, and red as if she had been crying.  And she had
seen how frightened she had been.  Had she been…?  Mieta had seen dozens of
women raped when she had been captured.  She had been pregnant enough that no
one had been horribly interested in her, but that hadn’t excused her from
seeing it, and trying to comfort the victims.
                Who? she wondered, though dared not ask.  This wasn’t the time
for questions.  Right now, getting the girl to bed would be the best thing for
her.  She walked beside her son, and he was deathly silent throughout the walk
back.  Mieta cleaned the blood off of Varania, and Leto pulled himself out of
the wrappings, and into a shirt.  He commented that he was going to go to eat,
but Varania snatched his hand as he moved by.  She stared up at him with her
big, haunted eyes.  Tears tracked down her face.
                “Please stay,” she whispered to him, drawing him closer.  He
paused, and moved toward her.  Mieta knew he was hungry.  Knew he hadn’t eaten
anything substantial since the day before, and was tired and that the places
where he had been hurt were still hurting, and would for another day or two,
but still he knelt beside her, and she threw her arms around his shoulders,
burying her face against him as she sobbed.  He held her while she cried, his
eyes closed and accepting.
                Mieta looked on, uncertain and feeling like a stranger to her
own children.
                “Don’t leave me alone,” she was whispering to her brother. 
“Don’t leave me…”
                They were all each other truly had, Mieta thought.  She was
their mother, but she had been absent out of necessity, not by her choice.  She
wished it could be any other way, and it was not that her children were close
that made her sorrowful; it was that they truly seemed to believe that the
other was all they had.
                Had she been so negligent of her children?  She had tried.  She
had done everything she could for them, whenever she could.  It hadn’t been
enough.  It hadn’t been nearly enough, and they still sought solace in each
other and never in her.
                Varania slid out of the bed, and he supported her as she fell. 
He let her cry for a while, let her hug him as tight as she could manage,
before he lifted her in his arms, not straining.  He laid her down gently in
the bed, and her grip on him slackened, and her arms fell away.  She kissed his
cheek as he set her down, like she had when they were children.  He smoothed
her tangled hair out of her face, and promised to brush it for her when he got
back.
                She reached out to him again, catching his wrist, squeezed, and
let go.  He nodded, and left without another word.
                “Are you hungry, darling?” she asked her when the door swung
closed, already knowing what the answer would be.
                “No,” she said.  “I just want to go to sleep.”  She rolled onto
her side, away from her.
                Mieta sighed, and removed the old shift her daughter slept in. 
She set it in a neatly folded pile beside her, and left.
                On the way back, after the meal, she asked Leto, “Could you
talk to Varania?  I fear… that something happened, but she won’t talk to me. 
But she’ll talk to you.”
                He looked away.  “I’ll try,” he said.  It was good enough of a
promise to her.
Chapter End Notes
     Mieta loves her kids so much--some favoritism there, but hey. Mieta
     would weep if she knew all the hell Fenris had gone through. I feel
     like, even if he didn't recognize her, she'd still refer to him as
     her "baby" and be concerned about him in a very mothering way.
***** Tears Before Daybreak *****
Chapter Summary
     In which a wedge is driven between the sibling's closeness that has
     the possibility to fester if it is not cared for. This chapter is
     about the fear and hurt that drives a person, leaving only sadness
     and pain in its wake.
                Leto did try to talk to her, a little bit, but Varania simply
refused to talk about it—to anyone.  She got Leto to leave her alone when she
asked about the girl he had murdered.  She had heard whispers of it, words of a
corpse, and had her suspicions, but she didn’t really know.  He had just fallen
silent, bowed his head, and told her that she could keep her secrets if he
could keep his.
                She refused to admit that anything had happened.  She attended
her studies, sewed, and devoted herself utterly to her works.  She didn’t allow
anything else to exist.  It was the only way to cope, to handle it.
                Two months passed, though, and her denial had gone on long
enough.  The true horror had only just begun.  She had thought that brief
moment had been all there was to it; she was wrong, and she had thought the
first missed moon had been a fluke.  Maybe it would come with the second?  But
she didn’t want to fool herself any longer, and Leto seemed to at least suspect
already.  She knew that her mother had known a month ago, but had blessedly
said nothing at all to her.
                Well, Varania didn’t want to talk about it.  To anyone, even
her family, for another week or two.  By then though, she did desperately want
to talk to her brother.
                As she often did when she wanted to speak to him privately, she
pulled him out of bed at a ridiculous hour, and they walked alone to the shed,
and only once they were both safely sitting on the sturdy roof, did she confide
in him.  She took her time though, and he let her, without rushing her, without
making her want to hit him, or feel awkward.  That almost made it worse
though.  She spoke of the weather at first, of mundane things, trying to ease
out some of the tension.
                Randomly, she just blurted out, “I’m pregnant,” she said, voice
sounding dead even to herself.
                Leto was silent as the grave for a long moment.  Despite having
been prepared for this, he had no words for it either.  Then, he did.  “I’m
sorry, ‘Nia,” he whispered, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
                She wanted to cry.  She felt like she should be crying.  It
wasn’t fair.  It was just once.  Just once, and she had been a virgin, and it
hadn’t been willing, and it wasn’t fair! “I hate him,” she hissed, in rage.  “I
hate them all.”
                She sobbed, and hid her face against his shoulder, but she
didn’t exactly cry.  He let her stay there as long as she would, and she pulled
away, and off the roof.  He followed her down, but she only stared at the path
back to the hut.  He looked at her inquiringly, and she went around the
longhouse, away from view.  She put her back against the wall, and closed her
eyes.
                “I want you to punch me,” she told her brother when he followed
her.  She heard him stop in his tracks, but didn’t turn to look at him.  If she
looked at him, she would lose her resolve.  “In the stomach.  Hard as you can.”
                There was a long silence from him.  “It could hurt you,” he
finally said.
                “I don’t care.”
                “I do.”
                She rounded on him, furious, but kept her voice down.  “I don’t
want to bear that bastard’s child,” she hissed through gritted teeth.  “I’d
rather die.  So do it, or I find a way to kill myself.”  It would be pretty
easy.  She could just walk up, very casually to the tower room that she
practiced certain spells in, and just throw herself out the window.  Easy.
                “’Nia…”
                She swallowed hard.  He was making this so difficult.  “I’ve
heard… that tulips are poisonous.”  There were tulips in the garden.  It
wouldn’t be that hard to eat some of them.  Maker knew they weren’t fed enough
as it was, and she was almost always hungry, and never mind whatever they
tasted like; slave rations were terrible.  Leto, being a gladiator, was fed
slightly better and more often than she was, but he always tried to sneak her
foods…  He cared about her, didn’t he?  He had to see why she needed his help! 
“Maybe the poison will…”  She touched her stomach absently, biting her lip in
worry—but worry that it wouldn’t help.
                He stared at her, eyes so full of pity that she was tempted to
slap him—hard.  But then she thought of how Danarius had slapped him, realized
that she had wanted to hit him the exact same way, and she calmed, just a
little.  She didn’t want to be that, ever.  “’Nia, please,” he begged her.
                She shook her head.  “Please, Leto,” she besought him.  “You’re
the only one who can—please!”
                He looked down, then shook his head.  “Not here.  Let’s go… to
the orchard.”  He led her out of the compound, and they snuck around to the
empty orchard.  The leaves littered the ground.  They would be raked soon, she
imagined.  The walk wasn’t silent, though.  The entire way there, he pleaded
with her to reconsider, to do something else.
                She did not listen.  She didn’t want this child.  She wasn’t
old enough.  She wasn’t ready.  She couldn’t bear to have a baby, least of all
a child born of rape.
                She turned to face him, ready for the potential bruising and
the miscarriage that would ensue, ready at least, for what little she knew
would happen.  “I’m ready,” she told him, but was afraid to see his face.  He
was silent for so long, though, that she had to look up at him.  In the light
of the half-moon, he stood frozen.  He just looked appalled.
                Then, his features softened.  “I’m not,” he told her, voice so
soft she barely heard it.  “Please don’t ask me to do this.”  His gaze fell
down, to the leaves under their bare feet.  It took her a moment to realize
that he was in as much pain as she was, in a way.
                She reached out to her brother, touching his arm gently. 
“Leto, please.  I have to,” she told him, desperately.  “Please understand.”
                He shook his head, and backed away from her.  The movement
shocked her.  Was she a monster, for what she wanted to do?  For what she asked
him to do?  Was that how he saw her?  “It’s not the child’s fault,” he pleaded
with her, trying a different approach.  Before that, he just hadn’t wanted to
hurt her.  Now it was this?  “The sins of the father do not pass on to the sins
of the son.”
                She folded her arms under her breasts, stoic.  “That’s not why
I don’t want the baby; I’m not ready, Leto!” she cried.  “I don’t want to be a
mother, least of all the… the dirt for that bastard’s seed!  Please, brother,
help me!”
                He stared at her, measuring the depth of her desperation, her
fear, her utter terror.  Finally, he nodded, and stared back downward.  “Are
you ready?”
                “Yes.”
                The first hit knocked her off her feet, and after that, she put
her back against the sturdy trunk of a thick tree, and the siblings made an
effort not to look at each other.
                She felt her stomach bruise, and it hurt something fierce not
to simply crumple to the ground, and curl into a ball crying.  Oh, her eyes
watered, and she cried out in pain, shaking.  She tried to be quiet, though,
lest anyone hear.  And she tried not to show how much it hurt, for her
brother’s sake.
                She finally had to have him stop, and he seemed grateful when
she told him to.  She was bleeding, she knew, and he turned his back while she
cleaned herself.  It was horrifying and simultaneously pleasing to see.  It
worked.  It had to have worked.
                “Thank you,” she told him as they walked out of the orchard.
                “Don’t thank me,” he said, his voice as cold as it had ever
been to her.  He’s angry, she realized.  Really, truly angry with her.
                “You could have refused me,” she told him, and as soon as she
said it, she regretted it.
                He rounded on her, so quickly that it scared her.  He suddenly
seemed terribly tall, impossibly frightening.  He raised his hand as if he
might strike her.  She cringed, fully expecting the full force of the blow. 
“Could I?  Could I?  Would you have blamed me for your child?  Would you have
hated me?”
                She stared at him, wide-eyed.  How could he say that?  How
could he speak that way to her?  “No…” she gasped.
                His hand lowered, dropping back down to his side.  “Don’t ask
me for anything again,” he said, with so much venom in his voice that it hurt
to hear.  With that, he turned on his heel, and walked away, leaving her
standing there alone, for the first time in her life.
                She had thought… if anyone would understand, it would be him. 
If anyone would support her decision, it would be him.  She was wrong.  She
felt… oddly, betrayed.  The aching in her stomach reminded her of why he was
angry.  Was he angry because he truly believed that it wasn’t the child’s (more
like a quickening in her womb than a child) fault?  Or was he angry because he
hadn’t wanted to hurt her?  Or was it simply because he didn’t want to be the
one to do it?
                No matter the reason for his anger, no matter if his anger was
warranted or not, she sunk to her knees, and pushed her back against a tree
trunk.  She brought her knees to her chest, and hid her face.  She cried like a
child.  She cried because of all the things wrong in her life.  She cried
because she was a mage, because she was a slave.  She cried for her brother’s
pain.  She cried for the rape, and possible child she wanted dead.  No, it
wasn’t it’s fault, but she still felt like it was the right choice to abort
it.  She couldn’t raise a baby.  She wasn’t old enough for this.  She wasn’t
ready, and she hated it already besides.
                Nothing was fair.
                She wanted all of this to just be gone.  She wanted to erase
all of this, like it never happened, and prevent it all from happening.  It
felt like it couldn’t be real, because she just couldn’t really have ever been
pregnant.  It was all a mistake—that was all.  A mistake.  She had just dreamed
being raped—it had been a terrible nightmare, but it was a dream, right?  And
Leto—he hadn’t really killed Erron.  The boy would be in the yard later,
yelling cat-calls at her, and butting heads with Leto again.
                When they were much younger, and she had been discovered to be
a mage, Erron and his friends had thrown rocks at her.  She had been expressly
forbidden from using magic, and couldn’t outrun the boys, or the stones, and
they hurt.
                Leto had been there, though, and beat up the three boys with a
stick.  Oh, he had gotten a little bruised too, but he had been there for her.
                She had thought that it would always be like that.  She had
thought that she could always rely on her big brother, forever.
                But…  He had told her never to ask for anything again.  Did
that mean she couldn’t go to him when she was upset?  That she couldn’t seek
solace in his company?  Or anything?
                She felt like her heart was breaking.  She disgusted him. 
Maybe she was disgusting.  She was a mage, after all, and she had used blood
magic.  That alone made her feel filthy and unworthy.  But even then, he hadn’t
hated her.  Had this been too much?
                She couldn’t bear to think of her only brother hating her.  It
was awful.  He meant so much to her.  He had always been there for her—always. 
Always looking out for her, and there to make her feel better when she was
down.  And now… now…
                She felt like she had really screwed up, and now he hated her,
and there was nothing she could do to make it better.  Nothing.  If she had
known he would hate her though, would she have still asked him to do this?
                She didn’t know any more.  She knew she didn’t want a baby. 
That was certain.  But was it worth her brother’s hatred?
                It seemed that all she could do was cry.
 
                Her smile had always seemed a little… off to Cillian.  When she
was born without the gift, and he with, and she older, she had cried, and he
had said nothing.  Which is when she had begun to say things—things that
bothered him, or sounded strange, and often both.  When they were eight, he
would find impaled mice—some still writhing on their stakes, and she watching
them twitch in utter fascination.  He had taken them away, and hid it, and kept
their parents from seeing.
                He had found Irielle, a knife in her hand, and a smile like one
who had seen something holy, her other hand wrist-deep in a cat’s entrails.  He
had burned that too, cleaned her up, and gotten rid of the knife.  Would it
have been better to tell his parents when they were children?  To tell them
then, and pray that they helped her?  But he had been so afraid that they would
send her away.  He knew there was something wrong with her, but didn’t know and
couldn’t understand what.
                She would go on walks in the wood and come back looking
peaceful and even sublime.  He had thought that maybe she was getting better,
but when he took the dogs out tracking, he would find the squirrels, a vole,
field mice, even birds when she could catch them.  He had hid all of those too
and slowly began to fear that one day…
                Irielle would sing to herself as she walked down the halls of
the manor.  She would study and memorize her lessons, and smile her slightly
off smile—a thing about her mouth and eyes that did not look forced exactly,
but more as if it were not a part of her face.
                One day, he caught her screaming in the hall after their mother
died—and she had avoided their mother for days once the dying had truly began. 
She was throwing things, attacking the servants who were trying to subdue her. 
Cillian had managed to calm her, and when he touched her shoulder, she had
calmed as if it had never happened, and smiled her off-smile to him.  She began
to hum gently, and swayed as she walked away.  Cillian had threatened the
servants not to tell a soul, not even his lord father.  He had threatened them
with his station and most of all with his magic, and he had gone back after
her.
                Later that year, she had set fire to her room and tried to
bathe in the flames.  Cillian had run when he smelled the flames and heard Iden
scream for help, but in the end, their father had rushed inside and pulled out
his daughter, and left Cillian to tend the flames as a mage can.
                Even then, her fits could be called grief so long as Cillian
kept her activities hidden.  He had tried to tell her to stop, but he could not
get through to his twin.  She only smiled at him, and whispered her stupid
songs and didn’t seem to hear him.
                One day, she killed one of the hounds.  From the looks of it,
she had tied up the trusting creature, and muzzled the dog.  Then, she had
started to cut off pieces.  That time, a servant had found her instead of her
twin, and the woman had ran screaming.  Cillian insisted he had to see the
body, and his father had made Irielle bury it.  Cillian had offered to help,
but a menacing glare from his magister father had silenced him.  The dog had
been cut into six pieces and she had been trying to skin it before it bled out
and died, the poor creature.
                She hadn’t really been very coherent after burying the dog, and
the beating that had ensued.  Cillian could barely speak to her.  She would
only give him nonsense verses of something like abstract poetry and nothing
made sense.  He once asked her, “Why would you do something like this?”
                She had smiled.  She always smiled.  “I have to stop the
whispering.”  She made it sound like the most logical thing in the world. 
“Eggs and infants and beating hearts.  Where does the sun go if there is no sea
to set it in?”
                He had backed away from her, and did not return for a
fortnight.  She had been kept locked in her quarters, for her own safety, her
father had said, until something could be done about her.  But Cillian cared
for his sister, and he heard her crying at night, whispering prayers, and when
he passed, she would beg him to let her out.  He would speak to her sometimes,
and confessed that their father had planned on moving her to a facility where
she could be cared for.  He was uncertain if she truly understood, for, again,
she only really replied in nonsense riddles and strange verse.
                It made Cillian sick to think about his twin going to a place
like that.  There was a servant, he knew, who had spent some time in one, as a
caretaker of sorts.  He had gone to her and asked her about it.  She had looked
at him with pity in her eyes, but not for him.  “She will be locked in a cold
cell.  She will be given bread and water, and if she proves troublesome she
will live her life in chains.”  A pause.  “No one lives long there, though, so
you may take some comfort in that.”
                He had went immediately to his father, beseeching him to, if he
must cage his sister, to cage her in the house.  “You can’t do this.”  He told
him what the servant had said.  “She can’t…”
                “Irielle has lost her mind,” his father said, matter-of-factly,
as he said everything.  He imagined that his father would have announced his
mother’s death to him in the same voice, had it been he in the room with her
instead of Cillian.  His father had not even visited that day, in her final
hours—something Cillian had silently never forgiven him for.
                The son had stood shocked to silence that his father would be
so callous.  He had begged and pleaded, and would give no ground.  Neither
would his father.  So, late one night, Cillian took the key from his father’s
desk, and opened his sister’s door.  The door only opened for meals and to
empty her chamber pot.  At this queer hour, he had been expecting her to be
asleep, but then he heard the quiet singing.  She looked a terrible fright,
hunched in the corner as she was, unclean with her coal-black curls in
disarray.
                He held his hand out to her.  “We have to go,” he insisted. 
“Father is going to take you away.”
                She looked at him, though, as if he were a stranger, and she
smiled, and he thought she knew him then.  She rose quite gracefully, and
strode to him as if she were not mad at all, like it were all a
misunderstanding.  But when she got to the door, she lunged suddenly at
him—violently and with everything she had.  She knocked him down, and he was
too shocked to react.  She fled down the hall, and, panicked, he chased after
her.  He always seemed just behind her.  It was like a disgusting mimicry of
when they would play cat-and-mouse as children.  She even laughed as she had
then, but there was something wrong with the laughter.
                Somewhere, he lost her.  He wandered, always quickly, always
calling for her.  He ultimately heard the sound of her singing—a wordless
melody of her own.  It was haunting at this hour, and it slowed his approach
rather than speed it.  Something felt wrong.  There was a wrongness to the
stillness of the air and a wrongness he felt in his soul.
                He opened the door to the kitchens, and stared, because he
didn’t know what else to do.  Blood splattered the floor, and a body lay
maimed.  He knew it was a slave on principal if nothing else—at least one slave
was always in the kitchen doing one chore or another, and by the flour and
dough laid out, the chore had been making bread.  There was blood in the flour,
a gob of flesh neatly indented in the dough like a freakish imitation of a
dried fruit.  Strange, bloodied and naked and barely enough to call it a body,
there was little distinction between a slave and a free man.
                And she was singing, and bloody, and smiled at him when she saw
him, her teeth stained red with blood, as if she truly saw nothing wrong with
what she had done.
                His father had had Irielle beaten bloody, and chained to her
bedpost in her room from then on.  Cillian had a similar beating and a worse
lecture.  He had no desire to free his sister again.  But, with her record,
they did not send her to the home, lest she kill again.  They were only
fortunate that it was a slave she had found alone there.
                Rather, a room was made for her in the attic, a long heavy
chain fixed about her ankle, capable of being pulled taught from the room
below—something done when the bedding had to be changed, or she needed food or
her chamber pot emptied.  Cillian visited his sister once a year after that, on
their shared date of birth.  He would sit in a chair at a fair distance, and
she would smile at him.  He talked to her, but she gave no indication she even
knew what he was saying, save once.
                They were fifteen that day, and he had been visiting from
Minrathous.  He had finally had to ask, “Irielle, I need to know…”  He almost
choked on his own words.  He shook his head.  “I need to know why.”
                “Butterfly?” she rhymed.
                He sighed.  It was useless.  Her mind was too far gone as it
was.  He shook his head, but tried again.  “Why did you hurt all those animals,
and kill that slave?  Why, Irielle?”  He knew the slaves still found impaled
rats and mice in the attic—a pigeon once or twice too.  Impaled, and worse
things.  The servants would not go to tend her any longer, so it fell to
slaves, and they would be too frightened except that one of the slave-guards
attended them, just in case, naked steel in hand.
                He heard a small sob then, and looked up to see his sister
weeping.  Instinctively, he wanted to go to her, but then remembered her bloody
smile.  He kept his distance.  “I just wanted someone else to hurt as much as I
did,” she whispered.
                Try as he might, he could not make her explain herself.  She
would only try to rhyme his words, or quote bad poetry at him.  Not half a year
later, she had managed to slip free of her chain and threw herself from the
tower window.  She must have been working at the lock for years, they had said.
                But all of that had been a long time ago, hadn’t it?
                A quarter of a century ago today, my sister died, Danarius
thought, looking out the window.  He wondered, for an insane moment, what it
would be like to fall through the air to an inevitable end, wind caressing his
skin, passing through his hair.  The slave who had found her had been insistent
that she had been smiling, and as far as Danarius could tell when he saw the
corpse, it was true enough, though he had not been able to see it until the day
her pyre was lit.  Sometimes—not very often—he feared that her same madness
lurked in his mind too, because they were twins.
               
                Another month passed, and though Varania tried to deny it, she
couldn’t.  It hadn’t worked.  It had all been for nothing, and Leto still
wouldn’t talk to her except when he had to.
                She tried, desperately, to talk to him, but he would stare at
her like she had destroyed something in him.  Maybe she had.  It was one thing
to accept that she didn’t want the child, and entirely another to ask him to be
the one to kill it.
                She tried not to say anything to her mother either, but three
months in, and it was too obvious not to, though she still didn’t speak of it. 
Mieta certainlytriedto bring it up, but Varania wouldn’t.  She couldn’t bear
it, and certainly didn’t want to think about it.
                It wasn’t denial exactly—she knew she was pregnant.  She just
didn’t want to talk about it.  That was all.  She had a right not to speak of
it, just like her brother had a right not to speak to her.
***** Unanswered Prayers *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Leto makes a promise with no intention to keep it, while
     Varania loses her faith. All the while, the Ritual looms ever
     closer...
                The tip from the demon had been useful.  Over-useful, in fact;
he became utterly obsessed with his pursuit of an answer to the riddle.  A
couple more slaves disappeared from the compound, a few more mad animals, and… 
The answer came.
                Raith and Danarius had written out the entire ritual.  Just
writing it had taken days, sleepless nights, hours of research and precise
runes, countless study.  The ritual itself would take hours.  It would be a
thing of blood magic, demons, and lyrium.  Usually, lyrium replaced blood
magic, but not in this case.  It was extremely dangerous—lives would be
required, and there wasn’t a way around that.  But life was expendable, after
all.  And, if they were careful, the Tranquil would not be as necessary as they
had at first assumed.
                The slave it had worked on, they beheaded; he wasn’t useful for
the ability.  Raith’s master wanted someone more capable.  He wanted a choice
subject, someone worthy of the masterpiece that was to be his life’s work—a
living canvas, as it were, but so much more.
                Naturally, such a position was an honor, and to be deemed
worthy, it seemed only fitting that the person would have to win it.  It wasn’t
even a question—Danarius wanted a warrior, someone who could and would use the
abilities that would come with the ritual.
                A mage wouldn’t suffice; the lyrium would deplete itself
whenever they cast even if they weren’t driven insane, and they wouldn’t use
it, as such, except to fuel magic—there was also the dangerously high risk of
death.  A regular person with no capability and no discipline would suddenly be
able to do things—untold things—that could hurt or injure someone.  The concept
would be like an untrained mage:  Dangerous to everyone including themselves. 
And Danarius liked the arena anyway, so why not?
                Raith presented, triumphantly, his work to his master.  They
spent three days going over the minutest of details, correcting small things,
adding changes, and creating a map of the body.
                The work would take place along the nerves more than the veins,
as they had originally thought—that had been a dead end.  Lyrium in the blood
not only drove a person to insanity, it usually ended in death.  But along the
nerves was a different story.  They could be close to the veins, and for some
things, that would be necessary, but they couldn’t be in them exactly, and
being so close to the nerves had other small bonuses as well—more control, for
one.  But lyrium wasn’t a solid thing; it was a liquid.  The body had to be
reconstructed a bit to accept the lyrium—which was something of a trial all by
itself, even for highly skilled mages.  It wasn’t a tattoo, after all.  It was
so much more than ink on the skin:  It was poured metal.
                So many details—so much work to do.
                Satisfied, Raith was then set to issuing a decree, a tourney. 
Invitations were sent to some—knights, soldiers.  Raith thought it was generous
to include the gladiators in the invitation, and even his own slaves.  Slaves
from other houses were allowed, with their master’s permission.  Depending on
their station, they would receive certain things, the greatest of which would
be given to all—a single boon of the wealthy magister, with few to no
restrictions.  To go along with the ritual, of course, and they certainly made
a note of it, it would make the individual quite powerful.  All the power that
a Templar had, was the plan—maybe more.  Maybe it would even be different than
that.  It was untold, what it could do, but lyrium made a mage more powerful,
made a weapon more powerful, gave the Templars abilities to fight and bring
down mages.  What would it do to someone when specially refined lyrium was
embedded in their flesh, forever?  Untold power, he imagined.  The raw material
could only be handled—very carefully—by dwarves and Tranquil mages.  It would
be wise even if it weren’t completely necessary to have a Tranquil doing the
tattoos, but he personally despised them, and was horrified by them.
                Fortunately, Danarius seemed to find them equally unappealing,
and so did not seek their use.  Besides, the lyrium was refined—twice in fact. 
Once, by the dwarves before they sold it to them, and a second time by
themselves.  But it was still dangerous stuff.  Even dwarves, who had a natural
resistance to magic, through exposure to the metal, became rather touched in
the head, given time.
                But Raith wondered—how far did simple greed go to make a person
want something like this?  So close to the nerves, the subject would probably
be in constant pain, and they couldn’t exactly lie about that, though they
certainly sugar-coated it.  In addition, the ritual would alter the person’s
mind, slightly at least, in small ways.  Still, he had noticed that people had
a tendency not to read the fine print, and even if they did, their greed would
often override their common sense.
                Idiots.
                It was nothing but foolishness.  And anyway, it would be some
months yet before it actually began.  It would take a while for all the
invitations to get to where they should, and longer for people to arrive.  The
entire event would be a grand affair, of course, with parties and feasting on
top of the main event, the ritual.
                Unfortunately, the ritual itself was expensive.  The blood and
life used to make it had to come from somewhere, after all, and slaves were
costly, with the damned Chantry tithing it, and smuggling out prisoners was
sometimes difficult, and taking people off the street raised too many
questions.  Even if fueling the spell wasn’t an issue, the lyrium was.  The
Chantry strictly regulated its use even in Tevinter (though not as much as
elsewhere, and fact of the matter it was just another form of taxation), and
they had used quite a bit of what they had already in the experiments.  More of
it would have to be smuggled out, and it came all the way from Orzimar in
Ferelden, and that would take a while too.  There was a dwarf there that was
simply waiting on the order, Raith knew, but Danarius had yet to choose the
colour of it, as if aesthetics were really so important.
                Raith didn’t quite get it.  He had suggested to just get the
lyrium—and bugger the color.  If it didn’t all match, that wasn’t really the
issue, was it?  And who cared if it didn’t compliment the subject’s natural
colours?  Danarius had stared at him as if he were speaking nonsense, and said,
quite calmly and matter-of-factly, that he “wouldn’t tolerate something that
was generally offensive to the eye.”  No, he wanted to wait until after his
champion had won the tourney.  Then, after it came, it had to be refined,
perfectly mixed—all very carefully and in small amounts at a time.
                It would take weeks.
                There were only three colours, and not even any additional
hues.  They could just get all three colours.  They had small samples of all
three shades, of course, but not nearly enough for the entire ritual.  Raith
was certain that they could find some use for the lyrium anyway; blood magic
was messy, though it did require fewer mages. 
                It was infuriating; Raith was so eager to see the culmination
of so many years of work, but it would be months in the making yet.  All the
same, it would be soon.  He had waited this long; he could wait a little
longer, he supposed.
 
                Varania had noticed how quiet Leto had become, even more quiet
than before, after everyone started talking about the tournament.  She would
ask him if he was going to compete, but he hadn’t been talking to her much, if
at all.  He barely even ever looked at her anymore.  It was… miserable.
                Mieta had begged him not to, had pleaded with him that it
couldn’t be worth it.  It had been exactly the wrong thing to say, just like
Varania had said exactly the wrong thing.
                “What’s the alternative?” he demanded, glowering down at his
mother.  He had gotten so tall, and it was always so apparent when he glowered
like that.  He turned from her, crossing his arms.  “If I win—and I can…  I can
ask for you and Varania’s freedom.”  His tone was quiet, but it carried.
                To Varania, it made her spirit a little more buoyant.  He still
cared about her…  “Leto, we’d never see you again,” Mieta continued, and
Varania saw her mother’s hands shaking.  She was having trouble again, and she
had been sick to her stomach lately too.  “If it means that, I’d rather that we
were together.”
                He stared downwards, and didn’t answer.  Varania understood his
desire.  It was a chance—a real chance—out of slavery.  She had never been
free; she didn’t know what that was like, so she didn’t have much of an
opinion.  But, she did know that as a free person, rape would not be treated so
casually as it was all around her.  And she would be able to get proper medical
treatment to get rid of the… creature… inside her.
                “I’ll never be anything but a slave,” he whispered.  He wasn’t
hurt by that knowledge, but he spoke softly because it did hurt their mother. 
“I know that, Mother.  But maybe you and Varania could be something else.”
                “Leto, no.  I couldn’t bear to never see you again,” she
beseeched him.
                He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, and stared at the
wall.  “Either way, I’ll be a slave for the rest of my life.  Is it so wrong
that I want…”  His voice faded for a moment, as if searching for the right
words.  “I want to be something—something more, even something different?”
                Mieta fell silent, but the pain she felt was evident.  Varania,
though, felt that she understood.  Her brother knew that, win or no, he’d be a
slave—forever.  If the only way to achieve anything in his life was through
bloodshed, she understood that he would do it.  Her brother had an insatiable
desire.  She had seen it in him as a child, but only was just beginning to
understand it for what it was.  It was a desire to live, to achieve, to
become.  None of those things he could truly accomplish as a slave.  He found
some validity to his life to the sound of the crowds in the coliseum, the
thrill of combat.  But it wasn’t enough.  And too, he had long ago expressed
that he didn’t want to fight Qunari when he was finished in the coliseum.  He
had no desire to kill the ones who had liberated his predecessors, and were
fighting those who had enslaved him.  Though, as an obedient Imperial slave, he
would.
                The silence seemed to stretch, and yawn between the three, a
deep rift forming between the small family.  Mieta tried to reach out to her
estranged children, but both shied away from her the closer she tried to keep
them.  Varania felt like her mother was barely there at all.  Her life revolved
around her brother.  He had always been there for her.  He was her only friend,
her only companion, the only one who had ever believed in her.  And she had
ruined it with her foolish request.  She was determined, now, to try to prove
herself to him, and believe in him.
                “Please, my son, listen to me,” she pleaded with him.  He
hadn’t listened to her for years though, not really.  He respected her wishes,
and did his best, but he had been doing what he thought he should since he
started in the arena, and not always what his mother wanted.  Did he think
spilling blood made him a man?  Well, it didn’t.
                “Mother, I have to try,” he said softly.
                She shook her head.  “No you don’t!” she insisted.  “You could
die in the tournament!”  Her eyes watered.  “There are knights and soldiers
entering in the tournament, Leto!  You could die!”
                He said nothing, but kept staring straight downwards, eyes
narrowing.  Varania saw his fingers clench.  His mind was already made up, she
knew.  It didn’t matter what their mother said; he was going to do it.  More
than that, their mother’s lack of faith in him was making him angry.
                “I don’t want you to die either, Leto,” Varania chimed in.  His
gaze flicked to her, then back down—his only acknowledgement that she had
spoken.  “But I think you can do it.”  He had only lost once, she reminded
herself, and because he had been sick.
                Mieta shot her a glare.  “Varania!” she cried, as if she had
betrayed her.
                The girl’s eyebrows arched.  “I believe in him,” she said.  And
slavery is killing you, Mother.  Leto was looking at her, and there was
something in his eyes besides brazen disgust, which was something.  Maybe she
had redeemed herself, at least a little.
                Mieta shook her head in dismay.  “No.  No, Leto, you can’tdo
this,” she pleaded.  She grabbed on to his arm, turning him to face her.  He
stared in her general direction, but not exactly at her.  “I couldn’t bear to
lose you.  If you win or die, I will.”
                He flinched, as if she had struck him.  She might as well
have.  “I won’t die,” he told her.
                You can win, Varania thought.  She had seen her brother fight,
known he had killed people, and never lost.  Didn’t that mean something?  But
there were knights, real knights, and soldiers, and many others in the
competition.  He would have to defeat all of his opponents to win.  It
frightened her, just a little, to think of her big brother facing down a
knight.  She worried for him, and at the same time, believed in him utterly. 
If any of the gladiators stood a chance, it had to be him.
                But Mieta didn’t see that; she saw her child throwing himself
into a death match on a slim chance of winning.  And if he did win, she would
be forever separated from her child.  Varania certainly understood that, but
she saw the logic of him entering; Mother’s health was waning, and they were
both reasonably certain that it was slavery that was killing her, crushing her
spirit.  Not to mention Varania’s rape, and that it could certainly happen
again.  She thought of the two slaves who had disappeared over the past few
weeks.  It could happen to anyone.  “Please don’t go,” Mieta begged her son. 
“Promise me you won’t go.  You two mean more to me than anything else; please,
promise me.”  She stared up at him, the desperation bare on her face.  To
Varania, she looked haggard.  Older than she was, frail, sick.  Her health only
continued to worsen with the passing weeks.  It worried her, and there was only
so much her magic could do.  Worse yet, with her pregnancy, it was actually
harder and harder to cast, so she couldn’t do as much for her as she wanted to.
                Her own magic was so focused inward, a steady trickle of it
guarding the child, she imagined, as well as safeguarding her own health.  Most
people had more morning sickness than she was experiencing, after all.  Mages
didn’t fall prey to as many illnesses for the same reason.
                “Mother…” he started to argue.  Varania, behind their mother,
shook her head in a small warning, and inclined her head toward their mother. 
Her eyes were pleading.  He mouthed to her, I have to.  The mage wasn’t very
good at reading lips—Leto was actually kind of good at it though, which came
from the arenas being so noisy and having to know what his comrades were
saying—but her brother’s face was expressive enough to guess.
               Varania nodded once and mouthed back, I know.  She found her
eyes watering, and understood, with absolute clarity, her mother’s feelings. 
She didn’t want to lose her brother forever either, no matter the sense in it,
no matter the prize to be won.  She didn’t want to lose him.  But Mother…  To
her shock, he lied, “I promise, Mother.”
                Mieta threw arms around him, and wept, shaking with near-
grief.  Her children couldn’t say if she believed him or not.  She could be
crying because she knew her son was lying to her, or she could be weeping in
relief because she believed him.  Varania watched Leto hug her back, trying to
comfort her.  The mage looked down at her swollen belly, wishing it would all
just go away.
                She had wished the same thing many times as a child.  She had
wished many things away before in the past.  Why, she had wished away herself
and all existence before, even.  She had prayed for her magic to go away. 
Hopes, wishes, dreams, prayers—all went untrue and unanswered.
                All the stories Ginger and Mother had told her about wishing
wells, jinn, and the like—it was all lies, nothing more.  Those things didn’t
exist, and never had.  Pleasant fantasies, and nothing more.  Nothing could
change things, not really—nothing but themselves.
***** Sickness *****
Chapter Summary
     This chapter is primarily foreboding, and setting the stage for what
     is to come. It's going to be a long night for Leto and Varania.
               Varania walked out of the manor, grateful for the lessons to be
done for the day, and was more than a little surprised to see her brother
waiting for her in the garden.
                “Leto?” she inquired.  “What are you doing?”
                He frowned at her.  “Can’t I walk with you and not be
questioned for it?”
                She raised an eyebrow, and he fell into step beside her.  “You
usually don’t,” she countered.  Especially lately.
                He made a face, and was silent for a moment.  “Some of the
other gladiators are still mad about… what happened with Erron.”  The siblings
were quiet for a moment.  A chilly breeze lifted her hair.  In the mornings, at
this time of year, sometimes the ground was icy-cold and frostbitten. 
Yesterday, it had rained, and there had been ice on the path and little
puddles.  Today, the rain had let up to a slow drizzle, the sort that got one
thoroughly wet and miserable without the grace of getting it over with all at
once.  They stepped carefully, but their bare feet got muddy anyway.
                “And?” she inquired gently.
                He seemed reluctant to go on.  “They want to hurt you, ‘Nia,”
he told her, and seemed troubled.
                She missed a step.  “What?”  Fear suddenly ran up her spine. 
Hurt her?  “Why?”
                “Because I killed Erron.”  A brief pause.  “And they’ve already
tried to hurt me.”  He frowned a little.  “All the time when we practice.”  He
sighed.  “They’ve jumped me twice already too.”
                She looked at her big brother.  “And you’re okay?”
                “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, running his hand through his
disheveled dark hair.  He added, “They’re not.”  He smiled crookedly, and she
found herself smiling back.  His smile faded.  “So I think they might have
given up on me, but I heard them talking about you.  So…  I’ll come walk with
you from now on.”  He paused.  “But be careful.”
                She bit her lip.  What if something happened?  What if
something detained him, and she was alone when they caught her?  That scared
her, but she reasoned that she could always trust her brother.  “’Kay,” she
said.  “Did you sign up for the tourney?”  A figure of speech—considering that
he couldn’t read or write.
                “Yeah,” he admitted.  “Don’t tell Mother.”
                She laughed at that.  “I wouldn’t,” she promised, then sighed. 
“Mother… doesn’t seem so well these days.”
                “She’s not,” he said, pained.  “She’s always hurting, and
sick…”  His voice trailed off a moment.  “I can’t… do anything about it.”
                “I’m sorry, Leto,” she said, but was really apologizing for
being so helpless herself.  She was a mage; she should know how to help, but
she didn’t.  Healing was not a strong point for her.  Maybe if she had been
better at healing, this wouldn’t be such a problem.  Or if she weren’t
pregnant; all her magic seemed to just be consistently draining out of her all
the time.  It was frustrating.  Even more terrifying—with her magic so
redirected, and Leto saying that some of the gladiators wanted to hurt her, she
couldn’t do much to defend herself, could she?  She shivered, but it was easily
attributed to the chill of the day.
 
                Mieta tried.  She really did try, but it did no good.  It
happened so quickly.  One day, she had been… in pain, but all right, and the
next she was bedridden.  She had to be helped to get to the sewing room, and
couldn’t see straight enough to even pin, so Lana had sent her back to the
compound, with an escort to make sure that she made it.  The pain kept her off
of her feet, and her hands shook so much that she had trouble feeding herself. 
Leto hated seeing her like this, she knew, and she tried not to let him see it,
but by the third day, it was only worse.  Varania had to feed her; she couldn’t
grip a spoon.  She tried to heal her, and her small spells kept her well enough
to move around a bit, but she didn’t have the power or skill for more.
                Her world was nothing but pain, and sickness.  It was hard to
breathe, hard to see.  She felt so dizzy, even lying down with her eyes
closed.  Sleep was the only solace, and her dreams were fevered.  She was
alternately hot and cold.
                She wondered, in a far-off kind of way, if she would die.  Die
in slavery, and be buried in the tiny graveyard in the compound without an urn
or a marker, left to rot instead of burned.  Death seemed a relief, a relief to
the pain.  Her children whispered around her, but she wasn’t well enough to
understand when they didn’t want her to hear them.  They may be conspiring, may
be planning; she didn’t know.  She was too sick to care, really, except that
she would have liked to have seen Varania give birth.  It was only a few months
off now.
                But… nothing mattered right now.  She tried to sleep.
 
                Her children talked to each other in hushed whispers, sitting
on opposite beds, occasionally glancing at their sick mother.  She was sleeping
right now, but it was a fevered sleep.
                Varania was terrified that she would die.  If she died…  She
felt like they would both be orphaned.  A silly thought.  She was pregnant,
about to be a mother yet—despite her wishes.  She was a woman, by rights, and
Leto was a man.  She shouldn’t feel like her world would end with her mother’s
death.  But she did.  She had never been particularly close to her mother, but
she had still been a constant figure in her life.
                “I can’t do anything more for her,” she said, lower lip
quivering.  “I can’t draw out any more of the sickness.  I’m… decent at
healing, but all of it is misdirected to this… parasite.”  Her tone was
scornful.
                Her brother glanced down at her belly.  “The baby,” he
corrected her automatically, raising an eyebrow testily.  She resisted the urge
to roll her eyes.  It was a damn parasite—redirecting her magic, hindering her,
feeding off of her, and she didn’t want it.  “Do what you can.”
                She shook her head.  “I’ve done everythingI can.  Maybe…”  She
looked down, at her hands, and then at the small scar across her arm from when
she had healed Leto.  “If I… used blood magic…”
                She felt him looking at her, sensed his disapproval.  She
understood; blood magic was dangerous, and led to dealings with demons.  But
even so… if it could be used to heal once, it could be used to heal again,
surely.  And she knew to ignore demons, to not listen to them, or be seduced by
them.  So surely…  “I think I can do it,” she told him.
                He shook his head firmly.  “No.  Do you really think you can
achieve anything by becoming an abomination?”
                She frowned.  “I’m sure that one—two—spells won’t get me
possessed,” she said, but even sounded uncertain to herself.
                His eyes flicked in the general direction of the manor.  “That
wasn’t what I was referring to.”
                He meant the magisters.  He didn’t want to see her fall to
blood magic, not only because of demons, but because their master had no qualms
about it.  Would she become like them if she used it?  She didn’t believe
that.  They were both silent for a moment.  “Do you think Mama will die?” she
asked, voice barely a whisper.
                He didn’t answer.  All was silent for a long moment.  The two
didn’t want to hear it, but the only sound in the room was their mother’s
wheezing breaths.  It was getting more difficult for her to breathe, and it was
only getting worse.  “Yes,” he said, after a long silence had passed.
                Anger gripped her.  How dare he?  How could he say that?  How
could he say that about their mother!?  It was their mother.  She felt outraged
to hear him say it.  She was on her feet before she knew it, and she had had
every intention of just marching out to be alone in the quiet of the early
morning, but Leto was staring at their mother, and she just thought, He’s
waiting for her to die!  Her fingers clenched into an angry fist.  How could he
look at her like that?  How could he dare to call himself her son if he was so
callous about her impending death?  Her hand flew, and she hadn’t even thought
she had made the conscious decision to do it, and by the time her hand struck
the side of his face, it was too late.  Her eyes flew open wide in shock.  One
of his hands shot out, snatching her wrist.  His grip was so tight that it
hurt, and he didn’t even give her the grace of looking at her when he spoke. 
She had never really realized how strong he was before.  Now, to her
misfortune, she did.  “Don’t.  Touch.  Me,” he hissed, and abruptly let go.
                Her sudden shock and even dismay at having acted violently
toward her sibling turned back to anger.  “You could at least be more
compassionate.  She’s your mother too,” she hissed back.  Her hand stung from
the slap, and her wrist throbbed from where he had grabbed her.
                “You grieve your way, let me grieve my way,” he shot back under
his breath, so as not to let their fighting disturb their sick parent.  With
that, he rose, walked past her, and left.  She watched him go, and slowly sat
back down.  She didn’t cry, but she did reflect that she should have acted
differently, and reacted differently.  It would be easy to just blame the
pregnancy; it made her kind of weird sometimes, a little forgetful, and she had
odd food cravings she couldn’t even satisfy, and sometimes sick to her
stomach.  But that was the easy way, and in the end, no one had made her be
angry enough to hit him, and no one had made her do that either.  She needed to
apologize.
                She hurried after him, but he glared at her when she came near,
so she let him be, for now.  Maybe she could talk to him later, like tonight,
after he had some time to cool off.  She could talk to him before their
master’s party tonight if she could manage it.  If not, then after the party. 
She wasn’t too anxious to try his temper again, honestly.
 
                Marietta looked at each of the boys in turn, her scowl saying
more than anything else could.  Some were simply washed off, and put a poultice
on the long stripes the whip had left them with, but two others had to be
healed, because they were supposed to be serving tonight.
                The mage had always disliked elves—they bothered her.  She
always felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with them.  She
disliked dolls too—anything that came too close to mimicking a more normal
human face while still not looking human disturbed her greatly.
                As a result, she did not look at the creatures, but instead
devoted her attentions to healing.  The magister had hired her for her
proficiency in healing, and because she was a scholar.  She had always
preferred reading and studying as opposed to learning about her magic.  She was
a talented healer, and that was enough for her; it paid.  That Danarius also
had use for her scholar skills played quite nicely into her pay.
                She was a middle-aged woman, the sort who should be properly
married and having children, except her husband had died some years past, and
she had consistently drank remedies to shed any conceived child.  She was
happier a widow, with her books and her scrolls—slaves to attend to her every
want and desire.
                Marry rich, her family had said.  Well, she had.  And, though
she felt her judgments were not poor, she had been fooled and cheated and lost
much of the fortune, so here she was… healing the flesh on a couple of knife-
eared slaves.
                “What were you lot doing?” she demanded, for she had to write a
report about it.
                The boys looked at each other, all except for the dark-haired
one waiting for her to finish with the brunette.  There were four of them in
total.  They had been found, punished, and then sent to her for treatment; they
were gladiators and more valuable than Danarius’ other slaves.
                A slave girl attended the two who were not to be healed with
magic, and the medicines clinked in their glass containers as the wretch rifled
through it.  When the boys remained silent longer than Marietta thought
appropriate, she said, “Start talking, or you’ll lose a bit more skin.  Seems
to me you could all stand to lose a couple more inches of flesh.”
                One of the two getting tended by the wretch said, “We…
was—were—He killed Erron,” he blurted, pointing at the quiet dark-haired one. 
“And he barely got punished.”
                “It’s not your place to carry out punishment to your master’s
property, because another piece of your master’s property was damaged,” she
said primly.  The elves were quiet at that.  “You.”  She pointed at the one who
had been singled out.  “What say you, knife ear?”
                The boy blinked, his eyes flicking up for a moment, then back
down at the floor.  “For whatever their reasons, they attacked me—for the third
time.  This time, in the apple orchard on the way to the manor.”
                “What happened?  I need details—all of you.  Now.”  In time,
she had the whole story, though she had to ask them to backtrack several times,
and each of them remembered it a little bit differently.  First, they had
pushed him, and there had been a few words exchanged, some name-calling.  What
had followed had been stones, and branches, and fighting.  Eventually, two of
them knocked the dark-haired one back, and the third held him under the stream
until he started going limp.  They had hauled him out of it and commenced
seemingly trying to beat him to death, when one of the guards had heard the
yelling and came to investigate.  Though, it wasn’t entirely the three of them
beating up the one boy; the others had cuts and bruises and one of them had
broken teeth.
                All of them had been whipped for the transgression, including
the alleged victim, though he did receive two less lashes than the others. 
They were all warned, by order of their master, that if it happened again, they
would all be gelded, in the hopes that it would calm them down.
                The two who did not work in the manor serving were told to go,
and the mage sent the first boy out.  She went to the last one, the victim,
after she had written her report.
                He had been sitting quietly the entire time, his back a
crisscross of the kiss of the whip, bloodied, with bits of skin dangling down. 
They had all been given a simple choice for their punishment—a plain whip and
twice as many lashes, or the barbed whip and a quarter as many.  She wondered
which was actually more painful.  She briefly contemplated ripping the dangling
skin off and listening to him whine.  She really hated elves.
                But, rather, she healed him, like she was being paid to do, and
sent him off to serve at the party. Though why the magister used elves to do it
was beyond her.
***** Sacrifice *****
Chapter Summary
     When someone you love is dying, what would you do to save them?
     Warning: It gets graphic past this point, but I did warn you...
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Varania couldn’t bear to be with her mother any longer.  It
wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there for her, or that she didn’t love her. 
It was that in her heart she knew she was dying, and she couldn’t bear to
watch.  She hated listening to the way the breath rattled in her lungs, the way
she would wheeze and the gurgle noise that occasionally came with it.  She
hated how her mother did not move, nor whisper, but just lied there and… died.
                She left the little hut, and stood standing just outside it,
taking deep breaths of the fresh air, trying not to hear the wheezing any
more.  She walked away, just to try to clear her head.  She felt dizzy, but
maybe that was just her own anxiety.
                Was her mother going to die tonight?  She wanted to cry.  The
tournament was in two days.  Surely…  Her mother was going to die in slavery,
and Leto was going to risk everything… for nothing.  Freedom meant nothing to
Varania.  She didn’t know how to live without being a slave, and didn’t know
what she would do.  She would rather just be a slave, and be with Leto, if she
was going to be on her own—never mind the child growing in her womb!
                When she thought she had mostly forgotten the particular way
her mother breathed, she started to head back, but a sharp blow to her back
sent her tumbling to the earth.  She gave a small cry, and looked up.  She
recognized two of the other gladiators.  They smelled like medicine to her, and
she could see poultices on them.  One of them grinned down at her, a smile of
broken teeth.  “And your brother can’t rescue you this time,” he said, cracking
his knuckles.
                Varania cringed.  What… were they going to do to her?  She
started to back away, but the other one grabbed on to her hair, and kicked
her—hard—in her pregnant stomach.  Pain lanced its way through her, making her
convulse.  He dropped her hair, and she collapsed into a partial ball, cringing
and making small noises of pain.
                The other kicked her in the head, and she cringed away, crying
out.  She screamed for help when the boys forced her to her feet, but no one
came.  No one ever came to help.  And Leto couldn’t hear her.
                Was this what it would be like, if he won and Danarius granted
her freedom?
                The boys kicked her, shoved her—all the while laughing as if
they were having a good time.
                She didn’t know what to do.  Should she try magic?  She had
been so strictly told not to.  Was it the right thing to do?  She didn’t know. 
But she was so scared, and they were hurting her, and she knew no one would
come to help her.
                “Stop!” she screamed, the spell coalescing around her tiny
fists.  But they didn’t.  They slammed her against the wall of the hut.
                “Bitch is pregnant, but we can still fuck her,” the one with
the broken teeth said.
                She even knew his name.  “Jadia, don’t,” she pleaded.  “It’s
not funny and I’m scared; stop!”
                “Hold her down—she’s a mage,” Jadia said, as the other wrestled
her downwards.  She screamed again, but no one came to help her.
                She was on her own, and it was happening all over again.  She
cried.  When one of them held her down, and the other shoved her dress up to
her hips, kneeling between her legs, she screamed.
                But… this time it was different.  This time, they weren’t him. 
They were just slaves, like her.  She couldn’t hurt them, but maybe she could
do something else?
                And she whispered the words, rather than scream, and her
fingers moved with the symbols, and she cast, triumphant.
                The two boys fell back, as if dazed, eyelids fluttering.  Jadia
hit the ground, dead asleep with his pants around his ankles.  The other stayed
awake for a moment longer, then collapsed.
                She felt giddy in her triumph.  She moved, carefully, to her
feet, wondering if the beating she had taken might have damaged the parasite in
her stomach.  Maybe it had—maybe her magic had protected it, or healed it.  She
didn’t really know for sure.  And didn’t care, honestly.
                She looked at the two sleeping boys, and stomped down on their
groins—as hard as she could.  She threw all of her 105 pounds into it, and only
felt satisfied when she had stuffed both of their mouths with stones and hoped
they choked on them, and trotted off practically skipping.
                Leto had no cause to be worried about her—she knew that now. 
She could just send them to sleep and do whatever she wished with them.  Of
course, she knew they would be back.  Their foolish, boyish pride would allow
nothing less, but, she grinned to herself, she had other spells she could
use—spells that wouldn’t hurt someone, but would debilitate them.  Spells like
sleep, temporary paralysis and the like.  How had she not thought of that
before?  They were so simplespells too!
                She felt lighthearted until she arrived back at the hut, back
to the sound of her mother’s dying breaths, and all the joy in her heart
faded.  Yes, she had found a way to protect herself, and she could even heal
the bruises and cuts she had sustained, but where did that leave her mother? 
She did not have the skill to heal this illness.  The most she could do was sit
with her.
 
                Two days before the tournament, and the magister feasted with
his fellows, having just returned from a brief trip to out of the city—not all
of his work could be accomplished in Minrathous.  There was music, but one
could hardly hear it over the sheer volume of the people gathered.  The
tournament would last an estimated three days, so great was the turnout.  Each
night, he would feast the nobles, and toast the victors of the day.  It was
expensive work, but he was a very wealthy man, so what of it?
                Years of stewing, and it was nearing its end.  He wanted to
stretch out that inevitable climax as long as possible.  He could sense the end
nearing, and was in no rush to get to it now, unlike his miserable apprentice
Raith.  Danarius, though, was a very patient man.  He would wait; he could
afford to wait.  He had learned to wait as a child—waited for his mageborn
father to come home, and watched his mother die slowly of a wasting disease for
which no amount of magic or otherwise could cure, only slow.  The dying had
been difficult, and lasted almost two years.  The death had been easy, and came
as a sort of release, and he had learned something else besides patience—death
was a release, not a punishment.  He had learned early on that there was always
time for patience, both in his studies and practice, and when it was time for
the real thing, he had best take things slowly.  He took the same philosophy to
bed too, so that elven girl learned.
                He had been… surprised that she had turned out pregnant. 
Humans rarely begot elves with child, after all, and vice versa.  If they did,
there would be more half-bred children, and probably fewer elves and humans
both.  Even so, the girl had been a virgin, for which he was a bit surprised to
learn, almost to the point of disinterest.  Almost.  That business was… messy,
for one.
                He watched her brother over the rim of a wine glass—one of the
best ways to watch someone else work.  His gaze trailed up his legs, his
unscarred back.  The boy had entered in the competition too.  He wondered what
he wanted, in a half-interested sort of way.
                His mother was sick—very sick, and might die.  But he had
entered before the woman had fallen ill, so it couldn’t be a cure he wanted.
                He thought of the girl again.  If her child was a mage, he
might express some interest in it, when it was older and its capabilities could
be tested.  As far as he was concerned, though, it wasn’t his child unless it
was mageborn, and even then, he had an apprentice, so he didn’t really require
a biological heir, least of all a half-bred child.
                He scratched absently at the stubble on his chin.  He was
getting tired of shaving, and decided to do something new.  He wondered if he
would ever get used to it though, and had finally decided that he would never
know until he tried it.  If only magic could get rid of the need to shave. 
Damned elves and their inability to grow beards—he admitted to being mildly
jealous of that.  He didn’t think he would ever truly have a problem with a
real beard—it was the process of it becoming one that was the trouble.
                He waited until Leto came closer, and signaled for more wine. 
He had been drinking quite a bit of it tonight.  He suspected he was not quite
drunk.  The boy saw him, bowed his head and approached him.
                “Is your mother still ill?” he asked him idly, setting the
emptied glass down on the pristine tablecloth.
                Leto blinked, surprised that he was even speaking to him.  “Y…
yes, Master,” he admitted.
                The wine didn’t splash as the glass filled.  But it wouldn’t. 
He had made sure the boy knew how to pour years ago, and he had been doing it
since.  “And your mageborn sister hasn’t the skill to heal her, is that it?”
                He shook his head.  “No, Master.”
                Not while she was pregnant, anyway.  Women.  This is why they
made terrible mages.  Of course, if they could keep themselves from getting
pregnant, they would be much better off.  He had heard that women can get an
incredible but temporary increase in ability after birth, but he wasn’t certain
of it.  Just a rumor, after all.  It could easily be exaggerated, or simply
feel like an increase in power after the decrease in it during pregnancy.  He
watched the boy, as he straightened, holding the bottle, waiting to be
dismissed.  He let him stand there for a moment, and found himself smiling when
he saw the boy’s obvious discomfort.  “Would you like her to live, Leto?” he
asked him.
                He frowned, either in surprise that he even knew his name, or
at the question.  “Y-yes, Master.”
                The magister leaned back in the chair, taking a long sip of the
wine.  He had wanted to dominate the boy months ago.  Rule him utterly, in
every conceivable way.  He felt it was finally time for that too.  After all,
the kid could die within the next week.  It would be such a shame if he didn’t
humiliate him at least once.  He wanted to see him cry, just once.  “Let’s work
out a deal, my pet,” he purred.  He raised an eyebrow.  Leto was watching him
out of the corner of his eyes—a useful trick that the slaves learned by
default.  “You do something for me, and I’ll heal her myself—tonight.”  The elf
said nothing, but his back seemed to straighten, eyes narrowing with suspicion,
as they should.  The mage’s lips curved into a sadistic half-smile, half-
sneer.  “On your knees, under the table.”
                By the stricken look on his face, he knew exactly what the
magister had in mind, but it didn’t take much imagination.  “Here… Master?” he
asked him, eyes wide in horror.
                He smirked, and took another sip of the wine.  “Unless you
don’t want your mother to live,” he said, shrugging one shoulder.  He didn’t
care about the cancer eating away at the boy’s mother.  But he knew he could
heal it, and didn’t particularly feel a need to.  Besides…  How much did the
elf care about his family, anyway?  He thought he was being rather generous,
offering the elf a cure as such.  Never mind the cost—he was a slave.  He
didn’t have money, of course.  Just that body—and a nice one, at that.  He had
best learn to use it regardless.
                Around them, the party continued.  No one was watching.  For
the moment, they were even alone in a crowded room.  Slowly, the boy sunk to
his knees, but stayed staring at the floor.
                “The bottle,” he reminded him, his tone icy.  He jerked, as if
just remembering it.  He glanced at it in his hand.  Stupidly, he thought,
briefly annoyed.  Distracted by what he was about to do or no, this is why
Danarius often thought of his slaves as unthinking creatures.  “Put it on the
table.”  He did so, pushing it gently from the edge.  His hands rested on the
wooden floor for a moment, and Danarius watched, sadistically pleased, as the
elf’s face heated.
                “I don’t… know how, Master,” he admitted, eyes squeezed shut.
                He couldn’t believe it.  How virginal could the brother and
sister really be?  He wondered if the boy was a virgin too, or had simply never
been with a man.  If he was a virgin, he was going to amend that.  Not himself,
of course, but indirectly.  He could always have him… bred, after all. 
Considering how talented her children were, he had been trying to breed Leto’s
mother for years—something the woman had begged to have happen away from her
children, so she had always gone to the male he had paired her with instead. 
Nothing had come of it though, even when he had her partners switched multiple
times.  Perhaps two had been her limit. 
                The mage reached forward, his thumb set against the elf’s
lips.  He hoped he cried as much as his sister had.
                He whispered, in a voice only his little wolf could hear, “No
teeth.”  He pushed his thumb past the boy’s lips, running it along his straight
teeth.  He pushed his thumb against the teeth, and they parted obediently. 
Farther into his mouth, and he heard him make a tiny, helpless noise.  The
sound made heat rush to his groin.  “Use your tongue, and as much saliva as you
can manage.  The farther back into your mouth, the better.”  He rubbed his
thumb against his wet tongue, wondering if he would whimper again.  He hoped he
would.  “And use your hands—whatever you can’t fit in your mouth, put in your
hands.”  He stroked his tongue, which occasionally twitched.  Too afraid to
move it, but wanted to desperately, he assumed.  Good.
                “What’re you doing to your slave?” someone asked.
                Danarius barely glanced up at him, recognizing him as another
magister.  “Training him,” he said, stroking his thumb along his pet’s tongue,
wondering how much more it would take before he started crying.  How long
before he really realized who had raped his sister.  If the bitch hadn’t told
him.  Reports said she hadn’t talked about it at all.  As far as the kid knew,
she had just been raped by anyone—even a guard, or a servant, anyone.  The girl
should be honored he had even noticed her enough to take her to bed.  If she
saw it any other way, well, he couldn’t expect too much from her, after all.
                “To suck cock?” he asked, deeply amused.
                He found himself smirking, exploring the wet cavern of his
slave’s mouth.  “I can think of few better uses for him,” he laughed, and so
did the other man before he moved on.
                He pulled his hand away from his face, and tilted the boy’s
face up.  “Open your eyes,” he commanded of him.  Green eyes opened, staring up
at him because he was forced to.  They were watery, and horrified, filled with
terror and disgust.  That suited him just fine.  His thumb was wet.  His hand
fell from his chin, and the elf looked back down, shivering as if it were
cold.  He might be cold in that outfit.  “And remember to swallow.”  He ran his
wet thumb over his exposed nipple, toying with it until it was dry, listening
to the elf’s breathing.  He almost stopped breathing more than once, and when
he pinched, yanking him forward, he got a gasp out of him.
                His other hand wrenched into the dark hair, hauled him under
the table.  The one trouble with the robes was this, he imagined, as he had to
lift the layers with one hand, keeping a steady grip on the boy’s hair with the
other.
                The lad was lucky.  All his whining, the frightened looks, had
aroused him; some of his work done for him.  He brought his head between his
legs.  He felt the elf, reluctantly, raised his hands up, both of them.  One
hand, callused from use of the sword, but covered in a layer of sweet-smelling
oils that made him glisten, cupped his testicles.  The other wrapped around the
base of the shaft.  It was too loud to hear exactly, but he liked to imagine
that he was crying.  He certainly had looked like he was about to.
                He took another sip of the wine, smiling in satisfaction when
he finally felt the boy’s mouth cover him.  It was hot and wet.  He was
inexperienced, but too desperate not to try as hard as he could, and trying to
get it over with as quickly as possible and those two things happened to nicely
coincide.  He kept a grip on his hair, enjoying forcing his head there almost
as much as what he was doing with his mouth.  His tongue was surprisingly
dexterous, but unskilled yet.  He worked up enough saliva to almost drool over
him, and in fact, that felt good too.
                But mostly what he liked was that he was doing it, in public,
and hated it.  He may have mostly liked it because the elf hated it.  Wanted
him to continue, because he hated it, and it was humiliating.  The boy should
just be grateful of the long tablecloth; fewer people would even notice him,
and it was loud enough that no one should hear it either.  That was generous,
Danarius reflected.  In the future, he made a note to amend that in some way. 
Not the immediate future, of course, but eventually, if the boy lived over the
next week.  It wouldn’t do to shame him too much before the tournament.
                His other hand reached for the glass of wine, sipping from it
casually, as if this wasn’t happening at all.  He kept an excellent straight
face, as it were, even under the most… trying… of circumstances.  It was a
necessary component of his position, after all.
                He reflected, as he leaned back in the chair, his fingers
curling and uncurling in the thick, black hair, that he did want the elf to
win.  Not just for aesthetic reasons, but for monitorial gain, of course.  He
wouldn’t have to pay a winner’s purse if he won.  The aesthetics was just
that—aesthetics.  He had every intention of turning the winner into a personal
bodyguard (something he was finding he had need of again—for some reason, not
everyone liked the magisters and sent assassins sometimes; so far, nothing he
and the regular guards couldn’t handle, but he had best be prepared anyway). 
In fact, that was some of the appeal—an easy, high-paying job for a knight or
soldier, and very honorable for them too.  Though, if he had to have someone
always at his side, and follow him wherever he went, he would prefer it if it
were someone visually appealing as well.
                His hand in the boy’s hair released, and moved down to his
face, running over his eyes and lashes, gently, trying to discover if the boy
had cried yet.  He hadn’t, but his eyes were watery.  He knew that was just
from occasional gagging though; he could feel it.  He ran his thumb along his
cheekbones, cupped his jaw, and went back to gently stroking his hair.
                Leto’s lack of skill made it last a little longer actually, but
he tried, breathing through his nose, testing his gag reflex, and even getting
desperate enough to use his hands a bit more than he had originally, sucking
harder, using more tongue.  Danarius wanted to come now.  Not just because he
had developed a rhythm, and it was feeling good for what it was, but because he
wanted the kid to swallow it.  He wanted him to swallow it, taste it, and
remember what he had done.  It was, after all, a form of submission.  And the
little brat had stabbed him some number of years ago.  It was about time he
made up for that.
                When he did come, hard, into the boy’s mouth, he held him
against his groin, his limp member still in his mouth, until he felt the boy
swallow.  He smirked to himself, and released his hair.  He moved away from him
immediately, and Danarius adjusted his robes.  The elf didn’t come immediately
out from under the table though.  Rather, he stayed there, as if hiding for a
moment, before he crawled out from under it.  Halfway out, he stopped, staring
upward.  Danarius saw the boy’s face heat, and his eyes downturned.  A slave
girl was staring at him in wide-eyed shock.  She was one of the ones that
Danarius had owned since birth—was her name Raenya?  He tried to keep track of
the ones he had owned all their lives; they were usually the most cowed and
subservient.  Frankly, the magister couldn’t have asked for better timing.
                She blinked, and hurried away.  The magister turned the boy’s
face toward him, so he could see him.  His eyes were a little red, as if he had
been crying, or at least his eyes watering, throughout it.  If they had just
been damp, he could have believed that it was only from the sporadic gagging,
but the redness…
                He smirked.  He had cried.  Maybe after he had touched his
face, but he had.  Maybe when he was swallowing his semen, or when he had come
in his mouth.  He liked to imagine that.  He leaned down.  “When did you start
crying, Leto?” he asked him, his voice barely above a whisper.  The elf stared
downwards, as if sick, and pale.  He contemplated slapping him out of the
stupor, but decided to ignore him for the moment.  Let him sit in shock for a
time, and reflect on what he had just done.  Patience, after all, was a
virtue.  He wasn’t too interested in his own question’s answer.  He went back
to his wine, and finished the glass.  Leto was slowly rising to his feet by the
time he was done.
                The magister glanced around the room.  People had begun to
depart.  It was getting late, after all.  He rose, and gestured for the boy to
follow him.  He walked appropriately, five steps behind him at all times, as he
led the way to the compound.  He had intended to keep his word, after all, and
the woman hadn’t much time.  But wouldn’t it be a delight if she had passed
away before they arrived?
                If she had, he wondered how much convincing it would take
before he could make the elf believe he had wanted to do that.  Danarius knew
Leto was just a little unstable.  The right manipulation, the right words,
moments, a push here and there…  That was what was so beautiful about the
entire thing.
                He let Leto open the door, and hold it open for him.  He strode
inside the small hovel, and saw Varania sitting up on the bed, staring at him
with wide, frightened eyes.  Foolish girl.
                He ignored her utterly, but did notice that Leto gave her a
silencing glare.  He went to their sickly mother.  At first, he thought she had
passed away, then realized that her breathing was just that shallow.
                It struck him as being… oddly… nostalgic, and he knew why.
                It didn’t seem to matter the circumstances, not really—or the
setting.  It all felt the same.  A child in the room with their dying parent. 
That was something he was familiar with.  The wind that rattled his mother’s
lungs, wheezing out of her, fighting to draw another breath.  The sickness had
driven her to unconsciousness, and he had sat, dutifully, beside her, because
someone should be there.  He had felt that very strongly—that his mother
shouldn’t die alone.  And he had been angry, so angry, that his father had
refused to be there with his wife.  He had said that she was just a woman, and
he had more important affairs than her passing.  And, why should he covet one
woman when he could snap his fingers and have a dozen—so let her die; she had
clung to life for too long anyway.  For the first year of her illness, he had
been dutiful and attentive, and then something began to change.  She lived too
long, and he began to resent her for it, he felt.  But what did he know?  He
had been twelve.
                He had tried to keep his younger sibling out of the room, to no
avail; the boy had charged in past him anyway, and looked at his dying mother
in silence, then ran back outside.  He had been seven; he hadn’t really
understood.  He had been angry in the days to come, and silent in turns, but he
hadn’t understood the frail body under the sheets laboring to breathe. 
Danarius’ sister visited but once, and laid a single flower on the nightstand
by the bed, looked at her, and walked out.  Even then, Danarius had watched her
smile her odd smile, and if only he had known…
                He had watched the slaves bathe his mother, changed the sheets,
and felt their disgust, and hated them for it.  Hated the looks they gave, and
felt the rage inside him quicken at the uncaring way they handled her; as if
she were a doll, a breakable doll, but still a doll, and not a human being at
all.
                Danarius had understood though, and had sat in the chair beside
her, for the final two days of the two years she had been dying, the only one
of her three children to pay any kind of respect to her death.  And still he
had felt guilty; guilty because he couldn’t convince his father to be there,
guilty because he could not make his brother understand, and guilty because he
didn’t want to be there either.  He had wanted to run, to flee the room and the
death that lingered there, the smell of the dying and the sick, the medication,
and the sickening sound of her breathing.
                And he couldn’t, because any moment might be her last, and it
was unfair to ask his mother to die in that room alone, with no one beside
her.  But all the same, he hadn’t held her hand, hadn’t said goodbye--nothing. 
She had died, and he had sat in that chair, falling asleep, with a book in his
lap, and had woken to discover her body was cold and stiff, and he had no idea
if she had spoken any last words in her sleep, or if she may have reached out
for him.  And, for it, he hated his brother, hated his sister, and hated his
father, and most of all himself for all his failings.  He hadn’t known enough
to save her.
                He wondered, if he had the same skill then as he did now, and
the knowledge, if he may have given her some more time.  He wondered that every
day.
                The elf may not have lasted another day.  Wasn’t Leto and his
sister lucky that he was feeling so generous?  It must be the wine.  But there
was something pleasing about forcing the elf to do that, through something
other than fear and an order.  Giving him a choice was… pleasant.
                “You’re fortunate, Leto,” he said, his hand upturning, a ball
of fire springing to life above it, the light casting an eerie glow about the
room.  “She would have died tomorrow, I wager.”
                The elf, wisely, said nothing, but stood in attendance. 
Danarius got immediately to work, no matter the reason, treating it as
systematically as if it were a math equation.  It took some time, especially
under the influence of the drink, and a great deal of power.  Varania had
risen, and was standing near, watching.
                He pointed to the prone woman, not so much sleeping as
unconscious.  “Feed the spell,” he commanded the mage.  She nodded, and her
hands came, palm out.  Her own magic added to it, drawing out the ill, and
filling it in with health, like she was trained to.  The work left him tired,
as if he had been running, and his muscles even ached.  Mages were rarely
overweight; they burned too much energy for that.
                Varania staggered, her hand going to her belly.  He found
himself looking at it for a moment, then turned away, his business done.  The
woman heaved a belabored breath, then another.  She shifted, and passed into a
more normal sleep.  Her breathing was regular.  …He couldn’t remember the sound
of his mother’s voice, but he could remember the way her lungs rattled when she
breathed those last few days.  The funny thing  about memories was that he
barely remembered her at all most of the time, and vividly only in rare
moments.
                “Thank you, Master,” Varania said meekly.  He sensed the
questions in her voice.  Her brother could answer them.
                “Don’t thank me; I’ve no interest in your affairs.  Thank your
brother,” he said, nodding to Leto, who immediately stared back downwards.  His
posture spoke volumes by itself.  He moved on, out the door and into the night.
 
                Varania looked at her brother, standing in the chill nighttime
air.  He was naked to the waist except for a gilded collar, and wearing almost
nothing below it too.  She knew that it was just one of the outfits for nights
like this, but seeing her big, strong brother in it was almost humorous.  If
not for the dire look on his face and their uneasy relationship at the moment,
she might have teased him.
                “Leto,” she began, reaching out to him.  Her fingers touched
the gilded bracers on his wrists.
                He pulled away.  “I… need to go,” he said.
                “Wait,” she whispered, taking a step after him.  She was almost
surprised when he stopped and looked back at her.  “I’m sorry… about this
morning.”  She meant every word, and only wished that she could convey the
depth of her sorrow over the matter, and her regret.  “I’m really sorry.”
                He looked down, and swallowed.  “It’s all right, ‘Nia.”
                “I love you,” she told him, feeling desperate.  She felt
suddenly like her family was slipping away from her.  Her mother was saved, but
still slipping away.  She felt like the sickness would only come back, and that
it was her mind that was truly gone.  She felt like she hadn’t told either of
them that she loved and cared about them enough, not nearly enough.  With
Mother almost dying, she felt that very strongly.  She realized that Leto could
die this week, and he was still upset with her from when she had asked him to
hit her to cause a miscarriage.  She didn’t want him to die with them fighting,
with her not telling him that she loved and cared about him.  Did he even
realize how much he meant to her?  He was her only brother, her only sibling. 
He had raised her, and loved her when she felt like no one else did, not even
Mama.  And was always there for her, no matter what.  She loved him so much. 
And she realized that she was going to lose him forever if he won.
                He paused for a long time, and she heard him sigh.  “I love you
too, ‘Nia.”  He sighed, shaking his head a little.  He looked pale to her,
under all the oil.
                “Leto… why did—“
                He cut her off before she finished the question.  “Don’t ask,”
he snapped under his breath.  She drew back, a bit alarmed at his tone of
voice.  “Go back to bed, all right?”  That time, his voice was softer.
                “I’m not a child anymore,” she told him.  “If you did…
something… or… made some kind of deal…”
                He shook his head, angry.  “Goodnight.”
                “Did you kill someone?” she asked, throwing out the words as
quickly as she could muster.
                He paused, his back to her.  He glanced back, over his
shoulder.  The light was dim inside, and he didn’t turn his head enough for her
to see all of his face.  “Yeah,” he said, his voice blunt.  With that, he
turned and left, faster than she could think to say anything.  She stared at
the closed door, wondering.  What had gone on?  Why had their master come? 
What had he really had to do?  He wasn’t bloody, but she guessed that didn’t
mean much.  And had he just said so to shut her up?  What had Leto had to do?
                At the same time, she knew it was best if she didn’t know.  Her
master was sadistic, and cruel.  He could have asked for anything.  Maybe he
had had Leto kill someone, or maybe something worse.
                It was interesting to note that, though she didn’t know, in a
way, he had killed something.
Chapter End Notes
     Something about the way Danarius looked at Fenris during that scene
     at the Hanged Man (among other things) always made me believe he
     could have been sexually abused. A psychology student friend of mine
     thinks it likely began in his childhood/sometime in the beginning of
     his memories--when he was too young/naive to know it was wrong and
     part of why he was so hurt years later was because he realized it
     was--and had likely been mentally groomed and conditioned for it. I
     think Fenris/Leto need/s hugs.
***** Lies *****
Chapter Summary
     In which the tourney progresses.
                Raith was bored.  Watching one-on-one fights one after the
other got dreadfully dull.  The first few weren’t so bad, but later on, it was
just boring.  His suggestion had been to divide everyone up into a few separate
teams and simulate a battle, but have the victors also attack one another after
the point, the last one standing winning.  This would have ended the entire
thing at once, and would have likely been much more exciting.  However, instead
it was one battle after another while an announcer rang off their names and
titles.  The first day was the grandest, the most public match.  The second day
would also be fairly public, but the third was invitation-only, and would be a
series of matches against the victors of the previous days.  Three days of
being bored out of his ever-loving mind.  Originally, they were just going to
do as many as possible every day, but it was far “grander” and more organized
to have it done this way.
                His gaze wandered from the combatants in the sands below, to
the thousands gathered in the stands.  They seemed more interesting to him,
they who stood out in the sun, jumping and cheering, screaming for their
favorites.  He watched from his privileged seat underneath a silk canopy,
shading them from the late winter sun.  Without it, as the afternoon wore on,
it would have been intolerable.  Tevinter had the mildest of winters.
                The people in the stands were primarily human, but the elves
from the alienage had been allowed to come, and why not?  He saw the scattered
surface dwarves about too—they were almost all merchants or smugglers.  It was
interesting how the three groups mostly kept to themselves, and on the borders
of these groups, people at first seemed uncomfortable, but as the day wore on,
seemed to forget themselves.  Out of all of them, the dwarves, as ever, were
the most comfortable with any given group.
                He viewed them all as being quite bloodthirsty.  Their cheers
were loudest at the sight of blood, after all.  The interesting bit was that
the poorer-looking they were, the more bloodthirsty they seemed to be.  The
arena at normal times were just gladiators.  The losers were whipped for their
loss, publicly—one lash per every one of their team who fell.  The crowd
screamed for that too, and counted along with them.  It was barbaric.  The
entire thing was barbaric.  They were so obsessed with the sight of blood, and
the crowd was deafening when someone died.
                The entire scheme was brilliant though.  The knights brought
with them squires, a contingent of servants, sometimes their families, slaves,
and they needed rooms, drink, food, women—and that was just the knights!  The
soldiers and sellswords who came may have only brought themselves for the most
part, but they required much of the same.  And of course the gladiators who
came to compete—their masters brought them, and they required all and often
more than the knights.  All of it amounted to revenue for the city, and,
ultimately, his master.  Sure, he put together a hefty purse for the winner (or
the winner’s master), but it was almost paid for, when he owned much of the
city, after all.
                In addition, it entertained the populous outside of the
gladiatorial season—fall.  Of course, they couldhave had the slaves fight all
year ‘round but then what would the populous look forward to?  No, it was often
best to keep them looking forward to something, to be excited about something
that was so easy to control.  Besides, the summers were just too hot for them
to be out in the sand in heavy armor; half the slaves would die from heat
stroke, he imagined, and winter was cold enough that the slaves would only fall
prey to illness, given that they were mostly naked and the physical exertion
coupled with the cooler weather and frequent rains.  Wintersend was a good time
for the tourneys, and always had been.
                The late winter tournament had been a nice reprieve, something
rare they could experience so out of season.  It was a small wonder that so
many had turned out to witness it.  He imagined that the streets must be bare
right now.  It would be… interesting to see the busy streets deserted during
the daylight hours.
                More interesting than this tournament anyway!
                He had never been interested in the coliseums.  He thought,
Apprenticing for over half my life, and this is what it has amounted to?  Bah!
                A couple elven slaves stood in attendance of the gathered
magisters; so well-trained they were scarcely noticed, which was the point. 
They were only really noticed when his glass seemed to fill itself, or when he
smelled the heavy perfumes on them, which he thought clashed badly with the
smell of the arena—sweat, blood, and warm sand.  He should have been talking
with the magisters there, forming alliances, getting to know them.  The
magisters didn’t have friends; they had allies—allies who would often stab them
in the back to get ahead—sometimes literally.
                He listened, sure enough.  The talk was more interesting than
the fighting sometimes, but the talk kept drifting back to the fighting.  Who
would win?  Who was betting against whom?  Whom was a fool to put their money
on Ser Armor-Clad Sword-Wielder of Psychopath?  Why were they a fool to do so? 
Well, because Ser Psychopath tends to favor his right, and sometimes drops his
shield two inches when he dances about for too long.
                It was horrifyingly dull.
                And the women!  The women were even worse.  They picked their
favorites, despite many of them being magister’s wives, and batted their
lashes, waving their favors, cheering their champions.  They spoke of how
gallant the knights were, how dashing, or handsome.
                It was ludicrous, because he had heard the same women judging
the slaves equally, but their language had been much more vulgar.  They would
talk about their skin, their muscled bodies, their penises—all in front of
their husbands, who didn’t even seem to care.  They seemed to see it as simply
judging stock.  Funny thing was, the arena often evened the odds between the
knights and the slaves, and there wasn’t much difference between them, for
those few minutes anyway—not in armor, not armed.  And this was one tournament
that the slaves were encouraged to wear armor.
                Fact of the matter, those gladiatorial slaves had women flock
to them, even in the damned cages.  They would reach out to touch the victors,
offering to lick the blood off of them.  Not all of them were homely or
depraved—rather, beautiful women would bare their breasts to them, offering
themselves.  Why, he had seen a daughter of a high-ranking Altus family stride
right up to that dark-haired boy—Leto—and lick blood off of his face, and
whisper something in his ear.  He didn’t have to imagine what it was; it
happened often enough:  Even highborn ladies sometimes liked to bed the
gladiators.  The best of them were bred.  He suspected that in a year or two,
his master might decide to find a suitable match or three for Leto, for that
matter.  Lucky bastard, even if those women would most likely be slaves.  The
other women—and some men--in question, though, would pay Danarius for a night,
a few hours, with one of his slaves.  To his knowledge, despite Leto’s steady
victories, Danarius had refused every offer for him.  The offers only continued
to climb in coin—that may have been the point, but he had best cash on that
before the boy fell in battle, took a bad injury, or marred that pretty face of
his.
                He smirked to himself.  He should have whored the boy out
before the tournament, fact of the matter.  He would only lose, maybe even
die.  He should have tried to get some extra coin out of it.  He hoped the kid
died—slowly.  Hoped he were maimed somehow—maybe a mace’s blow to the leg. 
Then he’d be worthless, even to the brothels.
                These days, Raith had little to no time to even visit the
brothels.  His master insisted he spend every waking moment teaching that runt
Varania, and when he wasn’t doing that, researching.  By the end of the day, he
was so exhausted that he just fell into bed.
                Well, anyone who made it to the final rounds in the tournament
would have their choice of the women in the stands, he guessed.
                Apprenticing had given him no time to consider marriage
either.  He wasn’t so certain that he wanted to anyway.  His master had done
quite well without a lady of the house, and seemed to blatantly refuse the
concept of marriage, something a few of his peers frowned upon, naturally.  To
each their own, as the saying went.  However, it was agreed, unanimously, that
anyone of an Altus bloodline, like Danarius, really should reproduce to keep
the line going.  He had always insisted that he had a brother who had several
children, but so far none of them were mages; it was quite the talk at the
Circle how his once prestigious family line seemed to be running out. 
Naturally, many other families, both Altus and even more Laetan had offered
themselves and their daughters to him, all to no avail.
                He wondered, idly, if his master had any illegitimate
children.  He owned several brothels, but Raith had never seen him visit one,
but that meant little.  He could also have mistresses around the city,
carefully keeping them from the manor.
                He suspected a number of people around the manor of the cause
behind Varania’s pregnancy with one in particular, but it was only a theory. 
His master said nothing about it, and Raith wasn’t about to mention it either. 
Varania certainly wasn’t talking.  He supposed it could have been anyone,
really.  A guard, a servant—anyone in the manor.  She was a little young for
Raith’s tastes though.  Elves didn’t have much curve even as adults so Raith
was normally more attracted to humans, or sometimes a very curvaceous and
feminine dwarf.  Elven women just made him feel like he was with a child most
of the time.  That Dalish girl had been one thing—her breasts had been small,
but she did have some nice hips.
                The magister had told Raith that marriage only opens one up to
weakness.  He had told him, if he must marry, marry mageborn and perhaps even
another magister or from a magister’s close kin, but nothing below Laetan, born
from a Soporati family, like himself; they can look after themselves and serve
as a dalliance, or even a hostage if things turned sour.  Anything else is only
a weakness, something his fellows could exploit, use against him.  It was why
any relationships he had, he kept secret, and ended quickly.  Raith imagined
that many of them ended in a mysterious death or disappearance.  He had heard a
tale that one of his master’s mistresses became catty, insistent, demanding
marriage in addition to the baubles and silks.  Some trinket had inevitably
been reported stolen from another magister one eve, and turned up in her
possession.  She had been seized, but they couldn’t hang her, for she pled on
the defense of her belly.  It was true, though whether or not it was Danarius’
child was always a matter of debate.  She had been sentenced to slavery in
Seheron instead of death.
                He glanced at his master out of the corner of his eye.  Was the
tragedy that killed his father and made him a magister really an accident?  He
wondered…
                It was also quite generous to give his younger brother, who
should have inherited nothing save some stipend to make him comfortable, as he
wasn’t a mage, so much land in the country, a vineyard, slaves, horses—anything
he could ask for.  To get rid of him?  To make him quiet?
                He pulled himself from his private thoughts; they weren’t
suitable by any means.
                The day dragged on.  By the end of it, the winners were
announced, and those winners would continue onwards.  The crowd cheered for
every one named, and booed at the losers.  Raith was just glad it was over.
                He was eager to be back indoors, back at the manor, where a
feast awaited them.  He was beyond disappointed when his master insisted to go
to that horrid almost-literal dungeon below the coliseum, to see to his slaves,
who would be held there for the duration of the tournament.
                There were only three—two of them human, who Danarius always
kept separated from the elven ones save on the sands.  He couldn’t imagine why
he would be so interested in it, though he had an idea.  That boy, Leto, he
assumed.  The one his master referred to as his pet wolf.  He trailed after
him, more irritated than anything else, but they weren’t alone.  A few of the
other magisters were yelling at the slaves in attendance to those locked in
cages, seeing to it that they were well-taken care of until the end of the
tournament.
                The prisoners were kept in a different area, and the holding
cages for the slaves were different—cleaner for one, because sometimes women or
occasionally men wanted to come down to them.
                Each was kept separately, and Danarius went to the other two
before Leto, looking at them, speaking little.  He stopped and gave orders to
the two slaves in attendance to his three—simple orders; food, keep them clean,
that it better not get cold enough for them to get sick, and that none of the
three were allowed women, or men.  Raith didn’t miss the glowers from two of
the three slaves who had overheard the remark.  Leto just didn’t seem to care.
                Danarius dismissed the two, and moved on to his “pet”.  Raith
stayed back, but within earshot, arms crossed, eager to be underway.  The scene
reminded him all too clearly of that afternoon in the market, when that same
elf had stabbed him in the leg.  But now, there was no knife, and even if there
was, Raith suspected he had been too well cowed to do such a thing.
                “I’m glad you’re entering, my pet,” he told Leto, privately.
                The elf sat on the stone bench, looking for all the world like
he had never moved from it, like he had just been cut out of the same stone as
the bench.  “I’m glad I could please you, Master,” he said.
                Danarius’s eyes narrowed dangerously.  “Look up,” he barked. 
The teenager lifted his head, staring past his master more than at him.  The
mage looked at him, scrutinizing him.  “If you’re being flippant, I’ll have
your tongue cut out.”  It wasn’t a threat, not exactly—just a reminder.
                “Yes, Master,” he said, in the same tone of voice.  “I wasn’t
being flip; I swear.”
                The kid had such an expressive face.  Raith could sense despair
in his eyes, even from this distance.  Despair, misery, loathing, and… fear. 
That made sense; this place was miserable—all the more reason to be away from
it sooner.  “Come here,” his master beckoned.  Leto rose stiffly to his feet. 
He had been sitting so long, not moving, that his legs cracked when he rose. 
He walked to the bars, standing at a comfortable distance from his master,
still looking past him, at the wall behind his head.  “I think I’d like it if
you won.”
                Raith found himself smirking.  He wouldn’t have to pay that
purse!  Still, the slave could ask a favor—any favor.  He wondered what he
could possibly want.  Did he even have the mental capacity to think of
something genuinely worthwhile?  He seemed more like a rabid dog than a man,
after all.  And Raith would, honestly, hate to see years of their sweat, blood,
and sleepless nights be poured into that ungrateful elf anyway.  “Then I would
be happy to please you further, Master,” he said, voice still utterly bland.
                The apprentice saw his master smirk.  “I’m sure you are.” 
There seemed to be more to that than what was said, but Raith wasn’t certain of
what.  Something that had transpired between them, or maybe just something that
the man knew about.  Who knows?  If Raith had learned nothing, though, it was
to not jump to conclusions if possible, especially when it came to the
magisters.  Believe only what you see, and be suspicious of that too.  Take
everything with a grain of salt, as it were—rumors were to not be ignored
exactly, but only taken into account.
                That didn’t stop his own opinions from forming though.
                The elf looked vaguely troubled.  “Have I… done something to
displease you, Master?” he inquired, as if hesitant to even speak, but had no
doubt heard the tone of his master’s voice.
                Danarius was silent a moment.  “No.”  The briefest of pauses,
as if in thought.  The magister’s gaze roved over the boy almost intimately,
and the elf took notice of it.  “Not once.”
                Leto finally bowed his head, eyes lowered.  His voice came out
half-strangled.  “I exist only to serve you, Master,” he said mechanically.
                The magister stared at him, and to Raith’s eyes, if the bars
hadn’t been in the way, he may have struck him.  He wondered why.  He had
certainly sounded like a perfectly obedient slave.  Had Danarius wanted him to
become angry, or abashed, or something else?  Whatever he had wanted, this
wasn’t it.        
                “Yes.  Yes you do,” he said placidly, and turned away from him.
 
                Mieta felt crestfallen.  Her own children—lying to her.  Leto
had promised her—promised her—that he wouldn’t compete.
                Had she ever really believed that though?  She stared at the
empty bed.  She had certainly wanted to believe it.  She had prayed that his
promise had meant something.  But it had been a lie.  She realized now, that it
had always been a lie.  He had never intended to back down from this.
                She understood.  It was horrible, but she understood her son. 
He wanted to help, and she knew that.  Knew that, whatever he was doing, he was
doing it for his family.  Whatever he might think, the sickness just couldn’t
be from something as simple as depression.  She knew that she was depressed and
downtrodden since capture, but, surely…  Well, she couldn’t convince her
children otherwise.  And when she was most insistent, then Leto only ignored
her, and Varania suggested, gently, that it might be from the change in
climate, which was common enough.
                She didn’t want Leto to take this burden upon himself.  It
wasn’t his place to do so.  It wasn’t his responsibility, and it shouldn’t fall
to him.  It should never have turned out this way.  What if he died?
                It made her want to cry.  Born free, to die a slave, slain for
a crowd’s amusement to the tune of cheering?  How terrible, how diabolical. 
And they would just toss his dead carcass in a cart, buried in a ditch
somewhere, fed to the lions—it didn’t matter; she wouldn’t even see him.  She
couldn’t even give him the dignity of a proper grave.
                Or what if he came back injured?  It would have to be something
really awful if a mage couldn’t heal it.  He would never fight again.  He might
even be considered useless.  Then what?  She feared that; the old and the
expendable somehow disappeared from the slave compound.  She had often caught
herself wondering what must happen to them.  Horrible things, things not
suitable to think about.  This was a place of dark magic, trickery, and lies. 
They never even saw the bodies.
                She didn’t know which was worse.  She supposed… in the long
run, coming home injured.  He would be miserable up until the day he died.
                Mieta’s stomach wrenched thinking about it.
                Or what if he came home comatose?  That was almost as bad. 
They certainly wouldn’t give him very long before he would be killed outright.
                She prayed, prayed, though to what god, she didn’t know, that
he would come back to her alive and in one piece, whole—no matter any other
outcome, alive and whole.
                She hoped that the last conversation she had had with him was
not the last one she would ever have.
                She hadn’t realized, at the time, his intentions, and had
besought him something, while Varania was away.  “Your sister needs you,” she
told him.  He had glanced away, but didn’t answer.  “You’re all she has.” 
Mieta felt heartbroken to say it aloud.  “I couldn’t be there for her when she
was growing up—you were.  She’s grief-stricken, though, and she needs you to
support her.”
                He was silent, and looked like he wanted to say something for a
moment, then apparently changed his mind.  “I’m done being her support,” he
said coldly instead.
                Mieta could barely believe that he had said such a thing.  “How
can you say that?” she demanded.  “She’s your sister.  And she loves you.”  Why
couldn’t he see that his baby sister needed him?  Varania looked more saddened
with each passing day at the growth of her belly.  She needed her older
brother.  Mieta wanted to be there for her, and had tried to, but Varania had
shied away from her.  She had accepted the comfort, but wouldn’t open up to her
the same way she did with Leto.
                His eyebrow sort of twitched, she noticed, as if he were
thinking of something else, something that made him angry.  Had the two gotten
into some kind of fight?  She had noticed that they were acting strangely
toward one another, but they were both teenagers; she had been expecting that. 
Mieta wished that her children would talk to her more.  “Is that so.”
                Mieta stared up at her son, shocked.  “Yes,” she said. 
“Please, Leto, talk to her.  Comfort her.  She needs you more than either of
you know.”
                He fell silent for a moment, frowning in thought, and then
sighed, defeated.  He shook his head in woe.  “I know,” he admitted, but his
tone was testy.
                The mother knew when not to push her children.  This was one of
those times not to push.  She let him be, and he had been silent, speaking very
little to either of them.  She couldn’t call any of the interactions she had
had with him after that a conversation.  And now… now…
                Please, my child, be safe.
 
                Raith felt like today was just another repeat of the day
before.  The matches were the same, as far as he was concerned.  No knights
today, but plenty of commons showed up anyway.  Not quite the crowd as the day
before, but about the same.
                He had spent all of the night before giving one final review to
all the separate documents the winner would have to sign.  The fine print
practically signed away their soul, and freed he and his master from any legal
obligations, should anything go wrong.  Not to mention that the magister would
almost own even one of the knights, for life, if they won.  Cleverly worded, it
gave them a permanent, fairly easy job with good pay.  Only the slaves’
paperwork wasn’t so cleverly worded.  That detailed that if one of the slaves
should win, then Danarius would pay for the slave on a previously agreed price,
the winner’s purse would go to the one who owned them.  But the favor, that was
for contestants only, and was so stated.
                He had found not a loophole, not a word out of place. 
Everything was exactly as it should be.
                The first half of the day was all the remaining soldiers.  The
second half would be the gladiator-slaves.  Raith couldn’t wait until it was
all over, and he could go back inside.  He had certainly tried to weasel out of
going, but his master had none of it, as usual.  Something about making
appearances and practicing what he had been studying.
                And Raith did make an appearance, and he did his best to study
what he had learned.  Basically, being as arrogant as befit his rank and his
master’s, as knowledgeable as he had to be.  The talk he heard was much the
same as the day before.  He imagined there couldn’t be too much to talk about
when it came to sweaty men swinging weapons at each other.
                One of the mages was commenting that he would like to rain some
fire on the combatants, maybe add some spice to the fighting.  Danarius agreed
that it would, but such a thing was strictly not allowed.  In regular arenas,
sometimes a mage was there to liven things up a bit, but that was all.  Mages,
even slaves, didn’t fight in the arenas.  There would be too much room for
mishaps.  An arrow flying high and striking someone in the crowd was one thing,
but dozens of burn victims quite another—that led to rioting, and other lesser
countries, he sometimes felt, were only looking for a weak spot sometimes—and
they didn’t need it with the war going on in Seheron.
                He contemplated what he might say for a time, then waited for
the right moment.  His master and two other magisters had fallen to discussing
the current prices on a trained gladiator.  One of them made a scathing remark
about the Chantry’s tithing.
                “… wouldn’t be so damn expensive, except for the tithing,” he
was saying.  “Fifteen percent is entirely too high.”
                Another snorted.  “Nothing compared to army-trained
gladiators.”  Those were deserters, primarily.  The army made a profit off of
them as well, to train their replacements mostly, and the Chantry still
demanded a tithe.  But the training was often worth it was the trouble,
apparently.
                “Your boy—the one with the black hair—cost me over two hundred
sovereigns when he killed my best gladiator,” the man closest to Danarius said,
scratching his beard.  “That him, by the way?”  He gestured to the sands.
                The magister glanced down.  His expression was unfathomable. 
“So it is.”
                “My offer still stands,” the man was saying.  “Even if he
loses—two hundred sovereigns—provided he can fight.”
                Danarius snorted.  The clash of swords sounded, even above the
crowd.  “My little wolf is worth more than that.”
                The other two both laughed.  “He’s cleaned us both out before,”
the third man said with a nod.  “Me, twice, in fact.  Hamstrung one of my
slaves once—damned bastard.”
                “Two-hundred thirty,” he said.
                The mage shook his head.  “No.”
                “Two-fifty.  He’s not worth more than that.”
                “He’s a prodigy.  Six hundred.”
                He whistled.  “That’s too high, even for you.”
                “I imagine that by the end of his career in the arena, that’s
what he will have made me.  Or what he’ll be worth—either way.”
                Raith frowned.  What an odd way to put it.  Did he mean as
breeding stock?  True, slaves were bred for this, but surely that was too high
as well?  He couldn’t stop himself.  “Six hundred for a stud is a bit high too,
Master,” he said.  He quirked a smile.  “Hardly even a haggling price.”
                But the magister only looked down, and watched his slave
fighting.  He was using a hammer.  They used blunted weapons a lot in the
fighting.  The elf chose a weapon that could kill while still being quite
blunt.  Raith suspected that he was bloodthirsty.  Well, he had gotten a taste
of it at a young age—perhaps it had just taken hold.  “If he wins, he’ll be
worth more than six hundred,” Danarius said, more to himself than those
gathered.
                “How much coin are you spending on that lyrium anyway?” a
Senior Enchanter asked, the third man.  Raith knew the answer to that, but the
question hadn’t been directed to him.  His own answer was:  Entirely too much.
                Danarius gave him a figure without even blinking at the
thought.  Before his apprenticeship, Raith had never even seen so much money,
but his master spent it without thinking about it sometimes.  He supposed that
it happened when you were rich, and he just seemed to get richer.  He invested
a lot of that money, though, back into the businesses he owned; the ships, for
one, were always needing maintenance.
                Raith wondered when he could bring up his ruse to escape the
arena.  The crowd roared.  The elf had knocked his opponent against the wall,
and the mage had heard the armor crash, and imagined if the man didn’t have
broken bones, he would be bruised.
                The gladiator started to rise.  The elf waited, standing
steady, ready for him.  The other fell back down, promptly, and yielded in
shame.
                Raith imagined that many of these slaves would be beaten for
losing so.  The crowd should like that, if they made it public.
                Later on, someone died, impaled on a spike along the outer wall
of the arena.  One of the mage’s ladies grew faint.  Her lady-in-waiting caught
her, but she was still quite pale.  Raith volunteered to escort her outside, so
her lord husband could continue to watch.
                She smiled sheepishly at him.  “I’m afraid I’ve no head for
this blood sport,” she said.  Her servant had a sun shade made of a delicate
silk and lace to shade her lady from the harsh sun.
                “It is barbaric,” Raith agreed.  “Shall we have a walk, my
lady?”  He offered her his arm, and she accepted.  He had no intention of going
far, just down to a nearby pastry shop, where he of course bought her something
to eat, rationalizing that she had only fainted due to hunger.  Of course, it
was the hunger and the gore—not her own weak suppositions.  How had this woman
managed to marry into the Circle, anyway?
                Raith disliked it, but he wasn’t averted to it.  And of course,
she was a woman, but so many were just as bloodthirsty as the men, if not more
so.  He wondered how much the woman knew about her husband, the blood magic for
one.  Likely nothing.  She wasn’t mageborn; why bother telling her about it?
                Anyone who wasn’t a mage served no purpose, except that which a
mage deemed them worthy of.
***** A Winter Victory *****
Chapter Summary
     In which the past will not simply die, but keep coming back to bring
     different forms of pain to everyone.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Aramael had always been sneaky and inquisitive, even by Dalish
standards—who were somewhat known for being sneaky in the forest.  It wasn’t a
forest, but the same principles still stood, and he had snuck into the Grand
Proving.  Was it really sneaking if he hadn’t had to hide, though?
                Aramael was barely fifteen, and was, as far as he could tell,
the last surviving member of his clan—who had been massacred by slavers, which
was a blunt way of putting into words the pain, trauma, and suffering that it
had been.  He had survived more due to cowardice than luck or skill—too scared
to do anything but run and hide.
                Revenge was the thought that kept him going, and finding out if
anyone else still lived what motivated him most mornings.  Any path he could
take either route had led him to Minrathous, so there he stayed.
                He liked the coliseums—not so much for the bloodshed, except
that people often were looking elsewhere and the magisterswould talk about the
most interestingthings when they thought no one was around to hear them.  That,
and with all the crowds, it was easy to cut purses.
                He crept up the steps, and took a long route to where the
magisters sat, in their shaded pavilion.  He passed a well-built, perfumed
slave, maybe two years older than he, on the steps, and he smiled, steel-gray
eyes inviting, and the slave paused, returned the look, and let him go.  The
thing about the magisters having so many slaves—the slaves didn’t care.  One
way or another, they didn’t care.  If their master died, it meant nothing to
them; slavery under one master or another was still the same thing.  And leaked
secrets was much the same to them.  The servants and guards were always another
matter, but even then, the servants didn’t care too much either if he paid
them, and the guards would look the other way for a bit of coin too—hence all
the purse cutting.
                His bare feet made little to no noise as he trudged up the
steps, keeping always to one side.  He made it onto the pavilion, but hung
around near the back, far enough away as to not rouse the guard’s curiosity—who
were really more interested in the fighting going on anyway, and out of the way
of the slaves.
                He listened to their talk, trying to glean what secrets he
might from them, but the din of the crowd, even here, was just too loud.  Back
to the wall, he crept closer, casually, as if he were supposed to be there.
                The slaves were too busy to notice him, the guards too
preoccupied.  The high-ranking mages were only watching the sands down below. 
They were commenting on the fighting, and one of them swore loudly, and half
the crowd booed, and the other half cheered.  Aramael glanced down at the
sands, then back at the magisters.
                One of them smiled.  “Seems my little wolf moves to the final
round after all,” he commented.
                Another one of them made a face.  “You ask me, I’d say it was
rigged, but that was my slave he was fighting,” he complained.  “What’s the
point, though, if your own slave wins?”
                The other smirked.  “For you?”  He laughed.  “There isn’t.  For
me, well, think of the gold I save.”
                The others chuckled.  “Entertainment,” another offered.
                A fourth laughed hollowly.  “And one of my slaves dead—let’s
not forget that,” he criticized.
                “They’ve been using blunted weapons and armor,” the first one
pointed out.  “It’s hardly my slave’s fault yours is dead.”
                “You shouldn’t have let him use a hammer.”
                He laughed.  “So long as it’s blunt—it is in the rules.”
                The third one made a face.  “That you made up.”
                “Oh, if only it was always that easy,” the second said. 
“Rather than having to go through months of revisions and screenings before
even a simple rule in the games are changed.”
                There was some general agreement, and they started discussing
politics as the next round was readied, which was a subject that bored Aramael
to tears, frankly.  He did manage to piece together that at least two of them
were magisters, and the others seemed to be Senior Enchanters and the like—he
only had a loose understanding of Circle politics and ranks.  He had asked
questions when he had gone to bed with a Templar a few weeks ago.
                He was about to slip away in defeat when the final round
progressed, with great hoopla and fanfare.  The crowd was deafening.
                The two combatants entered the field, announced as previous
victors.  It was the final round.
                “Your slave is going to die,” one of the magisters commented
after seeing who he was going up against.  “Ser Jared is an anointed knight.”
                “Titles don’t win battles,” the first one said, his voice
clipped.
                One of them shook his head.  “He’s just going to destroy him,”
he said with a sigh.  Aramael’s eyes flicked to the sands as the combatants
began their deadly dance.  “Should’ve let me fuck him when I offered.”
                The first looked at him flatly, then back at the sands.  “You
don’t deserve him.”  A brief pause.  “Besides, he’s a virgin.  If you want to
fuck him, you’ll have to at least double your offer.”
                “How do you know that?  He have a chastity belt?”  He laughed. 
“Tell ya what, he survives, I pay 50% more.  Doesn’t have to win.  Just
survive, and still look good.”
                “I’ll never understand why you like raping slaves,” another one
muttered.  “It’s like fucking a dog.”
                Aramael glowered, but looked back down at the sands.  They
fought, dancing around one another.  They dodged and stepped, and parried, and
seemed to only be sizing one another up.  It seemed like it would be obvious,
Aramael admitted to himself.  One of them was a human, a free man, an anointed
knight, with a sword and shield with his house symbol painted on it in bright
colours, and in heavy plate; the other was a slave in light armor and leathers,
with a warhammer.  Aramael guessed that, without armor, the knight was at least
200 pounds, and head and shoulders taller than the elf.
                The elf gave ground, he saw, but was reserved.  A part of him
wanted him to win, because he so rarely saw his own race win against humans. 
He wanted to cheer for him, to help him, to encourage him.  He wanted to see an
elf triumph, even just once.
                The late winter sun beat down on the combatants, and the plate
mail had to be heavy, he imagined—and hot.  Stories and songs spoke of battles
raging for days in plate mail, but Aramael knew that that was laughable at
best.  In full plate, even the best knight could not hope to fight without
reprieve for over half an hour; it was just too heavy to do more.  Granted, he
had had a bit of a rest while the other fought in the battle just before this
one.  Still, with the sun and the heat of the late afternoon and the hot sands…
                The repulsive man that raped slaves rebutted, “I like watching
them cry.”  He kind of smirked.  “Especially the gladiators, when they think
they’re so strong and nothing can ever happen to them.  They all say they won’t
cry, and they all do.”
                “And now we all know why your gladiators are terrified of you,”
another said, and they laughed.
                “Danarius, same deal,” he went on, trying to get the man to
agree.
                “Double it,” he insisted.  “If he loses, you can have him
tonight.”
                “And if he wins?”
                The magister Danarius smiled pleasantly at the other.  “Then
you won’t touch him.”
                The man made a face.  “C’mon.  How about if I can fuck him
after the Ritual.”
                “I don’t even know if that will be safe,” the magister said
with a frown.  “It wouldn’t be for a few more years either, until we know it
is.”
                The man rolled his eyes, and started to say something, but cut
himself off.  “Oh!”  Aramael looked back at the sands.  The elf had taken a
blow from the shield, knocking him down.  Get up, he wanted to scream.  Many of
the crowd were.  “If he’s just beaten and bruised, I’ll take him as is.  Any
broken bones, though, and I expect him healed before you deliver him to me.”
                Danarius laughed.  “Confident, aren’t we?”
                The elf rolled to the side, barely in time to avoid the
swinging sword, pulling himself to his feet in the same motion, and leaping
forward, using his own momentum to swing the hammer toward his foe.  “But if he
wins, I still want to fuck him.”
                Danarius rolled his eyes.  “No.”  A pause.  “I won’t punish him
for winning.”  The knight could not dodge in time, but he sidestepped and
brought his shield up, which absorbed much of the blow, but Aramael saw it
splinter even from this lofty distance.  The shield being the knight’s greatest
asset, it was a devastating blow.
                “Punishment?” he inquired innocently.  “He’s a slave; I’m a
magister.  He should be honoured.”
                Some people even believed that.  Danarius only blinked.  “I
know my pet well enough to know he will hate it.  So, yes, punishment.”  The
knight was not so crippled by his tattered shield as one would expect though;
he had been trained to compensate for its loss, and it might still take one or
two more hits at that.  The knight fell into defense as the elf attacked,
trying to think of a way around his attacks now that he had lost his main
defense.
                The other man laughed, as did the other two.  “After the
Ritual, then.  I’m serious.”
                “I’ll think about it,” Danarius said testily.  The hammer swung
again, and the knight dropped to avoid its mighty swing.  Lacking a target, the
hammer sailed through the air, its heavy end thudding into the sand.  The elf
stepped to get a better grip on the heavy hammer, and the knight came forward. 
The elf blocked with the handle, and stepped around him, bringing up the weapon
again.  It was heavy, in the sands.  And the elf had not rested enough in the
brief reprieve.  But the knight was in heavier armor, too—and maybe it was
enough to balance the two.
                “What did you do to finally figure out the spell?” one of the
other mages inquired innocently.  The combatants were locked again in a flurry
of blows and dodges.  The elf moved with the large, awkward-looking weapon as
if it were a part of him, wielding it as naturally as someone wielded their own
arm.  It was almost captivating for Aramael.  Most of the elvhen strayed from
weapons like that; they were smaller than humans, both in height and stature
and such weapons were simply impractical.  But this elf was different.
                “Do you recall when the slavers brought in those Dalish several
months ago?”  Aramael looked back at them, his eyes widening.  “I learned that
I needed someone willing.”  He pointed vaguely to the sands, where below his
slave rent the knight’s shield with another blow of the hammer—now only so much
broken wood and splinters.  “Hence, the tournament.”
                “But that didn’t write the entire ritual,” another objected.
                He shook his head.  “No, of course not.  But it changed
everything when I was studying it.”  Down below, the fighting continued on, and
if it were not for the magister’s conversation, Aramael would have liked to
watch the dark-haired elf more.  He knew part of his skill was natural talent,
but it had been honed and perfected like the Dalish could never have done, he
was sad to say.  There were too many other chores and crafts they needed to
do.  They had hunters, and some fighters, but no one who had the time or
resources to only fight.  The elf in the sands had done nothing but train all
his life, and it showed in the way he fought.  The dance of battle was as much
a part of him as the air he breathed.
                The rapist pig smirked.  “And how did you make them ‘willing’,
Danarius?” he inquired knowingly.
                Danarius looked at him innocently.  “I don’t know what you
mean, but they were begging for it when I did it.”
                The others laughed at their repulsive joke.  Torture, Aramael
thought with disgust.  He had tortured them until they had consented.  That was
the sickest kind of “willing” he had ever heard.  But was he just mentioning a
date, or had he done such things to the Dalish?  He wondered…
                A cracking blow to the knight’s chest plate sent him toppling
over, and the elf slammed the hammer down on him again when the knight tried to
get up.  The elf waited, patiently, for the human to make up his mind—as if to
say, “You know what will happen if you try to get up.”  The head of the hammer
rested heavily on the knight’s stomach, and the elf stood there with all the
patience of a wolf that knew its prey could not hope to escape.
                The man reached for his sword, having fallen just beside him. 
The elf lifted the hammer, barely a foot away from him.  Aramael could guess
their facial expressions, and wanted to laugh.
                The knight lunged forward, but the elf acted faster, slamming
the hammer into his chest again, knocking him back down.  And that time, he
stayed down.  Aramael wanted to cheer, and felt kind of happy,  and vaguely
racially prideful, for an elf—even a slave—to have triumphed over a human. 
Especially with a weapon like that!  So unsuited to the elvhen, but he did it
so well.
                Danarius seemed pleased—more than pleased.
                Aramael knew he had better get going.  He crept back out, and
ran into the slave from before again.  The slave gave him an intimate look, and
tilted his head a little.  The Dalish smiled lazily, and followed him down the
hall.
                The day was turning out to be pretty profitable after all.
 
                Danarius would have liked to say that there had never been any
doubt.  He would have liked to say that, except that many instances had given
him cause to doubt, when he looked at the roster and saw that his pet wolf
would be going up against a certain knight he knew, on point of fact, would
kill him.  The man was big enough to rival a Qunari in size, and could probably
lift a grown horse without magic.  He had been training since he was old enough
to walk, and lived and breathed the training.  Ser Irend, though, an anointed
knight, and he feared a better swordsman than Leto, got in a drunken brawl the
night before the tournament, and jailed.  He could have used his influence to
get him into the arena regardless, but he chose not to; he didn’t like the look
of the man.
                Even the Black Divine had come, for a brief time, and the two
exchanged pleasantries and a few words, guarded words and veiled daggers, all
of it.  That was all politics really was.  How droll.
                Ser Irend being Leto’s only true competition, his little wolf
had cleaved his way to a sweet victory.  Danarius recalled, but couldn’t recall
from where exactly, that a victory won in winter—in the past known as the dead
season—was a dead victory, but he just couldn’t remember who had told him
that.  Regardless… in a way, it was appropriate.
                So, sweaty, exhausted, but with an overall sense of triumph
hanging about him, he knelt before his master.
                “What do you wish of me, Leto?” he asked him, sitting tall in
his high-backed chair, almost a throne.  There was a gathering of others to
witness this, both out of curiosity of what the slave might desire, as well as
out of a sense of ceremony.
                The elf did not look up.  “Freedom:  For my mother and sister:
 Mieta and Varania, and my sister’s unborn child,” he added, almost as an
afterthought.
                He almost laughed.  “Is that all?” he said, an eyebrow
quirked.  He could have anything in the world, and that was all?  Dead
victory…  “Granted, but only after the ceremony.  Until then, they can stay in
the compound.  If your mother continues to work, I’ll pay her what I pay my
servants.”  He smiled to himself.  Generous, he would appear, to his fellows. 
It was always good to appear generous, perhaps kind, to a gathered crowd, not
all of them mages, and not all of them even nobles.  There were commons, as
well in the stands, who strained to hear the exchange.  A man relayed it to
them in a booming voice, and they cheered his generosity, and the boy’s sense
of values.  That suited his purposes just fine.
                They would need some kind of money after he sent them on their
way.  What would they do otherwise?  He didn’t care, not really, except as a
fleeting amusement.  Freedom would mean little if they were starving, after
all.
                There was one more thing he knew about the ritual, and he would
have to meet the parameter, quickly.  He was to be the catalyst for it, and the
specimen had to, in some ways, match the catalyst.  That is to say, Leto was
too pure and the experiment could fail if that wasn’t remedied.  Innocence
could destroy pieces of the spell.
                “I’ll give you one more thing too,” he said, not bothering to
hide his own amusement.  “A night, maybe two, in a whorehouse.”  That was
received with much laughter amidst the magisters, and more when it was repeated
to the commons.  Leto had stilled, and seemed genuinely uncomfortable at the
prospect, and continued to be uncomfortable when he insisted the boy ride in
his carriage—Raith took a separate one back to the manor.
                He let the kid stand in the entryway to the whorehouse, not
some back alley place, but a high-class, expensive one, a place he owned
actually.  He talked to the headmistress about what he wanted of the boy.
                “Someone barren,” he said with a flick of his wrist.  “A very
pretty girl--elven.  And the boy, I fear, is a virgin, so I need her to charm
and seduce him, to set him at ease.”
                The middle-aged woman thought for a moment, and nodded her head
sagely.  “I have just the one, messere.”
                He paused, and considered.  “A man as well,” he added.  “Same
qualifications.”  He didn’t want him paired with a human.  He rarely allowed it
with his slaves.  If they mounted a human, he wondered if they would begin to
think they could be more than property.  Not that humans weren’t slaves too,
but he kept none at his manor, by design.  He had fields, of course, and there
were humans and elves alike, each segregated, each carefully manipulated to
hate one another.
                She frowned, and folded her hands under her breasts.  “Best
male whore I have is a human,” she insisted.
                He shook his head.  “Absolutely not; I want Leto to mount him
too.”
                She laughed.  “Do you intend to watch, messere?” she said,
shaking her head a bit as she looked over her books.  “I’ll tell them what you
want.”  She frowned.  “He’s in an appointment right now.  But I have a half-
elf.”  She looked at him, raising an eyebrow.  “Would that do?”
                He considered.  Half-elves were the lowest of the low, lower
even than elves.  Even elves disliked them, because of what they represented. 
“Yes.  Let the girl have him first.  If he’s too tired to get to the man, let
him stay an extra night; I’m in no hurry.”  Not to mention the boy had
technically saved him a substantial amount of money; he cared not for spending
some of it.  Less than it would be if he didn’t own the house, but still—he
lost money by occupying the whores for so long.  And anyway, his pet wolf was
probably exhausted.
                She nodded a bit, and checked the books again.  “The girl has
an appointment tomorrow.  Do you want me to cancel it?”
                “No, send him to the boy in the morning if he’s still there.”
                She flipped the page.  “He has an appointment later that day as
well.”
                “Cancel it, if you must.”
                She nodded, and bowed.  “I shall, messere.”  And the
arrangements were made. 
                As Danarius passed his little wolf, he glanced at him.  “You
should thank me,” he told him.
                Leto was staring down at the floorboards, looking like he
wanted to be anywhere else.  “Th-thank you, Master, but I… am not worthy of
this.”
                He paused, frowning.  “A boy your age who has no interest in a
whore he doesn’t have to pay for?” he mused.  He saw his face heat.  “One would
think you would be eager to lose your virginity.”  A brief pause.  “Or are you
not interested in women?  I bought you a man as well.”  His face turned
positively crimson under his tan, but he said nothing in response.  He took a
step closer to him.  “How is it you’re a virgin with a face and body like yours
anyway?”
                Leto started to look at him, then averted his eyes, and looked
like he very much wanted to take a step back.  “My sister is a mage, and I am
from Seheron, Master,” he said, as if it explained everything.  Maybe it did. 
Superstition, after all, was strong amidst the uneducated.  It didn’t help that
he had gotten so tall, and his hair was so black it was blue, and his skin had
just drank in the sunlight.  Too tall for an elf, really, he thought.  He looks
like a shallow reflection of a Qunari, with finer features and no horns—wrong
hair colour though, but that was easy to imagine.  Black was only an opposite
of white—all colour one, and the other an absence of light was all it was.  And
he preferred heavy weaponry too, imagine that.  Hmm.
                He looked at him, for a long moment, and contemplated, for the
briefest of moments, taking the boy back to the manor.  Thought about stripping
him, shoving him down on the bed—any bed.  Thought about mounting him like a
stallion, his fingers gripping his hair, his cock impaling him.  Would he
whimper again?  Would he cry again?  Or if he hit his prostate hard enough,
would he like it?
                Footsteps ended his thoughts, and he turned away. 
                Unexpectedly, the memory came to him:  The big mansion in the
country, the dead leaves of fall crackling underfoot.  Looking down a ravine,
and watching a doe, struggling with all that she was, bleating in pain, as
three wolves bit, licked, and tugged on the mess of entrails she drug behind
her.  It was a victory for the wolves, and his father had called it a dead
victory, and explained the terminology.  He hadn’t thought he had really been
listening.  He had been entranced, in a horrific sort of way, at the beauty of
the winter forest, the waterfall at the bottom of the ravine, the river, and
the dying deer and the wolves that ravaged her. 
                He had spotted a tiny, helpless faun partially obscured by the
brush only a short distance away.
 
                The whore stopped in her tracks, pausing like a timid doe that
had heard a predator.  Her bare feet stopped on the carpet as she came to rest,
briefly, blinking away her momentary confusion as her honey eyes widened in
astonishment.  Cherry lips parted in a small gasp, partially of delight.
                This was him; she knew it.  There was no mistaking his ebony
hair, or sage green eyes, and wasn’t he handsome too?
                She hesitated but once, and strolled up to him, wondering what
he would do or say when she spoke to him, when he saw her for the first time. 
He did not look at her, though, when she walked up to him. 
                He was staring downward, miserably.  Was he embarrassed?  She
couldn’t imagine why he would be a virgin, like she had been told.  It seemed
silly to her, but she had serviced a much uglier virgin man older than he.  But
he was so cute—why would he be a virgin?  She thought about it, then decided it
must be superstition, about Seheron or something.  Or maybe he wasn’t really a
virgin and when asked had simply declined to say anything about it, and they
had just made assumptions based on his mannerisms; you couldn’t tell with a
man, not really.  That sounded likely too.  Still… she’d like to think he was a
virgin.
                She wondered if he had a sister or a brother, if Mieta had even
not miscarried.  Was she still alive?  She had so many questions for him.  And,
she delighted, the entire night with him.
                The slave-whore took his hand gently in hers, and gave a light
tug.  He followed her, still not looking at her, as she cheerfully led him to
her quarters, her heart pounding fiercely in her breast.  She could scarcely
believe this strange coincidence.
                The room was a big place, actually.  It was nicer than even the
one in Seheron.  The sheets were a fine linen, and the bed was enormous.  She
didn’t clean it; another slave did.  She had floor to ceiling windows, and
drapes, and anything she could possibly desire.  Slaves had brought in a tub,
with steaming water for a bath, knowing he must be tired and filthy from the
tournament.
                She couldn’t wait to get him in it, to undress this pretty
package.
                She shut the door behind her, and clasped her hands behind her
back.  She stood up tall, and looked at Leto, his back to her, still staring
downward.  She giggled, and his head finally raised.  He turned, and looked.
                She was wearing a long silk gown, held together by silken cords
with golden tassels.  She wore a gold torque, and peacock feather earrings, a
net of pearls holding back her long brown curls—the red had faded from her hair
as she got older.  She was considered an extremely expensive whore.
                But he wasn’t looking at the jewelry, or the silk.  He was
looking at her face, her hair, and her honey-coloured eyes, his brow drawn into
confusion.  She grinned up at him, rocking back on her heels, eager for him to
recognize her, and wondering at the same time if he would.
                “Lura?” he wondered, eyebrows raising in astonished disbelief.
Chapter End Notes
     I think it would be pretty freaking awful to see your childhood
     friend a slave in a whorehouse, and awful to be that childhood
     friend. And awful to see all your friends and family murdered while
     you were too terrified to do anything to help, knowing that the only
     reason you lived was because of your own cowardice.
     Aramael will not be significant again for a long time, but remember
     him.
***** Reunited *****
Chapter Summary
     In which old friends are reunited, knowing it was only chance, and
     knowing their time is short.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                She giggled again, and propelled herself into his arms,
wrapping her arms gleefully around his neck.  “Leto!” she called, rising on her
tip-toes to hold him tighter.  His arms wrapped around her, slowly, then pulled
her closer.  “Oh, Maker, I never thought…”  And she laughed, and soon he was
laughing with her.
                She let go of him after a long, tender moment, and held him out
at arms’ reach, to better look up at the man he had become.  His face made her
heart melt.  To think he had once been promised to her—she had so liked
listening to her parents conversations when they didn’t know she was near.  If
only…
                Her hands strayed to the clasps on the light leather armor.  “I
have a job to do,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
                He flushed suddenly, his hands catching hers.  “We don’t have
to,” he insisted.
                She giggled again.  “Oh, but I want to,” she insisted right
back, this time in the language they had spoken in their childhood.
                She saw the look on his face, as he tried to puzzle through her
words, and her heart sunk.  She remembered it, because she used the Trade
tongue when she bedded foreigners, but perhaps Leto had less use for it.  “I
don’t… speak it very well anymore,” he admitted, letting his halting words and
Imperial accent explain that for him.
                She pressed on anyway, taking his wrist in her hand.  “Let’s at
least get you in the bath anyway.  And… see where it goes from there.”
                He took a step back, out of her reach.  Her arms fell to her
sides.  “Lura, can we talk first?”
                She shrugged, and gestured to the tea table.  She sat down,
back straight, crossing her ankles.  “Sit.  I have tea.  Do you want some?” 
She didn’t wait for his reply, but poured instead.  He must be thirsty.  He
hesitated, and sat down on the cushion, despite the dirty leather.  She hardly
cared, after all.
                He accepted the cup, and sat, holding it for a moment in both
hands.  Then he set it down and peeled off his gloves.  He set them on his leg,
but she reached over and snatched them from him.  She grinned, holding the pair
in her hand like a prize.  He frowned, and she tossed them carelessly over her
shoulder.  He rolled his eyes.  “Danarius bought you?” he asked her.
                She shrugged one shoulder.  “He owns the House of Jade, sure,
but Mistress Alesand bought me.  I’ve never actually met the man.”  Her
eyebrows raised.  “I’m surprised he didn’t kill you, considering that you
stabbed him when we were three.”
                He laughed, and she smiled.  He had a pleasant laugh.  “I’m a
bit surprised myself,” he admitted, and picked up the cup of tea again.  She
took a sip from her own, encouragingly.  He took a hesitant sip, and swallowed
with a small grateful sigh.  “I haven’t had tea…  I can’t remember the last
time I had tea.”
                She looked at the cup in his hand, and felt very much like this
could easily turn into a pity-fest.  She didn’t like slavery any more than he
did.  He had to fight, and possibly kill people.  And she had to fuck people. 
True, any diseases she caught were cured by the resident mage, and she could be
worse off.  She was also promised that if she were good at what she did, when
she got older, she would be put to work with something simple and easy, rather
than just being sold off to a shoddier whorehouse.  But she still had to spread
her legs for anyone with the money to get there.  “I have cakes too,” she
offered, lifting one of the sweets from the tray.  She held it to her lips, and
took a nibble, then reached toward him.
                He shook his head.  She set it down, and licked the crumbs off
her fingertips.  “I had… a friend some years ago that would steal things from
the kitchens, and share them with me.”
                She frowned a little.  “A girl, I take it?”  She felt
saddened.  Of course he would have found someone.  It was foolish to think
otherwise.  And, being that he was a gladiator not a whore, he could find
someone to “marry”, even if it wasn’t a legitimate marriage, those sorts of
things weren’t forbidden to him.  “Where is she now?”
                “Dead,” he answered, and looked away.
                She paused, and looked down at her cup.  Now she felt almost
guilty for her previous thoughts.  She took another drink.  “How is your
mother?”
                A gentle breeze came from the open window, despite the late
season.  She liked the breeze from the ocean; it gave her a sense of nostalgia
she rather enjoyed.  “Sick, oftentimes,” he admitted.  He paused.  “I won their
freedom today—my mother and sister.”
                She smiled for him.  “Leto, I’m happy to hear that.  And the
baby was a girl?” she said.
                He blinked, and then realized what she meant.  He nodded
dully.  “Yes—Varania.”
                Lura ran a finger idly over the rim of her cup.  “’Varania,’”
she echoed.  “Is she pretty?”
                He glanced at his once-upon-a-time fiancée.  “Yes,” he said,
then paused again.  “She’s pregnant.”
                The whore’s eyebrows arched in surprise.  “Oh, my.  Isn’t she a
bit young?  I would have thought…”
                “Danarius raped her,” he said, voice utterly flat.  He looked
down.  “I’m certain it was him.”
                She didn’t know what to say.  She straightened, and set her cup
down.  She looked at him, and knew he had suffered so much already.  She wanted
to do something for him, even for a while.  “I’m sorry, Leto.  That’s awful.” 
She looked down, uncertain of what to say to him.  It had been so long.  She
had thought he had been dead all this time.  She had known him a long time ago,
but it had been so long that it was a wonder she even recognized him.  It was
strange, she had to admit.
                He looked at her, and to her eyes, he seemed oddly lost for a
moment.  “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.  “I’ve won her freedom, and
my mother’s, and I still feel like I haven’t done anything for them.  My mother
will still be sick, and my sister will still be pregnant and hate her child.”
                She shook her head.  “They’ll be happier, I guarantee it,” she
told him.  “It’s a noble thing you’ve done, Leto.”
                He shook his head a little.  “My mother said that to a knight
once.  He died trying to keep us free.”  He paused.  “He failed,” he added,
unnecessarily.  He shook his head, in more pain than she had realized he could
be in.  She didn’t know if she should go to him or not.
                “Leto…” she said, and she rose, and walked the short two paces
to stand before him.  She took his hands in hers, and held them to her heart. 
He stared up at her, with more sorrow in his eyes than she could bear to see.
                “Both our fathers died trying to keep us free, and Ser Newlyn
too, and all failed.”  He shook his head.  “So many people died that day, and
the following days.”  He stared up at her, his eyes pleading with her to
understand.  What he didn’t realize was that she did understand.  But she
didn’t want to think about it.  Seeing her old friend, though, reminded her of
everything that had happened to her, everything that was wrong in the world,
and she wondered if she might cry.  “Your mother died.  My sister was born a
slave.  My mother almost died a slave.”  His voice broke then, but he didn’t
cry.  “I had to…”  He shook his head in despair, and looked down.  “To keep her
alive…”
                She embraced him, wrapping her arms around him.  She didn’t
need to know what he had had to do.  Something that hurt him, pained him beyond
what she dared to imagine.  “Oh, Leto,” she whispered, and wished with all her
being that she could take it away from him, the memory, the pain, all of it. 
“Slavery has not been kind to either of us.”
                “It never is,” he whispered back.  After a moment, he pulled
away, and looked with some distress at her silk gown.  “I believe I’ve ruined
it.”
                She looked down at it, and laughed.  Sweat, a little bit of
half-dried blood, and dirt.  She wiped at her eyes.  She had begun to cry, and
hadn’t realized it.  She held her hand out to him.  “Now I need a bath.”
                He looked at her, hesitant as a virgin should be.  But then she
smiled, and danced away from him.  He cocked his head to the side, watching her
quizzically.  She removed a long headdress from a box, a silken veil with
intricate beadwork.  She put it on her head, and plucked the flowers from a
vase.  “We were engaged once, years ago,” she said, as she gathered the flowers
into a bouquet.  “You know, I barely remember it.”  She turned toward him,
drawing the veil over her face.  “But let me be your bride, just tonight.”  She
flashed a winning smile, and as she approached, he stood up, looking at her.
                She felt… like that moment had drawn them close again, that
moment of sharing.  As if the past fifteen years had been lived in freedom in
Seheron, instead of in slavery in Tevinter.  And, she could pretend, just for a
while, that it was true.  That her every fantasy was true.
                Her parents were alive, and had smiled at her wedding, and gave
her to Leto.  His parents had accepted her into the family with open arms.  She
wasn’t barren, and was a virgin bride in white silk and a veil, with flowers. 
A gathering of people to see them off, and they took their vows.  There was a
wedding feast, and now night was falling, and they were alone for the first
time as man and wife.
                “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.  Reality was that she was a
slave and a whore and hadn’t been a virgin since she was twelve; her silk gown
was meant to be sexually alluring and was sheer in places, not to mention that
Leto had ruined it when they embraced…  And her parents had died a long time
ago.
                She blushed.  “You’ve become a handsome man,” she told him.  “I
always knew you would be.”  She stood before him, and looked up at him through
the veil, the flowers against her bosom.  Slowly, hesitantly, he lifted the
delicate veil off of her face, back over her hair.  She wanted to pretend that
he was the only one who had ever done that.  She ignored that the veil had been
a gift from a client, a token of a night they had spent together.
                She tilted her head up to catch his lips when he bent to kiss
her.  She was dimly aware of the flowers getting crushed between them in their
embrace.  Lura wanted to pretend that it was her first kiss.  It was awkward
and clumsy, and his breath was only sweetened by the tea and was otherwise
awful, but it was the only one she had ever wanted.  And that meant more than
words could say, for she had kissed hundreds of mouths—some inexperienced and
gauche, others learned and skilled, some passionate, some uncaring, some
uncouth and foul, and others almost romantic.  But this, for all the
awkwardness and bumping teeth, and too much saliva, was exactly what she
wanted.
                She dropped the flowers carelessly, as she did with all her
troubling thoughts, when he lifted her into his arms, as if her weight were but
a trifle to him, and carried her, like a groom carried his bride across a
threshold.  “About that bath,” he whispered.
                She giggled.  “You need it.”  She inhaled deeply, her face
against his neck.  “But I like the smell of your sweat.”  He set her down in
front of it, and she stood on her toes to reach all the straps and buckles on
his leathers, but it peeled away.  She let it drop to the floor, and he gently
pulled the veil from her head, and seemed to want to gingerly set it down, but
she grabbed it from him and tossed it aside carelessly.  They didn’t have
enough moments of carelessness in their lives.
                She let him fumble gracelessly with the ties on the dress,
delighting in the way his callused fingers roved over her body, exploring her
every curve with all the curiosity that befit a virgin.  Men had been doing
that to her for many years now, but her heart raced as if it were the first
time.  She was glad to be the one to do this with him, glad it was her, and not
another.  It could have so easily been someone else, after all.  Thrilled that
they could have this moment, even in slavery, and excited to know that they had
all night to be together.  Lura did not believe in the Maker; she had never
learned about such things, not really.  But it was an awfully strange
coincidence, all the same, even if coincidence was all it had ever been.
                “I thought… your back…” he tried to say.
                She sighed, looking downward, and leaned her back against his
chest, as if to hide it.  “They’re still there,” she said, referring to the
scars.  “They’re a lot paler now, and you can only see them under close
inspection.  But they’re there.”
                He stepped back, and looked, and his lips pressed against each
of them in turn, as if he could kiss the hurt away.  Kissing a child’s wound to
take the pain away, and that’s what they were to each other—just a way to take
the pain of their existence away, even for only a little while.  Nothing but a
distraction and a daydream come to life, knowing it would only last for the
shortest few hours.
                When they were both naked, she took his hands, and led him into
the bath.  They took things slowly.  She insisted on washing him, for one.  She
attacked him with soap, good-naturedly, and made bubbles, and when the soap was
gone, insisted he still needed to be washed, playfully, amidst kisses and
touches.
                “I can’t get any cleaner,” he muttered against her mouth.  She
giggled as his lips crushed hers with an anxious need.  She wriggled out of his
grasp, and slipped below the surface.  Her lips parted, and took his swollen
member into her mouth, for as long as she could under the water.  She was
trained to hold her breath for a long time, after all.  When she was fourteen,
she had a client who had made… specific… requests, so she had had to learn. 
She came up gasping, but smiling at the look on his face.  She climbed into his
lap, her wet arms wrapping around him.  Sometime before, she had lost the
torque and the earrings, but the net was still on, despite everything. 
Tendrils of her curls hung free of it, traitorously slipping past it.
                His hands cupped the side of her face, kissing her.  She used
her hand to steady him as she lowered herself over him.  He breathed a soft
sigh against her lips, and she pressed her small, firm breasts against his
hard-muscled chest.
                Water splashed over the side of the tub, wetting the
floorboards.  Thankfully, the carpet wasn’t at this area.  Even so, she didn’t
care, not tonight.  Any other night, with any other man, and she might have,
gently, suggested they move to the bed or anywhere else in the room.  Mistress
Alesand made faces if they got the carpets wet.
                It wasn’t that he was the best lover she had ever taken to bed,
it was that she wanted him; wanted him like she had never wanted another man
she had bedded.  And a part of her loved him, would always love him.
                She couldn’t have him; she knew that.  Except for tonight. 
Tonight, they belonged to each other, like it should have been.  After that, it
was back to reality… but tonight…  Tonight was beautiful.
                They lay, wet and exhausted, and laughing between more kisses,
on the floor.  The pearls were lost somewhere in the tub, and her hair was
tangled and stuck to her shoulders and face, and he seemed to have every
intention of tangling it some more.
                He rolled back over her.  She grinned up at him, wholly excited
for what she felt.  “My, ser, ready again?” she cooed.
                He kissed her.  “You remember that you used to play like you
were a princess?” he whispered, nuzzling against her neck.
                She laughed at the stupid childhood memory.  “And you, my
prince?”
                “A knight,” he muttered, plunging into her.  She moaned, and
writhed, and kissed him until she couldn’t, applying every trick she knew in a
desperate attempt to please not only him, but herself.  For once, herself too.
                Her only real lament was that virgins were inexperienced and
didn’t last as long as she would have liked, but he seemed to be ready again
quickly enough.  She lay in bed with him, now, wet with sweat instead of water,
her finger running along his naked chest.  His eyes were closing as he held her
close to him.  She smiled to herself, cuddling closer still.
                She sighed against his chest.  “If everything was right in the
world, and we were never slaves, this could have been our wedding night,” she
told him.
                He was silent, and she realized that he must be asleep.  He was
probably asleep before she had even said anything.  She closed her eyes,
content to sleep with him, for once.
                She had just closed her eyes, it seemed, when she heard a soft
knock at the door.  She opened her eyes, and looked around the room.  It was
still dark.  Dawn was hours off, in fact.
                She slipped from Leto’s arms.  He stirred but a little,
exhausted, and didn’t rouse.  The floor was cool against her feet.  The fire
had died out sometime in the night, and the open window wasn’t helping.  She
slipped on a thin robe and belted it at her waist as she moved to the door. 
She cracked it open, just enough to see who it could be.
                It was Shanamyn, the half-elf.  His ears were as round as any
human’s, but the shade of his violet eyes more than the shape was elven, and
his nose suggested elven breeding--strongly.  The rest, though, was pretty
human in feature, except for his stature and his build.  His brown hair just
graced his shoulders.  Some nasty incident when he was younger had left him
with a scar across his neck, they said, and he wore collars and strips of
fabric to cover it.  Clients who had seen it bragged about it.  His head cocked
to the side a little, and inclined toward her door.  “He asleep?” he asked,
voice low.
                She smiled a little.  “Yes—exhausted, I fear,” she admitted. 
“Go to bed.  I’ll send him to you before my appointment,” she promised him.
                His bow lips curled into a frown, arms crossing and indignant. 
“Tomorrow?”  He made a face.  “I have an appointment that will be cancelled
tomorrow if we wait until then.”
                She sighed, glanced back at Leto on her bed, and stepped out
into the hall.  She closed the door behind her, and stood with her back to the
door.  She peered down the hall, and whispered, “I know him.”  She shook her
head, scarcely believing it herself.  “We were engaged before we were sold as
slaves.”  She laughed hollowly, just a little.  “Can you believe it?”
                He paused, and when she looked up, he seemed sad.  “I’m sorry,
Lura,” he confessed.
                She shook her head a little.  “It’s hard,” she admitted,
crossing her arms, as if it were cold.  The hallway was temperate enough.
                His brow wrinkled in thought.  “It’s... required of me that I
have sex with him,” he said, guiltily.  “But it’s not against the rules if we
do that, and he comes back to you tomorrow night.”
                She understood; that was all she would ever have with him, and
he was giving her what he could.  She also understood that he had to take his
sweet time until well after dark, to the point where it wasn’t worth sending
Leto back to the manor, and he would have to stay another night.  But it was
worth it, she supposed.  She wanted another night like this one with him.
                “You’re very kind,” she told him.
                He shook his head a little.  “Only in comparison,” he said
hollowly.
                She frowned.  “What… do you mean?”
                But he had already turned to go.  He looked back over his
shoulder.  “I’m only kind in comparison with the rest of the world,” he said,
and shrugged one shoulder dismissively as he walked away.  She thought, He
looks lonely.
                She hurried back into her room, and tossed the thin robe
aside.  She sidled back up to Leto, slithering back into his arms.  She felt
safe, oddly.  Comforted.  Clients would sometimes stay all night, if they paid
for the whole night.  Sometimes they fell asleep, and she would have to
dutifully play the lover.  But this… she wanted this.
                And she could pretend, for a little while, that it was their
wedding night.  That this was their bridal bed, and she had been a virgin.  She
could pretend that his seed would quicken in her womb, that she would give him
a son one day.
                But all those dreams had been crushed, one by one, long ago.
 
                Lura’s appointment wasn’t until the afternoon.  In the morning,
she woke him by licking his half-erect cock, and soon had her legs around him. 
She cleaned them both up, and they dressed, he in his dirty leathers, and she
in another silk dress.
                She came out of the kitchen with a tray of pastries and tea,
and decided, it being a warm winter morning, they could eat, quickly, in the
garden.  She told him that they had to stay out of her room for a bit while it
was being cleaned, and she giggled when he looked away, embarrassed.
                “It’s much prettier in the spring and summer,” she promised
him.  “But I like winter mornings.”
                He had been very quiet all morning, and was looking at her as
if he were thinking about something.  She let it be, for now, but did wonder
what he was thinking of.  He looked around the garden.  They were alone at this
hour.
                “Do you remember Seheron?” he asked her.
                She sighed, and shook her head a little.  “No.  I don’t really
remember anything,” she said.  “Except walking, and the dark—I think that must
have been on the boat.  And…”  Her brow creased in thought.  “And you stabbing
the magister; I remember that.”  She knew that her mother had died sometime
during all of that, but she couldn’t quite remember how.  She wasn’t even
certain of what her mother looked like anymore.  It had been so long ago…
                She had thought he had meant to bring something up, but instead
just fell silent, and was so still it was like he had fallen asleep with his
eyes open.
                She made sure that they were back in her room and out of sight
soon enough, and everything had been picked up and put into order.
                When he declined sex, she accepted that, and taught him how to
play cards.  She said, “Sometimes I won’t have a client for a while.  Cards
help to pass the time.  A friend of mine has a chess set too—it was gift from a
client—and she taught me to play.”
                “Strange gift,” he commented.
                She giggled.  “Not at all,” she said, smirking.  “She has black
hair, and he calls her his ‘black queen.’”  She rolled her eyes.  “Pillow-
talk.”
                He seemed saddened, though.  They played for a bit in relative
silence, then he asked, “Do your clients often give you gifts?”
                She shrugged, abruptly uneasy.  “Sometimes.”
                He looked away.  “I wish you didn’t have to do this, Lura,” he
said.
                She didn’t know what to say.  “It could have easily been worse,
Leto,” she admitted.
                The elf shook his head in some small amount of anguish. 
“That’s all anyone ever says,” he muttered.  “But it could have been better.”
                She looked down, studying her cards.  “Maybe,” she said.
                As the time passed, and they talked, and later she climbed into
his lap, and they held each other, more for comfort and familiarity than
anything, she noted the time.  “I’ll… take you to Shanamyn,” she said with a
small sigh, squirming out of his arms.  She held a hand out to him, and he
accepted it.  She didn’t let go of his hand as she walked with him, slowly, out
of her room, into the hall.  “Shanamyn is a half-elf,” she warned him.  “He’s…
kind.  He’ll… take care of you.”
                He pulled her to a halt, and she looked up at him.  “Lura?”
                “I’m so jealous,” she whispered.  Then she looked up, all
troubles seemingly forgotten.  “But I’ll be back soon, and he promised me that
I get to bring you back to my bed again tonight.”  She winked, and kissed him
briefly on the mouth.  “So don’t tire yourself out.”  She took both his hands
in hers.  “But if you do, I really just want to spend time with you, Leto.”
                He looked so much like he wanted to say something, but didn’t
know quite where to start.  By the way he was looking at her, she feared it was
nothing but grief-stricken words.  She let go of one of his hands and led him
gently down the hall, to the other wing, where the male whores were.  It looked
exactly the same as the other wing, except that the carpets were in different
shades.
                She felt heavy-hearted about this regardless.  Life wasn’t
fair.
                She had no choice but to leave Leto with the half-elf, and
looked back as she walked away, to her damned appointment.
Chapter End Notes
     I like how that entire chapter was basically just sex, but it was
     nothing but a pity-party.
***** Half-Breed *****
Chapter Summary
     The art of sex, from the lips of a whore.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Shanamyn smiled pleasantly up at Leto.  He was surprised by how
tall he was; he was usually a hair taller than any elf he met.
                “Hello, come in,” he said, holding the door open.  Hesitant,
the warrior stepped through.  The door closed with a soft clicking sound.  His
room did not mirror Lura’s.  His was distinctly more masculine, with bolder
colors and different woods.  But at least the sheets were clean.
                “I trust Lura took good care of you?” he said, moving around in
front of him.
                “Mm,” he mumbled without really answering.
                Shanamyn let it go.  If he didn’t want to talk, that was fine,
but he had promised Lura to try to draw this out until after nightfall at
least.  It would certainly help if he would talk!  “Are you hungry?”
                “No,” he answered.
                He snorted a laugh.  “First word you say to a whore is ‘no’?”
he snorted.  He didn’t respond.  Shanamyn looked at him, studying him.  He
looked distracted and decidedly uncomfortable.  Oh, dear…  “If Lura didn’t tell
you, my name is Shanamyn.”  He sat down, back rigid, on the sofa.  “You can sit
down if you like.”  He frowned a little when Leto didn’t move.  His eyes
flicked downwards.  He had dealt with racism since birth.  He was used to it. 
Elves treated him with as much disdain as humans.  He got by as a whore because
he was good-looking and some people liked to do things to “humiliate” him.  He
wondered if that could be it.  He raised his eyes to look at him, but kept his
head down.  It was best to get right to the point.  “Do I bother you?”
                The elf blinked, and turned his head to look at him.  “No.  I
was just…”  His voice trailed off.
                The half-elf noticed that he was staring at him.  At his ears,
at his too-human face.  He could even grow a little bit of facial hair, with
some cultivating—not that he relished that.  He looked awful with facial hair. 
Some of the human men here had magnificent mustaches and liked to tease him,
playfully, when his own would only grow in patchy and strange-looking.  “I
see,” he said, and glanced away.  His eyes slid closed for a moment, then back
open.  “I… will tell the headmistress, and see if we can arrange something
else.”  If he were going to be this uncomfortable with him, he really couldn’t
do his job.
                He rose on stiff legs.  Most people had a choice, he reminded
himself, and knew what they were getting when they bought him for a few hours. 
He sighed a little and started past him, giving him a wide, respectful berth.
                “Wait,” Leto called, his voice halting.  The half-elf paused,
his hand on the door handle.  He looked back at him.  He seemed hesitant,
embarrassed even.  “You’re…  It’s not that.”
                He raised an eyebrow.  What else could it be?  He forced a
smile.  He had a good forced smile; it even reflected in his eyes and no one
ever saw the difference.  “Do you need something?”
                The man hesitated.  “It’s not you,” he insisted.  The whore
frowned.  “It’s… being with a man…”  He looked away.  “And being told I have
to.”
                His hand fell away from the door frame, eyebrows raising in
shock.  “You were…  Oh, Maker,” he breathed in open astonishment.  “That’s
horrible…”  It was just like when he was told what he had to do when he was
nine, and his mother sold him to the slavers.  It was equivalent to being a
prostitute, in a way.  “I’m so sorry.  I…  I didn’t know,” he confessed, and
suddenly worried that he had said something unnecessary or unwanted.
                Leto looked down, and seemed as miserable as could be.
                Shanamyn sat back down, curling up onto the sofa like a
contented cat.  “Sit down, please?  It makes me feel awkward with you hovering
like that.”
                The elf looked at him, tried to smile and failed, and sat down
opposite to him, but seemed uncomfortable on the worn leather chair.  Not as if
the chair itself was uncomfortable, he just wasn’t used to this sort of thing. 
And why would he be?  A slave, he had been told.  He had thought this was
payment for some victory—it was known to happen—and the slave in question had
simply chosen both male and female.
                “Can I offer you something to drink?” he said, anxious to
repair the gap that had grown in their conversation.  “Tea?  Water?  I have
some wine somewhere.”
                He only looked away, and shook his head, as if lost in
thought.  He sighed, and stared up at the ceiling.  “Is there any way we can
get this over with?”
                “So eager to go back to your hovel?”
                Leto glowered, and Shanamyn wondered if he had offended him. 
He had grown to be pretty flippant over the years—it came from years of general
abuse hurled in his direction.  Sarcasm was how he had learned to cope.  “My
family,” he snapped.
                The half-breed blinked and bowed his head.  “I’m sorry; that
was rude.”  He cleared his throat, and raised his face again.  “You know, if I
can keep you in here until nightfall, you can stay another night with Lura,” he
said, steepling his fingers together.  “Still eager to leave?”
                At that, he considered, and looked down at his hands.  He said
nothing.  No answer, no inclination as to his thoughts.  Shanamyn was about to
fetch some rose oil and insist on giving him a massage, but Leto began to
speak, and he stilled.  “Is it very difficult for you—being half-elven?”
                He frowned a little.  That wasn’t a question anyone ever asked;
no one cared.  “I… suppose, but I’ve no point of comparison,” he answered with
a shrug.  “If you’re asking me about racism, then, yes, it’s difficult when
everyone hates you.”  He made a face.  “Except dwarves, I suppose, but they
don’t care.”
                “The Qunari wouldn’t care either,” Leto said, his voice barely
above a whisper.
                Shanamyn’s brows rose.  “It is almost treasonous to say
something like that,” he said.
                Leto didn’t seem to have heard him.  “But getting to Seheron
would be…”
                The half-elf straightened.  “Now that is something we would
both be punished for, just for talking about.”
                Sage eyes blinked.  “No, it’s… my sister,” he said, a bit
reluctantly.  “Her child will be half-elven.”
                Shanamyn’s eyes softened in sympathy.  “If it lives,” he
reminded him.  “Most of us don’t.”  Leto seemed saddened by this, but it seemed
to be more personal than anything Shanamyn had said.  He cleared his throat a
little anyway.  “Your niece or nephew might look more elven than I do though,”
he said with a sardonic grin.  “My mother was human.”
                He paused.  “Both parents are mages,” he said, a bit
unwillingly.
                The half-elf let out a low whistle.  “In any other country,
that child would be taken away from the parents immediately,” he reflected, and
cocked his head to the side.  “They belong to the Chantry.”  He made a face. 
“I suppose they think it’s owed them.”
                Leto snorted in open disdain.  “Even in other countries,
slavery exists—they just call it something else,” he said.
                Shanamyn cocked his head to the side in thought, and hated to
have to agree.
                It took some coaxing, but Shanamyn did eventually pry the other
out of everything but his pants, and bade him lay down while he gave him a
lengthy massage.  He took his time, getting every bit of exposed skin with the
rose oil, and he needed it.
                “Do they have you fight naked sometimes, out in the sun?” he
asked offhandedly.
                “Not naked, no, but sometimes I might as well be,” he said
placidly.  “Why?”
                “Your tan is very even,” he answered, straddling his middle as
he worked out the tension in his shoulders.  He liked his shoulders, rather a
lot actually.  A little more oil, a lot more rubbing and kneading, and he
managed to pry off his pants to get to his legs too, and started at the toes. 
                When Leto cringed, Shanamyn chuckled.  “You’re ticklish,” he
teased.
                “Don’t touch my feet,” Leto complained.  But Shanamyn perched
on his legs to keep them pinned down and did it anyway, all the way telling him
to relax, and it wouldn’t tickle so much, which proved true.
                “Maker’s breath, you’re tense,” the half-elf commented.  This
was the first massage in a while that he had had to work so hard at. 
“Stressed?”
                A pause.  “I know nothing else.”
                He sighed, but understood well enough.  A master that insisted
he go to a whore house, and get it every way imaginable and he could only
wonder at the horrible implications of why his master would want that, a
pregnant sister that was also a mage, whose child would be half-elven…  And he
imagined that was just the tip of the mountain, as it were.  “Where are you
from?”
                Another very distinctive pause.  “Why would I be ‘from’
anywhere else but here?”
                Shanamyn snorted a laugh.  “Your accent.  It’s not from here.”
                He frowned.  “My mother claims I lost my Seheron accent years
ago—and speak more like a Tevinter,” he admitted.
                Shanamyn was briefly distracted by his thighs, before he said,
“That’s it then; you didn’t lose all of it; I’m good at picking up accents.”
                “What’s yours?” he asked him.
                “My mother was from Orlais,” he said quietly.  “I have a touch
of it, I suppose, but I don’t remember being there if I ever was.”
                There was a long pause, and he wondered if Leto might have
fallen asleep for a while, by the way his breathing had deepened.  “I remember
Seheron,” he said, voice lilting a little as if he had just uttered a joke. 
Shanamyn sensed that it was a macabre sort of humor.
                “Oh?” he asked, his fingers firmly working out the horrid
tension in his thighs, beyond the sturdy muscle.  The rose oil sank obediently
into his skin as he worked, making it silk-smooth.
                “Oh yes,” he whispered, and the halfling detected a note of
bitterness in his voice.  “I remember my mother singing and dancing, and
carrying me.  I remember my father laughing.”  Another brief pause.  “And I
remember being captured, and my father being beheaded.  I remember a knight
named ‘Newlyn’ whose face I don’t recall, but who died for me and my mother.
 And we were both enslaved regardless—so he failed.”
                Shanamyn closed his eyes briefly, for all the pain and sorrow
in the world.  “Were you raised in the Qun?”
                Another pause, this one for thought.  “I don’t remember.  But I
don’t think so.”
                That would mean it was one of the odd cities that used to exist
in Seheron, but war had ravaged them to extinction.  Refugees went to either
the Tevinter forces or the Qunari—which just depended on the individual, but
most fled to the Qunari, who gave them shelter.  He only knew himself because,
well, people would say the strangest things in bed.  Sometimes, he was careful
to inquire about it; one of the few servants in the house that was nice to him
was Seheron-born and a refugee, and often worried about his homeland, so
Shanamyn tried to find out what he could.  … None of it was good.  The more
years that went by, the more war-ravaged Seheron became.  For the Qunari, it
made a good port, a go-between to Par Vallan.  But to the Tevinters, it was the
last outpost, the only thing keeping the war out of their major cities, and
they defended it passionately.
                The terrible thing about it was that Shanamyn had no love for
the magisters and their cruel ways, but was more afraid of the Qunari and their
beliefs than he was of the magisters.  One was a veiled evil, the other a cruel
religion—convert or die.  And conversion would mean giving up everything that
made each person an individual.  All were equal in the Qun, but everyone was a
slave to it in one way or another.  Shanamyn would rather be a Tevinter slave
than a follower of the Qun.  At least a slave was never told the way they had
to think—though it may be because their masters did not judge them capable of
the action; the Tevinter masters only cared what a slave did,not thought. It
was the difference between the evil he knew, and the evil he didn’t know.
                Shanamyn crawled over him, a hand on either side of his waist,
knees straddling his legs.  He knelt, his lips against his back.  He knew it
must be strange to him.  It was worse that he had been a virgin the day
before.  How awful.
                He almost felt like a rapist for doing it—almost.  He kissed,
and nuzzled, careful to keep his touches to his back and shoulders.  At first,
the elf seemed to be grimacing, enduring it rather than enjoying it, because
they both knew it wasn’t really an option, and they had wasted plenty of time
already.
                When he was more relaxed, and a little more responsive, he used
his hands, just light touches, a brush of fingers, that was all.  He traced the
muscle in his back with his fingertips, and left a trail of kisses from the
base of his neck down his back.  He bent, and kissed the side of his hip.  He
saw the face the elf made, and moved away from it, crawling back up to his
shoulders.  He pushed his face against his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck,
which he was satisfied to see tilted back to allow access.
                He was careful not to leave a mark, just light touches, nothing
more.  Gently, he urged him to roll over, onto his back.  He almost kissed his
lips, but Leto jerked away at the last moment, with an apologetic look. 
Shanamyn thought little of it, but found himself being a bit disappointed, and
he still felt like a rapist for doing this.  His victim had just consented,
that was all.  Consent was different than willingness.
                He touched his chest, lightly, with his fingers and his mouth,
and only when he was more responsive, and seemed less tense, did he stray near
more sensitive areas, like his nipples.  Still, light movements, gentle
movements.
                Shanamyn raised his head, a stray lock of hair falling across
his face.  “Tell me if you don’t want me to do something, all right?” he told
him.
                Leto snorted, and laughed in a nervous sort of way.  “I don’t
even want to be here—I’m sorry,” he added quickly.
                The halfling shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly.  “I understand,”
he told him, which was true.  “Then just tell me if you’re uncomfortable, or if
I’m doing something you don’t like.”
                He nodded in consent of this, and the half-elf ran his hands
down his thighs, but carefully avoided his groin.  He reasoned that he wasn’t
quite ready for that yet.  He was still very tense.  More light touching,
kissing, all of him but a few special areas.
                Finally, he lifted his head, one hand loosely around his cock. 
Everything about his demeanor was a question, from the way his eyebrows arced,
his lips curved, and his neck bent.  “No?” he asked him, his voice low.
                Leto was full of hesitance, shyness, and nervousness.  He saw
the long hesitation and moved away from it, going back to his chest, even his
arms, his neck.  He nibbled delicately on the lobes of ears, biting the tip,
gently—something most elves seemed to like if done right.  He did it right.  He
curled his body up to him, stretching along him.  His hand traced his ribs. 
“I’ll let you fuck me first of course,” he mused.  He laid his head against his
chest, over his heart, and listened to the steady cadence.  Even under such
pressure, it was steady.  It must be the training he had, with the sword—the
control.
                He would have kissed him, even wanted to because it calmed most
of his clients if nothing else, but he didn’t think Leto would have wanted him
to, so he didn’t.  He so rarely had clients who were this attractive.  He
wished he would relax.  Please, he begged silently.  Just relax and enjoy it
and it will all be over soon!  The more you fight it, the longer this will
take!
               But he didn’t know quite how to make him understand that.  He
had never had a client who was unwilling before in a way that wasn’t just some
method of foreplay.  It made him feel like…  Well, like a rapist.
                Shanamyn wasn’t certain that he could do this with such an
unwilling client.  Leto got uncomfortable when he went to touch him, and most
of the small noises he made seemed to be some kind of strained tolerance more
than enjoyment.  He just didn’t know what to do.  He could stick a finger up
his ass and find his prostate.  That would get him aroused, but it might earn
the whore a punch to the face, and he wasn’t willing to test it with someone
who had been a virgin yesterday.
                “I’m sorry,” Leto said, as if he had read his mind.  Had he
been so expressive?  “I’m not making this easy for you.”
                The half-elf lifted his head, and looked down at the other
man.  “I’m sorry I have to do this when you don’t want it,” he said, truly
regretful.
                “Can’t you just… lie… and say you did?” Leto said, and glanced
away.
                He was silent for a moment, wondering what the best way to tell
him the truth was.  “Mages have ways of… telling… when you’re lying.”  He left
unsaid that that was a form of blood magic.  Leto sighed at the sad truth of
that.  “And even if they couldn’t… they’d… be able to tell—with you at least.” 
Leto looked at him, clearly not understanding.  Shanamyn didn’t blame him; he
hadn’t understood before he lost his virginity either.  The whore struggled for
a moment to find the gentlest wording possible, the best way to tell him. 
“When you…  When a man has sex with another man…  One man is in the receiving
position.”  The half-elf made a somewhat obscene gesture with both hands.  Leto
gave him a flat look.  He shrugged helplessly.  He made a very small circle
with his thumb and forefinger, and pushed two other fingers against it, then
through it, having to widen the small circle as he did so.  He twisted his
wrist, and jerked his fingers out of the circle, but left it.  He pointed at
it.  “You… can kind of tell.”
                Leto stared at him, and his face went through a series of
facial expressions, ranging from bored, to disgusted, to curious, and finally
settled on incredulous.  “Why would anyone do that?” he demanded, genuinely not
understanding.
                Shanamyn actually laughed.  He covered his mouth with one hand,
stifling his laughter.  “Oh, you poor thing—you’ve no idea,” he said, feigning
pity.  “Well, let me explain it to you.”  He crossed his legs, sitting beside
him, very instructionally.  “Men have this wonderfully amazing happy place.” 
He jabbed him in the stomach, not sure if he was annoyed or pleased at how
muscular it was.  “It’s called your prostate.”  He grinned.  “There are a few
common ways to make you very happy with stimulation to it.”  He cocked his head
to the side, and studied Leto’s facial expression.  His face was so expressive,
especially his eyes; there was no way he could ever hide what he was thinking. 
He was listening, but with a sort of horrified fascination.  “The first one,
and Lura might have done this to you—is here.”  With no other way to really
describe it well, he quickly tucked his hand between Leto’s legs, and his hand
cupped his package, gently.  Leto’s face began to turn pink, then red,
rapidly.  Shanamyn thought it was kind of cute.  He applied pressure to the
correct area.  “Here.  But it’s not the happiest of the ways to do this.”  He
let go quickly, and rolled out of bed.  He knelt at the chest at the foot of
the bed.  He flipped the lid on it.  “Another way is… to use this.”  He found
the small case, and retrieved it.  He closed the lid, and slid back on to the
bed.  He flipped the case open, and held up the small device between two
fingers.  It was a long silver rod with a gentle curve at one side.
                “Ah…” Leto said, looking at it quizzically.  He was sitting up
now, legs curled under him, but still quite naked and seemed to have no real
qualms about it, so at least there was that.  But, then again, sometimes
gladiators fought almost naked, and they both knew they had the same parts
anyway.
                Shanamyn grinned wickedly.  “Want to try it?” he offered,
knowing full well that a lot of men were terrified of it just based on its
description.  He himself didn’t like it at all; it made him think of horrible
things.  “You see, what you do is, you stick this rod down your dick.”
                Leto’s eyes widened in something deeply akin to horror. 
“What?”
                He heard himself chuckle at his expression.  “Some men…”  He
shrugged.  “Like a pipe shoved down their piss hole.”
                “Why?” he practically shrieked, and tried not to cringe in
abject terror.
                He put the tool back in its case, clicking it closed.  “You’re
underestimating how awesome it is to have something stimulate your prostate,”
he said, voice utterly flat.  Then he brightened, setting the case down on top
of the chest.  “Another way, of course, is to have a toy… or fingers… or a
penis up your ass,” he said with all the fake bright he could muster.  The elf
was staring at him as if he had suddenly announced that he were, in fact, a
turkey.  He decided to ignore this and forge on ahead.  “But, you shouldn’t
take my word for it—you should try it.”
                “I…”  He looked very much like he wanted to argue it, then he
sighed, defeated.  The boy didn’t have much fight in him when it came to
rebelling against his master’s orders, that was for sure.  “I… have no choice.”
                Shanamyn sighed, feeling miserable himself.  “I don’t want to
make this rape, Leto,” he begged him, crawling toward him.  “It feels good; I
promise.  I wouldn’t lie to you.”  Shanamyn looked up at him, by his stance
making himself look weak and defenseless, but trustworthy.  Leto didn’t believe
him, or any of it for that matter, and that was plain by his expression.  “I’m
sorry.”
                Leto sighed, and looked away.  He looked back at him.  “If we
have to do this…  Can you answer a couple of questions first?”
                The half-elf looked hopeful.  “Certainly.”  His lips curved in
a half-smile.  “Anything—really.”
                The other made a variety of facial expressions as he tried to
think of how to word his questions.  “It really doesn’t hurt?  Because it
sounds painful.”
                Shanamyn shook his head.  “If you do it wrong it’s painful.” 
He winked.  “We’ll do it right, and I promise you, it won’t hurt.”
                Leto looked dubious.  “I think you’re just saying that.”
                He shook his head.  “Promise.  If it hurts, you can punch me in
the face.  Hard as you can.  Promise.”
                Leto looked at him, raising an eyebrow.  “I could break your
jaw.”
                “I’m confident.”
                “Deal,” Leto said.  He shifted a little, pulling his legs up. 
“So…  It doesn’t make you…”  Shanamyn raised an eyebrow when his voice trailed
off.  Leto looked embarrassed.  “You don’t lose…”  He struggled.
                Shanamyn nodded as he suddenly understood.  “Bowel control.” 
He bit his lip, trying to think of the best way to put what he knew about
that.  “Only if you do it a lot. Like, a lot.”
                Leto looked at him flatly.  “And you would know because…?”
                “Are you asking me if I’ve ever shit myself from fucking too
many men?” he demanded.  The half-elf laughed.  “Yes.”  His face reddened, but
not a lot.  It had been years ago.  “It was awful at the time, but now I just
think it’s hilarious.”  He shook his head a little.  “But, like I said, you
have to do it a lot.  And using too much lubrication will do it too.”  He
paused.  “You may have to run to the privy after, but that’s more of a comfort
thing than a necessary thing.  Most of the time.”
                Leto looked at him, as if debating how much he could trust
him.  “Speaking of which, where is the closest one?”
                Shanamyn jerked his head to the door.  “If you have to run down
there—to vomit out your depraved soul or whatever—down the hall, first door on
the left.”
                “My… depraved soul?”
                The half-elf nodded thoughtfully.  “Well.  By the Chantry’s
strict standards of celibacy…”  At the expression on Leto’s face, Shanamyn
explained, “I once serviced a priest.”
                “You’re kidding.”
                “Nope,” he said, grinning widely.  “I saw the robes.”  He
seemed pleased with himself.  “I was happy to participate in the breaking of
his vows.”
                Leto didn’t know whether to be appalled or laugh.  “You…”
                Shanamyn’s grin widened, all straight, white teeth.  “He had me
quote versus of the Chant of Light during sex.  Don’t look at me like that—I’m
serious.”  He shrugged.  “Some people... are into some very interesting
things.”  He pointed at him.  “Now lie back down—your chest needs more rose
oil.”
                With great reluctance, Leto did so.  Shanamyn crawled back to
him, kneading his muscles expertly, but noticed the way Leto would flinch and
shy away.  He really couldn’t do this if he wouldn’t relax.  Feeling defeated,
the half-elven whore sat up, shoulders slouched.  Leto propped himself up on
his elbows.  Shanamyn looked at him, his voice pleading.  “Please… Please
relax, and let me touch you?”
                Something about what he said made the elf still, and shift. 
“All right,” he said, but he sounded as defeated as ever.  Shanamyn didn’t know
what to do.  Just… try to arouse him, he guessed.  He put his hands on his
shoulders, gently lowering him down, against the pillows and the sheets.  He
straddled him.  Soft touches hadn’t done it for him.  Maybe something else
would.  He nibbled on his neck, which he quickly discovered was sensitive, on
his collarbone, his shoulders, back to his neck.  His hands roved over him,
gently but firmly.  He had taken control like this before, but… at the same
time, not like this.
                He lapped at his nipples, his hands groping his sides.  He
licked along his ribs, and traced his abs with his tongue and his fingers.  He
traced the curve of his muscles, down to his groin, and this time, had no
choice but to not shy away.  He used his mouth, his hands, everything he knew. 
He took him into his mouth, trying every trick, every maneuver that wasn’t
painful—he wasn’t sure how Leto felt about pain.  He didn’t have much of a gag
reflex anymore, and swallowing was easy.  His lips touched the base of his
cock.  Carefully, his tongue snaked out of his mouth, touching his testicles. 
He pulled his head back, just a little, and back down.  He was hard, and thick
in his mouth and throat.  This was the easy part, after all.
                He took a deep breath, and moved his head away.  He climbed
over him, one hand still between his legs, keeping his member steady.  Shanamyn
didn’t really need preparation—he saw too many men for that even if he wasn’t
always receiving, and he didn’t mind the stretching feeling anyway.
                Leto gasped, a small, almost unwilling sound as he lowered
himself onto him.  He was slow, more for Leto’s benefit than his own, as he
lowered himself down.  Every movement was slow, calculated.  Sex had become a
science to him, rather than an art.  Everything was measured, calculated.  Two
and two made four, as simple as sucking a man off.  He still enjoyed it, a bit
anyway.  He was trained to enjoy it—the stimulation helped, a lot.  Sometimes
it was hard, though.
                Two and two make four.  Ride him until he starts to crest, then
stop, and roll, pulling him on top.  An order, a method, a script.  He knew
what to do.  Every first customer got the same script, and they never knew the
difference.  Why would they?  What did Shanamyn care?  Every client was almost
the same in bed, and if he were on top, at least he didn’t have to fake his
moans as often, and masturbate less.  Everything was scripted in his mind, and
he had been acting out the same play for audience after audience for years. 
Down to the way his hips moved, his cheeks flushed, down to the way his head
rolled back, and he screamed.  All of it was rehearsed, fake—but probably more
beautiful than the real thing.
                A whore and a slave would never really know, that was the
tragedy of it.  He knew, in a scientific kind of way, what sex was.  But the
spirit behind it, the passion, the love, even the lust, was completely lost on
him.  He was an actor, the bed his stage, and the man he was riding his
audience.  Nothing more, nothing less.
                He was a good performer, though, and always had been.  He would
not have lasted otherwise.
                He grabbed on to him, as if entrenched in passion, and rolled
with him, pulling him on top of him.  His legs wrapped around his middle,
shuddering as he looked up at him.
                “How can that feel good?” Leto had to ask, even as he thrust
into him.
                He twisted his hips, bending his back so it would hit the right
place on the next thrust.  It did, and he cried out, a little more genuine that
time.  “Oh, you’ve no idea,” he said, twisting in the sheets.  “Mmm.”  He
pounded into him for a while more, and Shanamyn continued to act, to writhe, to
angle.  He sucked on two of his fingers, as suggestive as could be.  “Sorry,”
he said with a shrug of his shoulder.  Then he smiled a little.  “But you’ll
like it.”
                Leto squirmed a little, and he didn’t move his hand just yet. 
“Now?” he said, nervous.
                How nervous?  Oh, he hoped he didn’t wilt!  Damn it all…  “This
is the best time,” he told him, and jerked his hips, hard, fast, using his
other hand against the headboard for support, making damn sure that Leto didn’t
wilt inside him at the thought.  If he could distract him enough, or just make
it feel good enough…
                He got his hand in position, but the pace of the thrusting made
the elf slip out of him.  In the pause, he looked down, as if uncomfortable at
the thought of putting it back in him.
                Shanamyn smiled encouragingly.  “I promise.  It doesn’t hurt.” 
He cupped the side of his face with one hand.  “Not me, and it won’t hurt you
either.”  His fingers ran down his chest, but couldn’t quite comfortably reach.
 “I want you back in me,” he whispered, and made his eyes beg.  Leto hesitated,
maybe even sensed Shanamyn’s act, but said nothing of it.  But he did push back
into him.  A few more thrusts, and Shanamyn, gently, put his finger against
Leto, trailing it down his buttocks, and then…  Leto’s fingers clenched, and
movement ceased.  Shanamyn kissed his cheek.  “Wait.  Give me a moment…
please?”  He dug his fingers in farther, searching expertly.
                “Ah…” he breathed.  “How can…”
                And the half-elf smiled, content.  He had found it, and Leto
did like it.  Most men did.  Some didn’t, but most really did.  “Move with me,”
he told him, voice gentle and suggestive, and the elf followed the suggestion. 
Why wouldn’t he—it was a good one.  A second finger, and Leto squirmed a bit,
but didn’t hate it.  Shanamyn was actually liking this a little.  It was…
interesting.  Most people came wanting one specific thing—either Shanamyn on
top of them, or under them.  Rarely, if ever, both.  And never having done
either before.
                A third finger, a little more squirming, heavy breathing. 
Leto’s head touched Shanamyn’s shoulder, and he continued to grind into it. 
Knees getting weak?  Maybe.
                “Let me up,” he breathed in his ear.  He didn’t respond at
first, but, slowly, rose.  Shanamyn’s fingers slipped away, his hand falling
carelessly against the bed.  Shanamyn scooted back, away, sighing a little when
he fell out of him.  He waited a moment, in reprieve, swiping his sweaty brow. 
He crawled over Leto, straddling him as he lay on his stomach.  It was a good
position for his first time, especially if his knees were already weak.  He did
lament not being able to see his face though—his face was just so expressive,
even during sex.  Especially during sex.
                Shanamyn stroked himself, trying to work some of his pre-cum
over him, but their sweat should really be enough.  He hesitated, then thought
better of it.  The rose oil was on the dresser by the bed, and he could just
reach the bottle.  He coated himself in it, quickly, and capped the bottle
again.  He tossed it to the foot of the bed.  He leaned over him, kissing his
shoulders and his back, as he positioned himself.  He took his time easing into
him.  Took his time sheathing himself completely inside him, giving him lots of
time to adjust.  He was impossibly tight—but he would be, he reminded himself.
                He had to time it, which he disliked completely.  Every thrust
was careful, no movement without thought.  Nothing lost to passion.  He had to
be careful, so careful.  His arms wrapped around him, almost lovingly as he
pushed into him.  Leto was panting, gasping, some of it in stark disbelief.
                “I told you,” he laughed, kissing the side of his face.  “But I
like you on top better…  Would you take me like this?”  He didn’t know why he
said that, but he felt… comfortable with the elf.  They had talked, really
talked, before they began.  He felt like…  Maybe, in a different life, they
could have been friends.  Not lovers, but friends.  Leto hadn’t cared that he
was half-elven, not really.  So few people didn’t care…
                “Yes,” he whispered in reply.
                A few more minutes, and he pulled out, quickly, shivering when
he actually wanted to come.  But spilling his seed inside him might be more
than the elf could handle right now.  Thankfully, Shanamyn had been well-
trained, and could fuck without giving into such carnal desires.  As requested,
Shanamyn got on his knees, and Leto climbed on top of him.  His movements were
much less careful, much less precise—all the passion that was supposed to go
into sex that was completely lost on Shanamyn.  But the half-elf’s arms gave
out anyway, ground into the bed as they were.  Soon after, between both their
efforts, he fell into the blankets, Leto on top of him.  The halfling heard
himself panting.
                “Can you do something for me?” he gasped.  “Please?”
                Leto hesitated, his hands gripping his hips, his dick grinding
inside him, making Shanamyn’s toes curl.  “What?”
                The half-elf panted, swallowing.  “Pull my hair—grip it in one
hand… and choke me.”
                “What?” he cried.
                “Please…  Don’t hurt me though…  Please…” he gasped.  The elf
was hesitant, and it made him too gentle about it.  His grip was too loose, on
both accounts.  Shanamyn swallowed again.  “Do you know how to choke someone? 
Do it.”  And Leto hesitated again.  The half-elf sighed, feeling saddened.  He
was about to toss his head, tell him to forget about it, but the elf’s grip
suddenly tightened in his hair, hauling his head back forcefully as he pushed
harder into him.  His fingers around his neck tightened, until he couldn’t
breathe, the elf’s hand completely covering the scar on his neck.  He gagged,
and coughed, sputtered, and felt the world go fuzzy.  His hearing dimmed, and
his moans were genuine.  Movements were fast, and deep, and he felt like maybe
sex didn’t all have to be measured and scripted.  All of his senses were
dulled, far away, and there was nothing but the feeling of the elf’s cock
pounding into him, that one sense dominated everything, and felt so exquisitely
real compared to the dull world that his other senses occupied.
                And then he came, and the grip on his throat eased, and he
realized that Leto was lowering them both down onto the bed, and pulled away
from him, limp with ejaculation.  A wet, warm liquid ran down Shanamyn’s legs,
and he smiled to himself.
                “I liked that,” he breathed, his eyes closing as he rested.  He
took a deep breath, followed by another until his breathing was normal again. 
He rolled over to look at him.  “You don’t… think I’m some kind of freak, do
you?”
                Leto stared at him, and he seemed annoyed if nothing else. 
“I’m brother to a mage.  I’m from Seheron.  And I’m willingly going to undergo
a ritual to carve lyrium into my flesh.  No, I don’t think you’re a freak.”
                Shanamyn’s lips curved into a smile.  “I’d like to see that,
after the ritual is over.”
                The elf sighed deeply.  “It sounds… painful,” he admitted, and
Shanamyn saw all the doubts and fears in him in that moment.  He was afraid of
the ritual, afraid of what it meant, what it would do to him.  The half-elf
decided that it would be best not to ask about it.  People so rarely liked to
be reminded of their fears, after all.
                “You’ll look sexy,” he said with a wink.
                Leto frowned.  “I’ll look like a lyrium mine,” he corrected
him.
                Shanamyn laughed, and wrapped his arms around him.  “You will
be a stunning lover, given practice, and I don’t say that to everyone.”
                The elf rolled his eyes.  “I bet you say it to all your
clients.”
                “I don’t,” he insisted, and it was true.  Usually it was
something even more corny and outrageous.  “I usually say something like ‘you
were deeper inside me than anyone has ever been’ or ‘I loved that thing you did
with your hips’ or ‘you were coming out of my mouth’ or something stupid like
that.”
                “People really like it when you say things like that?” he
wondered quizzically.
                “Oh, yes.  Everyone wants to know they got a good grade on
their performance—part of my job is to build a person’s self-esteem,” he said
very matter-of-factly.  It was what made him a talented whore—it was so much
more than being good in bed.  “I was just truthful with you.”  He snorted a
laugh.  “After all, you’re not paying for this.”
                Leto made a face, his fingers trailing along the half-elf’s
hip.  “Why did you…”  He flushed a little.  “I mean to say, I was… inside you…
a lot longer than…”
                Shanamyn kind of laughed.  “I’m glad you asked,” he said.  It
meant he was interested, and curious.  He might want to know some time in the
future if he were ever with another man, and Shanamyn was personally only too
happy to tell him.  “It takes practice to be able to do it for a long time
without getting sick.  I didn’t want you to feel queasy.  If I went in too deep
for too long, you’d be sick for a couple of days.”
                “Oh,” he said, and glanced away.  Adorable.
                The half-elf ran his toes along his calves.  “You know, the
strangest thing anyone has ever wanted to do with me… this night aside…”  They
both chuckled at the truth of that.  “Has been someone wanting me to roleplay… 
And, well, this is what they had me say…”  He frowned a little, and mimicked a
throaty cry, “’You are the ancient Tevinters and I am the elven nation—conquer
me.’”
                “That’s horrible,” Leto said.
                “Isn’t it?” he said, smirking with a sort of contemptuous
delight.  “I’m pretty cynical, though, so I just think it’s kind of funny.”
                “Indeed.”
                Shanamyn looked up, and a grin broke out on his face.  “You’re
trying not to smile,” he accused him.  “You’re just as bad as I am!”
                “I am not,” he denied, but halfway through the statement, the
partial smile broke out.  Shanamyn laughed, closing his eyes.  For the first
time in years, he thought, I wish it didn’t have to be like this.
                He wished the elven nation had never been enslaved.  He wished
he wasn’t a slave, and a whore.  He wished that Leto wasn’t a slave.  He wished
that slavery just didn’t exist.  And he wished that no one ever had to do
anything they didn’t truly want to do.
                Just as quickly, the thought passed.  This was reality, and
wishes didn’t come for the wishing.  He had best live in reality, not a tale.
                He supposed he must have fallen asleep.  They had been
talking.  They had talked about other things, and Shanamyn had told stories
about some of his crazier clients—he had several.  And somewhere along the
line, he had fallen asleep.
                He woke when Leto stirred, a rapping on the door rousing both
of them.  Leto’s eyes opened, scanning the near-darkness of the room.  Shanamyn
yawned, and rolled out of bed.  He didn’t care about dressing himself—what was
the point?  Nearly everyone here had seen him naked anyway, after all…  He
worked well in threesomes, so the headmistress frequently recommended him, but
several of the other whores disliked him being involved (they had no choice in
the matter).  It sometimes made him feel self-conscious around the others,
socially at least, so he avoided them.
                He pulled the door open just enough to peek out.  It was Lura,
smelling like violets with her hair done up fancy.
                He noticed her gaze trail to his terribly bare neck.  He had
barely noticed the ribbon coming undone.  Slowly, his hand came up to cover his
neck, self-consciously.  Everyone knew about it, but not everyone had seen it. 
And no one knew the truth about it.  He lied and lied about it.  He lied to his
clients, he lied to his master, he lied to the other slaves, the servants.
                “Um,” Lura said, apparently shocked out of what she was going
to say originally.
                The half-elf glanced downward, wanting to slam the door in her
face and hide.
                Leto had said not one word about it.  His eyes hadn’t even
lingered on the horrific scar where his mother had tried to hang him, hang him
like a murderer, a rapist, a thief, for the crime of his birth.  Hang him from
a tree, and let the Maker take him.  The bough, though, had broken under his
weight (his mother hadn’t known much about the process), but not before the
rope had cut into him, strangling him, crushing his neck, and he had lain under
the bough, still gagging and too dazed to realize he could pull the rope around
his neck slack…
                Lura, though, stared at it, though she tried not to.  Shanamyn
was good at pretending that he didn’t notice; he had to learn.  Showing people
that he noticed bothered other people, so he had simply learned to cope.  His
entire existence was based around not bothering others.  With Leto, he had
almost forgotten about it.  He hadn’t shied from it, not even when his hands
wrapped around it, not even when he had seen it for the first time.  He hadn’t
stared, had barely looked at it.
                “Lura,” he said, voice soft.  “I’ll wake Leto.  Give me a
moment?”
                She nodded, her gaze flicking back to his neck though most of
the nasty scar was hidden by his hand, then back at his face.  He closed the
door, his hand already coming to cover his neck.  Mages had tried to heal it
when he came to the House of Jade, but it was too far gone.  He had almost
ended up as just another errand boy, a scullion, but the headmistress had a
good eye for her whores, and instead that was where he ended up.  She had
claimed that the scar would interest the same sort of folk who would be
interested in a half-breed.  She said it with such pleased contempt that it
made him feel like the only people who would ever want him were perverted for
wanting him.  Most of the time, he believed that.
                Leto hadn’t made him feel that way.
                He walked over to the bed Leto slept on, and shook his
shoulder, gently.  Sage-coloured eyes opened, and looked at him.  Shanamyn
still had his hand over his neck.  “Lura is waiting,” he told him.
                For the first time, the elf’s eyes fell to his neck, at his
hand hiding his neck.  He sat up, and caught both his wrists, pulling them away
from what he tried to hide, firm but gentle, even when Shanamyn tried to stop
him.  “Don’t hide who you are,” he told him, voice soft.
                Shanamyn wanted to cry hearing him say that.  How could he not
try?  He had to hide.  He had to hide the scar, the ugly mark across his neck. 
He wanted to hide his half-blood heritage.  Wanted to hide all of it, away. 
How could he not understand?  Why did he not see that it was worth hiding? 
“Wise words,” the half-elf said bitterly.  “Spoken by someone who doesn’t
understand them.”
                Leto raised an eyebrow.  “I’m too tall for an elf.  I’m from
Seheron, and my sister is a mage.”  He shook his head a little.  “I’ve tried to
hide who I am.  I can’t, so I gave up.”  He swung out of the bed, and moved to
his discarded leathers.  “You should too.”
                Shanamyn looked away, but didn’t know what to say.  It was easy
for the elf to say that, he thought.  He felt like he should say something,
anything.  He wanted to, but didn’t know what to say.  He could think of
nothing more to say, no words that needed saying.  And, before he could think
of something, Leto was dressed and heading toward the door.
                “Wait,” the half-elf cried, pained.  Leto paused, looking back
at him.  “How do you stop hiding?”
                Leto looked at him for a long moment.  “You begin by accepting
yourself for who you are,” he told him, and opened the door.  Just like that,
he was gone, back in Lura’s arms, and Shanamyn was alone again.
                He hugged his arms to himself.  Accept yourself for who you
are.
                He touched his throat, and wondered.  Accept that too?  Accept
that his father was an elf and his mother human, and stop hiding from people
because he was afraid of how they would react to it?  It sounded difficult,
even frightening, after years of hiding, and avoiding, of accepting that he was
nothing but some kind of perversion.
                He wondered if he ever could be anything more.
Chapter End Notes
     Now that you know which way I swing...
***** An Innocent's Cry *****
Chapter Summary
     In which preparations for the Ritual are underway and Leto begins to
     see the hell in which he has trapped himself.
                Varania felt her eyes begin to water when she saw Leto, sitting
alone on the bed looking anxious and lost in thought, and she simply could not
contain herself any longer.  She threw her arms around him, and wept.  She had
heard the expression “tears of joy” before, but never thought they were
actually true, and now, her cheeks wet, she found that it was no myth.  She was
fiercely proud of her older brother.
                “You did it,” she whispered.  “You really did it.”
                He hugged her back just as fiercely, and maybe he did really
forgive her.  “Was there ever any doubt?” he asked, doing his best to sound
over-confident, but she knew him.  He was scared, and she knew it.  It was in
his eyes, the way his shoulders seemed too stiff, and the faint tremor in his
voice—and the way he held onto her, knowing that their time was now numbered.
                 “Too much doubt,” she laughed.  Her brother didn’t like to be
reminded of his own fears; he was a man, after all.  “We were so worried,
especially when you didn’t come home for so long, but we all… heard about it.” 
She hugged him a little bit tighter, her swollen belly getting entirely too in
the way for her liking.
                Their mother looked on, and waited for the siblings to part,
before she held her son close to her, grateful, fearful, proud, sorrowful.  “I
can’t believe it,” she breathed.  “My son.  My incredibly talented son.”
                “Mother…” he complained, his face flushing with embarrassment
as his mother fawned over him.
                “What do you have to be embarrassed about?” she chided him in
the oblivious way that only a devoted parent can.  “You’ve… won.”
                He sighed, and then swallowed.  “You… won’t be slaves anymore,”
he told them, and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe it
himself.
                But Mieta took a step back, and folded her arms under her
breasts, looking up at her son.  “But… Leto…” she said, her brows drawing up in
concern.  She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, couldn’t bear to
put the thought into words.
                But they all knew, and he looked away.  Varania looked down. 
His sister and mother would go free, and he would stay behind in slavery…
forever.  They would never see each other again.  They might as well never
exist for each other after that.  “Thank you, Leto,” Varania whispered.  She
shook her head.  “You’ve given up so much for us.”
                He looked up then, at her.  He really had; he had given up what
he loved the most exactly for what he loved the most.  Freedom was never
something any of them could have attained on their own.  Without his victory,
they would have all lived their lives in slavery, but may have been able to be
together for a few more years.  What he had really given up was his family.
                “When… will they allow us to leave?” Varania asked him, a
question she had been wondering for some time.
                Leto was silent for a moment before he responded, “After… the
ritual, it seems.”  He paused and looked at their mother.  “They’re going to
pay you, like a servant, until then, he said.”
                Mieta frowned.  “How long until this… ritual?”
                He shrugged one shoulder absently, but seemed distracted.  “It
will take months to get the lyrium here, so I’ve heard.”
                Varania touched her stomach.  She did want Leto there when she
gave birth.  She accepted that finality, and one small grace of all this was
that he may be there for it.  She hoped so.  She didn’t know… if she could
really make it without him.
 
                The large stained glass windows were open to let in the sea
breeze, making the room, to one properly clothed, pleasantly cool and
fragrantly scented with the smell of the sea and the incense.  To Leto, who
stood completely naked, the room was uncomfortably cold.  A pot of white paint
squatted on the floor beside him like a beetle.  The apprentice dipped his
brush into it, returning to his work on the elf’s arm, all of his concentration
on making the lines straight, and perfect.  A large map lay on a writing desk,
awkwardly positioned so that Raith could see the design, for reference.
                The only sounds in the room was the breeze rustling the
curtains, a page turning, the scratching sound of pen to paper, and
occasionally the apprentice cursing or otherwise muttering to himself.
                They only had one chance to carve all of the lyrium into him. 
One mistake, one shaking hand, would ruin it, and the boy might die.  In truth,
any mistake in the ritual could kill him.  Moreover, the ritual itself could
very well kill him.  All the test subjects had only been tested with small
amounts of lyrium.  This would cover quite a bit of his body.
                Danarius wanted no mistakes.  Raith would be the one doing this
work, and Danarius would be the one controlling it.  So, Raith practiced.  If
he made one error, or hesitated once, he had to clean it all off, and start
again.
                Two hours a day.  Danarius planned for him to be painting these
lines in his sleep if need be.
                A knock at the door made the magister look up from his
writing.  Raith did not, for all his attention was on Leto’s chest now.  The
elf stared straight ahead, stock-still.  He might as well be a statue, except
for his eyes, which tracked the messenger as he came in, carrying a small
intricately carved alabaster box.
                The slave gingerly set the box down in front of his master,
bowed, and was excused.  The door shut.  The magister sat up, and opened the
box.  He selected a vial, and rose from his chair, stalking over to his pet and
his apprentice.  He held up the small vial of lyrium, tapping it against the
elf’s cheekbone in thought.  It was purple, not even a hideous shade of purple,
but…  “No,” he said, displeased.
                Raith looked up.  “Isn’t purple lyrium used to make bombs?” he
asked, as if solely to nettle Leto.  Leto’s eyes widened, just a little, green
eyes tracking the purple vial.
                “It is,” the magister affirmed.  Leto looked concerned at this
idea.  “I don’t like it much for him, though.”  The elf visibly relaxed.
                He put the purple vial back, and picked up the red one.  He
liked that one better, but still wasn’t entirely happy about it, but couldn’t
quite think of why.
                “It looks like blood,” Raith offered.  “Like we were painting
him with fresh blood.”
                Danarius nodded—that was it.  He would just look messy, and
maybe a little possessed-looking.  Frankly, he had seen enough possessed mages
and non-mages alike to drive a lesser man to a lifetime of nightmares.  He had
no interest in making Leto look permanently possessed.  “He’ll look as if he is
possessed,” the magister muttered.
                Raith laughed.  “And likely will be if you use the red; it has
made everyonewho has ever used it go mad,” he said with obvious amusement. 
Leto’s concern for his own well-being escalated, but he had no true cause for
it, as Danarius had already dismissed the idea.  Red lyrium was hard to come by
anyway.
                “Perhaps the blue…”  He switched the vials, and went back to
him, and began to smile.  The apprentice looked up.
                “I like that one better, and blue is easiest to come by
anyway,” he offered.  “Not to mention the safest.”  They both laughed at that;
the cyan lyrium caused damage to even dwarves, and in its raw state, it killed
mages outright, which is why it was all going to be refined before it was even
shipped.  Leto seemed relieved to see that it was not to be the purple or
red—which was understandable, considering that one was used to make explosives
and the other was a known cause of madness.
                “I’ll send the order immediately,” he decided, and called for a
page.  He sent his message out quickly, and continued to watch the painting in
the same manner that one would observe birds in the park while reading a book.
                When he was finished with the paint, Raith looked back at Leto,
glad to be finished.  “His face looks blank, compared to the rest of him,” he
decided.
                “If we put any more on his face, he’ll look like a damned
Dalish,” Danarius reminded him.
                Raith’s mouth twisted in a frown, but he nodded in agreement. 
There was even a bit in his ears—literally everywhere except parts of his
face.  It was probably safer that way though.  “He already looks like a damned
Dalish,” the apprentice muttered, looking at the other markings, which were oh-
so very much like the Dalish tattoos.  They had a word for it—what was it? 
Danarius couldn’t recall, and didn’t care too much for that matter either.
                “That’s part of the joke,” Danarius mused.  And Raith laughed. 
Leto’s eyes flicked to the floor.
 
                It wasn’t very often in the slave compound of Danarius’ estate
that two of his slaves should be pregnant at the same time.  It was difficult
enough for elves to conceive—and carry to term--and the same rapings to “breed”
them tended not to go on in the city as in the country, as such—it was
undisciplined and too barbaric for this place.  So children were special.  They
had always been special to the elvhen, for even without their lost immortality,
they still reproduced slowly compared to the other races.
                It was said that most of the first elves captured and
subjugated were primarily children.  They had not been a warrior race.  Before
mankind came, they had never known war, sickness, or even death outside of rare
accidents.  Their ancestors would weep to see what had become of them:  They
knew old age, death, sickness, and many knew and studied the arts of fighting
and warfare.  Worse, their ancestor’s descendants often had no idea what they
had lost, nor how far they had fallen.
                Ahline was almost ready to give birth herself.  She was several
years older than Varania, though, and therefore the others had seen her as much
more likely to carry to term.  Her child would be born into slavery, the same
as she had, and the same as its father had.  She thought little of the matter. 
There was no sadness without a point of comparison, after all, and she had
none, save the stories she cared little for.  They were things to entertain
children, nothing more.  She felt that children deserved their brief reprieve
and their innocence before the crush of the work they would endure all their
lives bore down on their shoulders.  It wasn’t an unfortunate thing to her,
merely inevitable.  She had always had a master, and could not think of life in
any other terms.
                In the meantime, her own work was horrendously slow.  She had
to go to the privy frequently—something she had been warned about by the older
women, and even then, it was just difficult to get around.  She was anxious to
give birth, though frightened by it to some degree; it was her first child.
                If she were not so close to her time, they would have set her
to work scrubbing the floors, but she simply couldn’t get around like that, and
even the mostly unreasonable headmistress saw that.  So, rather, she was given
lighter chores, like the dusting.  She had to be careful with that, though.  If
she broke anything, she would be severely punished.  Still, so long as she was
careful and took her time, that was not an issue.
                All the same, she considered herself to be fortunate—most of
Danarius’ household slaves did.  It was unlikely that she would be sold, and
she was allowed to lie with whomever she will (other masters had strict rules
about such things), and bear a child of that union.  In some places, it was
often cheaper and easier to buy a slave that was older than to allow a child to
be born, so sometimes they were killed in the womb.  Ahline did not consider it
barbaric or crude; she hardly batted an eye over the matter.  It was practical
is all:  A pregnant slave could not work as hard, after birth she would be
weak, she would have to nurse the child, and the child would have to be
taught.  It was simply easier to buy a slave.  But the magister was kind enough
to allow her to have her child, and so she was not unhappy here.
                She hadn’t quite decided on a name for the child yet.  She was
toying around with the idea of a few names, but just wasn’t certain about any
of it.  Perhaps, after her mother?  She didn’t know her father—he had been
shipped off to fight the Qunari before she was born.
                She felt the babe kick, and stir.  It had been restless the
past few days.  Sometimes, it hurt or was merely uncomfortable, but it was all
comforting at the same time.  She felt contented to bring life into the world. 
Even amidst the world of sorrow she knew only as “life,” there had to be light
in the world, and it came in the form of her unborn.
                Ahline dusted the halls, staying carefully off of the expensive
rugs whenever possible.  She came to a large entryway to the courtyard and
sighed to herself.  There was a lot in here that required dusting, though no
rugs.  The polished marble gleamed in the late afternoon sun, reflecting the
fresco above it.  A few weeks ago, a painter had been in to look at it. 
Danarius apparently wished a different scene above it.  She couldn’t imagine
why; it was lovely.  All climbing vines, flowers, sunlight piercing through the
painted leaves with such realism that one almost lost themselves in it.  It had
been the outer garden, actually, before Danarius decided to have all the vines
pulled up and burned.  Again, she couldn’t imagine why.  The magister did a lot
of seemingly odd things on a whim.
                Change, she supposed.  A desire for change—humans were like
that.
                She felt suddenly dizzy.  She stumbled for a moment, and felt
something run down her legs.  The liquid was involuntary and unexpected. 
Alarming at first, but once she understood what it was, she felt… well, nervous
and excited all at the same time.  She had to get to help.  Yelling was not
something generally tolerated inside the manor.  It was a large place, they had
told her, and yelling echoed.
                So she had to find someone to help her.  She had to find
someone to help her to the slave compound, who would get the midwife for her. 
She had just begun to turn when her legs crumpled weakly, too shaky to stand
just yet.  She heard footsteps, then they quickened.  Someone knelt beside her.
                “Ahline,” a voice said.  “I’ll get the midwife, and help you
back.  Will you be all right?”
                She looked up.  It was Leto.  She had never really had much
interaction with him before.  She was a couple of years older, and had been shy
enough as a young girl to avoid the others, and then she had been put to work
later on.  “Um.  Yes, but hurry!”
                He was up again and dashing off in an instant.  She crawled
away from the puddle of liquid, a little disgusted.  The pains of childbirth
had not started yet—she was lucky that Leto happened across when he did.  She
waited, and time seemed to go by slowly.  She was worried that the contractions
might start before he got back.  She didn’t know too much about the actual
birthing process.  The older women had tried telling her about it more, but she
felt sick to hear of it, so they had not continued.  Now, she wished she had
paid more attention!
                Though, she was in luck; he was back quickly, and with the
midwife from the infirmary.  The woman observed Ahline for a moment, and said,
“We need to transport her to the compound—“
                Leto didn’t answer her, but he knelt beside Ahline, and,
gently, lifted her into his arms.  She was pleasantly surprised that he could
lift her at all, honestly.  She felt like she must be impossibly heavy with the
child in her womb.  He didn’t complain that her dress was wet, and he carried
her as if she weren’t even there.
                “I will be there shortly,” the midwife said, satisfied, and the
woman hurried off.
                Leto struggled with the door briefly, and Ahline laughed.  “Let
me do it,” she said, and the two maneuvered, chuckling at one another, as they
had to work together to open the door.  He let her shut it—gently, and strutted
out into the sunlight.
                It felt strange to be carried like this.  Ahline hadn’t been
carried since she could walk.  It was bizarre to let someone else do it for
her.  She wanted to believe that Leto was strong enough not to drop her—he was
a gladiator, after all—but she still felt apprehensive that he might anyway, or
trip or something.  It made her nervous, and tense, and he must have noticed,
but whether he guessed the real reason, or thought it was just because the baby
was coming, he said nothing about it.
                He nudged the slave quarter’s gate open with his foot, and just
let it swing shut behind him.  He didn’t hesitate, and he brought her to the
hut she shared with two other women.  They did not have to fumble with this
door—none of them shut properly from the outside, and the leather thong used to
keep the simple door shut was secured on the inside, after all, so it could be
opened with a foot.  She felt a momentary pang of loss.  Her mother had died
years ago, birthing her brother, who had gotten sick shortly after and died
himself, as if it had all been for nothing.  It would be so comforting for her
if her mother had been alive to be with her today.  At the same time, it scared
her, just a little.
                Would she be one of the women that died?
                Leto gently set her down on the bed.  “Is there… anything else
I can do?” he asked her, brow creased with worry.
                She smiled, glad he had done what he had.  “Could you get me a
bucket of water—I think that would be a help,” she suggested.  He nodded, and
picked up the half-empty bucket by the door, and left on his errand.
                Her child’s father was a slave to another master—a midnight
foray as it were.  The young man certainly knew, but being able to see her at
all was infrequent.  And, as she had suspected and feared, he stopped coming
when she got bigger.  Ahline doubted he would even come to see his own child.
                Leto, though, returned with the midwife in his wake, and a few
other slaves for assistance.  Leto was sent outside, and Ahline smiled to him
for his help.
                When it was done, and she held her newborn son in her arms, she
asked the midwife if Leto could come in.  Surprised, she sent a slave to go
fetch him.  He came, though it was well after dark.  He hesitated in the
doorway, but she sat up, and said, “Come in—it’s all right.”
                He walked inside, nervously, and went beside her.  “You’re all
right then…  I had thought…  It sounded like…” he tried to say.
                She laughed gently, though felt exhausted.  “Like I was dying,”
she finished what he did not wish to say.  “Look.”  She offered her son,
tilting her bundle so he could see it.  “You helped with this.”
                He flushed, and glanced away.  “I did nothing.”
                “It was enough,” she objected, and her mouth quirked a smile. 
“Why don’t you hold him?”
                He blinked in surprise, and started to object, but she was
already shoving the babe into his arms, and he couldn’t.  Reluctant, he took
him from her.  She helped him hold the infant.  It stirred only briefly before
falling back asleep.  He watched the newborn with all the fascination of one
who had never been that close to a newborn child.
                “He’s like a miracle, isn’t he,” she said, her voice soft.
                He shook his head, but not in disagreement exactly.  Rather, he
said, “I don’t care what those mages say about magic.  If this isn’t that, I
don’t know what is.”
                And she laughed, blushing.  “Flatterer,” she accused him.
                But he looked at her, his face utterly serious.  “I wasn’t
joking.”
                Ahline only smiled.  “Why don’t you hold him for a while.”  She
leaned back on the bed, and closed her eyes briefly.  “Think about miracles and
magic, and hold him for a while.”
                The last thing she saw before her eyes closed was Leto, smiling
softly down at the sleeping infant.
 
                Raith felt like dumping the entire pot of paint over Leto’s
head and being done with it.  There were particular points that were difficult
to paint just on one side, but everything had to be perfectly symmetrical, and
the rule was that if he made but one mistake, the paint on that branch must be
washed off completely, and he had to start again.  The unfortunate part about
the markings was that it was so exact.  It had to cover different points of the
body, some chakra points, pressure points, and other such.  And, naturally, one
of those points was, well…
                “Stop squirming,” Raith muttered.  Leto wasn’t squirming
exactly, but looked very much like he wanted to squirm.  His hands were curled
into fists and to say he looked a bit uncomfortable was like saying the Proving
Grounds were a bit bloody.
                Raith was uncomfortable too.  He was on his knees, in front of
Leto, painting over the place he would have pubic hair, if elves actually had
any of that.  And the lines went down further too…
                The door opened on silent hinges, and Raith did not look up,
too entrenched in his concentration to do so.  He looked up at his master when
he dipped the brush back in the pot.
                “I’m having a problem,” Raith said, getting right to the point
before Danarius inquired as to his work.
                Danarius crossed his arms.  “What is it?” he asked, his tone
tired and halfway suggesting that Raith always had one problem or another.
                Raith was reluctant to go on.  He felt like all he ever did was
uncover problems and blunder.  And now…  Raith rose to his feet so he could
look his fellow mage in the eyes.  “The markings,” he said, gesturing to the
elf.  “The ones on his genitals, I mean.  The foreskin gets in the way.”  He
shrugged helplessly, but that was the truth of the matter.  “And if he ever has
an erection, it will change the shape of the markings.”  He did not have to say
aloud that the shape was significant.  Every arc and curve was planned for a
purpose.  A change to them could mean a change in the way the lyrium would
work.  It was just like any proper but complicated spell.
                The magister, of course, understood the implications
immediately.  “Hmm…” he mused, brow creasing in thought as he looked at his
slave in the same way a man would gaze at a puzzle.
                Raith glanced at Leto.  “We could have him castrated.  That
would fix everything,” he suggested.  He noticed the way Leto’s eyes widened,
and he saw him cringe.  It was almost comical.
                “We could,” Danarius said, a little reluctantly.
                Raith liked that idea the more he thought about it.  They could
cut everything—the testicles as well as the shaft.  He would never be
distracted or able to be seduced.  He was a man grown already, so they wouldn’t
have to worry about the fact that he would never be as strong as he would have
been otherwise.  It would eliminate some of Raith’s work—the most uncomfortable
bit at that.  “I’ll make the appointment this afternoon,” Raith volunteered. 
Leto looked pale.
                Danarius kind of chuckled, looking at Leto’s expression.  “I
don’t think my slave would like that very much,” he said.
                Raith assumed that his master was joking.  “I think he may
faint.”
                The magister looked up and down the elf’s body, along the
markings, thinking.  “It would leave a scar,” he said finally, sighing.
                “A skilled enough healer could heal it without,” Raith offered.
                He frowned.  “It would change everything.  We would have to
find a different set of markings—something suitable to a eunuch.  This one is
for a man.”
                “It wouldn’t be so difficult to draft a new pattern,” the
apprentice said agreeably.
                Danarius paused, and considered.  Leto swallowed hard, and
looked more than a little terrified at the prospect—inwardly debating on
falling to his knees and begging him not to.  Anyone with half a grain of sense
would be.  “What if he were circumcised instead?” Danarius wondered aloud, and
glanced to his apprentice.
                Raith’s mouth twisted into a frown.  His instinct was to argue
that it wouldn’t be the same, but then he thought about it.  Most of his
problem was with the foreskin.  If it were removed…  “I suppose… that would
solve most of the problem,” he admitted grudgingly.
                The mage nodded, pleased that a simple solution could be found
so quickly.  “See that it’s done,” he said, and took his leave.
                Raith bowed to his master, and looked back at Leto, and
couldn’t help but smirk.  “I think I’ll go make that appointment now.  It’s
urgent, so it will be done before this evening,” he said, his voice mocking. 
“You stay here, slave—and don’t move until I return.”
                Leto bowed his head.  “As you wish, messere.”
                Raith smirked again, and strolled past him.  There was a man
who handled such things in the city, but usually the ones he saw were much
younger.  The servant returned little over an hour later, looking tired.  He
handed Raith a scroll of paper, and the apprentice read it eagerly.
                He set it aside and he leered at Leto, who seemed to want to
shrink back.  “Go get yourself cleaned up, slave.  He’ll be here within the
hour.”
 
                When it was done, Danarius sent his slave, who was by that time
limping and in obvious pain, to the infirmary, where the mage there could heal
it faster than it would take on its own.  He was kind of proud of his little
pet; he hadn’t even cried.  Oh, the elf had grimaced, and gasped, and sweat,
but had stayed obediently still throughout (the magister had simply asked the
man doing the cutting about it).  Danarius had most of his foreskin removed—as
much as could be removed feasibly at least--to make the markings easier to
make.  The man doing it had complained about the magister’s requests, but he
was nothing.
                Danarius paid him, thanked him for coming on such short notice,
and sent him on his way.
                When Leto returned from the infirmary, the magister told him to
strip; he wanted to see him.  Leto seemed even more embarrassed than he had
before, and his face was red when he stood before him naked.
                “He did a good job,” he confessed, looking at the place that he
had been cut.  “It should hurt for a few more days though, my pet...”  He
paused, looking at Leto’s pained expression.  “There wasn’t any other way,
except castration.  Surely, you would prefer this?”  His tone was light and
innocent.  He did hold a particular enjoyment with tormenting certain
people—Leto being one of them.
                “Yes, Master,” Leto whispered, the most he could presently
manage.
                “We’re going to try something new now.”  Put that way, it
sounded sort of foreboding, he reflected.  The truth wasn’t nearly so dark. 
“Raith, do you think you can manage it?”
                Raith looked on, confident.  “Yes—I’d like to try it.”
                Danarius sat down in his chair.  “Then begin, and I hope this
makes it easier for you.”
 
                “What are you covered in this time?” Varania asked him.  It was
only a few weeks before they said she would birth the child, and she was more
than ready for it.  She wanted it gone.  She felt so heavy, and when it kicked,
it made her more than uncomfortable.  She felt unbelievably large.  Too large,
in fact.
                “Henna,” he muttered darkly, scratching at his arm.  When it
was done, they had made him go lie out in the sun so the henna could darken. 
Not one of his worst chores, though.
                She frowned.  She had heard of henna.  “Isn’t it like a fake
tattoo?”
                “Yeah,” he said, then added, “And it’s itchy.”
                She chuckled, and looked him up and down, wondering what the
network on his torso looked like, and at the same time not caring enough to
ask.  It wasn’t something he liked to talk about anyway, so she had given up a
while ago.  “It looks kind of neat,” she offered.
                He scowled.  “I hate it,” he said flatly.
                “Will you hate it when it’s lyrium and permanent?” she
wondered, idling picking at a loose thread on her dress.  The lyrium had come
in earlier this week, and Danarius and Raith spent nearly all their time
refining it, not trusting the cultivation of the magister’s life’s work to
anyone else.  Just because it was there, though, didn’t mean the ritual would
be coming any time soon.  Leto had commented that it had to be done in small
amounts at a time, and each finished product took some time.
                He made a face.  “I don’t know why I wouldn’t.  I think I look
stupid.”
                She smirked.  “I’m going to start calling you ‘Dalish.’”
                “Very funny, ‘Nia,” he grumbled.
                She paused, watching him walk by.  “… Are you scared?” she
asked him, voice low.  “I would be scared.”
                He stopped, and looked back at her.  His eyes searched her face
for a long moment.  “’Nia, I’m terrified,” he whispered.
                She realized her throat was dry.  She licked her cracking lips,
wondering if it had been the wrong thing to say.  “So am I,” she admitted. 
“For you, and for me, and… all of us.”
                He went to her, clasping her shoulders, making her look at
him.  “You’ll be happier, ‘Nia.  It’ll be better,” he told her.
                She shook her head.  “I don’t want to be pregnant,” she
whispered, staring down at her stomach in plain disgust.
                He looked down too.  “It won’t be long,” he told her,
completely missing or choosing to ignore the point.  She briefly considered
correcting him, and reminding him that she wanted the babe dead, but thought
better of it.  They were only just getting back onto speaking terms a few weeks
ago.  It wouldn’t do to bring that subject up.
                “You make it sound so easy,” she said instead.  “I’ve heard all
kinds of nasty things about birth—from Ahline.”
                He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.  “Like what?” he asked
conversationally, sitting down on his bed, stretching.  Some of the henna
cracked.  He picked at it uncomfortably.
                She made a face.  “Like…  Like the placenta,” she said,
shuddering in horror.  Ahline had told her all of this so matter-of-factly, but
she suspected the older girl secretly delighted in horrifying Varania so—not
cruelly, but more in a teasing manner.  “And that when a woman gives birth, it
squeezes all of her organs down there, so she usually shits herself, but
there’s so much going on that she doesn’t notice.  It’s just disgusting.”
                He snickered, and she hit him in the shoulder.  “What?” he
demanded, and she hit him again, and again, until she was laughing against her
will while he made snide remarks about the birthing process.  “Just make sure
that when your water breaks, you’re outside; it’ll be bad enough without it
being all over the floor.”  And other things like that--each comment she hit
him for.
                “You might as well live at the privy after the birth—Ahline was
telling me about all the bleeding and chunks falling out afterwards…”
                “I’ve heard sometimes when you’re pushing, you’ll piss.”
                And so forth.
 
                Raith had spent so long on this project of his masters that he
hadn’t seen any sunlight in what felt like weeks.  True, he was mostly a being
of the indoors, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t appreciate the natural
light of the sun on occasion—and sort of craved it after so long without.
                Thus, rather than the usual room he painted Leto in, he
instructed the elf to meet him in the big banquet hall with the skylight.  It
was pleasant, and all the sunlight actually helped quite a bit for the painting
itself.  It was murder to his back and neck though, and there was nothing that
could be done about that!  Well, perhaps a girl with some aromatic oil, a
couple of candles…  Raith stopped himself from daydreaming and focused on the
task at hand.
                The elf shifted on occasion, and Raith frequently snapped at
him for it, but standing with locked knees like he was for too long wouldmake
him faint, so Raith never became too angry.  But when he made him mess up a
line, he would cuff him for it; that was infuriating.
                Of course, he had to heal any damage he caused pretty much
immediately, because any kind of swelling or cuts interfered with his work.
                Today, like most days, Danarius dropped in, unannounced. 
Likely, he planned to keep Raith on his toes—making sure that his apprentice
was never slacking off, or anything of the sort.  Well, Raith had worked too
hard to slack off.
                The two mages spoke for a time, of the ritual at first.  Later,
their conversation drifted to the estate and the many intricacies of keeping it
running smoothly.  Danarius asked Raith about the testing he was undergoing, to
become a magister.
                An infant’s cry broke their conversation.  A slave—a creature
Raith rarely took much note of—had been scrubbing the floor at the far side of
the room before.  Her child had been strapped to her back in a stained sling. 
The woman stiffened as the two mages turned their attention to her.  All the
color drained from her face as she tried to shush the crying child.
                Raith hated screaming children.  Hated it.  He hated the way
they sounded, the way they didn’t seem to stop.  Simply hated it.  He had come
from a large family—his mother had had children younger than he, and they had
screamed and bawled.  He had an older brother, who had married, and she had
given birth to two screaming children too.
                Danarius, though, was silent throughout, and seemed to teeter
between strangely haunted and angered.  His expression settled on, not anger,
but annoyance.  The woman rushed out, through the servant quarters, to quiet
the babe.  The mages resumed their conversation, and in time, the incident was,
if not forgotten, no longer noted.
                But the woman came back, of course.  And with the infant not
old enough to be left with the old woman the slaves used to watch their
children, the infant had to be with her, naturally.
                It was quiet enough at first, and, as was only ordinary, they
took no note of the slave.  Masters rarely noticed their slaves, after
all—exactly as it should be.
                But then the infant began to wail again, causing Raith to drop
the brush.  The paint splattered on the floor.  The apprentice twitched in
annoyance, grinding his teeth in frustration.
                Danarius, though, seemed, oddly, calm.  He glanced at Leto. 
“Leto,” he said, drawing the elf’s attention.  The woman backed away, and the
door opened and closed again.  Danarius shook his head, and Raith cleaned up
the paint, and the moment passed.
                This time, the two mages were so deep in their conversation—a
matter of politics, other magisters specifically—that they hadn’t noticed the
woman came back in again.  Nor had they noticed her resume her task.  But they
certainly noticed the infant’s cries.
                Danarius whirled toward the woman.  “Stay there,” he commanded
of her.  She was ghost-white, and frightened as a rabbit.  Still, the infant
wailed.  She tried to shush the babe, but it would not be quieted.  The
magister’s gaze shifted to Leto.  “Leto.”  He stared at him.  The elf stared
downwards, and seemed tense.  Danarius looked back at the woman.  “Kill the
infant.”
                Leto’s head snapped up, eyes going wide with shock.  “What…?”
he gasped.  The woman’s lips parted, closed, and she shook her head, backing up
a step.  Women could be strangely protective of their young.
                “Kill it,” his master repeated.  “Do as I say.  If you hesitate
again, you will kill both the mother and the child, now go.”
                “I… need…” Leto whispered, throat dry.
                Danarius did not require him to finish the sentence; a knife
Danarius usually kept on his person flipped in his palm, extended hilt first
toward Leto.  The elf looked sickly.  The woman stood frozen in shocked horror.
                Leto’s eyes closed, as if in pain.  “Please… Reconsider,
Master,” he pleaded.
                Raith watched his master’s jaw set, and saw him backhand Leto
across his face.  His ring sliced open the elf’s cheek.  Blood dripped from the
wound.  Around it, his face was red where he had been slapped.  Leto bowed his
head, and took the knife, and blinked a little when he held it in his hand.  He
recognized it, Raith assumed, and he should.  It was, originally, his after
all.  But it was a pretty blade, and the steel was good.  Danarius was also the
type to enjoy such melodrama.
                Somehow, it didn’t make it at all silly that Leto was naked and
covered in white paint.
                It looked primal, ritualistic.  Barbaric maybe, but not silly. 
The woman quivered in fear for a moment as Leto approached, then she started
talking.  Her voice was high with fright, and shrill with desperation. 
“Please, Leto, this is wrong,” she insisted, and when Leto didn’t stop his
advance, she looked to the two mages.  “Please, the babe is just sick…  That’s
all…  Please…!”
                She had the child in her arms now, and looked ready to flee,
but not quite willing to bring the mages’ wrath down upon herself.  Leto had
come closer to her now, only a few feet away.  The two spoke in low tones, and
Raith couldn’t quite hear them.  The elven woman was begging with the young
man, it seemed, and Leto was resolute, though he did plead softly for something
from her.  He must have talked her to reason, or simply begged it of her,
because she angrily pushed the infant into Leto’s arms, causing him to drop the
knife.  The blade clattered on the floor, and seemed to narrowly miss cleaving
off one of the elf’s toes—which he was heedless of.
                The woman stood, tears glistening on her face, as Leto knelt to
the floor, the infant cradled in his arms, still balling.
                It kicked, and flailed its arms, crying, even as Leto knelt in
front of it.  Even as the mother wailed along with it.  It only stopped
screaming when Leto plunged the knife into the infant’s chest, burying the
blade up to the hilt in one fluid motion.  The crimson blossom flowed over the
stained wrap of cloth, soaking it.  The woman trembled for a moment, her wail
trapped in her throat, and she fled, out the servant’s quarters.
                “Raith,” Danarius said.  The apprentice looked up.  “Tell the
guards to find that woman, and have them cut off one of her fingers from each
hand, just to the first joint, for her transgressions.”
                Raith rose to his feet to accomplish this task.  He glanced
over his shoulder.  Leto had not moved.  He knelt, naked and feral-looking,
before the infant’s corpse.
 
                Varania had heard about the incident with the baby.  Everyone
was talking about it.  She couldn’t make herself understand why her brother had
done something like that, and he simply refused to talk about it.  She knew he
slept little at night over it, and saw many of the other slaves glaring at him
when he was near.  Mealtimes were the worst of it, because he couldn’t escape
it, and she of course was guilty by association if nothing else.
                She wished he would talk about it with her.  She understood
that their master was a cruel person, and, furthermore, understood that it must
have been an order Leto was following out.  But Ahline preached a different
story, offering her mangled hands as proof, all the while insisting that Leto
had wanted to do it.  Else, he would not have.
                Varania had caught him crying, once, at night.  Mieta slept
like the dead most nights lately, but Varania was a light sleeper, dependent on
the circumstances.
                He hadn’t cried in the hut.  Rather, he had left it, and gone
to the orchard.  And, though Varania was great with child, she waddled after
him when he was gone for a long enough amount of time.
                She pretended not to notice the tears, or him trying to hide
them.  She pretended not to notice the way he was shaking, and pale.  He sat
beside the small stream, staring at the water, his arms wrapped around his
legs, occasionally hiding his face.  She eased down to sit beside him, and he
did not reject her company.
                They sat in silence for a while, and he composed himself.  He
still trembled, though, and his eyes were wet.  “It wouldn’t hurt as much if
Ahline did not accuse me as if it had been my idea,” he whispered.  “I pleaded
with him not to make me do it.”  He took a long, deep breath before he lost
control of his voice.
                “With… our master?”
                He shook his head.  “No.  Not your master, Varania,” he said,
very firmly and with feeling.  “I pray you never have to call someone ‘master’
again.  You aren’t a slave anymore.  He’s just… holding you here to… to make
sure I do anything he says.”
                Now he was trying to change the subject.  It was an equally
painful subject, but it was an old one.  “You didn’t want to do it, Leto,” she
told him.
                “Then why did I?” he wondered aloud, sounding hurt.  “It was an
infant, ‘Nia.”
                She didn’t know any words to say that would bring him any
comfort, except what he already knew:  That he was only carrying out orders. 
“It’s not your fault that our—that the magister is cruel.”
                “Is it?” he whispered.
                “What really happened?” she asked, gently.  He had been so
unwilling to talk about it.  Days had gone by, and he had been, emotionally, a
wreck since the incident, and seemed physically ill any time he looked at
Ahline’s bandaged hands.
                He, at first, seemed disinclined to speak.  But, to Varania’s
surprise, he did.  He told her that Raith had been painting him, as usual, but
in the banquet hall this time.  Danarius had arrived, and they talked for a
while.  Ahline’s baby interrupted their talk three times, and the magister
ordered it put to death, and gave the order to her brother.  He had tried to
plead with the magister not to do it, but he would not listen, and,
furthermore, said that if he did not do as told, then he would have to,
ultimately, kill both Ahline and her baby.  So Leto did as ordered.  He had
tried to tell Ahline that if she did not let him kill the child, that Danarius
would order her killed as well, but she did not believe him.  She had been in
the room while Danarius gave the order, but she did not believe him.  He killed
the baby, and had felt numb and empty ever since.
                Varania hugged him as best she could, considering her pregnant
belly.  “I still love you, Leto,” she told him.  He leaned his head against her
shoulder, miserable as she had ever seen him.  She didn’t know what to say, so
left it to silence.
                Varania had been listening to people whisper, though.  They
whispered rumors of Leto—horrible things, things that couldn’t be true but
still they said it.  They made snide remarks that he would gladly kill
Varania’s newborn when the time came.  If he heard those remarks or not, she
didn’t know.  It would be cruel to tell him if he didn’t know already.  She
knew how much this incident had scarred him.  She only hoped that he could
recover from it, in time.  But the others’ scathing comments and glares were
not helping.  Her brother wasn’t a murderer.  It wasn’t his fault.  She knew
that, and believed it with all her heart, even if he didn’t yet.
***** Life *****
Chapter Summary
     In which new life enters the world through uncertain, and
     frightening, means.
                Though almost two weeks had passed, Ahline still glared at
Leto, and he had resigned himself to the fact that she would never forgive him,
nor would she ever say it was not his fault.  Varania knew that her brother had
tried to apologize and talk to her half a dozen times, and the last time, she
had slapped him with her mangled hand, and he had avoided her since then.
                Leto would spend his days in a numbed stupor, saying little,
smiling less.  His fears, self-doubt, and sorrow were relieved daily when he
trained, but only temporarily, and then he was back to this broody sulking that
Varania was beginning to consider to be “normal” for him, considering that he
had been doing it for years every time he grew depressed and quiet.  She
worried that he would default to this when she was gone and he was alone.  She
didn’t want to think of him as being forever isolated and alone, with all the
slaves despising him for acts that Danarius had forced him to commit.
                Varania woke, shifting and uncomfortable.  The unwanted weight
on her stomach ached, and she could not find a comfortable position to sleep. 
She sat up a little, and slid out of the bed, her bare feet touched the chilly
packed earth floor.  She tiptoed out to the privy.  She saw Leto roll over when
she opened the door, watched one of his eyes open, look at her, then close. 
Only when he was exhausted did he ever sleep through the door opening.  It
being the off-season for the arena, he was not so tired as he was in the fall
and spring; he wasn’t fighting in the arena any more anyway.
                She finished her business at the privy, irritated that she had
to go so frequently, what with her unfair pregnancy.
                Her heart sinking with the thought, she wondered if the
abomination growing in her womb was male or female.  She imagined what the
child might look like, or whom, more specifically, and feared if it would look
like its father.  She didn’t think she could ever even bear to look at the
child if it did.  Still, maybe it could be stillborn, or perhaps it would catch
a cold and die in infancy…
                The young mage froze, stopping still in her tracks like a
frightened doe.  Something warm and liquid ran down her legs.  It wasn’t urine,
or blood for that matter.
                She paled.
                The baby had come early.
                She waddled—pregnant women don’t really walk; they waddle—back
to the hut, yelling and waking her brother and mother in her panic.  Mieta rose
quickly, suddenly all business, sending her son to fetch the women who would be
in attendance, and the midwife from the servant’s quarters.  He stopped on his
way past to give her a one-armed hug.  She wanted to cry.
                She was absolutely terrified.
                She felt like she was going to die, or worse.  What was worse? 
She didn’t know.  She felt… panicked, and everything happened so fast and so
slow at the same time.
 
                The early afternoon sun shyly peaked from between sheep-like
clouds over Minrathous, warming the gentle winds that stirred the branches in
the trees.  Danarius had a meeting that he had tried to avoid and couldn’t in
the morning and so the painting was delayed later than was usual, as Raith had
to attend to a few of the magister’s usual morning duties.
                The magister sat in attendance to the painting that afternoon,
but wasn’t paying too much attention; the entire process had become boring to
watch the second or third time it had been done, even though Raith could do it
all by memory now.  As was his custom, Danarius had privately listened to all
the rumors and stories that went about his manor and its grounds, from a
variety of servants that he paid a small sum extra to gather them.  He liked to
know everything that went on in his manor, and he did the same twice weekly
with the city, and once weekly with both world news and Tevinter news; the
practice paid for itself, often as not.
                One bit of information was bothering him:  The girl, Varania,
had gone into labor in the night.  His own past was haunting him, and wouldn’t
let the matter rest, though he knew he had more important things to think
about.
                Damned paperwork never seemed to end.  That was the trouble
with owning property and land, though—mostly the land.  He had given the wheat
and rye fields to his younger brother, but kept the vineyard, and glad of it;
he didn’t need the headache. 
                He debated, for the first hour, about asking his little pet
about his sister, but never felt overly inclined to bring it up as the painting
went on.
                He looked up, to check the careful progress.  Raith’s brush
strokes were very confident now.  He had been practicing for weeks though, so
they had better be.  His hand was sure, and he was doing it much more quickly.
                The magister’s gaze trailed to Leto’s face, which seemed pale. 
He probably hadn’t slept much last night.  He decided that it must be that, and
let the matter go, and never mind about the girl either.
                It was probably nothing.
                Just because Roschelle died didn’t mean Varania would.  That
would be… stupid, for one.  Unlikely, for another.  He was foolish to think
about it, and this was more important anyway.
 
                Night fell again, and Varania was still held fast in the grip
of labor.  Mieta had to leave her during the day, and a part of the mage hated
her mother for it, but not her brother, who stayed up with her all night, who
held her hand.  The midwife had tried to keep him out, and he had demanded to
know how she intended to keep him out, when his baby sister was in so much
pain.
                At least she knew he cared about her.  He held her hand all
night, even when she squeezed hard enough that it obviously crushed his
fingers.  He talked to her in soothing tones, brought her water, mopped her
brow, hugged her when she needed it.
                “I love you, sis,” he told her, over and over again.  By the
second day, she was terrified that she was dying.  He had to leave to be
painted, and she had cried, and begged him to stay, and he couldn’t.  “I’m
sorry.”
                “Leto, don’t leave me!” she had screamed, reaching out for
him.  She watched his heart break in his eyes, looking at her.  She was
shaking, and weak and exhausted.  She was so scared that she was going to die. 
“I don’t want to die alone.  I want you with me—please!”
                “You won’t die,” he said, but his eyes held uncertainty.  “I
love you.  I’ll be back in two hours—I promise.”  He hugged her, kissed her
temple, and she held him, fingers digging into his tunic.  He had to plead with
her to let go.  They would beat him if he were late.  She wept when he left,
and was so frightened that she wouldn’t live to see him return.
                She was tired.  She was so tired.  She felt like the life was
draining out of her.  I can’t do this.  I’m going to die.  Please, Leto, come
back before I die.  Please come back.
 
                Leto had never been so close to being late, arriving somewhat
disheveled having obviously run to get there on time.  He had been acting
positively unsettled, even jumpy, since his arrival.
                “Is it your sister?” the magister finally asked.  The boy
looked like he hadn’t slept in two days.  Leto hesitated, but was reluctant to
speak and move with the paintbrush on him.  “Raith.”  His apprentice pulled
back, obviously annoyed at having his work interrupted, but willing enough.
                Leto swallowed.  “She’s been in labor since the night before
last, Master,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
                Danarius paused, staring past him more than at him, not seeing
the boy at all.  He thought of Roschelle.  A tiny voice inside him asked, Is it
me? But that was just as ridiculous.  His seed had nothing to do with the women
that carried it.  Still… the coincidence was unnerving at best.  “Is that so.” 
The elf didn’t respond, but instead hung his head, looking exhausted with worry
and sleep deprivation.  “Raith, resume.”  He tried to ignore the matter.  Tried
to just focus on his work.  If the girl died, it was nothing to him.
                Still…  It bothered him, on some fundamental level he couldn’t
name or even give a decent reason for.  He sat up, and considered.  He had
saved Mieta from her cancerous illness, both because of Leto, and because he
had sat and watched his own mother die of illness.  It was like an atonement
for what he hadn’t been able to do before.  Maybe…
                “Raith.  Are you finished?”
                He didn’t respond for a moment, then leaned back.  “Just so,”
he responded.
                “Leave us.”
                Raith nodded, cleaned the brushes, put everything away, and
left.  Danarius read a report about a missing horse in his stable, and penned a
reprimand to the stable master, who had blamed a storm.  Leto stood staring at
the floor, and tried not to yawn.  Danarius leaned back in the chair, looking
at him for a long moment.  He was naked, and covered in white paint.  Tomorrow,
it would be henna again.  There was some fading henna under the paint, too. 
“Leto.”
                He raised his head only slightly, the only inclination he had
even heard him, but he was listening.  “Yes, Master?” he said after a moment’s
delay.
                Danarius chose to ignore it, for now.  Perhaps not in the
future.  “Your sister.  She’s dying, I presume?” he asked, voice bland.
                “I…” Leto stammered.
                He continued, “There’s a way she and the child can live.”  He
raised an eyebrow.  He had researched it, and read, and thought he knew a way. 
He had never had a chance to test it, but he was certain that this had to be
it.  And if he had only known at the time, maybe Roschelle would still be
alive.  But then where would he be?  Happier, he assumed.  Less cynical.  He
was angry with anyone who even seemed happier than he was, and sought to strip
it from them.  If he couldn’t be happy, to hell that anyone else would be. 
“It’s… experimental.  But I think it will work.”
                Leto suffered no delusions of charity.  “What must I do,
Master?” he whispered, his voice shaking in something much like fear.
                Danarius stared at him for a long moment.  “Saving your sister
is… something that cannot be delayed.  But, if she lives or dies, you will come
back to the manor.”  His fingers laced together, and he felt a sick delight in
what he was about to say.  “And you’ll spend the night in my bed—or however
long it takes before I tire of you.”
                All colour drained from Leto’s face.  His tongue wet his
suddenly parched lips, and he saw that his hands were shaking.  “I…”
                “Do you really think she’ll live?  How long has she been in
labor, my little wolf?” he asked him.  “She’s dying, if she even lives now. 
Best you decide quickly.”  He looked at Leto for only a moment more, before he
looked back at his never-ending sea of paperwork.
                The elf’s head snapped up after a few seconds of careful
thought.  For Leto, the decision was easy though—his sister, or his pride?  His
sister meant so much to him.  “I…”  Danarius glanced at him inquiringly. “…
consent, Master,” he said, though he was pale and shaking, and even looked
faintly ill at the words coming out of his mouth.  But at least he was
reasonable, even under his weariness and his terror at the idea.  “Please…”
                “Then get dressed; we need to leave immediately.”
 
                Mieta mopped her daughter’s sweat-streaked brow, combed her red
hair back.  Both her children had the rarest of hair colours, the rarest of
talents.  Why did they end up in slavery?  Mieta had even left that morning,
right before Leto, to report to work, though it pained her.  She had been
quickly dismissed, because the tailor needed to lock the room, and was leaving
to pick up supplies, so Mieta had hurried back to her daughter’s side.  She
knew she wasn’t the one Varania wanted to be with her.
                Varania’s voice had given out some time ago.  She couldn’t
scream anymore if she wanted to, and had taken to sobbing.
                “I’m going to die,” she had whispered, tears mingling with the
sweat.  It had been the last coherent thing she had said, and that had been
right after Leto had left.  Now, she was just sobbing, and seemed to be begging
with the unknown.  She was a mage; maybe she was bartering with a demon.  Mieta
hoped not, but at the same time, she didn’t want to lose her daughter.
                The midwife had stopped someone at the door, and they were
speaking in hushed tones, then she stepped aside.  Mieta looked up, and felt
her blood run cold.  What was he doing here?  What did he want?
                She looked down, like she should, and held her daughter’s
hand.  Varania’s eyes tracked the magister for a moment, and when he came near,
she recoiled.  “No!” she screamed, somehow finding the strength to protest. 
“Get out!  I hate you—get out and leave me alone to die!”
                He ignored her words as nothing but the ravings of a birthing
woman—and perhaps there was some truth to it.  The midwife stood by, nervously
dry-washing her hands, with a look on her face like she would very much like to
kick the man out, but couldn’t.
                He looked down at Varania.  She was lying in the bed of sweat-
soaked sheets, and had originally been wearing a dressing gown, but it had
become so unclean that they had taken it off of her when she was having
trouble, to better help her, so she had on nothing but a tangled sheet over her
nakedness.  Even so, nothing they were doing was helping.
                “Get out,” he told Mieta, and glanced to the midwife as he
started rolling up the sleeves of robe.  “You too—out.”
                “Don’t leave me with him,” Varania sobbed, her fingers
tightening so hard around Mieta’s hand that it hurt, and she seemed completely
unaware of it.  “Please, don’t leave me alone with him!”
                “I…” Mieta stammered.
                But the magister had, in his mind, already dismissed them.  He
had a knife in his hand.  Mieta thought the blade looked familiar, but a piece
of steel was a piece of steel to her.  “Leto,” he called.  The elf noticed her
son standing hesitantly in the doorway for the first time.  “Come here.  And
you, woman.  If you must stay, assist your son.  Lash your daughter’s ankles
and wrists to the bed—I fear that she will thrash otherwise.”
                Mieta’s eyes narrowed, and years of contempt and hatred
surfaced, and she could not stop herself from what she said, and in that moment
she didn’t even care.  “You will use her and the life of her unborn child to
fuel your dark magic?” she hissed.
                “You’re lucky I don’t cut out that tongue,” he said.  “Leto.” 
He inclined his head toward the birthing woman.  He went to his sister, and
squeezed her hand briefly, regretfully.
                “It will be all right,” he told her.
                Varania’s green eyes tracked her older brother as he came near
her, and the suspicion in them fled at his gentling gaze and steady hand. 
Trust filled her eyes, mingling with her pain.  She would trust her brother
with her life.  Slowly, she relaxed, and let Leto lash her wrist to the bed
post, securely but not so tight as to cause her pain.  And then the other one,
and her ankles.  Mieta watched in confusion.  What was going on?  Leto spoke as
if Danarius had planned to do something to save her.  With a knife?  By lashing
her to the bed?
                But she followed her son out of the room, outside.  “I hope you
know what you’re doing,” she whispered to him.
                The two sat outside, backs against the wall, listening to their
daughter and sister cry out in pain, sobbing, shrieking.  Mieta sat with her
legs under her.  Leto sat with his knees against his chest, his hands on his
knees, and she saw his fingers tighten every time Varania screamed.  He seemed
pale to her, sickly looking and terrified.  Was it all worry for his sister? 
What had made Danarius himself come help them?  It wasn’t out of a sudden sense
of fatherly duty—she knew it was her son.  She wanted to ask.  She wanted to
know what he had bargained this time.  She had been suspicious when he had come
to heal her.  Varania hadn’t known, and Leto had simply refused to talk about
it.  Her daughter had commented that perhaps Leto had killed someone, but Mieta
wasn’t sure.
                A new cry pierced the air—an infant’s scream.  Both the elves
looked up, distracted from their thoughts and suspicion, and Mieta felt hope
stir in her heart.  And… did her ears deceive her, or was that two cries?
                From the open window, she saw light—blue healing light. 
Several minutes passed, the infants continued to wail.  The door opened, and
the pair rose to their feet, anxious.
                Danarius walked past like he didn’t see what was around him. 
He stopped near the two, but didn’t look at either.  Mieta didn’t miss the fact
that his robes were splashed with blood, and he was soaked from his fingers to
his elbows, and he barely seemed to notice.  They were dripping.  Mieta saw his
fingers curl into fists.  He was angry about something.  Furious even.  She
wondered, briefly, why, then decided that she didn’t care.
                Mieta quickly excused herself, hurrying into the room.  The
midwife, who had stayed close under orders, swept past her into the hut.  Mieta
stopped in the doorway, and heard her… former… master say, “… Stay here until
two hours after sunset.  And I expect to see you waiting outside my quarters. 
And wash off that paint.”  And with that, the magister left.  Leto crossed his
arms, as if it were cold.  Mieta pretended that she hadn’t heard, and hurried
into the room.
                The midwife was washing the infants.  Mieta helped her, and
presented the first one to Varania.  She took it, but with great reluctance,
and clearly didn’t want it.  The midwife’s first order of business had been to
move Varania to another bed.  When Mieta looked at the other one, she knew
there was no salvaging the sheets or even the thin mattress.  It caused
temporary distress in her, before she realized that… they weren’t slaves
anymore, and after this ritual, they could leave—forever.
                “Is it a boy or a girl?” Varania asked, looking with only
partial interest at the resting child.
                Leto knelt beside her, looking simply grateful that she was
alive.  He peered around her to look at the babe.  Mieta answered, “This is the
boy.  And here’s his sister.”  The infant girl was placed at her other side,
swaddled in a long cloth.  She fussed, and whined, and Varania looked away,
unwilling to coddle her.  Mieta’s heart fell.  She had hoped that her daughter
would be more willing after she saw them.  But… perhaps…
                She ignored this, and picked up her granddaughter, cradling her
in her arms.  Leto touched his sister’s shoulder, in some small effort to
convey his sorrow for her.  “I don’t want this,” she whispered, her eyes
closing in exhaustion.  She was asleep in moments, but the sound of the girl
crying woke her, startling her.
                “She’s hungry,” Mieta offered.  “So is your son.”
                “They’re not mine,” Varania whispered.
                Leto looked at her sadly.  “’Nia… please…” he begged her.
                But Mieta’s mageborn daughter sobbed.  “They’re not mine! 
They’re not mine, and I hate them!” she cried, but was too weak to push them
away.
                Leto took her frail-looking, pale hand in his callused dark
ones.  “Take care of my niece and nephew,” he admonished her.  They were
innocent, too innocent of all sins to be hated so much by their own mother.
                “What did you have to do to get that man to help me?” Varania’s
voice was a ghostly whisper.  Leto only stared at her as if she were speaking
another language, his face utterly blank.
                She stopped, and stared up at her older brother as if from
across a vast distance.  There was a long silence that passed between them,
pierced only by the fussing infant.  The boy had begun to whine too.  Varania
sighed, then nodded, and Leto helped her to sit up.  She held the sheet up to
her shoulders.  “Get out.  Please?”
                Leto reluctantly left her side, his eyes filled with emotion,
and much of it sorrow.  Mieta gave her daughter her granddaughter, but Varania
asked her to stay.  Mieta sat at the foot of the bed.
                “Tell me a story,” Varania requested, pulling the sheet down to
her waist when the door closed and the midwife left after Leto.
                Mieta thought for a moment.  “You’ve heard all my stories.”
                “Tell me any story—I don’t care,” she said.
                The grandmother thought, and told her a story about the
seasons, of how Winter fell in love with Summer and she denied him, and in his
wrath, he sought to destroy her, so Autumn and Spring forever separated the
two.  It was one she had heard before, but she didn’t care.  Varania sobbed,
and complained, hissing in pain.
                Mieta had told her about nursing, about how her nipples would
bleed at first, and she gave her no delusions that it would hurt.  And Varania
hated it, as Mieta suspected she might truly hate her twins.
                Later, Leto was allowed back inside, and Mieta sent him to get
fresh water, though he had obviously been to the well earlier; he had washed
off the paint.  He went back, and brought it back for her.  Varania drank
gratefully and deeply.
                Mieta held the boy, as he had begun to fuss.  She held him
close, swaying gently, and humming a little in an effort to soothe him to
sleep.  Leto was watching, and Mieta smiled.  “Do you want to hold him?” she
asked him.
                He blinked, and his eyes seemed to light up for a moment, and
it made Mieta laugh.  “Um… would that be all right?” he asked tentatively.
                She nodded.  “Come here.”  He came closer.  “Hold out your
hands—no, like this.  And cradle his head.”  She deposited the infant into her
son’s arms.  She could barely believe she was a grandmother, when she thought
about it.  It seemed like not so very long ago that her own children were
infants.
                Leto looked down at him.  “He’s so small…” he said, his voice
very soft.
                Mieta frowned a little.  “They were both a little premature,”
she said.  She left unsaid that many premature infants didn’t live long; she
feared that would give Varania too much cheer.
                She understood her daughter; she just didn’t approve.
                Leto stayed by her side for the rest of the day, only ever
really leaving to get things for her when she asked, or insisted that she could
walk all the way to the privy pit instead of use the chamber pot (Leto carried
her while she complained about it), leaving the twins with Mieta.  He brought
her a bowl of soup from the longhouse.  Mieta recalled one of the older slaves
saying that, a long time ago, they had all been crowded into the one house
instead of having multiple huts.  The kitchens themselves were outside, under a
thatched roof of course, so even at that time, there was more room than that. 
And, soon, no more of that either.  Freedom.
                Varania slept when she could, when the twins weren’t fussing,
and Leto slept even through that, though only for an hour or two before he
woke.
                Mieta noticed that he was anxiously looking outside, watching
the sun go down, pacing after it did, crossing his arms again, then uncrossing
them.  He went for a brief walk outside, and Mieta saw him eating all alone in
a corner during the meal time.  He slept for a few minutes when he returned,
but just woke quickly and paced around the small room.  He went to Varania, who
was by now asleep next to her twins.  He kissed the top of her head, and pushed
her hair out of her face.  His eyes closed, as if in silent grief, his lips
mouthing something Mieta didn’t catch, and he rose to his feet.
                He headed to the door, and Mieta started to ask him where he
was going, then remembered that bit she had overheard.  No, she had better not
say anything.  Best to keep her back turned as she continued dismantling the
ruined bedding and cleaning up what she could of the frame.  The door closed
behind him.
***** The Small Print *****
Chapter Summary
     The small print of a contract is always the part that signs your life
     away.
                Lura stepped lightly over the carpet, intent on going back to
her freshly cleaned room for the rest of the night; business had died down so a
few of those who had met their quotas were released for the time being.  She
just wanted to go curl up in bed.
                On the way up the dark stair, she saw the half-elf sitting on a
bench, holding the side of his face.  Ordinarily, she might have simply walked
by, but the way that people were yelling down the hall made her pause.  She
turned toward him.  “What happened?” she inquired.
                He looked up, blinking with surprise that she was even speaking
to him.  Most people, she reflected, did not even look at him if they could
help it.  He looked too human, and too elven, all at the same time—like parts
of his face were supposed to belong to someone else.  The only parts she could
stare at were his eyes and his noise, and the rest of his face seemed wrong to
her.  He moved his hand a little, revealing a deep, purplish black bruise.  “A
man struck me.”
                Her mouth opened in a wide “O” of surprise.  “Why?”
                He raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t know,” he said, touching his
face again.  “It was Apprentice Elden,” he said, frowning a little.  “He’s
always been…”  He hesitated.  “A bit violent, but he’s never…”  His voice
trailed off a little, and he shook his head.
                Lura paused and listened to the heated words down the hall, in
the office.  “Is that what’s going on down there?”  She pointed down the hall.
                “’Fraid so,” he admitted dryly.
                She started to go again, and stopped.  “Do you want some water
or anything?  Maybe Jairus is still up, and he can make some ice?”  Jairus was
the half-apprentice, half-resident healer.  He was old enough to no longer need
tutelage in magic, and would sometimes comment to the servants and Mistress
Alesand on his progression through the ranks, with intentions of becoming a
magister one day.  “Why haven’t they sent you to him yet?”
                “Evidence,” he said with a sigh.
                “I’ll get you a poultice at least,” she said, feeling she
should do something.
                “Thanks,” he said, and she hurried off to the infirmary.  The
infirmary was a very small room in the servant quarters.  It had two narrow
pallets with crisp linen sheets, and smelled of medicine.  It also contained a
worn and rather stained desk amidst its cabinets and drawers, and at the desk
was a chair, and in the chair, was the tawny-haired, somewhat pimply mage that
was their healer.  He had a few jars open, and looked to be partially mixing
herbs, and partially reading a thick book of law.
                “Pardon me?” she inquired, when he still had not acknowledged
her.
                He jumped, as if startled.  He blinked, looking at her, and set
the mortar and pestle down.  “Ah, Lura…?”  His voice was inquiring, as if he
was not certain he remembered her name.  “What is it?”
                She frowned a little.  Whatever she had once pictured mages to
be, Jairus was not that.  He was messy and disorganized, always somehow
managing to look frumpy and could not quite control his hair.  Every time she
came down, he was always engrossed in a book, sometimes whispering the words
out loud to himself, or writing notes on his chalkboard, which looked like
scribbles to one who could not read.  And likely looked like scribbles to ones
who could too.
                “Master Jairus, might I have a poultice?  Shanamyn is hurt, but
he can’t be healed yet.”
                His eyebrows raised a little, and he got out of his chair,
knocking over a small tin as he did so.  He stooped to pick it up.  “He’s
hurt?  Why can’t he be healed?  How is he hurt?”
                She watched him set the tin back down, and move to a cabinet. 
“Yes, he’s hurt.  He can’t be healed in case evidence is needed, and it seems a
client struck him.”
                “Just a bruise then?” he said, setting the gauze down, then
awkwardly picking it up again, then setting it back down.  She pursed her lips,
wondering how it was that he had even managed to become an apprentice to begin
with.
                He selected a few jars, muttering to himself, putting one
back.  He picked up a horn and inspected the stopper, then set it aside, then
moved it again, all the while muttering to himself.  He selected a few more
things, and set to work.  “You’re going to be a magister one day?” she
inquired.
                “I’ll be tested in this year for Senior Enchanter,” he
commented offhandedly, dropping a jar.  It didn’t break, thankfully.  He sighed
in relief, picking it up again.  He seemed a little too uncoordinated to her to
make it as a magister.  She was certain that those men and women needed a touch
more poise and coordination than he possessed.
                “Tell Vachel to keep it on until he can come see me,” he said,
sounding absent-minded as ever.
                “Shanamyn,” she corrected, wondering who “Vachel” was.
                He stopped, and hesitated.  “Don’t tell him I told you that,
but that’s his real name.”
                Lura stood in shock.  “What?” she whispered as he set the
poultice in her hands.
                The human turned from her, already mostly disconnected from the
conversation.  “Madame Alesand changed his name when he came here.  Said it
made him sound more elven, if he had an elven name.  ‘Vachel’ is an Orlesian
name, but a human one.  Think I’m the only one who calls him that though, but
he’ll just act all weird if you say his real name.”
                Lura thanked him, and left, and wondered what it would be like
have her name changed like that, knowing every day that it wasn’t her real
name, but having to respond to it.  Having to introduce herself to people by a
name that was not her own.  What would she say?  My mistress calls me ‘some-
other-name’ she would have to say, so pleasantly while she wanted to scream
out, My name is Lura!
                And she looked at him, and gave him the poultice, and told him
to keep it on the bruise, and all she could think was, His name is Vachel.
                Two hours later, she wandered down the hall, and saw him still
sitting there, heard the arguing still going on, and he was lying on the bench
at that point, staring at the ceiling.
                “I could get you a blanket, or a pillow,” she offered.
                He shrugged.  “Does nothing for the boredom,” he complained. 
“I had to make a statement about two hours ago—that’s what started it again.” 
He looked up at her.  “It’s gotten so bad, there are two magisters in there, at
each other’s throats, yelling about the apprentice.  Over ‘damaged property’.”
                She looked alarmed.  “Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asked,
concerned.
                He frowned a little.  “My face is the worst bruise, sure, but
he did a number on my back too.  Hell,” he added, flinching a little as he
moved, took a deep breath.  “Stomach too.  And don’t ask about anything below
that.”
                She bit her lip.  “You need to be healed,” she insisted.
                He sighed, and looked away.  “Not allowed to, until the
magister lets me,” he said.
                Lura blurted, “Who changed your name?”  She hadn’t intended to
say it.  It was rude, certainly, and she was terribly curious, but all the
same, she had never intended to actually say it.
                He did not seem to be offended, however.  “How’d you know?” he
asked, staring back up at the ceiling.  Then he kind of smiled.  “No, I guess
Jairus must have mentioned it.  He’s so scatterbrained sometimes, and he hates
my name.”
                “Shanamyn…?  Or, Vachel?”
                “Hmm?”
                “No, I mean, he hates which name?”
                “Oh, Shanamyn,” the half-elf replied.  “I don’t even think of
myself by that name anymore, so when he calls me ‘Vachel’ it takes me a minute
to realize he means me.”
                She looked at him, and she felt sorrowful for some reason.  It
seemed sad to her.  “What’s it like… when you have a different name?”
                He looked at her, then back at the ceiling.  “I was a kid when
Madame Alesand changed my name.  I was upset and angry for a while.  Then I
just got used to it.”
                She felt like her name was all she had left of the life she had
had before she had become a slave.  She couldn’t bear to have that taken from
her as well as everything else.  It would leave her stripped of everything she
had ever been.  How could she even be herself, if even her name were taken away
from her?
 
                Danarius was late.  Not by design; he just didn’t care enough
to not keep his little pet waiting. Besides, that suited him.  He didn’t care
if he waited and contemplated what was going to happen tonight.  Let him wait,
and worry, and fret.  The waiting was often worse than the act.  Besides, he
had to go yell at the visiting magister and his apprentice for abusing his
property; some things couldn’t wait.
                He passed the elf on his way to the door, and opened it.  He
walked past, leaving the door open.  “Come,” he told him.  Leto hesitated, and
followed him in.  “Close the door.”  The door closed.  The room was near-dark,
lit only by long, tapered beeswax candles.  He disliked torches, and didn’t
like gas lamps at all, as those were messy and stank, and it was entirely too
warm for a fire.  There was always the blue orbs of mage’s light, but that
required effort on his behalf and cast eerie shadows.
                His robes from earlier had been ruined.  That was fine.  He
didn’t really have any attachment to clothing, aside from the minor annoyance
of attaining new ones.  At least they weren’t his court robes.  But it had
really been his own fault; he really should have stripped down a bit.  He
hadn’t been thinking… most unlike him.  Roschelle…
                Too late now.  He removed his ring first, placing it on the
mantelpiece with a sense of finality.  Roschelle had given it to him--had it
made special, actually.  He should get rid of it.  “Strip,” he ordered his
slave.
                He didn’t turn to watch; didn’t see a point.  He went instead
to a small table, pulled out a chair, and sat.  He looked back at his slave,
who stood naked.  Ah, so Leto hadn’t seen a point in drawing out the moment
either, and left the rough-spun linens in a heap on the floor.  He also hadn’t
seen a point in wasting time folding them.  Some had, had tried to push the
moment as far back as possible.  What they didn’t realize, but what Leto seemed
to realize, was that it scarcely prolonged the inevitable enough to make it
worth it; the waiting was worse.  And anyway, Danarius had already seen every
inch of him.  The henna on his skin had faded, but he could still see it.  It
made a good map for Raith; he should have him do that again before the ritual.
                He needed this, the magister reflected.  He needed the stress
relief, to vent his frustrations out on his slave.  The work of a magister was
tedious at best, and the preparations for the ritual were even worse.  He could
use some relief.
                The mage glanced to the table, eyes flicking to the bottle of
wine.  “Pour me a glass,” he told him.  Leto strode over to him, staying an
appropriate distance away.  He gingerly uncorked it, and held it in both
hands.  He poured it, and set it back down, but left it uncorked.  He stood
near, in attendance.  Let him wait.  Let him wonder what was going to happen,
and how.  He saw no reason to rush things.
                He sipped at the glass, watching the elf over the brim of it. 
He was pale, and there was a faint trembling he detected in his hands.  His
earlier terror hadn’t seemed to diminish much over time, but he looked like he
had managed to sleep a little at least.  The magister’s gaze shifted back to
the wine bottle.  He had had a couple small glasses of it in the past.  There
was maybe a third of it left, maybe a bit more.  He pointed to the bottle. 
“Let’s make this easier on you.  Drink it.”  He took another sip of his own.
 Leto paused as he reached forward, hesitating as if he weren’t quite sure he
understood the order.  “Drink it,” he repeated.  “All that’s left in the
bottle.”
                Leto picked up the bottle, closed his eyes for a moment. 
Remembering something?  And he put the bottle to his lips, tilting his head
back.  He drank, and only put the bottle down again when it was empty, licking
the corner of his lips.  Obedient little wolf.  He swayed a little bit, dizzy,
but stayed on his feet.  His lips twitched and he started to make a face, then
schooled the expression with some effort; the mark of one who drank only very
little or not at all.
                It was… potent; that was certain.  He took another sip, and set
the glass down.  “On your knees.”
                It took him a moment to fully process what he had said, and
then his eyebrows raised in alarm.  “That… Master, that wasn’t…”
                His fingers drummed, irritated, on the table.  “And you’re my
slave, and you’ll do as I say.”
                “I…  Yes, Master,” he said, hanging his head in defeat, going
to his knees.  Danarius gestured him closer, to crawl.  He liked watching him
do it, delighted in it in fact.  It told him a great deal about an individual,
too—watching them crawl.  Some were graceful and sensual, others childlike and
uncertain.  Leto, though, moved like it gave him great pain to do so—head low,
and as if a part of him were broken.  Poor thing—he really hated this.  If he
were well-behaved, perhaps Danarius should reward him.
                It was warm in here.  He rose, and undressed, tossing the robes
to the side carelessly, and noted that his slave kept his eyes fixed on the
floor.  He sat back down, taking another sip of the wine.  He had all night,
after all.
                He set the glass down again, looking back at his trembling
slave.  He casually leaned forward, wrapping his fingers in his short hair, and
hauled him forward.  The boy made only the smallest noise of alarm as he pulled
his head between his legs, and then another noise that he imagined was that of
defeat and abject misery.
                He leaned back in the chair, stroking the boy’s hair as he felt
himself harden in his mouth.  He was a bit better at it than last time—whether
the drink actually made him better at it, or he just remembered what he had
learned the last time, he couldn’t say.  Nor did he particularly care.
                As the elf worked at bringing him to orgasm, he thought.
                Leto was nothing if not a martyr.  He had done this to save his
mother’s life before.  He was doing it now to save his sister’s.  He was going
through with the ritual for both of them.
                And the more he thought about it, the more he thought, Damn.
                He was going to undergo that ritual.  He was going to be his
slave, his bodyguard, his personal pet, for the rest of his life, and would do
so knowing that he was sacrificing everything to “save” another.  He was a
martyr.  He would forever take solace in that knowledge.
                Danarius didn’t want him to take solace.  He didn’t want him to
look back on his choices and feel like everything worked out for the best.  He
didn’t want Leto to look at his life and feel like he had done the right thing,
and take hope in that his family was free.
                He wanted him miserable, and hopeless, downtrodden—because if
he were a martyr, he’d begin to think, and wonder.  He may even feel pride for
the first time, from what he had done.  No, no—he just couldn’t have that.
                So the magister thought, his fingers twining in his pet’s thick
hair.  Solutions.  He needed solutions.  There was no solution.  No matter how
he looked at it, Leto was a damned martyr.  The little cheeky bastard was a
martyr.  Even the other slaves would see that.  They would look at him like
some kind of damned hero.  Why hadn’t he thought of this before?
                Now, he felt desperate.  He needed a solution.  Well, he would
sell the slaves, for one.  Get new ones—ones that didn’t know.  That was simple
enough.  He could even use allof them as the blood he needed for the
ritual—that was probably the best option.  But what of Leto?
                The only real way to keep him from really beinga martyr was to
keep him from realizing he was a martyr.  But how?  It wasn’t that difficult to
see, and it was clear enough that the boy was some kind of sacrifice…
                But then he relaxed again, his temporary near-panic easing.
                What if the elf simply didn’t remember any of it?  Not just the
tournament, but his family?  No, his entire life?  He had no need of it any
more.  He was certainly never going to see his family again.  What need had he
of memories?  They would only bring him pain anyway, to think on it.
                He had a book regarding the blood magic involved with
memories.  Most of it was in reading another’s memories, but he seemed to
recall…  Well, he could read into it later.  There was time enough yet, before
the lyrium arrived.  And, if he recalled correctly, he could very easily weave
that spell in with the ritual.
                Now there was a thought.
                And his first waking memories would be of the ritual—that was
fine.  The elf would wake thinking it had been the ritual that had cleansed his
mind.  Now that he thought about it, that was ideal actually; his pet could
blame the ritual for the memory loss and not his master directly.  He could
even mold Leto into whatever he desired of him.  He would awaken frightened,
confused, not remembering anything.  Now Danarius felt intrigued at the idea. 
Yes, he wanted to do that.  It was the perfect solution to everything.  His
little wolf would be reborn.  If he were careful, he could fashion him exactly
as he wanted him to be—predictable, incapable of independent thought, and
perfectly obedient.
                The first thing to go would have to be his name.  He disliked
it anyway.  What should he re-name him?  He considered, and decided that it
would require some careful thought.
                “Stop,” he told him, and noted with some amusement that he
didn’t have to tell him twice; Leto backed away quickly, keeping his head
down.  His lips were moist.  “Stand up.”
                Slowly, on shaking knees, the elf stood up.  His shoulders were
hunched, head down.  He looked smaller than he actually was.  Was that all it
took?  Pathetic.
                Danarius offered him the glass.  “Finish this,” he told him. 
Leto carefully took the glass from him, making sure their hands didn’t actually
touch.  Charming.  He also drank from the opposite side he had been drinking,
and almost seemed grateful for it.  Perhaps he thought that if he drank enough,
he wouldn’t remember tonight.  Yes, pet, you don’t want to remember.  You don’t
want to remember anything.  He may be right.  He also thought, snidely, that he
was quite eager to get the taste of pre-cum out of his mouth.
                The elf set the glass down on the table when it was drained. 
It lent a flush to his cheeks.  The last bit of that had been enough to tip him
over the edge.  He was probably drunk, or would be soon enough, after the wine
had time to settle.
                Danarius sat back in the chair, enjoying the sight of him.  He
had waited for quite some time for this.  Had thought about taking him for some
time.  He hadn’t—couldn’t remember why not at the moment, but it was worth the
wait.  “Before we begin,” he said slowly, a ghost of a smile gracing his lips. 
“I don’t mind if you cry.  I’d like it if you screamed.  But if you think to
beg for me to stop…”  He glowered for a moment.  “I’ll kill your sister and the
twins.”
                He swallowed hard.  “I understand, Master,” he whispered,
throat gone dry.
                The magister watched him for a moment.  “There’s a pitcher of
water on the stand.  Why don’t you go drink some of it?”
                It was a command, worded as a question.  He didn’t want him
fainting from exhaustion or dehydration, after all.  And, drinking water after
imbibing alcohol only thinned the alcohol and made it travel faster.  In short,
it would get his little wolf drunk that much more quickly—and minimize the
hangover in the morning, and his pet still had to be painted for two hours
tomorrow morning.  Besides, he was his property—expensive property soon—and he
had best look after and care for him.
                All the same, he watched his pet pour a glass, hesitate, and
drink.  He waited, all too patient, not caring at all that his penis had gone
flaccid; that was what his pet’s mouth was for.
                He let his slave stand for a while as he considered what
exactly he wanted to do first.  Try to make him cry, if possible.  Sadism was a
small pleasure he was frequently unable to indulge in, sexually anyway.
                He rose, and moved the wine glass to a small stand, and picked
up the bottle.  A thought struck him.  “Leto.  Come here, bend over the table.”
                The elf positively jumped, and looked wooden when he walked
back, and even more wooden when he obeyed his command, eyes squeezed shut,
palms flat against the smooth wood.  It was actually just the right height… but
Danarius already knew that.
                The half-elf had insisted that he had mounted Leto, and the elf
had enjoyed it.  But he also admitted that he couldn’t make it last long, and
listed off some valid-sounding excuse for it.  Danarius had nearly had the boy
sold for it, but his mistress was emphatic that the kid had two regulars who
wouldn’t come anymore if he did, so he had relented not to.
                Still, it was… good to know that, under the right
circumstances, the elf could enjoy it.  These were not the right circumstances.
                Unlike some people, Danarius had no illusions that his slave
could ever like this.  He had no illusions that Varania had enjoyed him taking
her either.  Some people would insist that the ones they raped secretly liked
it, had asked for it, wanted them to.  He wasn’t so deluded, and, frankly,
didn’t care how they felt about it.  He had no reason to.  The elf was
property, to do with as he wished, nothing more.  That he could speak, move—all
of it was trivial.  He was the master; he was the one he served, in any manner
of his choosing.  The feelings and pains of his property were not even worth
his thought.  That he was giving his pet any kind of consideration was simply
because he felt that Leto was worth some small amount of care.  He had invested
a lot into him already, and soon to be more.  His pet had earned any kindness
he gave him.  The wine was one of those kindnesses.
                “If you relax, it won’t hurt as much,” he advised him, his free
hand running down his muscled thigh the same way a butcher would inspect a cow
for slaughter.  He moved his other hand between the boy’s legs, and listened
for any kind of whine or any noise he might make.  He was utterly silent, eyes
squeezed shut, and still foolishly tensed.  He had warned him.  The lip of the
bottle was met with some resistance, and the elf yelped, and whined, hissing in
pain, but overall stayed obediently still while the mage pushed it into him,
heedless of if it hurt or not.  He watched his face, more interested in
watching it contort in pain.  He held on to the base of the bottle and shoved,
hard—harder than perhaps he should have.  The elf gasped, and it ended in a low
whine, fingers clenched.
                “Open your eyes,” he told him.  His green eyes opened.  Cold
sweat was beading on his forehead, born of terror and, possibly, pain.  The
mage liked to watch his face contort with every thrust of the empty bottle, and
was pleased when the elf’s eyes began to water.  The elf’s hand rose, covering
his mouth to stifle a cry of pain, but fell away when Danarius began to glare. 
He listened to his soft whimpering for a while, and then the elf fell silent,
lower lip trembling and breathing only shallowly.  Maybe it didn’t hurt as much
as it did initially.  He noted, with some impatience, that he couldn’t fit any
more of the bottle into him.  He pushed down on it, and wriggled the bottle,
fast, pumping it into him until he whimpered again.
                Finally annoyed, he yanked the bottle out, fast enough that the
elf just crumpled to the floor.  He slammed the bottle down on the table, and
cuffed Leto, for falling.
                “Get on the bed,” he told him.  The elf shivered, and crawled
backward, away from his master, before he rose.  He stalked toward the bed,
hesitated, and climbed on to the silk comforter, on his knees, kneeling. 
Danarius watched him shake, and wipe at his eyes with the back of one hand.  He
had been about to cry, but in pain.  “Lay on your back in the center of the
bed.”
                He watched the elf crawl toward the center, found himself
staring at his legs, his ass.  The boy stopped, and rolled onto his back,
staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, as if he were dying.  Maybe, to a degree, he
was.
                Danarius stretched until he heard his spine pop, flexed his
fingers, taking his time.  He drank some water from a clean crystal cup.  “Are
you drunk yet, my pet?” he asked him.
                A pause, then, “Uh…  I think so, Master,” he said, his voice
deadened, but a little slurred.
                He nodded to himself, and set the empty cup down.  He climbed
onto the bed, over to his pet.  For a while, he just touched him, explored him,
all the while watching for what he seemed to hate the most.  His neck was
sensitive, he noticed.  So were his nipples, and he had a very sensitive spot
around his hip that made him twinge when he gripped it.  His upper thighs,
toward his groin, were just as sensitive, and he almost tried to kick when he
touched his ankles—might be ticklish.
                He turned the elf’s head to him, his hand on his chin.  “Is
your family going back to Seheron?” he asked him, a plan beginning to form in
his mind.  He saw it all so clearly.
                Green eyes blinked in surprise.  “I think... that was what they
were talking about, Master,” he said.  His words were a little slurred together
again, and he could see in his eyes that he was well and truly drunk.
                “They’ll need passage.”
                He blinked slowly.  “You… were paying my mother for her
services, Master.”
                He snorted.  “It will barely be enough for the crossing.”  He
smiled, slowly, leisurely.  “But it’s nothing to me to pay for the crossing.”
                A long pause, and then the boy just looked hurt, genuinely in
some kind of deep emotional pain, touched faintly by anger.  “Master, what else
do you want from me?” he sobbed, his voice ending in a strangled cry of pain. 
“I have nothing left.”
                “Kiss me, and I’ll pay for your mother’s crossing,” he
whispered.  Leto’s eyes widened, breathing seemed to stop.  “Embrace me when I
fuck you, and I’ll pay for your sister’s.  Convince me you don’t hate what I’m
doing to you, and I’ll give them a generous stipend on top of it.”
                His eyes watered, indisputably watered.  His eyes closed, and
tears tracked down his cheeks.  A sound escaped his throat, so pitiful and full
of pain, and abject misery, that for a moment, even Danarius was moved to
pity.  But the moment was fleeting.  He was reminded of how young he was. 
Seventeen?  Or was it eighteen?  Something around that—but so young.  He had
been married and a magister at that age, though; he wasn’t swayed just because
of the elf’s age.  … But his expression made him look so much younger—broken
and like once not very long ago, he had been innocent.  “Please, anything else,
Master,” he whispered, and his voice carried that same pitiful, painful,
miserable sound.
                That was it.  That was exactly what he needed him to say.  “All
right, pet.  But only because you cried,” he said, running his thumb through
the tear.  “I don’t want a martyr.”  Sage eyes opened again, questioning
through the alcohol.  “I think your memories are worth your family’s passage,
and that stipend I mentioned.”
                “I don’t… understand, Master,” Leto said, his eyes begging.
                And he smiled, and ran his fingers through that ebony hair. 
Hair like…  “You don’t need to know the specifics of the spell, my pet.  But, I
have no desire to have you be a martyr for your family.  And, tell me, do you
think your memories will serve you any purpose as my personal pet?  Do you even
want to remember… tonight, for an example?  Or that Dalish girl you murdered? 
Or the infant you killed?  Do you want to remember any of that?”
                A pause, then, “Not… really…”
                “Then consent, and I will honor our bargain.”  He remembered
the spell now—most of it anyway.  One of the key components of it was that it
was considerably easier, and risked less brain damage, if the subject gave
consent.
                He was thinking about it, considering.  “But… then I won’t
remember my family…”
                Danarius ran his hand down the boy’s chest.  “Do you think it
would bring you any comfort to not know where they are, if they are alive or
dead?  Do you think it will even matter, as you won’t be seeing them again? 
Won’t it be… easier… to not remember?”
                He looked away, and his eyes closed for a long moment in
thought.  They opened.  “Can I think about it, Master?”
                Danarius blinked, not at all prepared for that question. 
“Yes,” he decided.  “Tell me by the end of the day tomorrow.”  If nothing else,
he would just get him drunk again, and do something similar, but tell him that
he had to come to that decision immediately.
                “Thank you, Master,” he said, voice sounding a little
mechanical.
                The magister ran his fingers back up to the boy’s neck, then to
the back of his head.  He lifted his head up, guiding his lips back to his
crotch.  He seemed… better at this after drinking the wine.  It took some time
still, but he was enjoying it after a bit of patience, thrusting deeper into
his mouth, listening to him choke and gag on it when the movement was
unexpected, felt the boy wanting to pull away, but not being allowed to. 
Interestingly enough, Leto’s gag reflex was not actually very sensitive.  Most
of the gagging must just be instinctive; he thought he should be gagging, or he
hated it so much that he did.  He could tell the difference; Leto didn’t
actually vomit or even convulse.
                Then the magister shoved him backwards, away from him.  He
gripped his shoulders, shoving him back down on the bed.  There was an
instinctual struggle.  The elf, briefly, had no control over it; it was an
instinct, and Danarius thought they both realized that Leto was, physically,
stronger than he was.  Then the elf let him push him down, obeyed when Danarius
told him to spread his legs.  The green eyes closed again, not wanting to
watch.
                The magister knelt between the elf’s legs, positioning himself,
one hand steadying himself on his slave’s hip.  “Open your eyes,” he hissed. 
His eyes snapped open, staring upwards, wide and in horror.  Elves had wider
irises than a human, he reflected momentarily.  Probably why it was said that
their night vision was better, and that they supposedly saw more colours than
humans.  He was still fairly open from the bottle, and entry up to nearly three
inches was easy.  He felt the elf tense, and he gasped as he tightened around
him, a feeling that made his slave whine again.  The magister braced himself,
and slammed the rest of him inside him, without warning or preparation—which in
truth hurt both of them.  A gasp escaped Leto’s throat, his lip trembling, his
fingers winding into the comforter.  The human shoved his legs up, over his
hips, and out of the way for the most part.
                He was tight, hot, and overall felt good.  The bed was
sufficiently sturdy so it did not shift, but sometimes the wood groaned.  He
pushed into the elf hard enough that it drove the breath from his lungs,
shoving him forcefully away even, closer to the headboard.  A few more similar
thrusts, and the elf had to put his hand against the headboard, to keep his
head from smacking against it—that was allowed.  And as he pounded into him,
began to notice…  His hand reached down, exploring his suspicions, and Leto bit
his lower lip, his eyes wide in a silent plea.
                “When you’re drunk you like it?” he taunted him.  Son of a
bitch.  He’d remember this.
                “No…” he gasped in clear and obvious denial, and covered his
mouth, holding back a cry that the elf was nothing but ashamed of.
                Danarius paused, his eyes widening.  Hair of jet, sage eyes, a
hand over a mouth to stifle a cry that shouldn’t be heard…  If anyone knew…
                Enraged, the magister back-handed him, hard enough to bruise. 
His fingers wrapped around his throat, and Leto took in shallow breaths, eyes
wide.  He cuffed him again, and suddenly wanted, not to possess him, but to
kill him.  His magic demanded it.  His rage demanded it.  His hand raised. 
Fire danced around his palm, demanding the boy’s death.
                He took deep, calming breaths, and the feeling passed.  He
closed his fist, and the fire extinguished itself in a blaze of heat.
                He slapped him again, and climbed off of him, slipping out of
him.  “Get out,” he said acidly.  “Before I change my mind.”
                Leto’s eyes were wide, frightened, but slid away.  He heard him
scurry about the room, grab his clothes.  He didn’t pause to dress; the boy
just fled.  Smart.
                I almost killed him.
                He shook his head, and fell against the bed, naked and alone. 
He missed Roschelle.
                And he missed Shallise enough to want to kill her.  Leto just
reminded him of Shallise, that was all.  Same hair, eye colour was similar
enough, and they looked just alike enough for him to see it, especially in that
moment.
                He should have taken the bastard from behind.  Then this
wouldn’t have happened.  Should have…
                It didn’t matter.
                Roschelle was gone.  Shallise was gone.  It just didn’t matter.
 
                Mieta helped her daughter with the twins before she left for
the day, to work.  She was supposed to find out how much the crossing would be
today.  Lana was very kind, and was more than willing to help her if she needed
it, and Mieta had asked that she find out how much only the cheapest crossing
would be.  They had to make whatever she made last as long as possible.
                Leto had come back sometime late the night before.  She had
gotten a look at him; he looked ashen, and there was a nasty bruise on one side
of his face that he refused to comment on.  He seemed sick to his stomach, and
like he didn’t want to move from bed.  Mieta wondered if he had been fighting
again.  She had hoped he was past all that.  At the same time, that was very
likely the best thing it could be.  She remembered, all too clearly, the
magister’s orders for him.  She dared not consider it too deeply.
                When she was finished with the day’s work, she was pleasantly
surprised to see her son waiting for her in the garden.  The bruise had
darkened to a deep shade of purple, and he seemed barely aware of it.  She
chose not to comment; he never talked about any bruises or anything he
collected if he could help it, never had.
                They talked for a little while, of mundane things.  He inquired
as to her current project she was working on, and she told him about it.  Then
he got to the heart of the matter, “Will you have enough for the crossing?”
                She sighed.  “Barely.”  Then she smiled up at her son, her
chest swelling with a sort of fierce pride.  “But we’ll be free.  Because of
you.”
                He tried to smile, and failed, then looked away.  “Won’t it be
difficult—being penniless with the twins?  You… won’t have anywhere to go when
you get off the ship…”
                She shrugged, simply happy to no longer be a slave.  And she
was certainly not staying in Minrathous a single moment longer than she had
to.  “Yes, I’m sure it will.  But I’m a skilled tailor, and your sister is a
mage.  We’ll get by.”
                He fell silent, but seemed unconvinced, even concerned.  He
walked with her to the compound, and looked up at the setting sun, and excused
himself.  She watched him trot back to the manor, and wondered what he must be
up to.  Her secretive son would not tell her though.
                She asked Varania if he had been acting strange at all that
day.  Her daughter thought about it, and said, “No more than usual.”
***** Execution *****
Chapter Summary
     In which another character meets their fate, and Leto has to try to
     cope with his life and his actions.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Danarius smiled.  His little wolf had come back, just before
the sun had truly gone down, and told him that he accepted his terms.
                “Good.  I’m glad to hear it, pet.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “It
will be… easier… for you if you don’t remember.  Though I don’t recommend
telling your family about it.”  The elf shook his head a little, but said
nothing, and bit his lower lip, like he wanted to say something more.  The
magister quirked an eyebrow.  “Is there anything more?”
                His eyes flicked upwards, then back down again.  “The… whore…
Lura.  From the brothel, the House of Jade…”
                He was vaguely amused.  “Do you want her again?  I’m sure
something could be… arranged.”  In truth, he was so pleased by the way that
events were going, he saw it as nothing but an investment that would be quickly
repaid if he were to keep his little pet occupied and satiated for the time
being.  He wouldn’t want him to start to doubt.  It was imperative that the elf
remained certain and resolute, and determined to live most of all.
                He shook his head a little.  “Master…  What must I do… for you
to let her go?”
                What an interesting turn of events.  Danarius leaned back in
the chair, and thought for a moment.  He considered his schedule, really
thought about it.  He didn’t need anything more from his pet, not really.  He
had his body, his willingness, his memories and mind.  He would even sear his
mark onto his soul.  But when he thought about it, one of those twins would
make the perfect link between them—their living blood, a bridge of blood
between them during the ritual.  “I would let the girl go for either one of the
twins.”
                Leto visibly paled, but chose his words carefully.  “Master,
they are not mine to give.”
                Very well.  He thought Varania could be easily swayed to give
one of them up anyway, if he chose to ask, though she might refuse out of
spite.  “True enough.”  He paused in his thought.  “Do you love the whore?”
                The question made his slave blink in shock.  “I… No, Master…” 
Lies, he thought, but hadn’t bothered to use blood magic to tell.  This was
just intuition speaking.  But he was a child, overall, still—if he did love
her, he may not really realize it yet.
                He frowned.  Then why make the request, though, if he didn’t
know how he felt about her?  Had she asked him to?  Was Leto really that much
of a damned bleeding heart?  He was suddenly assured by the fact that he had
consented to the memory wipe.  “Did she put you up to this?” he demanded.
                Leto’s eyebrows arched.  “No, she didn’t, Master.”
                His frown deepened, brow creasing in thought.  Then why…?  “If
you don’t love her, and she didn’t beg you to do this, why are you?”
                The elf stared downwards, at the floor.  He chose his words
carefully, and they came with the utmost disinclination.  “I… I can’t stand to
think of her like that, Master.”
                He raised an eyebrow.  Yet he was fine with all the other
slaves?  No, there was something more to it than that, and now he was certain. 
“What is she to you?”
                Leto seemed reluctant.  “I… knew her, Master,” he admitted. 
“In Seheron.”
                He remembered someone from when he was three?  He had spent two
nights with her.  Perhaps they had talked, and realized they knew one another. 
It was possible, he supposed.  Unlikely—bloody unlikely—but possible.  It only
served to give validity to his former thoughts.
                He didn’t like that idea—Lura--at all.  He leaned back in his
chair.  He had done some research on the memory spell since last night.  There
were things that could trigger his memories.  Seeing someone he knew would do
it.  He should have Lura killed.  It was a good thing that his family wanted to
be away from Minrathous.
                But the slave compound, the mansion, the coliseum, all of those
things could trigger his memories.  It was such a precise spell—powerful, but
exacting.  It required that the individual be utterly removed from their life. 
The first couple of years would be the most difficult, and the most
interesting.  He would be like a blank book, waiting to be filled.  His
capacity to learn would be that of a child, but with the mental capabilities of
an adult.  He needed to be in an environment with people he had never met,
places he had never seen, for at least the first two years.  Those were the
crucial stages of the spell, the time it settled, sunk its roots into his
mind.  Anything—anything—could shatter it in the first two years.  Except
Danarius himself; because he was the caster, he was shielded from it.
                Well, he had a manor out in the country, on a vineyard.  It was
high time he visited it.
                But, if he were to return after the two years, he had best sell
his current slaves—whichever ones he didn’t use for the ritual--and buy new
ones, new household staff, possibly remodel part of the mansion—that was
actually an excellent idea, and the perfect reason to be away at the country
manor for so long.
                He had best get rid of the whore too.  He could simply have her
executed, he supposed.  But why, when he may have use for her later?  Leto had
some kind of attachment to the girl.  If ever he needed Lura, he had best keep
her alive.  Under his thumb, but alive.  He could track Varania at any time;
she was a Circle mage, even if she were a slave, and she had a phylactery. 
Mieta, the tailor, would not turn away Lura if they were from the same city,
and Varania would not leave her mother.
                He almost forgot about him, but then suddenly remembered the
half-elf.  Well, he could eliminate that problem right now, and he saw now that
getting rid of Lura like this would be beneficial for himself as well. 
“Tomorrow night, if you obey me, I’ll release the whore with your mother and
sister.”
                Leto nodded, and bowed low.  “Thank you, Master.”  The relief
was evident in his voice.
                “Go,” he dismissed him.
                Tonight, Danarius decided to redirect his plans, and visited
the House of Jade.  The girl was apparently just finishing with a client, so he
waited in their tearoom, one of the whores all too eager to giggle and hop onto
his lap.  When Lura came downstairs, he didn’t even look up until she went to
him.  She kept her head down, respectfully, but smiled softly, peering up at
him through thick lashes.
                She was a delightful little thing, and as lithe as a weasel,
tireless too, and had a lovely belly.  Yes, he saw what would make Leto care
about her, though he was stupid for doing so.
                …  Danarius had once been just as stupid.  Oh, Shallise…
                Leto could learn a few things from Lura about sucking cock.  He
debated, briefly, on bringing her with him for tomorrow night, but decided
that, no, his little pet’s mind was delicate enough right now.  He wanted just
enough pressure on his slave’s mind to bend it, maybe break it, but not destroy
it.
 
                It was dark, but not the eternal, inky blackness of a void,
just dark.  He saw a dim amount of light from a flickering torch farther up the
hall, beyond the cell they had put him in.  He wondered how long he would stay
here.  What had happened?  He didn’t even really know where he was.
                Shanamyn’s legs drew up against his chest.  His arms wrapped
around his legs, clasping loosely in front of him.  Had someone said something
to him that they shouldn’t have?  If so, he didn’t know what it could be.  And
he didn’t care!  He honestly didn’t care.  If someone had accidentally told him
military secrets, or something, he didn’t remember it, and it meant nothing to
him anyway.  What did a whore care about anything like that?
                They had brought him out of the whorehouse.  There were
whispers, and he could feel people watching him from the shadows as his wrists
were bound behind him, and a sackcloth bag was thrown over his head, so he
could not see.  A cord was put around his neck, and it felt so nostalgic that
he balked at first, then followed the person leading him.
                They kept the cord too tight around his neck, and sometimes
jerked it as they walked, either on purpose or on accident, it made little
difference to him; he still stumbled and nearly fell.  Someone had pushed him
forward, and his knees had hit a step.  Someone told him to step up, and he
did, slowly, uncertainly.  And another step, and a gloved hand to the small of
his back made him fall into the carriage.  It was a prison transport carriage,
though he couldn’t really tell.
                He had lain on the wood of the bottom of the carriage, and
listened to the horse’s hooves, the sound of the cobblestone and the wheels
turning.  It had been ages since he had so much as left the House of Jade.  And
this was how he was to leave it?
                He wished he could at least be told why.
                He had tried to ask them, when the door opened again, but he
was cuffed for speaking, and he quickly fell silent.  He was led, by the cord
around his neck, up a path.  It was cobblestone at first, then gravel, and he
had to tread lightly on it.  It was uncomfortable on his bare feet.  Elves, he
suspected, had somewhat stronger feet than humans—than he did certainly.  But
he had no real need of shoes in the House, so he didn’t actually own any.  They
said it made him a little more elven that way anyway.  Point being, the gravel
was painful, and he wished they would let him walk over dirt rather than this.
                But he was then led up two steps—more quickly than he was
comfortable with, and his feet again touched wooden floors.  He tried to keep
some amount of slack on the cord, but it was difficult without the use of his
hands or eyes.  There got to be a long stairwell, and he fell twice before one
of the—three?—men there just picked him up, and tossed him over his shoulder
like deadweight.  One of them made some snide comment about how Shanamyn was a
whore, and the other two laughed.
                They had carried him down the steps, and he could smell burning
pitch, and see light through the sackcloth, but that was all.  They got to the
bottom of the steps, and he heard a heavy door groaning open, the jangle of
keys.  The guard walked away, shouldering him as if he had gotten heavy with
time.  He heard more creaking as another door was opened, and was dumped to the
floor.  The bonds on his hands were cut, and the cord around his neck removed,
then someone pulled the sackcloth from his head, just in time for him to see
the guard leaving, and the iron door clang shut with an ominous bang.
                The lock clicked shut, the keys jangled, and the guards walked
away.  The outer door shut, leaving him in semi-darkness.
                The cell, he had discovered, was approximately six paces deep,
and four paces wide, with a small pile of rotting hay in the corner, a cracked
chamber pot in another.  There were manacles toward the back too.
                He leaned his head forward, until his forehead touched his
knees.  He just wished he knew why he was here.  Maybe… maybe if he knew, he
could dispute it.  Maybe he could convince these people that, whatever it was,
it wasn’t worth locking him away like this, or killing him.
                He touched the scar on his neck.  He didn’t want to die. 
Maker, he didn’t want to die.
                A small slot on the door opened, toward the bottom.  A tray was
shoved through.  Shanamyn shouted for help, pleaded to have someone listen to
him, but the footsteps only grew more faint, and the outer door shut again.  He
sighed, and crawled over to the meal.  His joints ached.  His vision had
adjusted to the dimness, and he suspected it had been hours.  He was used to
eating well, for a slave.
                He was used to three meals a day, something healthful and
light, but good food for a slave.  Mistress Alesand had said that no one wanted
to hear their stomachs grumble during sex, so they had best stay well
nourished.
                He inspected the broth.  It was an onion broth, and a cup of
water, stale bread.  He wasn’t hungry enough for the food.  Maybe he was
spoiled, but he wanted nothing to do with it.  Maybe, if he were hungry enough,
he would eat it then.  He drank the water, in sips, trying to make it last
throughout what he assumed was the day.  When it was empty, he set it down on
the tray.
                His stomached growled.  He glanced at the tray, and sighed, not
hungry enough yet.  This was surely a mistake.
                It had to be a mistake.  Just a simple mistake.  He would get
to go back to the brothel, and it would make for an interesting story to tell,
that was all.
                He had an appointment for this evening.  His client would be
furious.
                He closed his eyes.  The rich man he was supposed to service
would not be pleased that his favourite whore had gone missing.  Someone would
have to apologize to him.  And, when Shanamyn came back to the House, he would
have to offer, of course, a complimentary visit, which would end in a scolding
for him, though it mattered little when he technically wasn’t paid for it.
                Though… it wasn’t so bad that he missed that appointment.  The
man was fairly regular.  Not daily, but perhaps at least once a week. 
Privately, Shanamyn hated him with a burning passion.  The man was overweight,
and his dick was so small he could fit his fully erect penis and balls in his
mouth with no trouble; didn’t even have to swallow.  He could jerk him off with
two fingers, and did sometimes.  Thinking about the man’s breathing, some of
the stupid things he would say during sex—it disgusted Shanamyn.  Maybe it was
shallow, but he didn’t like the man’s personality either.  He was always
wanting him to do things… things he didn’t really like.  The pig liked him to
do things to humiliate himself.  There were a few lines the House drew, but
very few.  Unfortunately, hunkering down on his knees with his ass in the air
while a girl with big breasts rammed an ivory phallus inside him with the pig’s
cock in his mouth was not one of those things.
                His eyes slid closed, and he tried not to think about it too
much.  Not all his clients were like that.  He wished that more of them could
be like Leto had been.  He hadn’t wanted him to do anything humiliating or
asked for something difficult or disgusting.  Moreover, he had been… kind to
him.  Not very many people ever were, and most people were only ever polite
because they felt inclined to be, like many of the other whores.  For example,
he knew that Lura was uncomfortable around him, because he was half-human, but
it wasn’t just her.  A lot of people were.  He always thought it was vaguely
amusing, in a hateful sort of way, how an elf and a human may get along with
one another just fine but couldn’t help but stare at him and treat him like
something else.
                He tried to sleep, his back against the wall.  He nodded off
now and again, and missed the big bed at the House.
                He woke with a start, not having realized he had even fallen
asleep.  He heard a squeaking noise, and jumped again, eyes going wide.  The
dim light illuminated the creature, its whiskers twitching over the brim of the
bowl.  The animal looked at him when it sensed him stir.
                Shanamyn was terrified of rats.  When his mother had sold him
to the slaver, after the transport, he had been put in a small room with a few
other boys his age.  There had been straw on the floor, rotting and rat
droppings were in it, and that first night, he discovered why.  Night would
fall, and the rats would come.  Big, hungry, terrifying rats with scratching
claws, sharp teeth, and beady eyes.  They would dig through the hay, scurry
throughout the room, looking for scraps.  He had been scared then, afraid of
the rats in the dark that he couldn’t see.  When the furry creatures would
crawl across him, or nip his toes, he would shriek.  They came every night. 
They were fed a single bowl of gruel every day, and they quickly learned to
lick the bowls clean, because even more rats came otherwise.  One day, a boy
got sick.  They tried to tell the slavers, because he was very sick, but they
were ignored.  The boy was sick for two days, and one morning, the half-elf saw
him, nothing but a corpse.  A rat was chewing on his lips, other teeth marks
across his flesh.
                He had been terrified of the vermin ever since.
                But the rat didn’t care.  It snatched the bit of stale bread,
and scampered through a crack in the wall with the bread in its teeth. 
Shanamyn heard someone whimper, and realized it was him.
                There were rats.  Oh, Maker, there were rats.  Of course there
were rats.  It was a dungeon—why wouldn’t it have rats?  Why hadn’t he thought
of that before?
                Now he searched for the holes, but only found the one. 
Desperate, he grabbed fistfuls of the straw, shoving it into the hole.  His
attempt was feverish, and he stuffed it as far back as he could, as close
together as he could.  His fingernails broke in his attempts.  When he
finished, he swiped his palms on his pants, picking at the broken nails, eyes
fixed to the wall.
                He slept not at all after that, and though he grew ever more
hungry, he left the bowl untouched; the rat had been in it, after all.  He
wasn’t that hungry yet.
                It was just cool enough here to be uncomfortable.  He wished he
had a cloak or something—anything.  He stuck his fingers in his armpits in an
attempt to warm them.  He wondered if he would just be left down here and
forgotten, and was again struck with the sad reality that there wasn’t a soul
who would mourn his passing.
                He didn’t want to die.  Even though he was alone in the world,
and a slave, he really didn’t want to die.  Even being a half-breed, he just
didn’t want to die.  He had come close once, and it was painful.  He had seen
other people die, and it looked horrifying.  Life may not be pleasant, but it
had to be better than the alternative.
                He didn’t really believe in the Maker.  He couldn’t believe in
something he couldn’t see and experience and he had known at a young age that
he could never believe in it.  How could he believe in an uncaring god, who had
made him half-elven and a slave, whose own mother had sold him?  How could he
believe in a divine prophetess that was a god’s bride?  Who was to say that she
wasn’t simply mad?  And why would a good person who did not serve the Maker be
condemned to the same Void as the slaver?  That wasn’t right.  It wasn’t fair,
and he didn’t believe in it.
                He wasn’t sure there was an after-life, which gave him all the
more reason to want to live.  If this was all there was, he would rather
experience as much as he was able to.
                He reached up, and touched his throat, the scar around his
neck.  Was he going to die down here?  Was his body going to rot somewhere
alone?  Would no one stop and wonder what had become of him?  Would they care
if they knew?  Would anyone even pretend to care, even for a moment?
                He felt like he should be crying.  Felt like he should weep. 
But if no one else cared, why should he?  He wanted to live, but… what for?  He
had nothing and no one, would amount to nothing.
                The mood swings came, back and forth, as he struggled with his
situation, but he came to no real conclusions, and knew that even so, he had no
choice in the matter.  The decision would always lie with someone else—that was
what being a slave really meant, after all.  When he thought about it, really
thought about it, he sometimes realized that the number of slaves in, say, the
House of Jade, outnumbered the guards there, and their mistress.  But they
wouldn’t revolt.  Even the ones who really hated being whores, or just being
slaves--they wouldn’t revolt, because that was hard.  It was hard to take up
arms, not just when one doesn’t know how, but because it means pain and death
and hardship.  It was easier to keep one’s head down and quietly do as they are
told.  It was easier to let someone else make the decisions, even when it was
your life.
                He closed his eyes for a moment.  He wished this place wasn’t
the last place he would ever see.  The House had a beautiful garden in the
spring.  He would have liked to have seen it again, or the sea.
                He had once asked why the House of Jade was called that, as
there really wasn’t a whole lot of “jade” to be had in the House.  One of the
older whores had told him that, before their master bought out the House, the
owner’s name had been “Jade” and named it after herself.  To help keep the
clientele, the name stuck.  But it reminded him of misnomers like none other.
                Thinking about mundane things helped to keep his mind off of
his impending death, but it was still difficult to escape.  No matter what he
seemed to do, he kept thinking about it.
                Would they hang him—finish what his mother had tried to do?  Or
was it the chopping block?  Perhaps they would just tie him up and throw him in
the bay.  The magisters were mages, though, and did that mean he could suffer
some worse fate?
                He didn’t want to think about it.  What was worse than hanging,
beheading, or drowning?  He supposed that they could burn him as well.  The
stories said Andraste suffered in a pyre too.  But he doubted anyone would take
pity on him and end his suffering, like they had her.
                He waited, alone in the dark with his thoughts, and looked up
only when the outer door creaked open.  He half-hoped it was food, or at least
water; he was so thirsty.  He heard keys, though, instead of the small slot
opening at the bottom.  He sat up, eyes wide against the darkness, wondering if
it was time.  Already?  So soon?
                He wasn’t ready to die.
                The door opened:  A guard, nameless to him, didn’t even speak
to him.  He grabbed the boy by the arm and half-drug him from the room.  It was
hard for Shanamyn to climb to his feet being manhandled like that, but he
managed, having to bend nearly double, as the man would not change his grip on
him.  He marched him to the outer room, past the heavy door that creaked.
                Once there, another guard bound his wrists together, behind his
back, another cord around his neck, and he was hauled forward.  At least they
didn’t put the hood over his head this time, and he could see to make it up the
stairs, and the guards were slow in their armor.  His stomach felt like it had
been bruised from being carried down the stairs last time.
                He was led up the winding staircase, up to a long hall, and
another staircase.  The hall at the top of the second staircase was wooden
instead of stone, which meant he was aboveground again at least, or he was
getting closer and this was more decorated.  Either way, he followed the guard,
head down and frightened.
                He was led by what he suspected were servant quarters, through
passages designed so that the servants could traverse the building unseen and
unnoticed.  The passages were droll, but clean and well-lit, though slender.
                The guard opened a door, and led Shanamyn through it.  The door
was obscured completely from the room by a large tapestry hanging two feet from
it.  It wasn’t a lot of room, but it was enough to get by.  The room beyond the
tapestry was obviously a banquet hall.  The trestle tables had been put away,
but it was more than big enough for it.  The roof was a spider’s web of glass
in metal frames, and he could see the stars beyond it.  He was glad he could
see the sky once more. 
                At the far end of the hall, he saw a high-backed, cushioned
chair, almost a throne.  In the throne sat a man with hair beginning to visibly
grey, the beginnings of a beard forming on his jaw.  He wore pale green robes. 
The colour was supposed to be fashionable right now, he had heard.  He imagined
that it was either simple coincidence, considering the demeanor of this man, or
he cared just enough about the way he appeared to others to make himself
presentable.
                He was brought before the man, and the guard shoved him down to
his knees, hard enough that it hurt.  The cord around his neck was removed, and
the guards moved away, to stand in attendance.
                Shanamyn’s eyes flicked to the man in the chair, and back
down.  His heart palpitated in his chest like a galloping horse.  He could hear
his blood ringing in his ears, or so it felt.  He was so terrified.  What was
going on?  What had happened?
                This was no court to decide his fate.  What, then, was going
on?
                “Please, just tell me why I’m here!” he pleaded after the
longest silence he felt he could endure.
                A guard moved to cuff him, but the man in the chair waved him
off.  “Another word, and I’ll have your tongue cut out.”
                Shanamyn snapped his mouth shut, and his eyes slid closed.  He
was going to die.  It didn’t matter that this was no court.  He was going to
die.
                Were the rumors true?  This man was a magister, maybe even the
one who owned the House; he had never met Danarius.  Were they really blood
mages?  Did he need half-elven blood for some vile spell?  Shanamyn felt his
skin crawl.
                He may not believe in the Maker, or an afterlife, but it still
felt unholy to do something like that, like his soul, if he had one, would be
forever tainted if he were sacrificed as such.
                His hands shook in their bonds, but still he could not find the
tears he should have found.  He was scared beyond belief, but still couldn’t
cry.
                A door opened.  He did not look up.  He stared at the wooden
floor in horror and pondered his fate.  He heard footsteps, then they stopped. 
He heard the sound of a blade being drawn.  The sound made him raise his head.
                Was that…  It couldn’t be…  Leto?  It was, though the elf tried
very hard not to look at Shanamyn.  Instead, he looked at the knife, at the
floor, at anything but Shanamyn.  He accepted the knife from his master, and
slowly, painstakingly slowly, turned to face the half-elf.
                “No!” Shanamyn cried instinctively, remembering the threat to
have his tongue cut out too late.  His eyes opened wide when the magister
signaled, and the guards came toward him.  “Don’t do this!  I don’t want to
die!  I didn’t do anything!  Please!”
                Strong hands grabbed his arms.
                “No…” Leto gasped.
                “Don’t!  Please don’t!  Don’t let them do this!” he shrieked. 
But Leto was frozen, too subservient, too much his master’s property to do
anything else.
                He watched Leto, not the guards.  A man grabbed onto his jaw,
and he tried to fight it, but couldn’t.  They were stronger.  They were always
stronger.  His mouth was forced open.  Someone else had a pair of tongs, and
found his tongue.  He saw Leto, over the shoulder of one of the guards, his
eyes wide, appalled, but unmoving.  He had gone pale, Shanamyn saw, even as the
half-elf screamed, trying to fight back, but unable to.  He felt the cold metal
against his tongue.
                Leto’s mouth opened, and a tiny sound escaped his throat in an
echo of the scream.  It was all over in an instant.  A swift motion of the
sharp knife, a flick of the wrist, a moment of agony, and then his mouth filled
with blood.  The guards walked away, letting him sag, whimpering, making a
sound like half of a scream.  The bloodied, severed muscle was tossed into a
fireplace, discarded.  Blood spilled from his mouth, down his chin, soaking his
chest, his knees, dripping on the floor.  He coughed on it, wished he could
wipe his chin and lips of the blood.  He could smell the discarded muscle of
his tongue as the flames took it, and the smell made him gag anew.
                Blood coated his teeth, and he could taste it in the back of
his throat, but only there, and it was the strangest sensation not to taste it
more strongly.  And, beyond all the minor discomforts, the pain, the horrible
pain of having a muscle severed, coupled with the horror of the manner in which
it had been cut:  He realized that tears were streaking down his cheeks.  He
sagged, and slumped to the floor, lying in his own blood and able to do
nothing.
                And all the while, the magister watched, a bored expression on
his face.  His slave stood beside him, pale and horrified, looking like at any
moment his legs would simply give out on him.
                “As you were,” the magister instructed the elf.  But Leto
didn’t seem to have heard him, or even recognized his existence.  He was
staring at Shanamyn in a sort of mute horror, and Shanamyn saw something else
touch his eyes:  Realization.
                It had taken fifteen years, but Leto had realized, truly
realized, what sort of life he had won in the tournament for himself.  And he
knew, without doubt, that his master was the worst kind of sadistically
cruel—and there was no escaping it.  And maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been
worth the prize of his family’s freedom.  But… no.  No one would want their
family within easy reach of this man.
                The magister, though, grew annoyed.  He nodded to the closest
guard, and glanced toward the elf.  The guard walked up to Leto, very casually,
who still didn’t seem to hear or see anything.  An armored fist rose.  Leto
still didn’t seem to see it.  The fist flew, and the elf dodged, automatically
and without thinking.  The blow sailed past his head.
                “Leto,” Danarius snapped.  The elf stood, back rigid.  He heard
him now, and he could see now.  The guard was looking to him, and the magister
nodded.  The guard looked back at Leto, and the elf glanced away, not wanting
to watch the fist land on his jaw.  The blow sent the elf back, nearly making
him fall.  He caught himself, and started to cradle the blow, but stopped. 
Perhaps he had been instructed in the past not to do that.  It was red, and
starting to form an ugly bruise.  “Enough.  Kill the whore, and I will free the
other.”
                Leto started to walk toward Shanamyn, and paused mid-step when
the half-elf looked up at him pitifully.  He didn’t drop the knife in his hand,
but his lower lip quivered for a moment.  He lowered his head.  “Why?” he
whispered.  “I understand killing Ginger, but why Shanamyn, Master?”  His voice
sounded broken, even to Shanamyn.
                He signaled to the guard again, and he backhanded Leto across
the other cheek.  Shanamyn gave a cry of dismay, and realized just how much he
had relied on his tongue; he couldn’t speak anymore.  He could only make some
amount of noise, and spitting or swallowing the blood he was halfway drowning
in was difficult or impossible.  Easier to open his mouth and let it flood out
of him slowly.  Leto stumbled a little, touching the side of his face.
                “Go to the infirmary after this—I don’t want any of your teeth
falling out,” Danarius hissed.
                Leto looked down.  “Master, I…  Shanamyn is…”
                “Again.  Not the face this time,” he told the guard.  The next
blow was delivered to his stomach, and it made him bend double.  Shanamyn
wanted to cry out, to plea to make them stop hurting him, but he had no words
any more—just a worthless sound.  Leto hadn’t helped him, but Shanamyn, another
slave, understood why enough not to begrudge him that.  “Leto.  You agreed to
this.”
                The elf shook his head, gasping.  “No.  Not to this…” he
denied.
                Danarius paused, and Shanamyn saw a slow smile spread across
his face.  “That whore--Lura,” he began.  Leto looked up.  “She’s a pretty
little thing, isn’t she?”  Leto’s fingers tightened around the knife, his jaw
clenching.  “You could learn a few things from her about oral sex.”
                The guards snickered.  Leto’s brow drew down in a glare. 
Shanamyn wondered if Leto would kill the guard nearest to him and risk
everything in an attempt at his master’s life.  He looked ready to; the elf was
enraged.
                The magister smirked at his slave.  “But I could see why you
liked her; she’s very limber in bed.”  He sat back in his chair.  “If you don’t
want to free her, I won’t complain; I might like her in my bed more often.”
                Leto’s eyes squeezed shut, in some personal prison of pain. 
When he opened them again, they were wet.  “No,” he whispered.  “No.”  But he
didn’t attack his master.  He did not turn on the guard.  He looked back to
Shanamyn, and walked toward him.
                Shanamyn’s eyes fixed on the blade, and he tried to beg Leto
not to kill him, tried to plead for his life, but there were no words left to
him.  Just sounds, and blood.  The elven slave knelt beside the whore.  His
eyes were wet, and sad, and filled with regret.  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. 
The whore began to kick, to struggle.  A strong hand held him in place.  He
thrashed against it, but could not manage to do more.  “You didn’t deserve
this.”
                The knife came as a surprise to him, a sharp stabbing pain to
his chest, and then a twisting motion.  Just a sharp pain, then… nothing.
 
                Danarius watched the half-elf’s bloodied body go limp, and fall
to the floor.  Leto systematically cleaned the blade on a clean bit of the
half-elf’s clothing, as if it were not a body, but instead a thing.  The elf
tracked right through the blood and didn’t seem to notice, or care.  He didn’t
really seem to see anything around him, not truly.
                He sheathed the knife, and, head down, gave it back to his
master.  Danarius was pleased, overall.  Leto had killed his friend and had
killed a one-night lover—all on command.  He owned him, utterly.  Anything that
might once have been an individual had been crushed.  He didn’t think Leto had
any more free will, or thought for that matter.  He didn’t even seem to see
anything that was going on around him.  The boy moved as if in a dream, as if
he didn’t believe in the reality around him.
                “The infirmary, pet,” he told him, his voice gentle.
                Leto turned and looked at him, his eyes glistening with unshed
tears he didn’t seem to realize were there.  He saw the question in his eyes. 
He was struggling to understand his words.  Something in his mind had snapped
when he killed Shanamyn.  Ginger had been a mercy, he supposed.  Leto had seen
her suffering, seen her beaten and bruised.  She would not have lived long had
he not killed her, and she had not struggled like the half-elf had; she had
gone almost nobly to her death.  The infant had been hard on him too.  Shanamyn
was something else.  Maybe because it wasn’t only an order; Leto had consented
to this, though he had not known at the time.
                The half-elf had begged for his life, had struggled against the
blade.  Leto had watched him mutilated, and a part of that had been key to
breaking him.  How horrible was it for the boy to watch someone else be hurt
like that, when they had begged for their help?
                Danarius sighed, but almost happily.  He put a hand to either
side of his pet’s face.  Healing magic flowed through him, but could not touch
his mind, which was swimming through a numb haze.
                When he pulled his hand away, the red marks that promised to be
bruises were gone, the teeth that had been knocked loose back in place.
                The magister hadn’t really intended it, but he glanced back at
the bloodied corpse, and told the guards to dispose of it.  Leto turned and
looked too, and he made a small gasping noise.  His legs buckled, falling to
his knees.  His hands touched the floor, keeping him from hitting his face on
the floor, but the movement seemed wooden.  His eyes were wide, breathing
shallow.
                Danarius leaned a bit forward, casually stroking his little
wolf’s hair.  He watched his guards pick up the body, his fingers twining in
the boy’s hair.  Leto raised his hands a little bit, staring at the splattering
of blood on his fingers in silent horror.  Danarius traced a finger along his
ear, lamenting that soon enough they would have to shave of all of Leto’s blue-
black hair.  He had been putting off that part for last.
                He gave another order to the remaining guard, and he hauled
Leto to his feet.  He yanked the elf forward, and Danarius glowered.  The guard
froze.  “Gently, with my pet,” he admonished him.  The guard muttered a hasty
apology, and gently led Leto from the room.
 
                The door swung open and banged against the side of the wall. 
Mieta jumped, and the twins cried out.  Varania grumbled, turning to look at
the door.  Leto was more shoved through the door than walked, and he stumbled,
and fell to his knees.  The guard behind him turned away.
                Mieta rushed to him instinctively.  Varania sighed, and picked
up the louder of the twins, the girl, trying to shush her, but couldn’t hold
them both.
                The mother noticed the blood almost immediately, how it looked
as though he had walked through it.  Much of it had come off, but she could
still see it.  Most of it, though, was on his hands and forearms—not a lot,
just a splattering, and a few droplets on his front.  There were track marks
from where he had cried, and his eyes were red.  When she lifted his face, he
moved his head without resistance, and as if he didn’t really see her.  His
eyes were glazed, and he just… seemed numb.
                What had happened to him?  “Leto…  What happened?” Mieta asked
him.  He only swallowed, and slowly shook his head, as if he might have finally
heard her, but as if from some great distance.  The children continued to
wail.  She needed to help Varania quiet them.
                Instead, the young mother set her infant child down, still
wailing, and went to her brother, who she considered to be more important by
far.  Varania knelt beside him, looked at his hands, the stricken look on his
face.  “You killed someone, again?” she whispered.  “Who?  What would make you
so upset?”
                He just shook his head, eyes sliding closed, and bowed his
head.  “Varania, help me get him into bed,” Mieta urged her.
                But Leto was finally coming out of the haze he had been in. 
“No,” he insisted.  “I’m fine.  Just… leave me be.”
                Mieta tried to help him, regardless, but he just shoved her
away.  Varania helped him to his feet, and left Mieta with the twins when she
and her brother walked out to the well to clean off the blood.  Mieta had just
gotten the twins back to sleep by the time they returned.  Leto still looked
ashen, but better since the blood was washed away.
                He left in the morning, like he normally did, to be painted for
two hours, but when he came home, he just washed off the paint and fell back
onto the thin mattress, his legs curled up against his chest, as if he were
sick.
 
                While Mieta was away working, Varania sat on the bed opposite
her brother.  His eyes tracked her with the infant she carried.  “What
happened?” she asked him, her voice gentle.
                He paused for so long that she wasn’t sure he had heard her, or
was going to answer if he did.  “My master told me to kill someone.  So I
did.”  His voice was flat, bland, and lifeless.
                Varania looked at him, and knew it was so much more than that,
to make him like this.  “…  Was it… very awful?”
                He swallowed, and licked his dry lips.  “The… person I was told
to kill…  He was innocent,” he whispered.  “He… did nothing wrong.  I can’t
understand why…?”  His voice trailed off, and she thought she understood. 
Maybe the other person he had mentioned having killed, maybe that person hadn’t
been innocent, or something.  But this bothered him.  “They…  The guards cut
out his tongue when he pleaded for his life.  He begged me to help him, and I
didn’t…  I just… watched.  Then I was told to kill him.  And he tried to beg me
while he choked on his own blood, but he couldn’t speak.  He thrashed, and…  He
was so terrified…”  His voice faded away, and his eyes squeezed shut.
                It was guilt.  That was what was doing this to him.  Someone
had died, and he had been the cause, and he felt like it was his fault.  “Leto,
you were just doing as you were told.  What could you do?”
                He seemed angry at that, briefly, then it faded.  “Ginger once
told me that I’d be a slave all my life, even if I were free.”  He laughed,
hollowly.  “And I obey my master even when I don’t want to, or when I know what
I’m doing is wrong… so I guess she’s right.”
                Varania didn’t know what to say.  Was that the rest of it?  Was
that what so disgusted him?  This self-inflicted illness he seemed to have, it
was borne of those things?  He was guilty beyond measure, and regretted his
actions, and at the same time, was trapped in them, and, for him, knew there
was no other way—and that sickened him too.  She didn’t… quite understand.  If
her master gave her an order, she had to carry it out.  If she didn’t like it,
it didn’t matter.  If she thought it was wrong, that didn’t matter much
either.  The way she saw it, she wasn’t the one doing the deed; it was her
master.  But Leto…  He didn’t see it that way, not really.  She had tried
convincing him of this before.  He had insisted that it had been himself then
too.
                He went to his drawer in the small clothespress and opened it. 
He rummaged through it for a moment, and lifted something out of it, and looked
down at it in his palm.  He closed his fist over it, and turned.
                Varania hesitated, and left the twins sleeping and went to
follow her brother.  She found him behind the compound, on the other side of
the low wall.  “Didn’t Ginger used to hide things here?” she asked him.
                “Yes—I imagine her stolen goods are still buried here,” he
offered.
                Varania kind of smiled.  “Let’s leave them here,” she said.
                He looked up at her, and returned the smile in kind.  “I’d like
to.”  He wriggled at a loose stone in the wall, and it pulled free with some
effort.  He set the stone aside.  Varania frowned, curious as to what he was
doing.  He picked up the small item he had removed from his drawer, and she
gasped when she recognized it.
                “Is that--?  Can I see it?” she asked him, reaching for the
trinket.  He did not even hesitate before he handed it to her.  She looked at
the small, carved wolf.  It wasn’t a good carving, but the wood was pretty and
worn smooth from years of handling, and it was made by a friend, and that meant
more than anything.  “Can we put my halla with it?”
                “Run and get it,” he said, and she turned on her heels and
hurried back.  She checked on the twins, and found her own small halla
carving.  The other horn had broken off years ago, and now it looked more like
a deer or a goat, but it was a halla to her.  She gave it to her brother, and
he hid the wolf and the halla behind the stone, fixing it like it had never
been touched.
Chapter End Notes
     If any of you are wondering, yes; I like killing off characters.
     *wicked laughter* Guess who's next on my hit list?
***** Sin *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania is at her limit--emotionally, spiritually, and mentally--and
     no one will listen to her or be there for her when she needs them. In
     the meantime, dark things happen in the deep dungeons of the manor.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The infant twins had thus far survived their first week of life
outside the womb.  Varania had yet to name them, and when her brother or mother
questioned her on this, she only replied that it was an age-old custom not to
name children until it was more certain that they would live.  When Mieta and
Leto made faces at this, she would follow this up with the stubborn fact that
they had been unnaturally born, and that they were premature to boot.
                While her mother reluctantly conceded the point, Leto’s eyes
would only narrow in suspicion.  But wasn’t he always suspicious lately?
                She had the sheet pulled over her shoulders as she nursed the
girl.  It was getting better, but she still hated it—hated all of it really. 
She didn’t really know why she even did it, except that it was expected of
her.  Her brother sat on the bed opposite her, his back to her.  He had the
boy, and had been watching him.  Now, it seemed like he was purposefully trying
to irritate him.  She hated hearing them scream; it was awful.  Why would he be
tormenting the babe?
                “What are you doing, Leto?” she finally asked, exasperated.
                He held his hand a short distance to one side of the infant’s
head, and snapped his fingers.  The infant turned its head in that direction,
then he snapped the fingers of his other hand, and it jerked toward that
sound.  He waved his hand in front of the child’s face, a frown upon his lips,
brow creased.  His fist closed, slowly, then opened his palm suddenly.  The
babe didn’t jump, despite the close proximity to his face.
                “He’s blind,” he said, certain after many minutes of testing,
and being suspicious of that for a few days.
                She had half-expected that, given everything:  The boy had the
most unnaturally pale shade of blue eyes she had ever seen, even in elves, even
compared to his father’s pale eyes.  The girl looked almost completely human,
but the boy was another story—and she found the boy to be the more tolerable of
the two as such.  His ears were human in shape, with a very faint but
distinctive point.  Time would tell if he began to look more human when he got
older—even a slave had heard that half-elven children were human in look (these
things did happen), so she did not expect the boy’s elven looks to last.  The
girl began to fuss, finished.  She picked her up, and got a rag to burp her on
her shoulder.  “Of course he’s defective,” she muttered under her breath.
                Her brother shot her a glare.  “Don’t ever say that,” he
snapped.
                She glared back.  “They’re that bastard’s children, and you
defend them?” she said, inclining her head in the direction of the manor that
loomed over them like a threat.
                “They’re yours too,” he insisted.  “And, like it or not,
they’ve done nothing.”
                “They almost killed me,” she countered.
                His eyebrows drew into the most menacing glower she had seen
from him.  Her mouth snapped shut.  “Don’t blame them for something they cannot
help.”
                She fell silent for a moment, and when the girl burped, she
brought her to Leto.  “Here, switch me.”  He did, and she went back to the bed
to nurse her blind, bastard son.  Half-elven and blind?  She might as well let
him die; it would be less cruel than letting him live.
                “Do you think one of them will be a mage?” she asked bitterly. 
She didn’t want to train another mage, not really.  Least of all in just a
couple of years before their talents started developing.  “I’d hate that; I
don’t know if I could handle it.”
                He shot her another glare.  “What did I just say?” he said
seethingly.
                She sighed, looking away.  “’Don’t blame them for something
they can’t help,’” she quoted, irritated.
                He seemed mildly satisfied that she had been listening.  “I
don’t care if they’re both mages,” he said.  “And neither should you.”  Varania
chose, wisely, to stay silent.
                A while later, she noticed he was performing the same tests on
the girl.  “She’s not blind,” she called to her brother.  Her eyes were an
extremely vivid shade of green, and she was always alert and looking around. 
She couldn’t be blind.  She may have forgiven the girl, in fact, for her eyes
were the shade Mother said her own father’s were, but she had the hair of the
magister that raped her, and she hated her for it.  Mieta had only been amused
that she had been born with a full head of hair.
                Leto shook his head.  “That’s not what I think.”  They both
fell silent.  More snapping fingers, the babe suckling at her breast.  In a
time, Leto announced, “I think she’s deaf though.”
                Varania sucked in a long breath through her teeth.  What could
be worse?  A blind twin, and a deaf twin.  They couldn’t even communicate with
one another.  Lovely—and half-elven to boot, and, worse, bastard children the
product of rape.  She hated them.  “That would explain why she screams so
loudly and so often,” Varania said, deeply annoyed.
                “It’s not her fault,” Leto said, his tone that of thin
patience.
                The mage rolled her eyes petulantly.  “Of course not.”
                He took a deep breath, and his temper seemed to fly.  “Maybe
they’re blind and deaf because you insisted I hit you until you bled all those
months ago?” he hissed acidly.
                She was stunned to silence, and was just grateful that Mieta
was away.  He was saying that it was her fault they were… ruined.  Well, that
couldn’t be.  It just… couldn’t be.  Mother had told her about her forced
march, their escape and capture, the trip over the sea.  She had been but a
form in her mother’s womb too, yet she had survived unscathed.  It couldn’t be
her fault.  How could he say something like that?  Her eyes threatened to
water.  She was emotional—they said that happened after birth.  But his words
were scathing, and hurt.  “Leto…” she whispered.
                He turned toward her, and the anger left him.  “Oh, Maker…” he
whispered, and got up, away from the babe, and to his sister.  She was upset,
and near tears at his remark.  “I’m sorry.”  She started to shove him away, but
he held her hand, and she stopped, wanting to cry.  “I’m so sorry, ‘Nia.”  He
looked sorry; his eyes sorrowful, face contorted in sympathetic pain.  “I…  I
didn’t mean…”
                But he did mean it.  Even if only for a moment.  Her big
brother, who she so adored and looked up to, who was her only companion and
solace, had truly meant that.  Did a part of him hate her?  Was that it?  She
wanted to cry for the thought, and embrace him, and shove him away, and say
something just as hurtful, and to tell him that she loved him—all at once. 
                In the end, she simply did nothing. 
                              
 
                She was almost certain of it.  Leto hated her, hated her for
what she had asked him to do and never forgiven her for it.  And Mother viewed
her with open contempt every time she was trying to talk about anything she
felt was important.  She desperately wanted to talk to someone, and have that
person understand her when she said that she hated her children.  Why wouldn’t
anyone listen and understand?
                She didn’t want this.  She was a child herself.  She didn’t
want children!  This had been forced on her.  She hadn’t been ready.  And now
here she was with two:  Two children, with problems, half-breeds with a mage
for a mother and father.  They were doomed from the start, didn’t anyone see?
                Varania just wanted to talk about it.
                But no one would listen.  Mieta scolded her, tried to convince
her to love her children for what they were.  But she couldn’t love them.  They
were worse than abominations.  They were the living evidence of what had
happened to her that night nine months ago.  She couldn’t love something like
that.  She couldn’t bring herself to.
                Was it so wrong that she wanted to meet someone who would see
her for herself and love her?  Had that been wrong of her to wish for?  Elven,
a mage, with two bastard children, one blind and one deaf—who would ever learn
to love that?  She’d be… alone… forever.  Raising these two brats that she
hated, who she felt had ruined her life in more ways than it already was.  It
wasn’t fair.  She was too young for her life to be over, but that was what it
felt like had happened.
                Every time in her life she could have been happy, maybe,
something had to happen to make her life miserable.  She was born a slave,
found out she was a mage, was raped and had been a virgin, and against all odds
became pregnant and gave birth to these two.  Why?  Why did this have to happen
to her?
                She wanted to be someone else.  Anyone else.  She hated being
herself, hated her life.  Hated everything.
                …  She just wanted to talk to someone.  She had no friends
though.  Just her family, and Mieta was of no use, Leto less so.  She tried to
talk to him too, but he would have none of it, and after a while, she lost the
heart to try.  She didn’t want him to hate her any more than he already did. 
She was incredibly lonely.
                She cried herself to sleep a lot, and woke to the tune of the
horrid cries of those babes she despised.  Leto had won her freedom, only for
her to be put out in the world with these children.  If they had been
stillborn, she might have had a chance at happiness.  Rather, her life would
now become devoted to her children, her blind and deaf children.
                How could she even communicate with the deaf girl?  She didn’t
understand.  She hated it.  She thought, she would want to die if she were deaf
or blind.
                These thoughts tumbled about in her mind for days, driving her
deeper into a state of depression, and in her depression, the thoughts
blackened.  By the week’s end, she knew what she had to do.  It was for the
best.  Best for her, best for the twins.  But mostly, it was best for her.  She
didn’t want them.  What child would want to be with a mother that didn’t want
them?  And they were blind and deaf anyway.
                Late at night, she ascertained that both Mieta and Leto were
asleep, and she rose quietly from the bed.  She picked up one twin, the boy,
and used the sheet to wind him, quietly, to her chest.  The girl, she carried
in her arms.  She tiptoed from the room, and was grateful neither of the
children stirred enough to cry.
                She quietly opened and closed the door, and thought she saw
Leto stir, but assumed he must just be rolling in his sleep.  She walked,
decidedly, certainly, toward her destination.  She knew what she was doing. 
She was sure of herself.  She had to do this.  It was necessary.  She hated the
twins, hated what they meant, what they were.  She would want this too, if she
were they.
                Varania walked past the gate, down to the orchard.  She set the
girl down gently in the spring grass by the stream.  Taking her time, she
rolled up her sleeves, humming a little to herself as she did, to take her mind
off the necessary task before her.  She unwound the boy, and set him beside his
sister.
                She cradled the infant for a moment, looked at her, and the
babe opened her eyes, beginning to fuss.  Wet, hungry—didn’t matter.  She had
leaf-green eyes, but hair like her father, and her deaf ears weren’t even
elven.  It was better that she didn’t have a name.
                She plunged the babe and her hands under the water, continuing
to hum to herself, even as the tears dripped down her face.  It was better this
way.  And she hated them both so much, more than she could bear.
                Her hands were beginning to get cold, but the babe was still
kicking, struggling as best an infant could struggle.  The boy had begun to
scream, an ear-piercing wail that made her shiver, like he knew what was
happening.
                He couldn’t know; he was a baby.  A stupid, bastard-born child
of rape that had ruined its mother’s life.  She hated his father, and hated
him.  She would rid herself of everything having to do with the magister that
had raped her.  This was for the best.
                She thought she heard footsteps, but dismissed it; she was
tired, after all.  And once the task was done, when both of them had stopped
moving and their bodies would grow chill and stiff, then she could rest.  Then
she would have a chance at life she would not have had if they continued to
live.  Once they were gone, she could begin to heal.  She would never get over
the rape, but she could learn to live with it.  But every time she looked at
the twins, it reminded her of that awful night, and she could not forgive them
for it.  She could not move on with her life, and she could not heal, though
she wanted to.
                The babe had stilled, but it was better safe than sorry; she
would hate to see it come up coughing, after all.  A little while longer
perhaps.
                Hands grabbed onto her shoulders, hauling her bodily
backwards.  She dropped the infant in the water, and the person who had grabbed
her dashed forward, picking the infant out of the water.  Her brother knelt,
cradling the body of her child, a look of astonishment and horror on his face.
                He looked at Varania, his eyes wide, unable to speak.
                And Varania began to cry.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I
just…  I hated them so much…”
                And he swallowed, and set the body down gently on the grass. 
The boy continued to cry.  Leto wrapped his arms around his sister, sheltering
her, embracing her.
                “I never wanted them,” she whispered against his shoulder, her
body racking with sobs as he crushed her against his chest.  “I would rather…
die… than keep them.”
                “I don’t want you to die, ‘Nia,” he insisted, and his voice
sounded just as broken as hers.
                Her fingers twined in his tunic.  “I… couldn’t…  I couldn’t do
it, Leto,” she whispered.  “I’m sorry…  I…  I just wanted someone to
understand…  And…”
                He held her tight.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
                He held her until she stopped crying, but he picked up her son,
wrapping him in the long cloth she had used to carry him, hushing him until he
fell to silence again.  He looked down at the limp body of the girl twin. 
“Varania, pick her up.  We have to bury her.”
                She started to argue, then looked down, and nodded.  She picked
up the corpse, and followed him out, to the small slave graveyard behind the
compound.  He went to the storage shed with the broken lock and came back with
a single spade.  He gave it to her and said, “You’ll dig this grave alone, but
I’ll stay with you.”
                She looked away, and understood.  It was her fault.  It was her
mess.  No one else did this; it had been her.  She knelt, and dug in an empty
patch.  It was small, but deep, and Leto stayed with her all the while, holding
her infant son.
                It didn’t change things.  She still hated the children for the
sins of their father, for the burden their lives had placed on her.  But
digging the grave stilled her rage for it.  Burying the body sobered her, and
she patted the earth, and felt inclined, for the first time in her life, to
pray.  She wasn’t sure to what god or saint she prayed, to the Maker, Andraste,
or Ginger’s gods, but it didn’t matter to her; she prayed.  She prayed for her
soul, for the soul of the one she had killed.  She prayed for forgiveness, that
she may move on.  She prayed for Leto, and her mother.  And, even for the blind
boy she still had, his eyes the palest shade of blue she had ever seen.  She
even found herself, improbably, praying for the boy’s father.  What happened to
a man to make him want to do the things he did?
                When she finished, she walked with Leto back to the compound,
leaning against him heavily.  She told him that she loved him, and thanked him
for what he had done.  He looked down, and shook his head.  “I love you too,
sis.  That’s why I do it.”
                She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage to.
                Mieta, blessedly, said not one word about the girl, who was
missing.  Not to Varania, anyway, but Leto did walk with her to the manor that
morning, and the mage suspected, but whatever was said, she never found out.
                It was better that way.  She didn’t know what she would do if
her mother said anything about it.  Cry, she supposed, for her sin.  Varania’s
Sin.  It was wrong, something born of a madness that had gripped her for a
time.  She felt like it had passed, and she was all right now.  She had made
her apologies, prayed for forgiveness—she didn’t know if that were granted or
not, but she felt better for it.
                It wouldn’t change her Sin, but she knew… she had to do better
for the boy for it.  But he was blind.  What kind of life could he ever have?
                She just didn’t know.
                Leto kept telling her that everything would be all right, if
she just waited, and saw.  But she only half-believed him, because she wanted
to believe.
 
                Raith felt like he could paint the markings blindfolded, and he
knew he still painted in his sleep.  They had doubled the hours he
painted—twice a day now.  A week before the ritual, they would paint the elf in
henna again, which he was not looking forward to.
                Leto was… disciplined enough to stay still for long periods of
time, but some places he just couldn’t get to all at once, and the henna didn’t
dry as fast as the paint, so he had to wait, and let Leto move a little bit. 
He didn’t care too much, but standing with locked legs for too long will make a
person faint.
                Danarius had to stop Raith on more than one occasion when Raith
hadn’t been paying too much attention to the elf, and the slave had nearly
blacked out.  When Raith had looked at his face, he had noticed his shallow
breathing, the pale features, clamminess, but he had been so absorbed in his
work that he hadn’t noticed before.  His master had not been pleased, and Raith
had made an effort to pay more attention in the future.
                For the actual ritual though, he was informed that Leto would,
in all reality, be in a trance state, so fainting wouldn’t be an issue.
                The pattern, he was now more than confident with.  His strokes
were assured, measured, precise.  He used exactly the same amount of paint
every time.  He did not shake from nervousness.  He was self-confident in
that.  After all, that was the easy part.
                The truly difficult part was that the lyrium couldn’t just be
implanted.  It was a liquid.  They could make flat lines along his skin like a
tattoo, but that was the difference between painting and engraving something in
this.  No, the best use of it would mean more lyrium, and it would be carved
into his flesh rather than tattooed.  Which meant he had to construct, out of
Leto’s own body, something rather like thin arteries, but to hold the lyrium. 
It was temporary, in reality, to hold it in place until the ritual was over and
it could be seared into him, down to the depths of his soul and the Fade.  Once
the ritual was over, it would settle, resting in his skin, very unlike a
tattoo.  Frankly, he was quickly becoming annoyed at anyone who inquired about
it who referred to the procedure as a tattoo.  It was nothing like a tattoo.
                They would know if something went wrong almost immediately,
because the lyrium would start… bleeding.  He shivered at the thought.  All
that work…
                He had a slave they plucked from the compound for him to
practice on—shackled in the dungeon.  He created and destroyed the arteries
just as quickly.  The sensation, apparently, caused an unbelievable amount of
pain for the subject.  The girl had taken to sobbing whenever the door opened,
and pleading with him not to do it again.
                Out of curiosity, he had asked her, just yesterday, if she
remembered her name.  She had stared at him, blinking slowly, and trying to
remember.  She did remember, eventually, but it took her a while and she seemed
uncertain of it--Raenya.  She confessed to not remembering what the sun was
like, sometime in her inane babble.  She had taken to babbling lately, about
nothing mostly, and half of what she said was nonsense.
                It seemed, the ritual to erase Leto’s memory would go
smoothly.  Moreover, it was extremely simple to write in.  It fit very nicely
into a particular part of it, like it was made to go there.  It was probably
for the best anyway.  The nastiest bit of the ritual, the elf wouldn’t remember
to be horrified by it.
                When the paint was drying on Leto’s skin, his master inquired
as to the state of his sister’s twins.  It seemed, one of them died recently. 
Leto had looked away, and nodded, giving the affirmative that this was true.
                That meant there was only one left—a shame.  Those children
were the perfect link in the spell.  They could maintain the link without the
babes, but it would require a few more slaves, a bit more blood.
                Raith inspected the library they were using for the ritual. 
Well, it had been a library up until a few weeks ago.  It had been utterly
gutted since then—the rugs, the tapestries, especially the books and the
shelving, had all been removed.  Some of it went into storage, and other bits
just into different areas.  Not only was the space just what they needed, but
the skylight there was exactly where they would need it to be for the ritual,
for it must be done under starlight.  True, they could have done this in the
ballroom, which was larger, but the hexagonal shape was also important.  But
the most important bit was the stained glass.  It was over an inch thick, and
created so that one could see out, but not in—though this was not their
greatest purpose.  They had been forged with mage-fire, imbued with
enchantments by the Tranquil.  Magic would be safely contained in that room.
                Some of the tools they would need were already in there.  Tall
tapered candles, candlesticks, a couple ceremonial daggers, a glass chalice,
among a few other things.  Leto was also going to need to go through the
conditioning soon.
                He went down to the dungeons to see the slave girl.  He
suspected that she would not live for long, though.
Chapter End Notes
     You may be wondering why not a single chapter takes place from Leto's
     perspective. All I have to say is this: Leto was unavailable for
     comment.
***** Names *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania and Leto have a bit of a heart-to-heart while naming the
     twins. Danarius contemplates what he wants to rename Leto. Leto's
     heart and soul are breaking along with his mind... exactly according
     to plan.
                Danarius glanced to Leto.  In the morning, he would be painted
with henna again, but for now it was only white paint.  “I don’t want you
returning to the compound tonight,” he instructed him.
                He saw the way his pet’s lips pressed into a thin line.  “Yes,
Master,” he said, his voice ringing like a hollow bell.
                Did he think he had planned to take him to his bed again? 
Perhaps he should, but that wasn’t his intent.  But he did so hate leaving
things unfinished…  “I want you closer at hand, and you will have to be better
cleansed and prepared for the ritual.”  He frowned to himself, looking at the
boy.  He saw the protest in the elf’s eyes.  Probably about his damned family,
and wanting to see them.  “Of course, your family can be moved into the manor
as well.  They’re not slaves, so I won’t have them there any longer.”  It would
be better if they weren’t near them anyway.  He had every intention of plucking
every slave from the compound—blood for the Ritual.  He wasn’t entirely certain
of how much would be required, but it was best to have a plethora available.
                Leto visibly relaxed.  The magister called a servant, and when
one answered, he left instructions as to what to do with his slave.  The elf
followed the servant out, where he would spend the remainder of the day being
meticulously cleaned.  Danarius had been very specific—every inch of him, every
tiny bit of dirt, every patch of rough skin, every strand of hair.
                His pet arrived again that evening, to be painted a second
time.  He was… pleased by the way he looked.  He had been scrubbed and polished
to a shine, as it were.  Lovely.  Distracting, even.  He kept looking back at
him, eyes roving over him, remembering all too clearly his whining gasps, the
sobs, the way his face contorted in pain and misery.
                He… tolerated it, for a while, and observed.  In the end, he
dismissed Raith early.  The apprentice barely questioned it.  Just cleaned up
the brushes and left, shutting the door quietly behind him, likely just
grateful to leave.  There was so much to do that his apprentice would simply go
to work on one of the many other matters—like finishing up the lyrium, for
one.  Leto stood, naked with drying paint on him, looking like he would rather
be anywhere else.  The magister gazed upon him, trying to imagine what the
lyrium would look like.  It would be beautiful.  Strange and new and wondrous,
but oh so very beautiful.
                “I think… it’s time we finished what we started a few days
ago,” he told him, rising to his feet.  Leto’s arms crossed as if it were cold,
and Danarius saw him swallow.  The magister stretched his arms, his back, as he
rose.  He sat back down, taking his time, watching his pet squirm.  “On your
knees, slave.”  Leto licked dry lips with a dry tongue, and sunk to his knees.
                He looked at him for a long moment, trying to decide if he
really wanted him enough to rape him.  It would be… pleasant if the whelp would
cooperate, but that was entirely too much to ask from his pet.
                He wondered, though, if he were to do this, if his little pet
would stop wanting to live.  The thought was almost enough to dismiss him—then
and there.  If he wanted to die, to the point where he was suicidal, he simply
would not survive the Ritual.  There would be too much death already involved
in it.  He would just get sucked into the void of it—or the Fade, his spirit
left to wander until it was fallen upon by demons, defenseless.
                “Leto,” he said.  “Look up.”  The elf obeyed, but did not look
directly at him.  At least he was well-mannered.  “Do you want to live?”
                His slave didn’t respond for a moment, and then his green eyes
slid closed briefly, then opened again—a motion that took just a little too
much time for a blink.  For an instant, he looked not only terribly alone, but
also terribly lonely.  Then it was gone again when he opened his eyes.  “Yes,
Master,” he answered.
                The magister leaned back in the chair, resting his arms on the
armrest.  “Is that so.”  He wondered how truthful his pet was being, how much
he meant it.  “Would you beg for your life if I wanted to kill you?”
                The elf wasn’t at all certain as to how to respond.  In the
end, he looked down.  “If… If that is… what you wish of me, Master,” he
answered, doubtful.
                He frowned.  Perhaps… too well trained.  “Would you beg for
your sister’s life?”
                His head shot up.  “Master?”
                And he knew, with a sense of finality, what mattered the most
to the boy.  Not his own life, but his family’s.  Not his own well-being, but
his family’s.  “If you’ve any desire at all for your family to live, you had
better survive the Ritual.  Do you understand?”
                He paled.  “I…  Yes.  Master.”
                Good.  Now it didn’t matter.  He would strive to live just so
that his mother and sister would.  And that newborn too.  He frowned, just a
little.  Now, was he forgetting anything?  No, he didn’t think so.  He studied
his slave again for a moment.  “Do I want to take you now, or shall I take you
to my quarters?” he mused to himself.  Leto seemed to visibly shrink.  He
imagined that if he could, he would just melt into the floor.  He was enjoying
this, actually.  He saw no reason not to draw the tension out as long as he
could.  “I suppose I could get you drunk again.”  A smile twitched at the
corner of his lip.  “Would you rather be drunk, my little wolf?”
                Leto swallowed, and shook his head.  “No…”  His voice was
faint, barely above a whisper, but the room was quiet. 
                Maybe he just didn’t want to be fucked with the wine bottle
again.  He smirked.  “You don’t want to enjoy it?” he mused.  “You might as
well, pet.  But perhaps you’ll change your mind… in time.”
                Well, he could always order his pet to drink.  But where was
the fun in that?  No, he wanted Leto to want the drink, in an effort to
alleviate his own misery.  It would create a dependency.  People with a
dependency on something they could not attain themselves were easier to
control.
                He wasn’t sure how easy Leto would be to manipulate and keep
under his thumb once the Ritual was over.  He would have untold power.  Losing
his memories would help—enormously.  Creating a dependency on alcohol would
help too.  Danarius would just have to experiment with it.  Though, when he
woke up alone with no memories, it would, in reality, be best if Danarius saw
him at least frequently, and killed or got rid of anyone who was near the elf
in the first few weeks at least—create a sort of trust, reliance.  Make
everything around him unstable except himself.  The important bit would be in
not keeping to any sort of routine, or destroying any routine once it was
established.  Keeping him uncomfortable and intimidated, but not terrified.
                The magister took his time removing his shoes, socks.  The
wooden floor was cool under his feet with the dying day.  It felt nice,
actually—it was getting warmer with spring here.  He was beginning to look
forward to spending the summer, and the next two years, at his childhood home
in the country.  The trees, the nearby hills, and the lake were all enough to
keep it, at worst, tolerable, even in the heat of the Tevinter summers.
                It had been years since he had been there besides.  It would
be… pleasant.
                He rose to his feet, and shrugged out of his robes.  He left
them in an unruly pile on the chair.  The elf was staring intently at the
floor, but cringed when he came near.  He ran his hand down his back, and he
buried his other hand in his hair.  Leto was almost expecting it when he hauled
him upright, pulling him against him.  He didn’t even have to tell him.
                I should reward my pet.  He’s been so well-behaved, he mused,
stroking his hair gently as the elf took him in his mouth, even using his hands
the way he had been told.  And does a master not reward their pets when they’ve
been good?
                The elf gagged, coughing.  “Breathe,” he whispered to him,
continuing to stroke his hair, rubbing the back of his head.  The elf hadn’t
cut it since before the tourney.  It was still fairly short, but growing
quickly.  It was a good length to bury his hands in, and to grab fistfuls of. 
His gag reflex was… sensitive today--odd.  Or he was just terrified.  “You’re
getting better at it.”  He let him continue for a while, then told his slave to
stop.  He did, instantly, and looked away quickly, dropping his hands.  “On
your hands and knees, and keep your head down.”  Leto flinched, and did as
commanded.  The mage trailed his fingers along him as he walked behind him.  He
was about to take him, and quickly remembered the door.  It wasn’t locked.  He
had best amend that.  He had no desire for some idiotic servant to walk in at
an awkward moment.
                He sighed, and stalked to the door, turning the lock.  He
glanced back at his pet—now that made a lovely sight.  He went back to him, his
cock hard and dripping, eager to take him.  He liked to take what wasn’t
offered, and especially the things that would never be offered.  Even if Leto
had once agreed to it, he would never offer it.
                He steadied himself with one hand.  “Arch your back more—yes,
like that.”  One of his hands ran down his back, slowly, enjoying the way the
elf’s skin felt.  He should have him like this all the time—cleaned, manicured,
lotioned and oiled.  He made a note to do just that, right before he thrust
into him.
                Leto gasped in pain.  “It would hurt less if you’d stop
resisting,” the magister couldn’t help but snap.  The elf’s only answer was a
plaintive whine.  A week had been enough time for his slave to become just as
tight as before, except this time he hadn’t prepared him with a wine bottle. 
Entry was tight, every inch slow as he pushed him apart.  It was uncomfortable
even for the magister, and by the elf’s whining and gasping, worse for him. 
But he was patient, and soon he was completely sheathed inside him, his groin
pressed tightly against him.  The elf was shivering, in some kind of distress. 
Poor thing.  He had offered alcohol…
                Maybe, if he took him again, Leto would want the wine.  He
gripped his hip, moving slowly inside of him, gentle at first, enjoying the
tight feeling while it would last.  Then, long, deep thrusts—moving himself
nearly completely out of him, and pushing back in slowly.
                He leaned over him, his chest against his back.  He snaked both
his hands onto the elf’s chest, exploring it, touching the spots he remembered
had made the elf stir last time, rubbing his nipples with his thumbs.  Leto was
almost sobbing—almost.
                “Please…  Stop…” he pleaded.  “Don’t fondle me.  Please…”
                Oh?  Perhaps his little wolf wasn’t as deserving of a reward as
he had hoped.  “You should be honored that I’m interested enough to want to,
elf,” he told him, and pinched his nipples, hard enough to make his slave yelp,
and clench around him.  He sighed in pleasure, and leaned back, moving his
hands away from his chest, to steady himself as he pounded into the elf
harder.  He pushed his slave’s face, down, his cheek against the floor as he
ground into him.
                Leto’s legs shook, his arms suddenly giving out.  Danarius
almost hit him, then only smiled, looking at the position his pet had fallen
into.  He was lying partway on his side, one of his legs drawn closer to his
chest, the other more prone.  Leto looked up at him, then back down.  “Move
your leg a little, pet.  No, the other way.  Yes.”  The magister clambered back
over him again, running a hand down his side.  At the way the elf flinched, the
magister only laughed.  “My little wolf, you won’t even remember this soon
enough.”  He touched his backside, aware that some of the paint had smeared. 
“And all you’ll know is that you need to please your master—in every way I
desire of you.  And you’ll do it, and you will think nothing of it, my pet.”
                The elf’s eyes closed, and Danarius watched him cry.  Not the
awful sobbing of a woman, nor the endless tears of the youth, but tracks of
tears running down his face like the smallest of streams.  “Won’t you leave me
anything?” he cried, and he choked back a cry when Danarius thrust into him.
                “I will,” the magister promised him, cupping his wet cheek with
his hand.  He would leave his desire to live, his sword skills, and he needed
nothing else.  But it was something, wasn’t it?  Leto didn’t respond that time,
either because it was easier not to, or because he just didn’t believe him, it
was hard to say.  And the why of it didn’t matter to Danarius.
                He certainly liked the position.  Liked listening to the elf’s
belabored breathing, his occasional gasp, or whine.  He should have taken him
on a bed though.  This wasn’t comfortable for long.  He growled, partway in
frustration.  Age—that was probably what it was, but his legs hurt like this. 
Ah, well, a new position would be welcome anyway.
                He slapped the elf’s ass, hard enough to make a red mark on
him.  He moaned when he clenched reflexively around him.  He caressed his pet
for a moment, running his hands up his thighs, gripping his tight ass.  He
pulled out of him, swiping at his brow.  The elf held the position, as if
afraid to move, shaking.
                “Get up,” the mage ordered him.  “To the desk, and put your
hands against the top of it.”  His directions were clear, and the elf stumbled
to his feet, nearly tripped walking over to the desk, and rested his palms
flatly on top of it in an empty area.  Danarius didn’t miss the way Leto
flinched when he moved behind him again.  “Arch your damned back—good.”  He was
gentle again, at first.  Slow thrusts, until he developed a rhythm.  Then,
faster, harder.  This position was easy to fuck him harder in.  He gripped the
elf’s hair, shoving him down on the desk.  Something fell off of it—he didn’t
care.
                He slapped him again—lovely that his reaction should be the
same.  His thrusts were long, hard—harder.  He pounded into the elf, heedless
of how much pain he was causing.  He could feel where he had torn Leto.  He
could feel the warm blood, and delighted in it.
                He noticed his pet was whimpering now.  But blessedly not
pleading with him to stop, like his fool of a sister had.  He knew better.  He
knew to do as he was told, to take it.  Which was why he felt inclined to
reward his little wolf.
                Still, if the elf were in enough pain to whimper like that, he
had best stop.  He was his favourite pet; it just wouldn’t do to hurt him so.
                And so, Danarius pounded a little harder into him, heedless and
nearly reckless.  He released, as deep into him as he could get, jerking his
hips a little in a smooth motion as the orgasm washed over him.  When it was
done, and he pulled himself out of him, he stepped back, watching the semen
trail down his pet’s legs.  It was mixed with blood.  With two fingers, he
inspected his pet, and by the way he whimpered, it seemed to hurt.
                The salt probably stung going over the abrasions—that was all. 
Most of the damage he had done seemed to be just outside him, though he didn’t
insert his fingers and inspect it.  He swiped his fingers along Leto’s spine,
ridding them of the semen and the blood.
                “You’ll be fine, pet,” he assured him, stroking his hair again,
as if comfortingly.  The elf slowly slid off of the desk, sinking to his
knees.  Danarius pet his hair, in mock comfort, which caused a much more
visible tremor to rake the elf’s body.  His pet had been crying again; his
cheeks were wet.  “You’ve been very well-behaved.  I’m inclined to reward your
behaviour.”
                Leto’s only answer was to shudder, tiny tremors coursing
through his body to a similar rhythm Danarius had just finished pounding into
him.
                “What do you want?” he asked his slave, his voice gentle.  When
the elf didn’t answer, he twined his fingers in his hair.  “Are you hungry, my
pet?  Or do you want that wine now?”
                “I…  I do,” he sobbed.
                He smiled down at him, happy with how easy that was.  “Very
well.  I’ll send a bottle to your room.  You can get drunk, and fall asleep—and
forget about this.”  He touched the elf’s face, relishing the wetness on his
face.  He was just a child, he reminded himself.  He looked even younger when
he was crying.  Eighteen years old or something like that—and he was talented,
Danarius would give him that.  He was a fine warrior, stunning even.  He let go
of him, walking away from him to dress.  “And stay in bed.  I’ve an appointment
in the morning, so the painting will be cancelled.”
                He had intended to just let Raith do it by himself, but he
reasoned that there was a high probability that Leto would end up with a
hangover in the morning.  He had been obedient and pleasing enough that he felt
his pet deserved the time anyway.  Raith would be grateful as well, he
imagined.
                He moved away from the elf, and dressed, running his fingers
through his sweat-streaked hair.  He opened a window, letting in the breeze. 
It felt nice, even as his sweat pulled his robes close about him.  It would be
nice to simply fall into bed.
                Without turning to acknowledge the elf, he said, “Get dressed,
and go.”  He heard the elf dress, and go to the door.  He heard it unlock, and
the slave slipped out gratefully.  Danarius rang a bell for a servant, gave him
the order to fetch Leto a bottle of wine—something inexpensive—from the cellar
and bring it to him.  The servant obviously disliked doing this for a slave,
but hurried off regardless.
               
                Varania slept lightly lately.  Since… she had murdered her own
child—that was what it was, she realized now—she had felt a certain level of
devotion to her son.  Maybe, she would even love him one day.  Maybe.
                There was a soft knock on the door, and she woke.  The room was
strange to her, and filled her with memories of the rape.  That room had been a
guest room—nicer than here.  She had been so nervous about staying there that
she had barely touched the furniture.  Well, until he had pinned her down
against the bed.  But she preferred not to think about it.
                In her half-asleep state, she wasn’t certain that she had heard
the knock, but then it sounded again, just as light.  She stirred, and slid
from the bed in her threadbare shift.  She crept to the door and opened it just
enough to peek out—being in the manor frightened her just a bit.  It was so
strange.
                She was relieved and pleasantly surprised to see Leto.  She
opened the door wider, and smiled, though even in the dark she could see the
grave look on his face.  His hair was wet, like he had dunked himself in water
before he came.  It was dripping, and his clothes clung to him.  His eyes
looked haunted.  Had he been wearing that when she saw him this morning?  She
couldn’t recall exactly, but she was certain that it had been something else… 
Danarius had made sure that Leto had more—and nicer—clothing since he had moved
him to the manor. 
                He glanced into the room, and held up his hand.  Her eyes
widened when she saw the bottle.  It wasn’t an expensive wine—she could tell
from the marks on the label.  But still…  “Did you…  You didn’t steal that?”
she asked him in a hushed whisper.
                He shook his head.  “No.  Come with me.  You need this as much
as I do,” he murmured, and inclined his head to the hall.  She glanced back
inside.  The babe was asleep, but if he woke, Mieta would tend to him.  What if
he were hungry?  She wouldn’t be long, she decided.
                He gave her a moment to dress, and he was waiting for her when
she crept back out.  The siblings stole through the manor, out in the
courtyard.  Leto walked in front of her, Varania at his heels.  He walked
slowly and disjointedly, like at any moment, his legs would give out and he
knew it.  His fingertips trailed along the bare walls, as if waiting to catch
himself should he fall.  Sometimes, he would stop, and swallow, and looked
vaguely ill, as if simply sick to his stomach.
                They sat below the big magnolia tree, like they had when they
were children.  The wind swayed the branches and rustled the spring leaves. 
The new grass smelled sweet, and the stars were shining, but there was no moon.
                “How’d you get the bottle, if you didn’t steal it?” she asked
him as he uncorked it.
                He didn’t answer immediately, but rather took a long swallow
first, then passed it to her.  She sniffed at it.  “I…  Danarius gave it to
me,” he said—a bit guardedly.
                Her eyebrows arched, and she studied him for a moment.  He had
a faint but still detectable tremble in his hands.  He sat on his legs, and
like it pained him to do so, but was better than the alternative.  This,
combined with everything else she had seen from him tonight…  Her brows drew
together as she put together the pieces in his body language, as well as his
demeanor.  “He…” she tried to say, but couldn’t bring herself to.  She looked
down, and took a tentative sip of the wine.  She made a face at the after-taste
and handed it back to him.  He drank it like he didn’t taste it at all.  “When…
when he raped me, I didn’t fight back,” she confessed.  “I was scared to try. 
And I think, if I had, would it still have happened?”
                He paused.  “He would have hurt you, ‘Nia,” Leto told her,
resting a hand on her slender shoulder comfortingly.  He squeezed her shoulder
gently when she was quiet, and dropped his hand away.
                She frowned, staring down at the ground.  She heard crickets
somewhere in the dark, and a bird, other nighttime creatures.  “I don’t know. 
I could have hurt him.  If I got him unsuspecting, I could have… killed him.”
                “You would be killed for your crimes—he’s a magister,” Leto
said, ever the voice of reason.
                She felt frustrated sometimes that Leto was so logical, so
utterly reasonable.  He never did anything that wasn’t reasonable.  “I know,
but…”
                “I understand,” he told her.  She felt cheered by this, and
took another swallow of the wine, a bit more this time.  She wanted to feel its
affects, at least a little.
                They were both silent for a moment, and Leto said, his voice so
low she had to strain to hear it, “I didn’t… fight either.”
                She took another sip to stall replying.  She had suspected as
much.  She hadn’t known he would just come out and say it though.  Maybe it was
because she had gone through the same thing.  Well, no, it wasn’t the same—not
for a man.  But it was similar, and they were siblings.  What a sick man.  They
were of a different race, for one, and his slaves.  If that wasn’t enough,
well, she and Leto were siblings—why would he want both siblings?  It was just…
wrong.  “What could you have done?” she said, keeping her voice gentle.
                He took the bottle back from her and drank.  “Anything,” he
whispered, looking off at nothing.  “I’m… stronger than he is.”  He shook his
head miserably.  “It’s taken me so long to realize it, but...  I’ve had so many
opportunities to kill him.”  His eyes slid closed in pain.  “I never did.  I
wish I had.”
                “Leto, you’d be killed for that,” she gasped.  Hadn’t he just
finished telling her the same thing?  No, he didn’t care if he died—not really.
                His eyes opened, his grip on the bottle tightening for a
moment.  “I know.”  His voice sounded so hollow that she wanted to cry.  What
had…  No, she knew what had happened.  She knew… how terrible the magister
could be.  He would have made it as horrible as he could manage, made it last
for as long as he could manage.  And it wouldn’t have just been rape.
                He would have touched him too, she imagined, against her will. 
Degraded him first.  He had done that to her, after all.  He had been a bit
disgusted when he had touched her and found that she was a virgin.  He had
nearly lost interest in her then, but decided to go ahead and do the deed
anyway.  But at least she was getting away from him.  At least she never had to
see him again.  But Leto…
                She wasn’t sure if she should hug him.  Wasn’t sure if she
should say anything, or do anything.  She scooted a bit closer to him instead,
and gently took the bottle from him.  She put it to her lips again.  “He’s a
pervert,” she said.  To her surprise, he laughed.  It was another hollow sound,
something cynical and full of hurt, but it was laughter all the same.
                Abruptly, he changed the subject.  “The lyrium is finished,” he
said.  “Or, will be by tomorrow morning, rather.”
                “I know.  Everyone is talking about it,” she said.
                He glanced up at to the boughs of the tree.  “It means you’ll
get to leave soon,” he said, voice quiet.  She took another drink.  It was
beginning to taste a bit better.  “Mother knows how to read and write.  Make
sure she teaches you.”
                She paused, wanted to argue the usefulness of it, then
stopped.  This wasn’t the time to argue.  “I’ll try,” she said, a bit
grudgingly.
                He nodded, as if he weren’t really listening to her reply, and
simply expected her to do as instructed.  Maybe he was just thinking of other
things.  “And… could you name your child?  Before you leave,” he added quickly.
                She frowned, then brightened.  “Let’s name him now,” she said,
offering her brother the bottle again.  He took it from her, started to drink,
then apparently changed his mind.
                “We… should name the girl too,” he said softly.
                Varania paused.  “She’s dead.”
                He nodded.  “So her soul has something to call itself in the
Void, or at the Maker’s side… or in what Ginger called the Beyond,” he said,
sighing wistfully.  “Or whatever happens to our souls.”
                “I’m not sure we have souls,” Varania admitted.  She left
unsaid that the very concept of a soul was a foreign one to Danarius’ slaves. 
They were given nothing like religious education, and it was strongly
discouraged, sometimes with a whip or other device.  Perhaps religion was not
something a slave had any use for, and perhaps a soul was not something a slave
possessed.  And why would they?  Slaves owned nothing.  She frowned in
thought.  “I’m not good at thinking up names.”
                “Neither am I,” he said.
                The two went back and forth with names for a while, suggesting
and rejecting them.  Names they had heard, names half-remembered.  None felt
suitable.
                “Name her ‘Viscaria,’” Leto said suddenly. 
                That sounded so familiar…  “’Viscaria?’” Varania wondered.  It
was similar to her name, sort of.  Maybe that was where Leto had derived it
from.
                “Yes,” he said.  “It’s a type of flower.”
                That sounded familiar, too.  Where had she heard that before? 
She couldn’t seem to remember…  “Nothing I’ve ever heard of,” Varania said,
giving up on the matter.
                “You have,” he countered.
                She shook her head decidedly.  “I don’t remember.”
                “It was… a long time ago,” he said carefully.  “But it means
‘come dance with me’.”
                She frowned in thought.  “Does that really suit her?  I don’t
know.  I guess so.”  She had no idea.  She couldn’t know, would never know,
what her daughter may have ended up like.  She wished she had realized what she
did now before that moment.  Why hadn’t she seen?  Why…?  She feared that a
part of her would always feel guilt for her Sin, and some part would always be
broken for it.  But, she did deserve that part, and she could not blame the
child, she saw that now.  “I hope… that she would have grown up to dance—been
happy enough to.”
                “Mother used to dance,” Leto mused.
                “You told me that once,” Varania said suddenly.  “You said that
she sang too.  I’ve never heard Mama sing, or seen her dance.”
                He looked away.  “Maybe she will when she’s not a slave
anymore,” he said, his voice reflecting his hope.  She was dubious.  Even
Mieta’s laughter rang unclearly and short.  Varania had never known her to be
anything but mournful and sad.  “What about the boy?”
                She frowned in thought.  “What was Papa’s name?”
                A pause, then, “Calias.”
                “’Calias,’” she echoed, wrapping her arms around her legs.  “I
wish I could have met him.”  Her lips curved into a frown.  “What do you think
of that name?”
                Leto blinked.  “Father… died badly.  Give him a different
name,” he told her.  He looked down, his dark hair shadowing his troubled eyes.
                She looked at him, and had a sudden urge to ask how he had
died.  Then she saw the look on his face, and she didn’t.  He was in enough
pain right now.  She didn’t want to make it worse.  She never wanted to make
his pain worse.  “What about…”  She thought about it.  They discussed names,
and rejected all of them for one reason or another.
                “You know, I’ve thought of the girl as… Sin,” she admitted, a
little ashamed.  “My ‘Sin.’”
                He paused.  “I guess… that’s accurate,” he said with a little
reluctance.
                She looked down for a moment, and closed her eyes.  “I like
‘Shaislyn.’”
                Leto frowned.  “For… the girl?”
                Varania shook her head.  “Nope.  I’ll call him ‘Shai’ for
short.  Shai… and Viscaria.”
                Her brother nodded.  “All right.  Shai.”
 
                Though Leto certainly never paid attention, Mieta certainly
noted the passage of time.  She watched her son sitting on the floor with her
grandchild.  The older boy—no, he was a man now—put a finger against the babe’s
palm.  Instinctively the infant’s fingers curled around his finger.  It made
Leto smile.  His smiles—real smiles—were so rare that it made Mieta smile too. 
His smiles were fewer and fewer the older he became.  She wondered if he would
reach a point where he would forget completely how to laugh.
                She sat at the small table in the room.  They were family
quarters, for servants.  Leto had a separate room—a guest room—elsewhere, but
spent most of his time here when he could.  They all knew they didn’t have much
longer together, after all.
                No one talked about that though, not really.  No one wanted to.
                “Leto,” Mieta said gently.  Her son looked up, green eyes
behind locks as dark as jet.  It was getting long, and needed to be cut.  He
had kept it short when he was practicing every day, but he only went to the
training grounds a couple times a week now, just to keep in shape, and Danarius
had him close by at all other times.  She supposed that he just didn’t see a
point.  He had never liked haircuts, mostly it was that he didn’t like sitting
for so long and being so still.  “How about a haircut?”
                He made a face, swiping some of it out of his eyes.  “No
thanks,” he muttered.
                Varania giggled from the bed.  “You let it get much longer and
you’ll look like a girl, Leto,” she teased.
                He scowled at her.  “Shut up,” he suggested.  But she just
laughed.  “Well, they’ll be shaving it all off tomorrow anyway.”
                Varania stared at him, incredulous.  “What?”
                He made a face.  “They want those markings to go up to the base
of my skull.”
                She paused.  “Really?  …  Under your hairline?  Wait—will hair
even grow there after you get all… lyrium…ized?”
                He looked like he was tempted to laugh, but then seriously
considered her question.  “I really hope so.”
                She scowled.  “Then why didn’t they shave your hair off when
they were doing that… what was it called?”
                “Henna?” he offered.
                She nodded enthusiastically.  “Yeah—henna.”
                He shrugged a shoulder noncommittally.  “I’d look weird, and
the magister just makes a face when Raith mentions it.”  Varania laughed good-
naturedly.  “They were actually supposed to do that today, but Raith had to do
testing, so they put it off another day.”
                Mieta watched her children with some amount of satisfaction. 
She wasn’t at all worried about the people they were growing into.  She was
worried about the circumstances around each of them—especially Leto, but at
least she was confident in the man he was becoming.  He was everything she
could have wanted in him, really, when it came right down to it.  She wished
that he were happier, that he wasn’t a slave.  She wished he could smile more,
laugh more.  But he was loyal, strong, cared deeply for his family, was
attentive, forgiving (in time), thoughtful, and everything she had loved most
dearly about Calias.  It made her happy to see those same traits in her son.
                That evening, Leto slept on the floor, his sister and mother in
the beds.  The infant slept in Mieta’s bed, who was less likely to roll onto
him than Varania, who tossed and turned in her sleep.  In the morning, Varania
made faces as she changed the baby, Leto making sarcastic and discouraging
remarks about it.  The siblings made faces at one another, calling each other
names good-naturedly.  Mieta only smiled, and watched them, and kicked Leto in
the shin when Varania was struggling with another good insult.  She was
fiercely proud of her handsome, talented, smartass of a son.
                Leto scowled at his mother, but she smiled back, and hugged him
close.  “Oh, my son.  My beautiful baby boy…” she whispered, in her mind
wishing he was a child again and she could pick him up and swing him around,
holding him close to her, her entire world and existence in her arms.  Her
child, the most important thing in the world to her.  Her firstborn baby boy.
                He stared upwards, as if lost, but returned the embrace, a
little confused.  “Mother…?” he wondered.
                Her eyes watered.  “Leto…  Did you know you’re eighteen today?”
she whispered, and looked up at him.  She couldn’t help it; she felt emotional
about it.  Her little boy was a man, and though in her heart he would always be
her baby boy, he had been an adult for a long time now.  She wished he could
have stayed a child forever, that he never had to face the things he did now. 
She took a step back from him, so she could look at him.  She wiped at her
eyes.  “Eighteen years ago.  Four hours of labor, born at dawn.  Two days
late.”  She swiped at her eyes again.  “Eight pounds, four ounces…”
                Varania looked at them, one eyebrow quirked, amused.  Leto
looked like he wanted to run away.  Mieta was willingly oblivious to all of
this.  A mother had a right to be emotional about their baby growing up—her
firstborn.
                “Eighteen and a half inches,” she continued.  Leto had started
to flush with embarrassment, obviously just longing for her to stop.  She knew
he was leaving early, though, so felt no compunctions about keeping him.  He
always left before Shai needed feeding.  She felt the tears spill.  “And look
at you.”  She smiled through the tears, touching the side of his face.  She was
so proud of him, so happy to see him grown.  It had always been uncertain, as
slaves, if he would live to this age, if she would even see him reach
adulthood.  But he was eighteen, and she felt like… she wouldn’t see him again
next year, or any year after that.  On this date, it would be the last time she
ever saw him.  She was proud of the man he had become.  He would have made Lura
happy, she supposed.  “Oh, my baby…”
                He looked pained, but tolerated this.  “Mother…” he complained.
                But she ignored him, and hugged him again.  “I love you so
much, my son.”
                Varania rolled her eyes.  Leto shot her a glare, and hugged his
mother back, then the woman let him go, her eyes full of tears.
                But the mage only looked away.  Her mother never acted that way
with her.  Only Leto.  A part of her knew that it was because they were
leaving, and leaving Leto behind, and would never see him again.  She knew
that, but…
 
                When Leto came back that night with a bruise across his face in
addition to the henna and never even mind that they had shaved off all of his
hair, Varania of course immediately healed the bruise.  It was a nasty
one—swollen already, and purple.
                “You…  Look really stupid,” she said, gently lifting her hands
to the bruise.
                “I know,” he agreed.  “On the bright side, Danarius can barely
stand to look at me.”
                Varania kind of chuckled.  “Silver linings.”  A brief pause. 
“What did you do?” she grumbled.
                He sighed, and averted his eyes.  “I…” he started, then
stopped, and looked away when she healed it.  She supposed that she didn’t need
to know.  Probably didn’t want to, knowing Danarius.  Still, why would he hit
him like this?  What had happened?
 
                Leto had vomited.  Too much lyrium, he supposed.  Non-mages
didn’t handle it well.  Templars took it in measured doses at first, and drank
more of it later on, before they became addicted to it.  Deprived of the
substance, they went mad.  The same would happen to Leto, more than likely, if
the lyrium would ever—could ever, for that matter—be removed from his flesh.
                Part of the conditioning he needed to undergo included this. 
Danarius was putting so much lyrium into him, and not just like a tattoo with
ink, but more like an implant.  And there was a risk of his body rejecting the
lyrium.  The conditioning process would ease the rejection process, and if all
went well, his body would accept it and adapt.  And, like a small miracle, he
would have created something akin to a Templar or a spirit warrior in ability,
without the need to carry around lyrium for their abilities.
                But Danarius had apparently given him too much too soon and too
concentrated, and the kid had thrown it up.  He had been angry enough to hit
him—hard enough to knock the elf sprawling, but quickly calmed.  He made a new
order—all of Leto’s meals would be given to him in his room only, and
everything in it would have small trace amounts of the lyrium.
                The rest of the process was completely mental.  A week before
the ritual, he would place Leto in a cell in the dungeon alone.  He would be
washed and cleaned every day with a rough lye soap like any other of Danarius’
slaves (he would find any easily avoided disease loose amongst his slaves as
nothing short of insulting), fed, but kept alone and in the dark—that was part
of the mental conditioning.  The rest of it he had been working on since he had
won the contest.
                His mind had to be open enough for it, his spirit crushed
enough to accept it.  He had to be ambiguous enough to accept help from a
demon, his very soul wielding to tampering.  Part of what he was going to do to
him had to be done from the Fade.  All was going according to plan.  His pet
was proving a perfect specimen, even though he wanted no mistakes, no chances. 
Every precaution was made, every step.
                Danarius watched dispassionately as the tear rolled slowly down
his cheek, his lips parted as if to gasp, lower lip quivering.  Leto’s eyes
were open wide, and squeezed shut in turns.  They opened whenever Raith made a
new cut, and squeezed shut again when he began to drag the thin blade across
his flesh.
                He had been at it for most of an hour now.  It was his final
test.  “Make it permanent” Danarius had said, handing him a knife.  If Raith
wasn’t confident, then the lyrium would fail.  Raith, for all his faults, had
not even blinked.  It was a different tool; that was all, and he carved with
precision and grace, his hand steady and never faltering.  It was admirable—a
craftsman well comfortable with their trade.
                Leto had stared at the blade with a growing sense of horror,
and gasped with the first incision.  Danarius had told him to stay very, very
still, and the boy obeyed.  He never did anything less, of course, and he did
try to stay quiet, but it was difficult enough to stay still when someone was
carving into his chest.
                “Raith.  Stop for a moment,” Danarius told him as he finished
off a line.  Leto looked pale, and sick, trembling as the blood ran down his
chest.  It wasn’t even halfway finished.  He called in a servant, and had them
fetch some water.  He commanded Leto to sit until the water was brought, so he
did, shaking all the while.  Raith swiped sweat from his brow, setting the
bloodied blade down.  He looked at it again, and cleaned it off carefully.
                “We should give him something for the pain,” Raith commented,
staring at Leto as if he were nothing more than a piece of furniture, which he
was to Raith.  He discussed the elf’s pain as if a piece of furniture needed to
be propped.  “He’ll never make it through the whole thing if we don’t.”
                “He will,” Danarius countered.  “Pet.”  Leto blinked, raising
his head a little, but still shaking as he bled.  “Don’t hesitate to tell us if
you need Raith to stop.  I don’t want you to fall or something; it could hurt
you.”
                Leto looked down.  “Yes, Master.”
                Raith made a face.  “Let me take him down to the dungeon to do
this.  We can shackle him.”
                “No,” Danarius said, slightly irritated.  “This is just as much
about my pet’s obedience as it is about your test of skill.”
                Raith raised an eyebrow.  “You’re testing his tolerance too.  I
hate to say it, but how loyal is he going to be to you when you insist on
torturing him?”
                Danarius looked back at his slave.  “He knows better than to do
anything else.  Don’t you, pet?”
                Leto was still shivering, in obvious pain.  “I’ll do anything
you say, Master,” he said, and it was half a plead, and Danarius knew what the
other half was:  For the pain to stop.
                “Just a while longer, pet.”  The door opened, and the servant
came in with the water, which the magister directed to his little wolf.  His
slave drank greedily, and Danarius gave him a minute or two longer before they
resumed.  The rest of his chest was finished, and Raith delicately carved out
the parts on his neck and face, and Leto had to have him stop for a little
while.  A short break, and he started on his shoulders, down his arms, and
finally his back.  Leto took that one a little easier—either because he had
been whipped enough times in the past, or just because he couldn’t see it and
it made it easier to take, Danarius couldn’t say.  Leto had to bend his head
forward to make it easier for Raith while he cut into the back of his neck,
past his hairline, up to the base of his skull, and the other small marks that
accompanied it.
                But Raith didn’t hesitate once, didn’t make a single error. 
The blood continued to drip, and a slave was called in to clean it up, and
cleaned off Leto while Raith rested.  Finally, Raith started carving in his
hips, and it flowed across to his lower stomach, his sides, and down a little
lower.  Leto made a low whining noise at the first incision, and continued to
make faces and whine with every individual cut, gasping on more than one
occasion, but otherwise remaining perfectly still.  Danarius watched his eyes
water through the pain.
                “Yeah, I don’t like it any more than you do, elf,” Raith
muttered, flicking his wrist with the last cut there.  Danarius made Raith stop
for a while after that, and let Leto kneel on the floor, making small noises of
pain and possibly crying.  Some of the cuts had stopped bleeding by now, but
probably still hurt.  The magister had once read that being skinned was the
worst pain imaginable.  He finished off the last of the letters he was writing,
and put his seal into the wax, tossing it into the pile of others.  So much to
take care of…
                “Resume,” the magister said, waving vaguely at Leto.
                Raith looked at the slave impassively.  “This is too much for
him.”
                “How do you think he’ll survive the Ritual, if he can’t do
this?”
                His apprentice snorted.  “Because he’ll be drugged, in a
trance, and the spell will run its course whether he can stay on his feet or
not.”
                “Physically,” Danarius countered.  “Leto, on your feet.”  The
boy stopped, and staggered upright, but stayed shivering.  “Continue.”
                Raith seemed reluctant, but bent to his task.  With his lower
half, he began at his feet—which were tender.  Danarius remembered the way that
Leto had cringed and twitched when his feet and ankles were touched—both of
which were of course cut.  The markings wound up his legs, around his calves,
over his knee.  A single line over the back of his knee that made Leto twitch;
it was a sensitive area, and he was a gladiator; a blow there could mean death
in the arena.  Danarius watched his slave fight down the urge to move, to
retaliate.  Green eyes closed again, gave a small shudder and a whimper as the
blade slice upwards, curling up his thigh, over his buttocks.  Then it began
again on the other leg, and even then, Raith still wasn’t quite finished.
                The apprentice rose to his feet, and Leto stared straight
forward, or tried to.  It was hard not to watch a bloodied blade coming toward
your face.  His hands raised, just a little, as if to force the mage backwards
when the blade bit into his forehead, and traced a perfect, small circle, and
two more in a perfect, symmetrical trinity, two of them behind his hairline.
                The blood ran down his face, and mingled with the tears of
pain, but Raith smiled, stepping back.
                “I’m finished,” he said, unnecessarily.
                “That was excellent,” Danarius said, more than satisfied with
his apprentice’s work.  “Go have a well-deserved rest, Raith.  Leto, sit down
before you fall down.”  On shaking legs, he half-knelt and half-collapsed to
the floor.  Raith excused himself in a hurry, anxious to be anywhere else.
                The magister continued his work for several minutes, only
looking up again when he had finished reviewing a couple of the petitions he
was working on—and rejecting one of them, placing the other into review.
                “Come here, pet,” he called, voice gentle as if calling to an
animal.  Leto struggled to his feet, and staggered as he walked toward him, and
shook when he stood beside him.  Danarius watched the blood trail down his
face, mingled with the cold sweat.  Every cut was perfect, he noticed upon
inspection.  Each and every one.  Not a single cut out of place, or a mismark. 
His apprentice had done well, for once.  Not that Raith was entirely useless,
mind, Danarius simply thought little of him; it kept him trying harder.
                The mage touched the cut on his chin, below his lip, and traced
the one on his neck with a finger.  Leto shivered and cringed throughout, but
did nothing to stop him, as he knew he would not.  Danarius ran his fingers,
now coated in a thin layer of blood, over his slave’s cheek, along the
cheekbone.  “You did well today too, my pet.”
                Leto said nothing, only looked down.
                “You hate it when I call you that,” he said, smirking only a
little.  “Worse, when you know I use it as an affectionate term for you.”  The
elf’s eyes slid closed.  “You are so lovely, though, aren’t you?”  His hand
slid to the elf’s shoulder, trailing through the blood and the network of cuts
down to his chest, his thumb resting on one of his nipples.
                “Please…” Leto whispered.
                Slowly, the magister pinched his nipple between thumb and
forefinger, slightly displeased.  “Do you not remember what I told you about
begging?”
                Leto was silent for a moment, and Danarius took it for assent,
toying with the hard nub between his fingers.  “Master…” Leto whispered again. 
Danarius almost slapped him, but pinched down harder instead.  After what he
had just endured, the elf barely flinched, but did notice.  “Please… it hurts…”
                He let go.  “Oh,” he said, realizing he had misinterpreted his
pet’s plea.  “Turn around.  Before I heal it, I want to look at all of it.”
                Leto turned, hesitant.  The magister kind of smirked at that. 
He gave a long look at the incisions on his back, the design etched out onto
his living flesh—like a carving on living stone.
                He rose, looking at his shoulders.  Perfect.  He touched both
his shoulder blades, his hands falling down his back as he inspected every
inch, looking for even the slightest flaw or mistake.  Nothing.
                His hands rested on the elf’s hips, squeezing gently, one of
his hands running over his firm backside, and when he realized that he was
paying more attention to the way the elf felt than the markings on him, he
stopped, and kind of smiled.
                The blue healing light spilled from his hands, running over the
elf like water, but when the light faded, it left light scars, just as the
magister intended.
                Leto stared at his hands, even the palms marked with scars.  He
looked so lovely, so perfect.  And his if he wanted him.  And he wanted him,
which was the problem.
                “Get out,” Danarius told him, sitting back down.
                Leto did not need to be told twice; the elf was gone a handful
of heartbeats later.
 
                Leto was better with smaller trace amounts of lyrium in his
food.  Leto knew, of course, but had been instructed to eat it anyway.  There
was no hiding the taste of lyrium—it was a metal, after all.  Danarius didn’t
care for the taste too much either, but the mages did do everything they could
to make it more palatable for potions, and dim the music it made a little. 
Similarly, Danarius made sure that the foods he gave Leto were good foods,
rather than the type suitable for a slave.  Rather, he gave him meals more
suitable to his personal pet.  Elves had a sensitive palate, though—a problem
for slave owners for years.  It wasn’t such a problem in soups or stews when
everything was boiled and relatively the same, and beans and rice were mild
enough.
                So, at first, the servants gave Leto small portions of a
variety of different meats, vegetables, and fruits, and simply had them take
note of which were most consumed.
                He had no doubt that, if not confined to his room, he would
have given the fine foods to his family members, which briefly annoyed
Danarius, only to be self-satisfied in that he wouldn’t remember them a few
weeks from now.
                Fish was actually the meat he ate the most of.  Not
surprising—the taste overpowered the lyrium flavor for the most part.  Red
meats just seemed to bring it out more, after all, and chicken tasted like pure
lyrium in flesh form.  So Danarius adjusted his meals accordingly, and slowly
had the servants add more lyrium to it.  Living in a port city, fish was easy
to come by anyway.
                Right now, Raith was mixing more of the lyrium into the form
they would need of it for the Ritual.  Danarius had already prepared a portion
of it earlier in the day, during the painting.  Since that day, he had made
some effort to be absent for it, and the need to refine the lyrium provided a
good enough excuse.  Frankly, the way his little pet looked— groomed and
cleaned—was distracting at best.  It had been several days, and his hair had
grown out enough that he didn’t look quite so ridiculous.  He didn’t want to
make his pet miserable enough to want to die, or consider suicide to escape
what he had in store.  He briefly wished there was a way around it, but this
was the most effective method.
                He doubted he would, but it was always best to err on the side
of caution, after all.  Self-preservation was a strong instinct, and if Leto’s
mind were warped enough, he could see dying as a form of self-preservation over
time.
                There was a cautious knock on the door, before it slid open on
silent hinges.  A young girl stepped through the doorway, her head down.
                “You… summoned me... Master?” she asked tentatively.
                The magister raised an eyebrow.  “Varania.  I am hardly your
master any longer—your brother saw to that.”  He steepled his fingers
together.  “A more proper term, now, would be ‘mesere.’”
                She swallowed.  “Mesere,” she corrected herself.  “What do you…
wish of me?”
                Better, and she was appropriately frightened.  He took a moment
to study her.  Motherhood had only seemed to improve her, really.  She had been
a young girl a year ago.  Now, she looked more a woman to his eyes—milk-heavy
breasts, more of a swell of her hips.  Any weight she might have gained from
pregnancy, though, was gone through eating slave rations, and the brutal way in
which her twins had been birthed.  He had a brief flash of her, disemboweled
and covered in blood.  Even using some of her blood in the magic had not been
enough to disperse all of it.  His magic had boiled and consumed only some of
her blood—taking all of it would have been too easy, he assumed.  “I want to
buy your son from you.”
                She looked up, her eyebrows arched briefly in confusion, then
furrowed in anger.  “No.  I won’t sell him into slavery,” she snapped.
                “Did I say that I wanted him as a slave?” he questioned her. 
My, how presumptuous.  “No.  I just want to buy him for, say, a few hours—a day
at most.  You can have him back afterwards.”
                Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “Is this… about the Ritual, m…
mesere?” she asked hesitantly.
                He saw no reason to lie.  She would figure it out quite quickly
when he took Leto and the child both on the same day.  “Yes.”
                The confusion showed plainly on her face.  “What… why?”
                That, he had no intention of divulging to her, even if she did
deserve a full explanation—which she did not.  “That’s my business alone.  He
will most likely survive it, however.  Of course I will pay you for the use of
him.”
                She shook her head angrily.  “No,” she hissed through gritted
teeth.  “I won’t give him to you.”  With that, she turned on her heel, and
would have left, except that the magister spoke.
                “Send your brother to me,” he ordered her.
                She froze.  “He was finished for the day,” she said quietly,
and her head turned to look at him.
                Danarius felt a slow smile creep across his face.  “I’m not
finished with him.”  He paused, for effect mostly.  “Rather, send him to my
quarters.”  Her back straightened, her eyes going wide.  “He looks… quite
lovely, don’t you think?—now.”
                All the color drained from Varania’s face, her lips parted as
if she wanted to speak, but no sound escaped her throat.  She shook her head. 
“You can’t do this to him,” she pleaded, turning around to face her former
master.
                Danarius was amused.  “Can’t I?”
                Her eyes watered in pain.  “Please… you can’t…”
                He pretended to disregard her, picking up a form he had already
looked at.  He imitated studying the form.  “Do as you’re told, Varania.”
                Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shaking, and her
horror and fear had turned to rage.  “How dare you do this to him!” she
hissed.  He sensed more than saw her magic building.  His free hand curled into
a loose ball, prepared to throw up a shield should she do anything regretful. 
“Leave him alone.”  Then he felt her reign in her own power, but he kept his
spell at the ready.  And now she only looked sorrowful.  “Promise me you’ll
leave my brother alone…  I don’t want money, just leave him alone… and I’ll
give you Shai.”
                And she had played quite nicely into that.  Danarius did not
smile, or even act interested in her plea.  “You’ll have to be more specific,
elf,” he informed her.
                She looked heartbroken to say it out loud.  “Don’t touch him. 
Stop… hurting him,” she said haltingly.  “Stop hitting him.”  Her eyes
watered.  “And… don’t rape him…  Just leave Leto alone.  Haven’t you done
enough?”
                He decided to ignore that last remark.  “So, if I agree to stop
hurting Leto, you’ll give me the boy for a day?”
                She looked down, and nodded.  “Yes,” she choked.  And she
looked up.  “But you can’t just order someone else to do it either.”
                He almost laughed.  Smart girl.  But not smart enough.  “Very
well; I agree to your terms.  I will ‘leave Leto alone’ and you will give me
the boy for the Ritual.”
                Varania looked away, and nodded her consent of this.  “Yes,”
she whispered.  He dismissed her, on the condition that she not speak of their
agreement.  He did not think she would anyway, but he did like to take
precautions.
                What amused him the most about it was the terms:  He would
leave Leto alone.  Well, fact of the matter, once his little wolf had his
memory erased, his name was the first thing he was changing.
                He had been giving it some thought, but hadn’t quite come up
with anything he liked just yet.  He wanted something fitting, something he
could think of him as.  He was in no real rush, but did see the need to come up
with a suitable name soon.  The Ritual was nearing, after all.
***** The Dark *****
Chapter Summary
     Leto faces final preparations for the Ritual and runs into someone
     that disappeared from the slave compound weeks ago. Danarius finds a
     suitable new name for Leto.
                The darkness yawned and stretched like a thing alive,
conquering the recesses of the place, penetrating the crevices of the stone. 
It was a darkness so complete there was no shadow—only a nameless black.  A
shadow would have implied light and definition, no matter how vague.
                In the yawning darkness, there was no light, and so the
blackness thrived.  There was nothing to see, here in the dark.
                The scent of the place was that of despair—which held a scent
of its own, faint and intangible, flavouring everything it touched.  The
despair peppered the cold scent of the stone, the smooth granite, and the
single iron door of the windowless place.
                But hands could make out the stone walls.  Fingers could trace
the stone, touch the mortar and know that hands—who’s?--had crafted this
place.  A small comfort amidst the crushing dark, to know that others, too, had
seen the place.
                Sound echoed here, and the darkness seemed to resent it.  Sound
and touch shattered its illusion of infinity.  The darkness seemed vast and
empty, but it was all illusion, for the darkness was contained in four corners,
by cold stone and mortar.
                The black crushed around the inhabitant in the dark, seeking to
obliterate the one who so often disturbed the silence, who sought the walls and
was reminded that everything, including the dark, was only finite.
                A piercing sound rang out, so sharp it could have cut the
dark.  The darkness seemed to press for a moment, to loom and become so thick
it was nearly tangible.  A second sound pushed it back—keeping the impending
suffocation at bay—for now.
                There was a slithering noise like smooth scales sliding across
stone, and then silence as the inhabitant listened.  Distantly, a door could be
heard opening in the chambers above.
                As the inhabitant of the dark listened, ears grown sensitive in
the strict silence, footsteps could be heard, echoing only softly off the stone
steps.  More than one—most strange.  Only one guard came down at a time, or it
was the mage.  All the same, one at a time.  Perhaps the mage had come at the
same time the guard would be changed?
                Unless they had changed routine.  That could be so.  They
usually kept their routines, and their schedules, but such a thing was not
always the case, nor was it necessary.  Perhaps circumstances had changed in
the world above.
                It made no difference to the inhabitant in the dark.  The world
of the dark had been the same for… a very long time.  What felt forever.  The
passage of time was impossible to tell in the dark.  Though the space had once
seemed larger, to be certain.
                Perhaps it had been larger.  Perhaps the space were shrinking,
or perhaps the inhabitant grew.  Either way, it was impossible to really know,
here in the dark.
                The inhabitant listened, heard words being spoken in the outer
chamber.  A key turned in a lock, and the lock tumbled obediently.  The outer
door groaned in protest, sliding against the stone.  A thin shaft of light was
visible under the iron door.  The inhabitant blinked against even that weak
light, shown through the metal grill in the door.
                The inhabitant wondered if now was time for feeding, or the
Pain.
                But it was not the inhabitant’s door that creaked open, and a
sound like someone being shoved into another cell, stumbling on the stone, and
the door clanging shut could be heard.  It locked, and heavy leather boots
struck against the stone.  The outer door shut, and the weak light was gone,
leaving only the looming darkness.
                The darkness would swallow the inhabitant.  It felt
inevitable.  It stretched all around, sometimes threatening, sometimes
comforting.  Sometimes it clutched, and other times it cradled, but it was
ever-present.  It felt like the presence of a god—intangible but real to one
with eyes to see it.
                The inhabitant shifted in the dark, curious about the new
person in the cell.  Fingernails scraped along the iron as the inhabitant
clutched at the bars.
                “Is anyone there?” a voice called out, hesitant, masculine. 
The darkness did not like voices.  It did not like anything that gave it depth.
                “There?” the inhabitant echoed, testing the word, rolling it
over the tongue, the lips, enjoying the sound it made.
                A pause, then, “Hello?”
                The inhabitant blinked in the darkness.  “Hello?”
                “Is that… Raenya?”
                The name gave the inhabitant pause, made the inhabitant think,
and wonder.  A name.  Surely, a name had been something possessed?  A name
given, a name chosen, a name assumed—but a name.  Yes, a name.  Had it been
that name?  But any name would do—certainly.  Yes, Raenya was a name.  A
suitable name.  A familiar name.  Perhaps that had been the inhabitant’s name,
before the Pain came, and the madness with it.
                “Raenya,” the inhabitant echoed, and laughed at the sound.  The
laughter was a sound tinged with madness.
                There was a long, long pause and the darkness reached around
the pair like talons.  “How long have you been down here, Raenya?” he asked,
and sounded concerned.
                “Time,” said the madness, slipping away from the bars, falling
back towards the far wall.
                Another pause, and the darkness tightened its loving embrace. 
It was painful—the embrace.  “What have they done to you?” he whispered, more
to himself than to the inhabitant or even the darkness.
                What was done?  “The darkness.  The Pain.  The madness,” the
other whispered, half-cackling.
                The male-voice tried a different approach.  “Do you remember
me, Raenya?  I’m Leto.”
                Raenya…  Leto…  Images, color and light—not the darkness, not
of Pain, and not yet tinged with madness.  “Raenya… Leto…”  The voice echoing
in the inhabitant’s throat was not tinted with madness.  The mind teetered on
the edge of understanding.
                “Yes.  Do you remember Arrin?  Your brother.  And Varania—you
two used to play together,” he went on.
                Arrin…  Varania…  Names.  So many names.  Names for people? 
Things?  Colors?  Sounds?  Not names for the darkness.  The darkness had no
name.  But still the images came.  Images of faces, of sights, and then
memories.  Real memories, not of darkness or pain, but of sunlight and grass,
arms lifting her into the air, the feel of the soil under her bare feet,
weaving buttercups and daisies into her hair…  Kissing a servant boy around a
corner when no one was watching, working in the kitchen, serving food…  Her
foster-brother Arrin…  Leto killing him…
                “Leto?  Is that really you?” Raenya asked, her voice breaking. 
Tears welled in her eyes, and she scampered to the door, in an effort to get
closer to another person.
                She felt his relief, even with two doors between them. 
“Raenya!  Is this what happened to you?”
                She swiped at her eyes.  “Yes,” she admitted.  “Oh, it’s
awful…  Raith… does something to me, with magic.  I don’t know what exactly,
but… it hurts so much.  I hope…  I hope they’re not going to do it to you too.”
                Another pause.  “I don’t…  I don’t think so,” he said, his
voice weak.  “I think… they might be experimenting on you.”  Then a pause
again.  “But I fear… that I’m going to be the finished product.”
                She was silent, and could think of nothing to say.  She asked
him about what was going on since her disappearance, curious to know how long
it had been.
                He gave her what information he could of course.  She admitted
that she had hated him for a long time over what had happened to her foster
brother, whose mother had so readily taken her when she had first come here. 
But now, she didn’t think she had the capacity to truly hate any more.  The
madness that had gripped her so tightly only a short while ago still crept at
the recesses of her mind, and she could feel it there.  The madness had sapped
her capacity to hate, to love.
                Raith came back.  It could have been minutes, or hours, even
days.  All was the same down there.
                Leto listened, she knew, in horrified silence, while she
screamed until her throat was too sore to do so, and she fell to whimpering. 
As Raith left her, lying still on the floor, she heard him say, to Leto, “Two
weeks from now, you’ll know why she was screaming.”
                More people came in and out of the dungeons with Leto being
there.  They only fed Raenya once a day, but they brought Leto food more
frequently, and even someone with a bucket of water so he could bathe a couple
times.
                Raenya was jealous, a bit, but too crestfallen to care
overmuch.  He told her that he would give her his food if he only could.  She
believed him.  When the guards heard them talking, they were first told to be
quiet.  But sometime after that, Raith came down with a guard.
                The guard held Raenya still… while Raith cut out her tongue
with a hot knife.  He used the spilled blood to fuel his own magic, and kept
her from bleeding to death.  Leto had begged and pleaded with them not to,
promising not to talk to her any more, but he was just as ignored in this as
she was.
                It was hard to swallow, without a tongue, even the thin gruel
she was sustained on.  Her mouth was so dry, her throat dryer than before.  Her
lips cracked, and she could not relieve them.  She was tempted, sometimes, to
touch the stub of her tongue with her fingers, but did not.  It was too
horrifying to consider.
                She had cried for a while, at first.  When Raith came to
experiment on her, to practice, he called it, she had discovered she could
still scream just as well.  They put out her eyes, too, though that one they
did not explain or give reason to, and Leto begged them to leave her alone. 
They did not.  She saw nothing any more, but the darkness was all the same
regardless.
                Leto had tried to comfort her, but the guards reported that
too.  Later, someone came and shoved something into her ears, deeper than it
should ever have gone.  The last thing she heard was Leto screaming, begging
them not to hurt her anymore.  It hurt—unbelievably so.  And the world had gone
mute to her.  Then, a bit of cloth was forced inside her ears, and her hands
shackled behind her back, a fold of cloth wound around the empty sockets of her
eyes, more for Raith’s sake than hers.  She heard nothing any more, not even
the sound of her screams, or the door opening.
                She had to carefully feel for the bowl of gruel intermittently
with her toes, never knowing when the door opened.  After a while, she realized
that there was a slight change in the air, and that was when the door creaked
open.  She imagined that it creaked, anyway—she couldn’t tell any more.
                With her hands shackled, she put her lips against the gruel in
the bowl and took it into her mouth, and tilted her head back to swallow, and
she could barely drink the water at all.  She was always so thirsty.  So
incredibly thirsty.  She couldn’t hear, or speak.  She could smell, and found
that her nose was more sensitive than before, but that wasn’t always a good
thing.
                The chamber pot in the corner was overflowing.  There was mold
growing in the dungeon.
                When she felt the knife against her throat, she almost welcomed
her death.
 
                Raith had painted on the henna to Leto’s skin in the room they
would be using for the ritual.  Everything was prepared.  Everything was
ready.  It would be tomorrow.
                Years of waiting.  Years of preparation, and study, and
work—all of it about to pay off.  The power of a Templar, but without the
reliance of a steady supply of lyrium.  Maybe more power.  And he finally had
all the elements in place.  He was confident; it would work.
                The door opened.  It was Raith, Leto trailing behind him
wearing nothing but a thin robe, so sheer he might as well not be wearing it. 
His embarrassment to be seen in it showed plainly—his face was reddened. 
Danarius was only amused by it.
                “Master,” Raith said, bowing slightly, and presenting the elf. 
“For your inspection.”  How long had Raith been apprenticing here?  Two years
longer than he had had Leto, roughly—which meant…  Twenty years?  It took a
lifetime to become a magister, was the saying.  A lifetime of training, not
just in magic, but in protocol, and to survive being a magister also took a
lifetime of training.  Danarius wasn’t boasting, and he could say that he was
skilled at it—something special even, to have not only survived the game so
long, but to have stepped into it so young.  No one had thought he could do it,
and he was confident that he would not die from a knife in the dark, or in any
of the duels he had participated in.  Raith had been undergoing testing to
become a magister for the past couple of years.  The process had become slower
since Danarius had ascended to the rank, much to the magister’s displeasure. 
Still, the time would be soon, and he was pleased by this, actually.  Raith
would be forever indebted to him, and he would have an ally amidst the
magisters—an invaluable resource.
                Danarius appraised the elf.  Cleaned, manicured, his hair
shaved off, skin gleaming.  “The robe.”  He said, gesturing.  Even though the
robe was thin, Leto was still reluctant to shed it, but he did.  It slid to the
floor, and he stood before him, naked, and stunning.  The magister had him
turned several times, inspecting every graceful line of henna.  It was perfect,
expertly done—months of practice honed to perfection.  Raith looked proud of
himself, and he should be.
                “Perfect.  Take him to a guest room, not the dungeon,” he said
with a slight nod.  “No food, but plenty of water.  No lyrium either,” he added
as an afterthought.
                Leto’s eyes narrowed.  “Master.  What of our agreement?” he
said acidly.  “Regarding Lura?”
                The magister smirked.  “All in good time, my pet,” he told
him.  He addressed Raith briefly, discussing the Ritual primarily, and going
over necessary things.  They spoke for a time, and Danarius paused for a
moment, his face going carefully blank, not a noise escaping his lips.  He felt
the girl swallow, and he reached under the desk, and his fingers gripped her
hair.
                He hauled her out from under the desk, and shoved her roughly
aside.  She stumbled, swiping at her mouth.  She looked up at Leto.  He made a
pleasant variety of facial expressions, ranging from shock, to horror, and
finally settling on outrage.  Her own expression was that of concern, when her
gaze lingered on his cut genitals.
                “She…  Our agreement was that she go free, Master,” he hissed. 
Something in him had changed in his stay in the dungeon.  He added the “Master”
bit only out of a sense of necessity.  His anger was taking hold, overpowering
his common sense.  Interesting.  But Danarius had uses for anger.  Angry,
fearful people were easy to manipulate.
                “She will.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “After tomorrow.”  The elf
stared down, fingers curling into angry fists.  But he said nothing.  “At any
rate, I’m finished with the whore.  Raith, send her to the barracks.”
                Leto’s head snapped up.  “No!” he protested, his jaw set in
fury.
                The magister looked at his slave.  “’No’?” he questioned him. 
“She’s a whore.  I’m certain she’s been with more… disagreeable men.”
                His voice came out a strangled, furious whisper, “Leave her
alone.”
                Danarius raised an eyebrow, and he began to give an order, but
Lura actually strode toward him.  Her features were that of desperation. 
“Leto, don’t do this,” she pleaded with him, taking his hands gently in hers. 
He looked at her, and she didn’t even seem to be aware that he was naked—and
shaved.  Danarius decided that he hated his little wolf without hair; it was
weird and unpleasant.  Elves needed hair—their ears were even more ridiculous
without it.  The two looked at each other, and when they did, they were all
that existed in the world to one another.  “He’s right, Leto; I’ve been with
worse.  So… please…  Don’t get yourself hurt trying to protect me.”
                She loves him.  That much was plain.  It was in her every
gesture, her every movement, the way she spoke to him and the tender way she
gazed into his eyes.  “Lura…  I can’t…” he protested.  And how much this hurt
Leto gave Danarius cause to wonder if the feelings might be mutual.
                “Are you finished with this drama?” Danarius mused.  The pair
turned toward him, as if nothing else in the world had existed a moment ago.  A
couple in love often felt that way, though.  And he hated them for it.  He was
sadistically pleased that Leto would not remember her after the Ritual.  But he
begrudged them their affections in the meantime.  “Raith, the whore is yours. 
Do what you will with her, and send her to the barracks when you’re finished. 
Leave orders for the guards that come dawn, she is to be moved to the servant
quarters—with Leto’s family.”  A slow smile spread across his face.  “So they
had best hurry with her.”
                Lura looked down, but Leto pulled her close to him, encircling
her in his arms.  The magister’s eyes narrowed.
                Roschelle…
                “No,” Leto hissed, eyes sliding closed, his fingers holding
onto her so tightly that it looked like he might be bruising her milk-white
arms.  They actually made quite the pair—he dark, and she so light.
                Danarius heard himself sigh.  True, he could do nothing to
punish Leto, exactly.  He would not risk his vessel for anything, but Lura was
something else, as was Varania and his mother.  “Leto.  Let go of her, or
Varania joins her.”
                Lura whispered something to him, and he looked at the world as
if it were nothing but pain, but his grip slackened, and he let go of her.  She
stepped slowly away from him, and smiled to him, sadly, mouthed something to
him.  Leto’s eyes slid closed, and he hung his head as Raith appraised the
girl, and the elven whore followed the apprentice out the door.
                When the door closed, and they were alone, Leto looked up.  He
was seething with rage so tangible that if he were blind he could see it. 
“Damn you,” the elf whispered.  “And everything you are.”
                “Remember who your master is,” said Danarius, ever amused by
his slave’s ramblings.  He had been amused by him since he had first seen him
in that cage.  That he had dared to glare at him, that he had dared to try to
kill him.  And now, daring this.  It had been his rage.  All this time, what
had so amused him was the elf’s capacity for rage.
                Leto snorted disdainfully.  “You won’t do anything to me,” he
snarled, lips curling in open disgust.  “I’m too important to you.”  His words
were full of the utmost contempt.
                “Not to you, no.  But there’s still Lura, and your mother and
sister,” he corrected, though left out his nephew.  He had plans for the whelp
too.
                Leto seemed to regain himself, reign in his rage.  Green eyes
slid closed briefly, and when he opened them, the tide of rage had ebbed.  “I
apologize, Master.  I… I’m not sure what came over me,” he added, as if
suddenly lost.
                Interesting.  Danarius appraised him again.  The henna was
cracking with every movement.  The servants would be picking it up for days, he
imagined.  Beyond that, he still looked… lovely, from about the neck down
anyway—oh, his hair...  “If you were any of the other slaves, or even a
servant, I’d cut out your tongue for those words.”  It was something he was
fond of—the horror stayed with the living for the rest of their lives, after
all.  They could never forget.  “However, being that you are yourself, perhaps
I will extract that punishment on your mother.”
                Leto’s eyes widened in horror.  “No…  I… please, not that,” he
begged him, appalled.  “Please, Master, don’t…”
                And the magister smirked.  “And what would you do to apologize
for your rash behaviour, Leto?”
                And the elf knelt, head low.  “Please, Master, accept my
apology; I was wrong.”
                He certainly knew how to make all the motions of apology, he
would give him that.  And he may even mean it.  But Danarius remembered all too
clearly Leto’s embrace with Lura, and felt his own anger boil at it.  If he
couldn’t have Roschelle, what right had anyone to such happiness?
                “Do you love Lura?” he asked Leto, once more.  “And don’t lie.”
                Leto paused.  The pause was so long that the magister began to
feel annoyed, but then his slave spoke.  “I… think so, Master,” he whispered. 
“I don’t really know.”
                “Do you hate me?” Danarius wondered suddenly, curious.  Leto
did not answer.  It wasn’t that he paused, he just knelt, lower, until his
forehead touched the wooden floor, which was answer enough for most people. 
“Lura has been here since last night.  I don’t need to tell you what I did with
her, do I?”  He watched Leto’s fingers curl into angry fists, then the boy took
a deep breath, and relaxed.  “I wonder if Raith has gotten her to bed yet.”
                Fingers clenched again.  “What do you want?” Leto cried, voice
furious but tinged with desperation.
                His lips pressed into a thin line.  “Get out.  Go to your room,
and stay there.  You remember where it is, I trust?”
                Leto only nodded dimly.  He slipped on the thin robe, and was
gone in moments.
                The magister attended the remains of his paperwork, signing
papers and a series of other nonsense.  He finished it off, and left the room. 
The day was dimming.  Tomorrow would be a long day.
                He started to go to his quarters, then changed his mind.
                Leto and Lura embracing was burned into his memory.  It pleased
him to think of Lura in the barracks all night.  But what of Leto?  Lying awake
thinking about it, he imagined.
                What he wanted to do, what he really wanted to do, was go to
Leto’s room, that guest room to which he had been confined.  He wanted to open
the door without ceremony, bend the boy over the bed and fuck him.
                But that was a bad idea.  He had spent too long getting Leto
properly conditioned to ruin it all on a perverse desire.  When he thought
about it, it might be best if Leto had some peace of mind before the ceremony. 
It would calm him.
                He would allow him to see his family tomorrow, and Lura too,
but only briefly.  He would ensure all of them that, regardless of anything,
the ceremony would be over by sunrise the next day, and their ship set sail
that evening after the Ritual—everything was perfectly planned and executed. 
The next morning, Leto would likely not be conscious yet, and that was the
prime time to start moving him to the country for the next two years.
                He would forget everything—he hoped he still remembered motor
functions, though that was at risk too if he weren’t careful.  He would be
careful.  He had already sought to hiring a man to re-teach Leto the ways of
the sword and combat.
                Leto…
                That name had to go.  He hadn’t had the time to put the thought
into what he wanted to name his little wolf.  That was a shame.
                He needed a new name when he woke up—lost, alone, and
frightened.
                Danarius reasoned that he would have a name by then.  He would
meditate on the matter, and pick something suitable.  Something he himself
could live with.  Nothing elven.  He wanted no hint of a former life, no hint
of anything really except perhaps of his role and purpose in life—Danarius’
slave, his little wolf.
                He found himself restless, and paced about the room, and grew
tired of its confines.  He stalked down the hall, vaguely amused at the way the
servants skittered to get out of his way.  He believed that good servants
should leave their work to be seen, but they should be as invisible as
possible.  If they failed in this duty, they were easy enough to replace. 
After Shallise, he didn’t much care for seeing another servant ever again.
                He took the long way to his quarters, walking through the large
ballroom, with its beautiful glass ceiling.  He looked up at it.  One couldn’t
see it as well at night, but the iron frames that held the glass were shaped
into his family crest—a howling wolf.
                But right now, when he looked up, it was just the stars.  Well,
the stars wouldn’t give him an answer to his small dilemma of what to name his
slave.  They were just stories, pictures, random glowing dots in the sky.
                But it made him wonder.  He continued his walk, thinking about
all the stories he had heard in his youth, both from his mother and his nurse
when he had been a child—and the stories Roschelle had promised to tell their
child, the words she would whisper to her pregnant belly and the unborn child
inside.  He had insisted that it did not know what she said, so she might as
well say anything.  She said that she might as well tell stories then, because
she “knew” it could hear her and “enjoyed” the sound of her voice.  He had
rolled his eyes back then.
                But now…  Now he found himself thinking of her stories.  She
had liked the dark stories the best.  Oh, she enjoyed tales of princesses and
brave knights.  She enjoyed tales of beauty and triumph, but the books she read
the most were dark tales—frightening ones.  He had seen her reading from one of
such books once, and to break the silence, asked her to read it aloud.  She had
delighted in it, and selected a particular favorite of hers about a king who
dined on an ever-growing corpse of a snake, kept under a silver lid on a silver
plate, consumed only in solitude, and was said to be the source of his
longevity.  A servant glimpsed the contents, and was seen, and thus banished. 
The meat of the tale was about the boy falling in with a group of thieves after
not heeding the advice of his elders, about how he was eventually caught and
given impossible tasks.  And at the end, his only friend requested that he cut
off his head and hands to break his own curse.
                Danarius had promptly demanded to know who had given her such a
thing.  She had only laughed, of course, and said that her nurse had read her
these stories as a child.  His retort had only been that she had a mad
childhood, and that this nurse should see the hangman’s noose.
                He wondered what other stories were in that book.  He thought
he still had it—somewhere.
                The mage was right; he had kept it on his bookshelf in his
private quarters, obscured and partially hidden by a larger text.  Idly, he
thumbed through it, more for something to occupy him than anything else.  He
was too anxious to sleep.  And anyway, Roschelle had been the last one to open
it…
                Stories—fascinating stories, really, when he thought about it. 
He skimmed them.  A sister cursed to not utter a single word for seven years
while she wove tunics of pine needles to break a curse on her seven brothers,
turned into swans.  Tales of gods, of spirits, and demons, talking animals, and
dragons.  A story about a wolf that was said would devour the world at the end
of time, but destined to be slain after the deed was done.
                That one gave him pause.  And the wolf was bound in the rarest
of bindings, woven by dwarves, and sealed by mages.  But if free, once free,
will destroy everything, until it was cut down by the son of one the wolf
killed.
                Did that not describe his little pet?  He would be marked in
lyrium mined delicately by dwarves, sealed in it by mages, and leashed by a
mage.  If free, he would have the power to destroy like no one before him.
                He liked it.  He liked the imagery, and the story.  But the
wolf had more than one name in the story.  In fact, it had several, and
variations of it.  But there was one that he liked best.
                Danarius put the book down, sliding it back into its place. 
Well, that was finished.  And now he felt like he would be able to rest at
least, if not sleep.
***** Two for Tragedy *****
Chapter Summary
     Leto's hours are numbered, and the others ready themselves for a
     lifetime separated from their loved one.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Lura was unwillingly, even grudgingly, handed over to a
stunned-looking servant, right at dawn just as her master had said.  She held
the remnants of her dress in her hands.  The servant’s eyes softened at her
plight, and helped her to the servant’s quarters.  The woman found Lura a
simple, old dress.  Lura was grateful for anything, though, really—even if it
were not the fine silks she had grown accustomed to.  The woman helped her
brush her hair, and let her bathe.  The soap was harsher than she was used to,
and the concept of freedom seemed alien to her yet, but not having to do this…
that was a wonderful thought.
                What would it be like, not to have to give herself to anyone
with the coin to buy her?  Could she ever grow used to that?  Could she ever
become accustomed to having no master?  She was frightened, and afraid, but oh-
so excited at the prospect of freedom and what it meant for her.
                After she finished, the woman brought her to a room, and
knocked on the door.  There was a stirring inside, and the door opened to
reveal a middle-aged but still pretty elven woman.  Her bearing suggested that
of one heavily burdened, from the slump of her shoulders to her tired hazel
eyes and the way wisps of her graying hair strayed across her face.  Lura
looked at the woman curiously for a long moment, and felt like she must know
her, but she was quite certain that they had never met.
                “Is that…  Lura?” the woman said, and her eyebrows raised in
surprise.  The servant woman quickly excused herself.  Lura blinked, still not
understanding.  How did this woman know her?  She had never seen her before,
she was certain.  “Oh, Lura…”  The woman stepped aside, and ushered her
inside.  Lura, not knowing what else to do, walked in.  The door shut behind
her.
                The room was simple, lit by the dawn’s light from the window. 
A young girl sat on the bed, holding an infant.  The girl was redheaded, and
had bright green eyes.  She did not know her either.
                “Lura, do you remember me?” the elven woman asked her.
                Lura flushed, realizing that she could not say that she did. 
“No, ma’am…” she said, reluctantly.
                But the woman was not in the least bit offended.  “Oh, I
certainly don’t blame you.  It was so long ago,” she went on.  Lura wished the
woman would explain.  The woman hugged her close, and Lura had never felt more
awkward.  Who was this woman?  Who was the girl?  What was this?  “You look
just like your mother, dear.”
                Then her eyes opened wide.  She had been so exhausted she
hadn’t been thinking straight.  This was… this was Leto’s family.  She had been
told that she would be leaving with them.  So the middle-aged woman was Leto’s
mother—she couldn’t remember her name.  And the redheaded girl was his sister,
and the babe was her child.
                “Leto’s mother?” she finally asked, gasping, and finally
returned the hug.  “I never thought…”
                The woman held her out at arm’s length, looking at her. 
“You’ve grown up to be so beautiful, Lura,” she told her.  Lura flushed.  “I
imagine you don’t remember my name.  It’s ‘Mieta.’  And this is my daughter,
Varania.”  The redhead smiled, a little uneasily.
                “Leto did tell us that someone would be joining us,” she
admitted.  “You’re his childhood friend?  You… made the crossing here from
Seheron?”
                Lura nodded once.  “Yes, but I barely remember it at all,” she
said with a shrug.
                Mieta hugged her again.  “I’m so glad,” she whispered.  Yes,
now if only Leto could have been here for this too.  It hardly seemed fair.  To
Lura, it hardly seemed worth it at all.  But she knew that he didn’t feel that
way.
                She only wished… she had the time to tell him all the things
she was too afraid to, and all the things she couldn’t say.  The things she had
no name for, and how she really felt.  Would he ever know what she really meant
to say?
 
                There was a brief rap at the door.  Varania jumped, and went to
it.  She had been jumpy and frightened since Leto had disappeared weeks ago. 
She knew he wasn’t dead; he was too important to Danarius right now for him to
kill him.  But that must only mean he was undergoing some dark preparation for
the Ritual.  That frightened her.  Somehow, knowing he was alive only meant
that he was alive to suffer something unspeakable.  There would be some peace
found in death, she felt.  But he was alive, and living was to serve his
master; which meant he suffered, she had no doubt.
                She often found herself praying for him at night, silently
pleading with a god that didn’t listen for her brother’s safety.  Above all
else, she wanted him safe.  She did not trust Danarius, not really, even with
her promise to deliver him Shai.  It was just that it was the most that she
could offer, and she would give her brother anything, if he would but ask.  He
never asked.
                It was a servant, and at first she was relieved, but then he
said that it was “time.”  She knew what that meant, and it made her blood run
cold.  Then, the servant simply left.  She had to deliver Shai, then.  It was
cruel.  It would be less cruel if the servant had simply collected him. 
Handing him over—that was a difficult task in itself.  But delivering her child
was something else.
                Lura was dead asleep.  Mieta had said that she looked very
tired, and the girl had fallen asleep once she laid down.  Mieta herself was
working, which Lura was grateful for, trying to get a few extra coppers before
they set out.
                The babe stirred not at all when she lifted him from the bed. 
She cradled him to her breast, and took a deep breath, and then walked silently
from the room.  She of course knew where the Ritual was being held.  It was
hard not to know.  She took the servant’s passage to the gutted library, but
the entrance into it had been blocked, for safety reasons, so she had to
detour.
                She realized that she didn’t want to do this.  But it would
help.  Anything she could do for her brother, anything at all…  She was
horrified to think of the things that Danarius had done to both of them, and
know that she was leaving her brother alone with such a man.  She felt like she
was abandoning him.
                This was all she could do.  She loved her brother; she had to
do this.  But it certainly didn’t make that long walk any shorter.  It didn’t
make the burden in her arms any lighter, or easier to carry.  The babe shifted,
and reminded her in its small way of what she was doing.  The decision weighed
heavy on her heart and soul, and she felt like her very soul was corrupt for
doing this, for allowing it to happen.
                She knocked sharply on the door, but perhaps too softly.  She
heard noise inside.  She knocked again, louder, and the door opened.  It was
Raith.
                Varania swallowed, and looked down, unable to say a word. 
Raith’s gaze fell to the child.  “Oh,” he said.  “Give me that.”
                He went to grab the infant, and Varania’s eyes widened in
something akin to fear.  “Wait!” she gasped, and held it close for a moment. 
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Shaislyn, before she handed the baby, her eyes
watering, to Raith.  “Watch his head…”  Raith grumbled, but did hold him
properly.  His pale eyes were open, but that meant little considering that he
was blind.  At least he could not see what was going on.  She wondered if that
was better or worse.
                Raith brought the child into the room, and the door shut.
 Varania stood outside it, trembling in fear of what she had just done.  She
looked down, the water in her eyes threatening to spill.  It had been a hard
choice, but, she felt, the right one.
                Besides, Shai could yet live.
                She went back to the room they shared, and curled onto the bed,
eyes closed as if she were asleep, but feeling too sick to sleep.  She was sick
with grief, with loss, with horror over what she had done, over what would
happen tonight.
 
                Mieta had been in the sewing room since that morning, chatting
amiably with Lana, who was sad to see her go, but happy for her at the same
time.  She had been more than a help when it came to finding a ship, to
bartering their passage.  Lana had laughingly said it was the least she could
do after her years of hard work, and complained that they wouldn’t find another
seamstress like her easily.
                Lana had stopped for luncheon, and Mieta, accustomed to not
eating very much, was prepared to work through the break, but Lana made her
stop and told her to stand up for a while.  So, Mieta stretched, and paced
about the room.  She found herself tidying things up instead of resting, but a
change was as good as a rest, so they said.
                The air seemed to grow stuffy with the sun’s passage across the
sky.  Mieta suggested opening a window, and Lana hurriedly agreed to this idea.
                Mieta opened the windows in the sewing room to let in the
breeze and some fresh air, but wished she had not strayed so near the windows
when she looked out them, for the sight she saw disturbed her.
                All the slaves from the compound—every one—was being marched
toward the manor.  All of them—the children, the gladiators, the old,
everything in between.  Every one of them.  Every one of those slaves Mieta had
known, many for years.  The boys Leto had fought with, the women who had helped
Mieta when it came time to birth Varania, Marlance, ancient Lolette.  She knew
them all.  They looked frightened, and unsure of what was going on.
                There was only one certainty:  They were serving their master
in some way.  A slave’s life hinged on that one certainty, and it was always
true.
                Mieta had a cold feeling in her stomach of what that meant. 
Tonight was the night of the Ritual.
 
                All the slaves had to be properly prepared for the ritual.  All
the servants were busy in preparation too—scrubbing the slaves clean was the
most important one they assisted with.  Danarius, Raith, and Marietta,
Danarius’s mage servant, prepared the actual room.  It had been gutted, and
scrubbed to perfection.  Now, all the items had to be in order, accounted for. 
The lyrium was taken stock of, the cages had to be out of the way but still
convenient.  Everything had to be perfect.  The slaves had not been fed for the
past two days, as per instruction.
                Raith had no doubt that many of them were sneaking food, or
eating something regardless, but that was why they weren’t as important.  Raith
and Danarius had been fasting for two days, similarly, drinking nothing but
water with a few breadcrumbs to cloud it.
                He was going to eat as though he had survived a famine after
this.  He had visions of roast duck, steaming on a plate, so skillfully
prepared it nearly melted in the mouth.  Perhaps served with a side of
cranberry sauce, hot bread, still steaming from the ovens—with butter.  Of
course this meal would have to come with potatoes—roasted potatoes, with
peppers and onions.  Mayhap, a glass of fine wine on the side—or even brandy? 
Now that sounded nice.  And the meal, he felt, should end with pie.  Strawberry
pie—it was the season after all, and cream would be welcome as well.  Served
with cordial, or even a cool tea.
                And afterwards?  A whore, maybe three.  He bet he could fit
more into that big bed of his, but he only had one penis, and girls had so many
options anyway.  And Danarius had better not tell him he can’t!  He was of
course given a bit of an allowance for his work, and he could use that on
whores if he liked.  And, just this once, damn his master’s disapproving
frowns.  After all this, he deserved a reprieve.
                And after this success, he could present his case to the Archon
and the magisters.  And, why, they were already considering raising him to the
rank.  He had studied for years, after all, and passed all the tests so far, so
why not?  And this, well, it was visionary—nay, revolutionary!  There was no
reason he should not be made a magister.
                Danarius had hinted, privately, that Raith may be taking the
final tests as soon as the next phase of the moon if all went well.  Everything
must go well.
 
                A servant knocked at the door, and when Varania answered, he
only told them to come with him.  So, Lura and Varania followed him, through
the servant’s passages to the guest rooms.  There, Mieta was standing in the
hall, as if waiting for them, looking as confused as they felt.
                The servant would not speak when questioned.  Rather, he
knocked loudly on a door, then opened it.  “You are permitted some time to
speak with the slave,” he said curtly, and turned on his heel.  The three women
looked at each other, and knew what that meant.  They filed in shortly, and
Lura closed the door behind them.
                Leto was standing next to an open window, a light breeze
ruffling his clothes.  He was clothed simply, and watched the outside world as
if he would never see it again.
                He did not turn to greet them, but not so much as if he did not
know they were there.  More like, he was lost in his own thoughts and could not
be bothered to be parted from them.  When he turned, it was because Varania
touched his shoulder gently.  He looked lost to her, and as frightened as she
had ever seen him.
                But he smiled all the same.  There weren’t really any words the
four of them could say, so they embraced him in turns, and any idle chatter
died before it really began.  What does one say in a situation like this?  What
can anyone say?
                Promises were made—to love and remember, to cherish and also to
let go.  Leto made Varania promise to learn to read, where the others could
hear her swear it.  Lura offered that she would like to learn as well, and
Mieta said in a low voice that she would teach both of them.
                No one mentioned Shai, though the infant’s absence did not go
unnoticed.  Rather, no one wanted to fight when this was the last time they
would be together, likely forever.
                Varania was frightened for her brother.  She was scared that he
would not survive, and scared that he would.  She was afraid for her child, and
her brother, and everything.  She had thought she had been frightened before,
during the rape, when she discovered she was a mage, when she found that she
was pregnant, when the twins nearly killed her and Danarius cut open her belly
and plucked the screaming infants from her womb.  But this—this was worse
somehow.  Worse, because she would never know for sure what had become of her
brother.
                Leto asked them where they were going, when the ship was
leaving.  They spoke of that for a while, and Mieta told them that they had a
small house in an alienage waiting for them when they docked.  Some of the
money, Danarius had given them already out of necessity, which meant that he
had given it to Lana, who had actually made the arrangements.  Mieta said with
confidence that she would find work, and teach the girls her trade.  Lana had
even volunteered to write her a reference, and had—something Mieta kept safe. 
Lana had done more for the small family than anyone had ever asked her to, and
she did it all gladly.  They all owed her more than thanks.  Varania offered
that she could study more of the healing arts, and might find work as a doctor
or an assistant at least.  Lura was looking forward to learning to sew, though.
                In a moment of silence where no one could think of a word to
say, Leto asked, his expression that of someone who hoped for something but
expected nothing, “Mama, would you sing me a song?”
                Mieta blinked, surprised to hear him ask, and she smiled
softly, both because of his request, and because of how he had asked.  “I… 
It’s been a long time,” she said, flushing.  “But I’ll try.”
                And she sang.  Her singing was uncertain at first, her voice
shaky from years of disuse, but she gained confidence, and it was as though her
voice had remembered what to do.  She sang of how she felt—a mother’s love for
her child.  Her son, specifically, Varania noted.
                She did not intend to be jealous.  That was never something she
wanted, nor something she had felt so much before.  But it had always been
there.  Varania was the mage, the one who complicated things.  Leto was her
firstborn, the special one.  Leto was the strong one who was sacrificing
everything.  She knew he deserved this, but…  Mieta had never sang for
Varania.  Not to help her sleep, not for anything, not even when she lay dying
unable to birth the twins.  But she was singing now for Leto.
                Varania knew that she would never sing like that for her.
 
                Mieta touched Varania’s shoulder gently.  The girl looked up at
her inquiringly.  Mieta inclined her head toward the door, and glanced back at
Leto and Lura, who were both speaking to one another—filling in pieces of what
the other did not remember of their earliest childhood, trying to remember the
name of her pet cat.
                Mieta knew the answer, though did not feel inclined to give
it.  Rather, she had something else in mind.
                Varania, though, looked at her mother, puzzled.  Mieta leaned
down, and whispered in her daughter’s pointed ear, “Come—let’s leave them alone
for a while.”
                The girl looked at her, clearly not understanding.  But that
was fine—she was young yet.  And though Varania did not quite understand, she
did heed her mother, and quietly followed her out of the room, looking back
over her shoulder.  Mieta smiled when she saw Leto look up, puzzled.
                She opened the door, and shut it behind them both quietly. 
Somehow, she felt oddly at peace as she walked away.  She knew it would be the
last time she saw her son, in this life, and yet…  Yet, she had done the best
she could for him.  She was proud of him, of the man he had become.  If things
had gone any other way, she knew that he would have made a good man, a good
husband, and he had always been a good son.
                She only wished, fervently and with all her heart, that things
did not have to be this way.
 
                The door closed, and Lura smiled at Leto.  They were alone
again.  Finally.  It felt like it had been so long ago, but it really hadn’t
been.  She didn’t know how much time they had left together—not much, she
assumed.  She wasted none of it.
                She rose from her seat, and crawled into his lap, throwing her
arms around his neck, and he held her for a time.  She knew the ceremony—the
ritual—was tonight, and assumed that someone would come to collect Leto soon. 
She knew that.
                She didn’t want them to.  She wanted to stay in his arms like
this forever.  She wanted to die in his arms.
                Had she loved him all her life and was only just realizing it
now?  Why had it taken so long?  She knew that she could do nothing for it, but
it would be nice if only…  No, she did not want to lament.  Not right now.  She
could lament later perhaps.  But not now.
                “I love you,” she whispered, feeling her eyes water as she said
it, because nothing would ever come of it.  Nothing.  She would be free, in
Seheron, and he would be a slave all the way in Minrathous.
                He paused.  “I…”
                She heard the way his voice died, and even then, she smiled. 
“It’s all right if you don’t love me,” she confessed, and held him a little
tighter.  “But I wanted you to know—that someone does.”
                He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply.  “I just…
don’t know yet.”
                She sighed to herself.  It was hoping for too much perhaps. 
Still…  It was enough, for now, just to have told him.  It filled her with a
sense of peace and fulfillment.  Maybe later she would wish he had told her his
feelings, and wish he had felt the same way.  But for now, she was content. 
“It’s all right,” she breathed.  “I’m happy just like this.”
                She only wished that it could last.  A loud rap on the door
startled her.  It burst open, and Leto looked up, but did not let her go. 
Rather, he held on to her tighter, as if she were the only thing anchoring him
to this world.  Maybe she was.
                “The whore leaves,” Raith said, and smirked.  “Shame.”
                Leto rose to his feet, to Lura’s surprise lifting her with
him.  Her legs dangled off the floor as if she were a child.
                “She’s not a whore,” he protested.  “Not anymore.”
                Raith snorted.  “She’s not a slave anymore, but how long do you
think it will really be before that purse Danarius gives them runs dry and she
has to ply the only trade she knows?”
                Lura’s throat felt suddenly dry.  No, no it wouldn’t happen. 
It would work out.  Mieta could get a job as a tailor.  Varania could get a job
in a clinic maybe.  And surely Lura could find a job at a tavern at least?  Or
even washing dishes—anything but… that.  Hearing the man say it aloud made her
more determined that it should not happen.  “It won’t happen,” she insisted
aloud, as if solidifying it in her mind.
                He only snorted.  “Let go of her.”  Leto gently set Lura down
on her feet.  Leto clearly expected her to simply turn and leave, but she,
frankly, was finished being bullied and ordered around.  She stood up on her
toes and kissed Leto, her hands on his strong shoulders for support.  It wasn’t
long, but it wasn’t short either, and she poured all of her passion and
affection for him into the kiss.  She heard Raith clear his throat, and she
stepped back.
                “I love you,” she whispered in a voice so low she doubted the
mage could hear it.  Leto caught her sleeve as she turned to go, and took an
anxious step forward.  He was looking at her with such a pleading look in his
eyes that she paused.
                “I love you, Lura—I think,” he added quickly.
                She smiled for him, and to herself.  It was good enough for
her.  “I’ll never forget you,” she promised him, and had to go.  Strangely, she
left light-hearted.  Someone cared about her.  Someone loved her.  She had
thought… for so long that no one did.  That no one would ever love a whore. 
Someone did.  She hated that that someone would be ripped from her life
forever.  She found herself praying that, if not in this life, perhaps she
could meet him again in the Void.
                She did not miss the look that Raith gave her as she passed
him.  His appraisal, his lingering, knowing gaze.  She had no choice in what
she had had to do the night before.  He knew that.  Leto knew that, and did not
begrudge her it.  She sometimes wondered if he even saw her as a whore.  But
no—he didn’t.  He saw her as a person.  He had been the first person who had…
for as long as she could really remember.
                And now…  Now…
                But her life as a whore was over, and she would never go back
to it.  Leto had given her a new life, and she intended to cherish it, and to
live it.  She would not dwell on the past, nor what could have been.  She would
embrace this new future full-heartedly, and every day give thanks for Leto’s
sacrifice.  She would throw herself into her new life with gusto, and felt
determined to enjoy it and be grateful, no matter what, for Leto’s sake as well
as her own. 
                And whatever choices she made, from now on, were her own.  No
matter the consequences of those choices, no matter the inevitable pitfalls as
well as the joys, the despairs she would face alongside the triumphs—they were
her own. 
                Her life was her own, and she intended to live it.
 
                The door opened again, and Leto looked up, but he knew who it
was.  The door shut, and his master looked at him, at the henna, at his shaved
head, and his untrusting and fearful eyes.
                The magister went up to him, and told him to look up.  The elf
obeyed, and Danarius put his fingers to his forehead.  A trickle of his magic
wound his way into him, probing.  He was ready.
                “Time to go,” he said.
                Leto hesitated.  “Wait…  Master…” he called, and looked down
when his master turned to look at him.  “I…  What is the Ritual?”  He looked
up.  “What… are you doing to me?”
                Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “You know the purpose of it, but I
suppose I never told you the process.”  He smirked.  “Very well; if you’re
curious, I’ll tell you.”  He turned back to him.  He ran his fingertips down
his naked chest, imagining it covered in lyrium.  “We’ll be pouring boiling
metal over your body and searing it into your skin.”  Leto’s eyes widened, just
a little.  “The pain will be… more than anything you could ever imagine.”  He
touched his arm.  “Your skin will blister and boil, and you’ll scream but you
can’t make it stop.  And it won’t, pet.”  And he would feel all of it even if
it were a lesser pain, Danarius thought with a shudder.  Except he wouldn’t
have the grace of forgetting the worst parts of it.  “Your body will be
reforged to hold the lyrium, and while the two are made one, I will be binding
the lyrium into your soul.”  He kind of smiled at the stunned look on his pet’s
face.  “That will bring about a pain unlike any known form of pain.”
                Leto stared downwards, then his eyes flicked up again.  “I
don’t care about the pain.”
                “You might feel differently about that while it’s happening.” 
He smiled sadistically.  “Fenris.”
                The elf blinked, and his expression was that of shock and
dismay.  “You…”  He couldn’t speak for a moment.  “You won’t even leave my
name?” he whispered.
                Danarius smirked.  “You won’t remember your name.  You won’t
even care.”
                Leto shook his head in despair.  “I’ll know it’s not my name,”
he insisted.
                “You won’t know the difference.”
                The poor boy looked to be on the verge of tears.  “You’re
taking everything from me!” he cried out in pain.  He shook his head again. 
“Why can’t you at least leave me my name?”
                Danarius chuckled.  He looked so sad, his pet wolf.  So
heartbroken.  “I’d rather leave you with nothing.”  Leto stared at him, barely
breathing.  Danarius watched his anger build, the rage twist across his face,
his fingers clench into fists.  He waited, until his slave’s muscles began to
flex—all of this in a matter of seconds.  “My pet,” he called him.  And the
boy’s despair overcame his rage, all the fight that had been there a moment ago
gone.  And he had been ready to assault him too.  “Come.”  He smiled as he
turned.  “Fenris.”
                “I hate you,” he whispered.
                But Danarius only smiled, because soon, the lad would forget
that too.
 
                Marietta would not be in the actual Ritual, but her role was
still significant enough.  She was overseeing the cleansing of the slaves, and
had personally taken the half-bred brat to be properly prepared.  Danarius
checked her work, and ascertained that everything she was doing was suitable.
                Raith was given the pivotal, and trying, task of preparing
Leto, while Danarius oversaw the happenings of the room.
                Raith had to, personally this time, more or less give Leto a
spongebath with a cotton cloth and scentless soap.  It was more than that
though—the subtlest of spells made the elf more docile, and every soothing
movement helped the matter.
                So, he bathed him, all the while keeping a steady trickle of
magic feeding into him.
                He had discovered almost immediately when his master had taken
the boy to bed.  He had suspected it for some time that it might be something
that happened, but only recently was it affirmed for him.
                He had simply… noticed… when he was painting him a few weeks
ago.
                He hadn’t been particularly surprised.  If one were going to
take a man to bed with them, it might as well be an elf.  And Leto did clean up
well.
                After the bathing, he inspected him—the henna mostly.  All was
as it should be.  It was nearly time.  He daresay he was even excited.
 
                Marietta inspected the slaves, each one, carefully.  She had
overcome shyness by necessity—she was a doctor after all, of sorts.  But she
still disliked staring at naked people, especially a long row of naked knife-
ears.  How revolting.  It wasn’t their ears, so much as their eyes, that so
disturbed her.  In fact, it was a common enough discomfort in humans when
looking at elves; with their wide irises, it was difficult to tell exactly what
an elf was looking at.  It disturbed something primal in her, some remnant in
the brain of when humans had to be vigilantly wary of predators and it was
important to know when something was watching them.  And you couldn’t tell as
easily with an elf—which was exactly the problem.
                Elves—perverted, lower forms of humans.  Weaker, smaller—but
properly subjugated.  It was only fitting that such lesser beings served
humanity.  That the two species could breed seemed doubly insulting.  The
lesser creatures were properly afraid of her, as they should be.
                She gave the approval, and each slave’s wrists were bound
securely in silk rope, behind their backs, no matter their age.  The parents
voiced dismay.  She ignored them, and attended to the half-bred creature she
was to prepare.  Its unnatural eyes made her uncomfortable.  She would put them
out so she would not have to look at them, but she had been given strict orders
not to harm the child.  Just cleanse it properly, in cold water, in scentless
soap.  It cried in the cold water.  It sounded human enough—and that was the
true blasphemy of its existence.
                Touching the half-breed made her feel unclean.  It was
repulsive.  Nothing so morally wrong as a cross between an elf and a human
should be allowed to live.  It was disgusting that it was still alive.  She
would kill it herself, except she could not; Danarius would be most displeased.
                She swaddled the infant in silk—the creature did not deserve
such delicacies—and gave the final order that the slaves should all be gagged. 
She had no doubt that many would start shrieking during the ritual, or begging,
and that would be distracting for the magister.
                Wool was used to bind their mouths, and they were ushered to
what used to be the library, and likely into their cages.  She made sure the
infant swallowed the right amount of drops of lyrium—it hated it.  She let it
drink some water from a bottle, and carried the foul silk bundle to the Ritual
chamber.
                When she arrived, she was pleased to see that everything was
prepared.  Everything was ready.  It was only a matter of waiting for the
proper time.
                She gave the half-breed monstrosity to the magister, who put a
spell of sleep over the babe.  It fussed, and then fell to silence, eyes closed
and limp.  She was dismissed, her duty performed.
Chapter End Notes
     Yeah, I still just don't like Lura. She drives the plot, and
     ordinarily I like a strong, confident female (even one who doesn't
     fight) but I still don't like her much. On another note, has Leto
     really saved them from anything? Barely any money, Mieta with health
     problems, Varania a half-trained mage, and Lura an ex-whore, all with
     an infant--they don't really stand much chance, do they?
     But they've all worked so hard... be a shame if something... happened
     to them. *wicked grin*
***** Leto *****
Chapter Summary
     And here it is: The Ritual. All of Danarius' dreams, and all of
     Leto's nightmares.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The octagonal room was but a shadow of its former purpose, odd
stains against the walls and the floor hinting at what it used to be.  Where
once was one thing, in its place was another, like a city rising from a
forest. 
                A few months ago, shelves of books and scrolls had lined and
filled every wall—books of history, geography, poetry, stories, drawings, law,
books of magic of every subject, theories, art, and sciences of every
conceivable thing—and in its place stood cold iron cages, bars as thick as a
gladiator’s wrist.  Once, sunlight would play along the spines of the books,
bleaching their worn leather covers.  Now, the sun’s dying light streamed in
from the heavy glass windows against the elven slaves’ naked skin as they
stirred uneasily behind the bars.  A large, grand fireplace was in the
room—glass tiles painted to look like a dragon curled around the fireplace,
angry and serpentine, its mouth open, as if the flames that would fill its dark
chimney would spring at any moment… but it stood dark and lonely, its expensive
glass screen missing from the room.
                The candles in the room were just as expensive as anything
else, their warm, yellow glow somehow more sinister than cheery, as if the
gladiator-slaves who had fallen on the sands haunted the candles that had been
made from the fat on their bodies.  The light from them seemed to turn
something ordinary into something frightening—a candlestick into a ghoul, a
sconce into a monster, a cowed slave into a demon.  The air was perfumed with
incense like much of the rest of Tevinter cities, its scent mingling with that
of the ill-gotten candles.  A sense of something hung in the air—intangible as
of yet, but as if somethingwere waiting to happen and the very air was
anticipating its coming.  It was the feeling of drawing on magic without the
magic itself.  To the mages, it was oddly comforting, but to the mundane
gathered, it made their flesh crawl.
                The entire day had been spent in preparation for this event. 
There were spells already in place throughout the room, carefully constructed
enchanted items, made special, to seal and protect.  Runes crafted to activate
once triggered.  Everything had to be perfect.  Once it had begun, there was no
going back.  If a mistake were made, they would have to restart from the
beginning and such an onerous task would have to wait until sunset the next
day.
                 Both the mages had memorized the ritual, by heart and by
mind.  There was no hesitating, no wondering.  They knew what they must do, at
the proper times.  All the items were laid out for them, convenient and
flawless.  It was impossible that everything was not precisely as it should
be.  Nothing had been overlooked.  Everything had been checked and triple
checked.
                It was time.  Above all else, it was finally time.  Years of
waiting.  Years of research, study, practice, and discovery.  Over twenty, in
fact, for it consumed over half of Danarius’ lifetime, and nearly all of
Raith’s own.  But he was not the first one to study this subject, merely the
latest.  And, he knew, the first to complete it.  At least who had documented
it.  Even if someone else had done this before, they had never documented its
completion—he had searched for the evidence.
                Few would have had the resources to complete such an ordeal,
though.  The instruments, the tools, every piece was special, made in exacts. 
Every piece was necessary.  Something could not simply be repurposed—it had to
be made especially for its task.  The blood necessary for the ritual had its
own expenses.  So much of it was required, so much life, just to keep the
subject alive during the Ritual, just to keep the magic in check, the demons in
check, to control all of it, and of course to protect the mages themselves. 
The lyrium was worth more than most of the slaves combined, and that was just
another piece of the Ritual.  Finding a suitable subject was difficult enough
by itself, on top of the instruments required.  But to say nothing of the
magical ability of whichever mages would cast this ritual…!  It would tax
everything both of them knew, and everything they were.
                Leto was led, already in a spell-fed trance, to the center of
the room.  He was naked and didn’t seem to be aware of it, or of anything
really.  Two humans in a room of elves, two mages in a room of non-mages.  Only
the two mages were clothed, and in the simplest of garments.  Due to the work,
and the amount of blood that would be necessary, they were wearing naught but
darkly coloured loincloths—anything else was deemed unnecessary and cumbersome
in the rehearsal.  Under normal circumstances, it would be weird and
uncomfortable, but the situation was such that even Raith barely noticed, and
at that, not for long.
                Raith led one of the bound slaves forward.  Raith pushed her to
her knees, her head over a wide bowl crafted of solid gold, her neck exposed. 
The apprentice stood behind her, his fist in her hair.  Tears of fear tracked
down her cheeks; she knew what was going to happen.  With a quick gesture,
Raith slit her throat.  He held her still while she thrashed as she bled into
the bowl, and held her aloft above it when she stilled.  They had not been
allowed to drink since the day before, and guards had even been monitored to
make sure they did not, even in the compound.  Else, she may have urinated.
                Blood gushed into the bowl.  Raith let it fill to the brim
before he pulled the body away.  These slaves had been slaves for most if not
all of their lives.  They were very tame creatures, even when being led to the
slaughter.  He half-drug, half-carried the corpse to an empty cage, and brought
it to the very back of said cage.  The rest of the space would be necessary
later.  He heard whimpering and other noises from the cages.  He found himself
glad of the woolen gags—good thinking on Marietta’s part.
                He glanced to the small pedestal, where the infant lay in its
silk wrappings, in the same trance Leto was in.
                Danarius had a golden dipper for the blood, and Raith waited
while his master drew out the spell-form in blood on the floor, with Leto
standing at its perfect center.  Every line, every curve, was marked and
planned.  The dipper was made special for it, to be filled with the proper
amount of fluid, for Danarius could only refill it at just the right moments. 
The dipper had even been constructed specially.  The solid gold was heavy by
itself, but the weight still had to be manageable even (and especially) when
filled.  Every instrument, down to the knife, was planned.  Raith held his
breath over one particular arc.  That one had been difficult, and there was a
chance that he may run out of blood before he could refill the dipper.  Each
drop in the steady, slow trickle of red from the dipper was in time to Raith’s
racing heart.  If it wasn’t enough, then they would have to start over
already.  It could ruin everything, push everything back one more night.  They
needed every minute.
                He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding when
the dipper returned to the bowl, perfect as ever.  The blood was used, nearly
all of it, and the spell-form was written.  Raith took the bowl away, placing
it on the table, careful of where he stepped.
                He went to the cages, and brought out one slave.  Each one had
been carefully selected for each part of the ritual, and those selected were
put into separate cages.  The rest were simply for extra power.  But the
gladiators were integral to this part of it—someone the subject had interacted
with, spilled blood with.  That had been one of the most difficult parts in
writing the Ritual.  The gladiators were also under the same trance Leto was
under, which kept them docile.  They were skilled enough to cause some damage,
after all, and that simply would not do.  True, they were well-trained slaves,
many born and bred slaves, but the instinct to survive was a strong one, and no
matter how tame, they always acted upon it, even if it were only for an
instant.  An instant was enough to ruin everything, and proper replacements
would be hard to come by.
                If the subject had been a free man or a knight, they would have
made do, but there were so many risks involved.
                One person was all that was truly necessary.  A knife to each
point of the body--but Danarius wanted no chances taken.  It was one person for
every wound, and each wound must be fatal, even if not instantly fatal.
                The first one was brought to a certain point of the spell-form,
and Raith put his fingers to the elf’s forehead.  His magic lanced through his
skull like a heavy mace, exploding blood as well as bits of skull and brain. 
It would not affect the spell form, for that spell was already cast and
waiting.  Raith could feel it vibrating in the air.  The body was left there as
an offering, for the moment.
                The next gladiator tried to fight; the trance was not as strong
in this one after watching his comrade die.  Raith subdued him quickly and with
ease, and brought him to the next point.  He died quickly, and Raith moved on
to the next.  The five offerings lay in formation around the spell form,
waiting.  Now, Danarius moved to the infant, to establish the connection. 
Danarius cut his own hand, putting the blood against the babe’s lips.  Raith
could not say if the child swallowed, but he must have got some of it in his
mouth.  Then, he healed his own hand, and pricked the child’s finger.  The
infant was so well under the spell that it barely cried out.  The blood of the
infant on his fingertip, the magister went back to Leto, and put his finger
against the elf’s lips, and whispered something to him.  The elf’s eyes were
glazed over, as if he didn’t see or really hear anything, but still his lips
parted, and the blood was swallowed obediently.
                The link was formed.  Not a vital part of the ritual, but a
safety precaution.  There were several of those.  The golden bowl was plucked
from its place again, and the dipper as well.  This time, a child was
sacrificed, and he heard some muffled wails from the parents.  Raith drug the
body to the proper place while Danarius, again, drew the spell form.  This one
was smaller and surrounded the infant, and was a different pattern, made to
bridge and nothing more.
                The spells were ever-present, like a trap ready to spring. 
They were active, and waiting, and thrumming through the air.  It was an
expectant, pregnant presence—a sense of change about to happen.  In the room,
those present could feel it in the same way that a battle-hardened soldier
could sense bloodshed before the battle began.  More blood, and the Ritual
would truly begin.
                When Danarius finished, Raith began.  An entire cage of slaves,
he sacrificed to the cause, feeding the spells with all of their life force. 
The sheer amount of power confined in the room was enough to humble most men,
to stand in awe of its might.  And underneath all of it, the vat of refined
lyrium filled the air with its strange music.  Two different sorts of magic
coalesced in the room, intangible to all but a mage, yet somehow sensed by
everyone in the room that eve.
                Leto was its focus, and the power ran through the blood,
curling around him, snaking through him.  For an instant, it lifted him off of
his feet, and set him gently back down again.  He had been judged, and he was
worthy.  Others had died at this point.  Despite it, the boy barely stirred,
and saw nothing of what was around him.  If he did, if not for the trance, he
may have balked by now.  Many others had, and so they had learned that they
must be made docile.
                The mages fed their own power into the magic—ice, fire,
lightning, earth, entropic energies, and everything they had, holding in
reserve nothing but the spark of their own lives.  And even that must be made
clear:  They were willing.
                Raith heard voices.  They spoke in every language and no
language, languages he had never heard, languages he wasn’t sure had ever even
existed, or did not exist yet, and the most chilling of those were the ones
that echoed his own voice and yet somehow spoke in a language only his soul
knew, understanding the intent if not the words, pictures forming in his mind
at each syllable.  His own soul cried out for better understanding, as if… if
he only gave in, he would know everything there was to know about the world,
his soul would know a peace and understanding he had never experienced—and it
would be rapture.
                His hand strayed, and touched the knife blade.  Its razor-sharp
edge sliced into his finger.  Blood ran along the tip, and his own magic poured
out of the blood, and the humming seemed to intensify to his ears.  He blinked,
appalled that he had been so easily seduced—or nearly seduced—by the demons. 
He heard laughter.  Oh, what easy prey mortals were, weren’t they?
                The laughter echoed in voices he thought he knew and could not
know, voices he did know, voices he knew only in memory or dreams.  A voice
whispered in his ear and he did not understand it, so another took its place. 
“Do you give of yourself willingly?”
                It was a demon, but even so, he did not hesitate.  “Yes,” he
answered.  The sense of presence lifted.  He had no doubt that the demons had
asked similar questions of Danarius, maybe even Leto.  And, he thought with
some unease, he doubted either one had been so easily seduced by the thought of
rapture.  Or maybe they had.  A quick glance at his hand assured him that the
cut had stopped bleeding, and his gaze caught on the symbols drawn in a slave’s
life blood on the floor.
                The symbols began to glow, to dance, to raise in the area in a
sweeping grace, surrounding Leto, surrounding the infant, a thin trail of them
whirling around Danarius like some kind of gentle twister.
                At this point, all of the magister’s attentions would be on the
ritual and maintaining it.  Namely, keeping himself and Leto both alive.  The
more mundane tasks would be Raith’s.
                Raith moved with some measure of awe to the table of tools.  He
selected his tools, and went to Leto.  The magic accepted his presence, and he
laid the tools at Leto’s feet.  The lyrium would answer his call.  He would be
an instrument of magic himself, but magic would forge the lyrium and ink into
flesh, magic would burn it in and seal it.  And all he had to do was not let it
stop.  It was terrifyingly dangerous work, though—if he were to somehow ingest
it, even by accident, he could lose his mind.
                As he worked, he noticed that Leto’s breathing was slowed so
much that the mage wondered, at one point, if he were even alive.  Moreover,
the elf blinked only rarely.  He knew the boy felt what he was doing.  Raith
knew it was painful, from the way that elf girl had screamed and cried.  But
the nature of the ritual was prohibiting Leto from moving, even enough to
scream—barely enough to breathe.
                Raith labored, slowly, forming the proper vessels to contain
the lyrium.  He re-forged Leto’s body.  There could be no other phrase for it,
for everything about his physical form, at its core being, would change with
the addition of the lyrium.  The preparation was a painful but important part
of the Ritual.  A single tear tracked down the elf’s face, followed by
another.  Unable to scream.  Unable to blink, and scarcely able to breathe. 
The tears could either be because he was in so much pain, or simply because he
could not blink:  Held aloft by a magic that seemed to fight every basic
function he had.  How horrifying was it to be in pain, and be completely unable
to even scream? 
                He noticed that all the slaves had gone silent some time ago,
and wondered if that was some grace of the magic in the room, or the work of
the demons.  Perhaps even both.
                This was the delicate part, and he could bear no distractions. 
One flaw would prove fatal—maybe for everyone.  Leto was prepared, but for the
moment, was empty—a vessel waiting to be filled, from the center of his being
outward.
                And emptied.
                Another sacrifice, and for the first time, Raith saw the
demons.
 
                The demons had been in the room nearly the whole time, waiting,
watching.
                Danarius watched Raith move, but as if they were in entirely
different worlds.  Raith moved through one world, Danarius another and the two
scarcely touched enough to recognize one another.  Leto was trapped in what
Danarius dimly recognized, through their blood link, as an unbearable amount of
pain.
                Through the link, he could feel some amount of it, and it was
crippling.  And he only felt a small amount.  If he were capable of falling, he
would have fallen, legs unable to support himself any longer.  It felt like his
arteries were suddenly filled with molten metal, and he was so painfully aware
of everything that everythingwas pain.  Focusing his vision was painful, the
blood pumping through his veins a misery.  The magic coursed through him. 
Through the pain, he controlled it, focused it, gave it purpose and meaning. 
It was the most he could do—all he could do, and he could not have stopped if
he wanted to.  He had come too far to end it, even through the torrent of
suffering he felt.  It was only for a while.  Just for a little while.  A few
hours, nothing more.  And it would all be worth it in the end—surely.
                The infant, though, blessedly, felt none of it.  It was nothing
but a conduit for the pain, a spout that it trickled from.
                The established link was very much like a maternal link.  Leto
was suffering, writhing in agony, but would live because Danarius would live. 
And if Leto did manage to figure out how to die without his master’s blessing,
Danarius would still live.  There was an alternative to this link, but it was
much more indirect and even dangerous, for both of them.  The infant was oh-so
important; it meant Danarius didn’t have to actually venture into the Fade, per
se, which had been the original plan.
                Alternately, if Danarius died during the ritual, Leto would not
live.  Oh, he might survive Danarius’ death by, say, ten seconds perhaps, if
Raith moved quickly.  The infant may live, even so.
                Danarius risked a glance toward the child.  A demon stood
beside it.  Her tail twitched back and forth as she looked down at it. 
Gingerly, she raised it from the pedestal in her arms, holding it tenderly as
if it were her own.  The demon was nothing, save the entire concept of sex, in
a female form; curvaceous and sensuous, her every movement like nothing so much
as that of a snake.  Not elven, nor dwarven, human or Qunari, though to him the
Desire Demon had always resembled what he thought a female Qunari must look
like:  Horns, strange eyes, about seven feet tall.  It was the unearthly air
about her that most marked her as a demon, though one could not miss her long
tail, the claws, or the quality of her voice that made lesser men shiver for
reasons they could not name.
                “Fear not, mage,” she said gently in her sultry, unearthly
voice.  “I am easing your burden.”
                He recognized the Desire Demon.  She was the same one that
always showed up for him, the same one who had always been eager to answer his
calls.  To a small degree, he trusted her, trusted in her nature, as much as
one may trust a demon; he trusted her to be herself.  That was the most he felt
he could trust in anyone, really.
                As she held the infant, he felt a certain tension release, the
magic flowing more freely.
                “What did you do?” he asked, more with his mind through his
gift than in words.
                Her perfect lips curved into a perfect smile, and before his
eyes, she changed into Roschelle, holding an infant, but a different infant
entirely in the vision before him.  She was naked, her every dip and curve more
real than his memories ever could be to him.  He felt his heart ache, and drop
into his stomach.  His mouth felt dry.  This was how it should have been. 
Maker and Andraste, this is how it should be.  Longing ripped through him anew,
and memories of her death—wounds he had thought healed—were bared.  He wanted
to scream, to cry.  It had been so long ago.  He was a bit shocked that it
could still cause so much pain.  He had been prepared for physical pain, and he
knew there would be pain with the ritual, for both he and his slave.  But he
had not been expecting emotional pain like this.
                He felt Leto at the other end of the spectrum, dimly aware of
his anguish the same way he was aware of Leto’s pain, with the exception that
Leto reached out to him through it.  He felt the boy’s presence, comforting and
compassionate.  Why?  Why was Leto so compassionate as to extend that comfort
to someone who had happily caused him so much grief, someone he hated?  Yet it
was still there, for what it was worth.  “Why do you despair so?” she asked him
in Roschelle’s voice.  He had nearly forgotten the sweet sound of her voice. 
“I simply chose a form that I thought would bring you a moment of joy.  Did it
not make you happy to imagine your dead wife and child?”
                “I like you better as yourself,” Danarius answered instead.  He
knew better than to get angry.  One does not become angry with a demon; it
accomplished nothing.
                With that, she was merely a demon again.  “As you wish,” she
said with a slight incline of her head.
                “What did you do?” the magister asked the demon.  Why was the
magic flowing so freely now?  The lyrium sang its soft, sweet song.  Leto’s
compassion, he still felt, strong as ever, in response to his hurt, and he
could not understand, for the life of him, why his slave could be so
compassionate.  Would this be a part of him that was forever lost when he took
away his memories?
                She smiled down at the infant.  “I only awoke his power.  Do
not fear, it will be dormant again by sunrise.”
                He paused.  “The child is a mage,” he said, and felt it was
unnecessary.
                “What do you expect, with both parents gifted?” she answered,
and looked back toward Leto and Raith.  Danarius inwardly explored the link he
felt with Leto, and sensed the boy’s fear under his compassion.  Leto was
terrified, compassionate toward anyone else in pain, even Danarius, but perhaps
only because it distracted him from his own fears.  His fears threatened to
crush him.  Danarius could barely believe the elf’s own terror.  Leto knew his
memories would be gone when he awoke, and he was afraid of the Ritual too.  He
was afraid for his family, and himself.  Afraid for the infant on the
pedestal.  He was afraid of losing himself forever--and he knew his memories
were about to leave him, maybe because Danarius knew that, but the boy knew no
matter the reason why.  And Leto was losing a battle with his own terror.
                It will be better this way, Danarius told him.  Raith was
preparing the ritual to erase Leto’s memories—a somewhat tedious process, but
necessary and useful.  He was aware of other demons in the room, lesser
creatures, beginning to poke with interest at the corpses.
                It won’t, Leto argued.  I’m going to die.
                You’re not going to die.
               Leto’s response was delayed, either because the pain elevated to
a point where Leto could no longer form coherent thoughts, or because he did
not believe him.  Or both.  When it came, his “voice” was oddly crippled.  Will
you leave nothing left of me?
                He had asked that question several times now.  It was a plea
for him to leave something, anything.  Danarius was about to attempt to calm
Leto, but the Desire Demon looked at him.
                “A spirit will be necessary, to guide his soul, lest it
wander,” the Desire Demon said.  “I will do this.”  She placed the infant down
and walked, decidedly, to Leto.  Every movement she made was like sex.  The way
she seemed to breathe, the way she walked so sensuously, and spoke.  She
wrapped her arms lovingly around the elf, her lips against his neck while Raith
worked, and she may have whispered to the slave.
                Danarius knew this part of the Ritual.  It was another
dangerous part.  The lyrium was slowly embedding itself in Leto’s body.  It
would be the work of hours, but that wasn’t the truly dangerous part.
                The dangerous part was in Leto’s mind.
 
                How does one describe their soul being ripped from their body,
but suspended in some space, still attached enough to it to not be truly dead,
but gone enough to not truly be alive either, and still feeling every
indescribable bit of pain the body was in?
                Leto would have crumpled to the ground and cried, if his spirit
could manage the act.  If there was ground here to crumple to.  He wanted to
try anyway.  He wanted to curl into a ball, and cry like a child, and never
move again, for any reason.  He wanted, simply, to die.  Every desire he knew
was for the pain to stop, and nothing more.  He didn’t care about anything
else; he just wanted it to stop.  He wanted to die, and for the pain to stop. 
If he died, the pain would stop—that he felt certain of.
                He assumed this must be the Fade, in some dim recess of his
mind that wasn’t blackened by the screaming pain that demanded all of his
attention.
                “Do you wish to die?” a voice cooed to him.
                He almost immediately replied with “yes” and then stopped
himself.  Why was he here?  There was a reason.  His family.  If he died…  No,
he wanted to live!  He wanted to live, or Danarius might decide that he had not
fulfilled his part of the bargain.  His master had promised him that his family
would die if he did not survive this.  He wanted to live, more than anything. 
He didn’t want to die here.  If he died… he wanted it to be in the light, in
the open air.  Not here!  “No,” he answered, a bit surprised that he could
speak at all through the torrent of pain.
                Pain was such a mild word.  Agony.  Hurt.  Torture.  Anguish. 
Pain.  Nothing described what he was feeling, because there were no words to
describe it, no proper phrase for what he was feeling.  It was so much more
than pain.
                “Do you wish your suffering to ease?” a sultry voice asked
him.  He was surprised he even heard it, surprised he was coherent enough to
make sense of the words.
                “Yes,” he gasped.  It arced through his very soul, searing into
him, making him scream anew in an effort to release the pain.  Dimly, he heard
a song.  “Anything, please!”
                “Very well,” the distinctly feminine voice said, and took his
hand in hers.  The pain was not gone entirely, but it receded to something
bearable.  It was the difference between a broken leg and a fractured leg.  And
someone hitting it with a small mallet.
                Leto looked up, and wasn’t even afraid of the demon he saw.
                She smiled pleasantly at him.  She had perfect teeth, and a
beautiful face.  She tilted his head up, and kissed his lips, drawing him close
to her, and he couldn’t think of why he should resist her.
                He felt like something was slipping away.  He was losing
something…  Something he felt was vastly important.  Losing…
                What was his name?
                “What’s my name?” he whispered when her lips parted from his.
                She kissed him again until he forgot he had asked the question,
but he remembered when she answered, “I took it.”
                That seemed a strange thing to take.  Why would anyone want
that?  And didn’t he need a name?  It seemed dreadfully important for some
reason, to have a name.  “Why?” he wondered, and she abruptly let go of him.
                He shrieked in pain, all the force of it rushing through him
like water from a broken floodgate.  It was like a thousand needles being
pushed through his flesh at once, a thousand knife wounds, like every bone in
his body was broken and being stepped on.  And she took his hand again, and it
receded.
                He looked up at her.  “I…  Why am I here?”
                “I took that answer too,” she told him gently, and she began to
lead him away.
                “Where… are we going?” he asked her.
                She smiled again at him.  “I thought we’d take a walk,” she
answered.
                Oh, what a pleasant idea.  He couldn’t imagine for a moment why
he wouldn’t want to do that.  She had such a lovely voice.  “Oh,” he said, and
was silent for a moment as she tugged gently on his hand, guiding him forward. 
He took a hesitant step after her, then another, and stopped, his fingers laced
in her clawed hands.  “I…  Will I be gone forever, if I come with you?”
                She looked back at him, and her smile was warm and inviting. 
He had never seen a smile so pleasant to look upon.  “No,” she promised him. 
“Only sealed away.  It won’t hurt; I promise.  And you won’t notice it when
it’s gone, not truly.”
                His expression was dubious.  “But who I am will be gone.”
                “Do you know how many thousands, over my long immortality, have
begged with me to give them a second chance?  And here you have it—and you are
afraid of it.”
                “But…  I don’t know who ‘Fenris’ is.”  He looked at his hand in
hers, and was too afraid to let go of her.  His green eyes lifted, back to her
face.  “Will we be anything alike?  What will happen to me?”
                She embraced him, holding him against her tenderly, a mother to
her child, and his eyes closed for a moment.  When he opened his eyes again, it
was his mother—or an image of his mother—holding on to him.  But when she
spoke, he could hear the demon in her voice.  “You are both two different
people.  You will be sealed away and forgotten, nothing more.”
                “Will nothing of me remain?” he inquired, his voice quavering
brokenly like a lame horse over broken pottery.  He glanced at her, and saw the
demon again.
                Her hands cupped his face as she bent to kiss him again, and he
didn’t know what to do except to let her.  “A bit of your nature will remain.” 
He looked at her, eyebrows drawing up questioningly, and he did not have to put
his question into words for her to understand.  “Your sword skills, your fears,
your desire to live above all.”  She ran her clawed fingers through his hair,
the same way Danarius did.  Hadn’t Danarius had his head shaved?  He couldn’t…
remember…  “And you have such a desire to live.”
                And he did.  He didn’t want to die.  With every fiber of his
being, he wanted to live.  How many people had he seen die?  How many?  He
didn’t know any more.  So many faces, so much pain.  He didn’t want to just be
another body.  He wanted to live.  Down to his soul, he wanted desperately to
live.  But at what cost?
                Her grip on him loosened, and he broke away, backing from her,
even as the pain enveloped him again.  He stared at her, the pain pounding
through him.  Pain, his swordmaster had once said, means you are still alive. 
“I can’t,” he pleaded with her desperately.  “I can’t.”  He shook with terror. 
He had never been so afraid of anything his entire life.  I was scared my first
time in the coliseum.  I was scared when my mother lay dying, when my sister
could not birth the twins.  I was scared when my father died, and scared when I
was whipped and beaten.  I was scared when Danarius raped me.  I was scared
when I killed Ginger, and scared when I had to kill Ahline’s baby.  I was
scared when Varania drowned her child. All these times he had been afraid of
something, reminding him that there were other fears besides this, all of it
added into it.  All those moments would be gone forever.  He couldn’t give them
up—he couldn’t…  He was too afraid.
                The demon took a step toward him, and he saw Ginger’s face
instead of his mother’s.  “You have to come with me.”
                “No…”
                Another step.  Lura’s this time.  “Please, my love.”
                “I can’t…”
                Varania’s this time.  “You have to come.  You’ll die if you
stay here.”
                Die?  That gave him pause, but only for a moment.  “But at
least I’ll be me!” he screamed back at her, and the despair and the pain made
his eyes brim with tears.  It was the hardest decision he had ever had to
make.  Harder than killing Ginger, harder than killing Ahline’s baby, or
Shanamyn the half-elf, harder than sucking off the magister to save his mother,
and harder than bartering his body to his master to save his sister.  Those had
been easy choices, when it came down to it—he valued his family more than
anything, and it was all to keep them safe.  But this?  This was only about
him, and the decision was not so easy to make.
                A pause, another step, his father this time, and his legs
buckled, dropping to his knees.  He looked up at the autumnal hair, the leaf-
green eyes.  “You can do this.  You don’t want to die,” he told him, his voice
gentle and soothing, reaching a hand out to him to help him.  He took it.  His
father’s hands were callused, and as strong as he remembered.  His father’s
image helped him climb to his feet.
                The demon, herself again, took his hand, laced in hers.
                With every step, he seemed to feel something fade away, but
could not quite grasp what it was.  Every step he took, another memory faded
into an abyss.  And he kept walking.  Every time he realized something was
missing, and thought about it, the next memory was gone just as quickly, and
another, in no particular order.  When he tried to stop, to gather his
thoughts, the demon’s loose hold on his hand would begin to slip away, and the
moment he lost her hand, the pain would flood back.  She would wait for him,
but he had to stumble back to her, and take her clawed hand again.  She would
not stop with him, and his memories continued to fade.
                “What… are you taking now?” he asked the demon, but couldn’t
seem to make sense of the question even as he asked it.  Everything was fading
so quickly.  Every step took something new, burying it, taking it away.  It
left him feeling empty, hollow, and he only knew it was gone for the emptiness
it left in its wake.
                She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and turned to face
him.  “I took your memories—the images in your mind, the people, the places.”
                He felt lost, and stared at her, confused.  Places?  There were
places outside the Fade?  There were people?  He didn’t… understand…  She
embraced him again, kissing him with all the passion a Desire Demon possessed,
and he forgot to ask any more questions.
                He felt the sensation of being pushed down, but couldn’t say
that that was what happened exactly.  He was lying on his back, and she
straddled him, kissing him, her hand between his legs, and distracting him. 
Something important was going on.  Something he should notice.  He was losing
something, and he needed to pay attention.  Needed to…
                Needed to do what?
                He couldn’t remember past her kisses, or her hand on his cock. 
He couldn’t remember much of anything, and couldn’t even remember why that
would be important.  He had been afraid not a long while ago, hadn’t he?  Why
had he been so scared?  What had caused him so much fear?
                She lowered herself on him, and as she crested and fell, her
breasts heaving, he seemed to lose more.
                Not just images, faces, places.  He lost thoughts.  He lost his
life’s narrative.  Every thought he had ever had was gone, plucked from his
memory like a tray of delicacies at a party, bit by bit.  She stopped, embraced
him again.  She led him away, and he knew nothing but to follow her, and even
then, the memories here were fading.
                He felt the pain again, and shivered, his entire body
trembling.
                Body?
                He was dimly aware of a body as its suffering again reached
him, a hot brand against his flesh, a pronged whip clawing across his skin.
                The demon smiled back at him, whispered something that whatever
was whipping away his memories took.  He reached out for the demon, felt his
lips begin to beg her to take that away again, but everything was going so dark
and he couldn’t form the words.  Who had he been about to beg to help him?  Was
there anyone who could help him, or would?
                Then there was pain.  Pain didn’t describe it though.  Agony
didn’t describe it.  Suffering was a word, and nothing more.
                This was the feeling of death without the dying.  It was what
the earth felt when miners scratched and burrowed into it.  It was what the
forest felt when the trees were cut down.  It was all the heartache and
suffering in the world compressed into one body, one moment. 
                There were no memories, no thoughts; there was room for nothing
but the Pain that had become his entire world, the point of his entire
existence.  He was a vessel to experience it, and nothing more.  A slave to
torment and suffering, and nothing more.  He only existed so the Pain of
existence could run through him like a flood, and if the pain stopped, so, too,
would he.  And so, despite its awful, awful existence, he clung to it, because
the alternative was so much worse.  The Pain shut out everything.  It washed
away everything, searing everything away—sealing it away like a wound. 
Everything… gone.  Just Pain…  And yet still he held onto it, knowing by
instinct alone that if he held tight to the pain and suffering, he would live. 
To let go meant to die, so he held on to it like a long-lost lover, beckoning
to it, taking it into him.  No words could ever hope to convey his suffering,
nor the suffering of the earth, nor the oceans—all were silent and
unimaginable.  It was something that was never-ending and could not be given
voice to.  To try to describe it was to go mad for lack of words.
                He thought he smelled blood.  What sounded like an infant’s cry
pierced the air.  Someone screamed, “He’s not breathing!”
                Then there was, blessedly, nothing.
Chapter End Notes
     And that was Fenris' first memory: Undefinable, blinding pain; the
     scent of blood, death, and viscera; and screaming. No wonder he needs
     therapy.
***** Blood Magic *****
Chapter Summary
     The Ritual has run its course, but something is wrong...
                “He’s not breathing!” Raith screamed.  Danarius ran, dropping
to Leto’s side.  The elf had crumpled the second the spell ran its course,
falling unconscious and unaided to the floor, in the dried and drying blood. 
All the slaves were dead.  It had taken all of them.  But it had worked.  It
had been a success, and it had worked.  But…
                There was no breath.  No air rattled in his lungs.  The pain
had been so much that the elf had simply stopped breathing, in a crumpled heap
on the dried rune on the floor.
                “Get Marietta!” Danarius yelled.  Raith was running in an
instant.  The apprentice wheeled to a stop at the door, remembering at the last
moment that it was barred from the inside.  Grunting with the effort, Raith
heaved the heavy bar upwards, shoving it out of the way enough to open one of
the large, carved double doors.  He shoved it open, all but crashing through
the doorway into the dim light of the hallway beyond.
 
                Marietta had been told to wait nearby, in a small study, on
standby.  She was not allowed to sleep per se, but she could nap, and a servant
woke her in hourly intervals, so she would likely not be caught napping if
needed.
                Now, it was near dawn.  She was tired from the long night, but
so far, she had not been required, and suspected she would not be.  True, the
subject was an elf, but she was still looking forward to the finished result. 
She had always liked lyrium—liked its qualities.  She liked the way it looked,
and liked that it was dangerous.  The taste was faintly metallic and not
particularly pleasant to drink, but it was addicting to a mage the same way
that alcohol was addicting; one does like the feeling and the power, after
all.  Blood magic was more useful for that.  It required something everyone
had, after all, and the power was so much more potent.
                She had just begun to think about breakfast as she washed her
face when the door burst open.  At first, she was angry at the rude manner in
which it had been opened, and outright offended when the door
slammed—hard—against a bookcase, and bounced off the side.  Books fell to the
floor.
                “What—“ she began, but then she saw Raith, clutching the
doorframe.  His tawny blonde hair was matted with sweat and blood, his eyes
feverish and dark with lack of sleep.  He was flushed from his sprint, and
panting.  He was dressed in so little he might as well wear nothing.  He looked
like some sort of vulgar barbarian, come to ransack and pillage; not at all
like a magister’s apprentice, soon to be a magister himself.
                “Come—quickly!” he said.  She dropped the cloth she had been
holding to wash her face, and did not turn to see if it fell back into the bowl
or not.
 
                The elf was glowing softly in the dim light of the morning. 
The candles had been burned out completely over the course of the night.  The
only light in the room was from the darkened windows—and the lyrium etched so
artfully into his skin.
                It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Danarius had
ever seen—either because he had waited so long for this, and worked so hard to
achieve it, or because it truly was, he couldn’t say.          
                But the elf wasn’t breathing.
                Was his body rejecting it?  Some of the previous test subjects
had, but he had taken such precautions, had conditioned his pet, had used every
possible safety means to keep his precious pet alive…!  That his slave might
die now, after everything he had worked so hard to achieve, just didn’t seem
fair.  All those years of planning and work, all the money and expenses—all for
nothing?  No—No!
                Danarius did everything he knew to keep Leto alive, in a
desperate, feverish rush.  There was a bit of lyrium potion left, and he drank
it without hesitation, using the power to help fuel his own depleted magical
resources, like blood magic, and poured every ounce of skill he had into Leto,
to try to keep him alive.  It took all of it to keep his heart beating, but he
still was not breathing.  No breath rattled his lungs, no air escaped his
lips.  His slave still lay dying.  Still alive, but fading almost too quickly.
                He heard movement, even in his feverish state.  Was it Raith,
back with Marietta?  He looked to the door, but it was shut.  His gaze shifted
around the room, catching on the cages.  One slave was still alive, buried
under a body, trying to hide perhaps.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the
stained bandages on the slave’s hands—moving.  He made a gesture, and the slave
gasped.  The blood fueled his magic, and it worked into Leto.  The breath the
elf took was forced.  Every breath was forced.  He was not breathing on his
own, but he was breathing now.  His heart was beating, slowly.  Again, forced. 
Danarius swiped sweat from his brow.  “Don’t die…  You can’t die…”
                Not after all of this!
                Had he used too much lyrium?  Was that it?  None of the other
subjects had this much lyrium (and thus had not required so much work).  But he
had tested it with different amounts, and that always seemed to be the same. 
But he had never used this much before.  Was there something that had been left
out of the Ritual?  Some crucial point that had been forgotten or neglected? 
Perhaps a line did not intersect where it should have…?  Had there been enough
slaves?  Perhaps he had needed more life and blood…?  Or maybe it was something
else?  When he bound it into his soul, had something gone wrong?
                He heard noises now, stirring and thrashing and a creeping
feeling up his spine confirmed his suspicions.  He looked up, and this was why
the slaves had been bound.  Yes, to keep them from fighting, but also because…
                The corpse rose to its feet, the mouth gagged, and it was
rotting prematurely.  Its hands were bound, and it fought its bonds.  The cord
was breaking, and it would have broken already, except that the rope had been
spelled.  There was no option except to leave Leto for the moment to tend to
the growing threat posed by the corpses.  He destroyed one, and another,
ignoring for the moment the ones securely locked in cages, though they stirred
behind the bars as they found their footing.  The child corpse rose, and
struggled against its bonds, staring at the pedestal.  They desired to feed, he
knew.  Demons of hunger were simple creatures, knowing only of the desire to
eat, to consume, and would eat anything, even if it still lived while they
consumed it.  He had watched, from a distance, as a group of them devoured
prisoners, in the gladiatorial arena.  He had seen enough of them in his time,
but they never ceased to be dimly terrifying in the most primary, basic parts
of his mind.
                The Desire Demon ushered her lesser brethren back, out of the
circles, away from himself and the infant both.  She was protecting him, but in
passive sort of way.  She also held no compunctions about slaying her more
excitable brethren, and did.  Danarius cast, setting them afire, destroying
them in turn.  The Desire Demon ripped them asunder dispassionately.  One of
them strayed close to the infant’s pedestal, and the Desire Demon abandoned
Danarius to protect the infant.  Danarius barely noticed, so absorbed was he in
keeping the creatures away from himself and Leto.  He looked up when he heard
the infant scream, saw a corpse straining to reach it, saw the Desire Demon
tear it in two.  Teeth clamped around Danarius’ arm.  He grimaced, and put a
hand against the corpse’s head.  It wheeled away, a mouth full of blood.  Blood
ran down his arm, dripping to the floor.  Red blood splattered on the
unconscious elf’s chest.
                Danarius grimaced, but used his blood to power his spells. 
There were more corpses after all, gnawing on the bars that Raith had placed
them behind.  The locks groaned against the weight of the bodies.  Magic danced
in the air, coiled around him, and outward.  The possessed corpses did not even
cry out.  They did not know pain, nor fear—only hunger.  The bodies collapsed
in bloodied pieces, and the Desire Demon waded through the survivors like a
shark among wounded fish.
                She looked back at Danarius when the last of them was
destroyed, and simply winked out of existence.  The magister took a deep
breath, realizing for the first time that his heart was pounding and he was
streaked with sweat—fear and desperation.  He was a bit short of breath from
the brief fight after a long night of nothing but torment and strain.  His mana
had been nearly depleted before it, and it was almost painful to cast without a
mana store, even for a blood mage.  He was… so exhausted.  If the elf’s life
were not in such peril, he may feel inclined to simply lie down on the bloodied
floor and stay there.  Danarius’ legs trembled, and he slowly went to his
knees, staring down at his slave in despair.
                The door opened, but didn’t shut—they were running.  Marietta
knelt beside him.  The mages’ movements were rushed.  The three tried their
best, doing everything they could to keep Leto alive, but he just wasn’t
breathing on his own.  Not magic, nor common means could make him breathe, and
Marietta did try to breathe the breath of life into him with her own mouth. 
For all her hatred of elves, she was a doctor at the heart of it.  She breathed
into him, pumping against his chest with her hands, and again.  She repeated
the process.  The other two used magic.  Blood magic, regular magic.  Nothing
was working.  The elf only rarely breathed, and only when the woman forced him
to.
                “You’ll have to start again,” Marietta said, shaking her head
as she swiped her mouth.  “Cut out the lyrium, and use a different slave; he’s
dying.”
                Danarius stared down at his life’s work.  Everything he had
worked so hard on.  Years of work, planning.  Months of preparing for this
moment, and his precious pet was dying.  All of that preparation, all of that
work…
                He found the blade they had used for the ceremony lying on the
floor.  Raith looked on despairingly, just as upset as he.  Dawn’s light was
lightening the room, highlighting the blood, the bodies, and somehow not at all
detracting from the softly glowing lyrium.
                But the life of a half-starved, mundane slave had been enough
to force the elf’s heart to beat.
                What would a sacrifice of two mages do?
                Rather, with one hand, he cast, and the other, he stabbed
Raith, in the throat.  Raith’s eyes widened in surprise, and he choked,
sputtering.  Marietta managed to jerk backwards, but was caught in the magic. 
She struggled violently, then succumbed to it.  He felt her life force
draining, and Raith’s power fed Danarius’s magic.  He stabbed Marietta in the
chest, leaving the dagger buried hilt-deep.  She slumped, on Leto.  He shoved
her off of his pet, almost angrily.
                He poured his magic into him, all of it, powered by the life
force of two mages.  He fed all of his desperation into it, all of the magic. 
It left him feeling raw, and some deeper form of exhaustion consumed his
being.  It enveloped the elf, humming around him.  He simply had no more mana,
and wouldn’t until he slept.  Dimly, he also knew he was on the precipice of
death.  One more spell would be his last, yet still, he worked to keep the boy
alive.
                He heard the infant on its pedestal begin to cry.  He had
nearly forgotten the half-breed.
                The elf took a shallow, rattling breath, then another. 
Danarius could have wept for joy.  His breathing was shallow and difficult, but
he was breathing, and when the magic subsided, the elf continued to breathe.
                And—an unforeseen side affect, the likes of which he would
explore later:  A bright light in an empty void.
                It had worked.  The sacrifice had worked.  He slumped,
breathing heavily.  His entire being ached with exhaustion.  He wanted to
simply fall over—did not really have the strength to even wander to his bed (or
any bed for that matter)—and sleep for, oh, a year or so…  Strength of will
kept him awake—and the feeling of triumph.
                In joy, he cupped the side of the unconscious elf’s face,
running his fingers down the lyrium veins.  Beautiful.  Stunning.  Dare he say
it, something bordering on divine.  His life’s work.  The culmination of a
lifetime of study and preparation, and here it was:  Alive.
 
                He had his unconscious slave moved to a guest room, locked, and
guarded.  A terrified servant stood in attendance of him, washing off the blood
under supervision.
                Danarius ordered a bath prepared, and took his time reaching
his private chambers.  He took a long, grateful soak, and was happy to have all
the blood washed off; that felt good.
                His life’s work:  Completed.  He closed his eyes, enjoying the
feel of the steam and the warmth of the water after such a long, strenuous
night.  It felt good to let the tension flow out of him.
                And just think, it had only cost him a small fortune in slaves,
lyrium, and tools—and nearly his life.  There was the small matter of Raith and
Marietta.  He would attend to that soon enough.  Marietta’s family would have
to be informed that she had died serving her master.  That was only proper. 
She had no dependents that he was aware of—and he liked to be aware of his more
high-ranking servant’s affairs—so he only had the matter of sending her last
week’s pay to her next of kin, plus a small bonus.  The corpse could be
cleaned.  She had been killed with magic, and so it would be a simple matter
regarding the Ritual’s nature that she had simply done something wrong and
died.  Her common-born family would not know enough to question it, even if
they somehow got a look at the knife wound.
                Raith was another matter entirely, though thankfully had no
family who would care about what he had done.  He had, after all, abandoned
them utterly when he came seeking entry into Danarius’s service.  He might have
curried favor with his estranged family again had he spoken to them, or at
least sent them some small stipend, but his selfish apprentice had done no such
thing.  Raith could simply be cremated and buried—Danarius would see to the
expenses himself; it was only fair.
                Not all the magisters were so discreet.  Some dueled publicly. 
Others scarcely covered their tracks when they did anything that might be
nefarious—much too arrogant, those.  He preferred to keep personal matters just
that—personal, and as discreet as could be.  He liked directing attention to
one thing, while the real act was going on somewhere else.  It was less messy
that way, avoided more conflict.  And, most importantly, there were fewer
attempts at his life when he was not openly cruel.  He played the game of
politics and magic with a skill and grace few could hope to equal, but lacked
the desire to ever be appointed Archon, and that was exactly as he would have
it, to tell the truth.
                There was a very good reason his servants were highly paid,
after all.  And even better reason his slaves had little to complain about.  He
enjoyed plucking the most miserable ones from wherever they had been.  He liked
taking the slaves who were suffering the most.  He took care when he did that;
he chose only the most despaired, but those most healthy as well.  They would
see him as kind in comparison, and, grateful, work harder.  He rarely sold
their children.  True, many disappeared from the compound, but that too, they
did not speak of.  He had no need to force them in to silence; they willingly
did not speak of those things.  Life was too good under his order for them to
risk it.
                Leto and his mother had been a small gamble.  Free-born
children his age were easy enough to tame—Leto was proof enough of that. 
Varania would have made a decent slave, given time.  It was his mother that he
had been most suspicious of.  And yet, the woman had done nothing to make her
not worth his wile.  True, she had tried to teach her children how to read, but
he simply made sure that she was too busy, too exhausted, to try very hard at
it.  A slave that could read was dangerous to him, in a way, but that woman had
little drive to do anything for herself.  For her, it had always been about her
children.  Women were strange like that.
                His biggest gamble in slaves, he mused, had been the Dalish,
who he had suspected had been too old but had risked it anyway.  That had ended
on a fine note—a satisfying one, and fruitful, for he learned in his
experimentations, and Leto’s obedience was put to test moreover, so even the
small financial loss was compensated.  If the girl had turned into an obedient
slave, she would have made a spectacle in the arena, to be sure.  But,
everything had worked out for the best, after all.
                 Danarius was anxious for when his pet would finally awaken.
 
                He still slept.  Well, that was fine.  He would move him
anyway.  Danarius had paid and sent the elves on their way.  Of course, he
deducted their room and board, as well as a small fee, which he gave to Lana
for her “help” in assisting the elves book their passage to Seheron.  In truth,
he had just wanted to have that much more knowledge on where his pet’s family
were headed, in case he ever needed them for anything.  He did like to plan for
even the most unlikely of circumstances.
                The magister allowed for another day for his affairs to be
arranged, and it was a busy day indeed.  Letters had to be written and sent,
affairs checked, fees paid, a few feathers smoothed as it were.
                The Black Divine himself came that day, briefly, to see the
still-unconscious elf.
                “He has not risen at all?” he had asked.
                “He does not stir,” Danarius admitted.  “But he has been
through much, and when you see him next, he will be well.”
                “I look forward to that.”  And that had been that.  They had
moved on to discussing the Ritual itself in its entirety.  Danarius left out
nothing, and why bother?  This was, after all, the Black Divine; a fellow mage,
who had no delusions about the inner workings of the magisters.
                The man seemed interested enough, asking questions, and
listening intently.  When all was done, though, he shook his head.  “I can’t
see this done to the Templars,” he admitted with a sigh.  “Not even a small
number of them.”  The Templars in the Imperium were more like a personal guard
for the mages than what they were in the rest of Thedas.
                Danarius did not have to ask why.  All the blood magic involved
was impossibly expensive.  “I understand,” he said, though felt no less pride
in his work.
                “It is a most wondrous thing, and shows great talent and
skill—but the expenses are such that I cannot justify making it commonplace,”
he said, with some regret, but then smiled.  “And I think it would be a shame
to see such a thing commonplace anyway.”
                That was true enough, though the magister did not miss what had
been implied and not said:  There were too many Templars, and two mages for
every Templar would be horrendous, and pointless.  Danarius escorted him to the
entryway himself and bid the man farewell.  The Archon had requested, too, a
report of the Ritual, which of course the magister had already prepared a bit
of beforehand—mostly the details of it.  He added a few here and there, and
listed what had happened thus far, as well as a promise to visit him two years
hence, when his pet had been properly trained again, and had come under some
mastery of his abilities.
                But the memory tampering was delicate, and he dare not risk
anything awakening those memories for the oh-so fragile first two years.
                A part of him wondered—should he have known more about Leto
before the Ritual?  What about him would change?  Habits?  Mannerisms?  Maybe
even the way he talked, moved, walked?  Would he be completely different, or
the same without his memories?  How much of a person’s personality was shaped
by their memories and the people around them?
                It was almost a shame…
                Ah, well, no matter.  He was still anxious for the elf to rise,
but by no means desired him to rise yet.  If he slept for the next few days,
that was perfectly suitable to his needs.  He could sleep through the
transport, if he would.
***** Lyrium *****
Chapter Summary
     Danarius pays a blood price and unleashes a little piece of hell into
     the world to wake Fenris from a coma.
                He did sleep through the transport, to a manner that worried
Danarius after a day passed at the country manor and still the elf had not
roused.
                He had not stirred, or roused.  He just… slept.
                He had healers called, and studied the condition himself.  It
was generally agreed upon, after some debate, that the elf was in a coma of
some sort.
                At first, Danarius was insistent that he would wake.  He had to
wake.  He had done so much to keep him alive.  He just… had to wake.
                A week passed, though, and he hadn’t stirred.  That was
fine—the Ritual must have taken a lot out of him.  If he slept, he slept.  The
skin around the lyrium markings was raw and red.  It was cracking, and bled
from time to time.  If he were awake, he would move, and scratch at them, and
make them bleed more.  He told himself that it was best that he slept through
it.
                A second week went by, and his brow creased with worry.  He had
been in a comatose sleep for nearly four weeks.  His pupils didn’t react to the
light.  He reacted to no stimuli.  Nothing.  He might as well be dead.  Feeding
him was a trial, and involved a metal pipe down his throat, which bruised the
tender flesh.  He inquired his healers as to this matter.  They were just as
puzzled as he.  He wrote to a scholar he knew, who studied lyrium and its
traits regarding the condition.
                Danarius was dimly amused that the hair on his head was growing
back, even over the lyrium.  At first, it had been varying different
shades—primarily black, and he had first naturally assumed that his pet’s hair
would always be that dazzling shade of jet, reminiscent of the Black Divine’s
Chantry, for that matter.  But, first in the places the lyrium was on his
scalp, it had started to turn white.  It happened slowly at first—a few strands
and ever-widening patches.  Now, he could almost watch his hair turn rapidly
from ebony, to gray, to alabaster.  His eyebrows, curiously, remained
dark—which made sense; there was no lyrium there.
                Three weeks, and he wondered how much longer he could bear
this.  The elf still did not wake, nor stir.  He didn’t know what was happening
to his slave, and no blood magic meant for reading thoughts could touch his
estranged mind—and Danarius did make the attempt, more than once.  It was
supposed to be a simple spell in blood magic, yet still his pet’s mind eluded
him.  He didn’t know why that was either; he could read a sleeping person’s
thoughts, but the elf was so far gone that he could do nothing.
                The elf was bathed, and fed, and his hair combed, and otherwise
tended by slaves.  Oils were put on his skin to help with the blistering, and
he noticed that if anything, his skin only darkened.  Strange, considering that
Danarius had kept him out of the sunlight.  What if it were the lyrium that
darkened his skin like that?  It did look darkest around the veins, but that
could just as easily by minor scarring.  It was difficult to say, but the
comparison with his paling hair was quite striking.  He just wished those sage
eyes would open.
                By the end of the fifth week, a reply letter arrived.  He tore
it open immediately.  There was the typical drivel he had been expecting, and
little else, though a few things he could think on.  The scholar mentioned that
it might render him sterile too—that was fine. 
                The scholar also mentioned, as delicately as possible, that
many people, when exposed to lyrium became… addled in some way.  Templars,
grown old, often slowly lost their memory over time until they remember little
at all.  And others who worked with it—such as dwarves—could become lyrium-
addled—touched in the head, basically.  Danarius hoped not.  The elf slowly
losing his memory over time he could work with—that would be years off—but if
he ended up lyrium-addled…  He didn’t know what he would do.  Kill him, he
supposed, as a failure.  Or keep him as some kind of living furniture.
 
                The girl walked beside him, and he couldn’t say how long she
had been there.  She was light of foot, and he welcomed her presence if for no
other reason than because when she was beside him the scenery began to change. 
The path they followed curved around a bend, and suddenly they were in a forest
in the summer, the sunlight filtering through the trees.  He could hear birds
twittering.  The girl walked along beside him, silent as ever.  He glanced at
her again, frowning at the markings on her face.
                She walked in front of him, and he followed her through the
forest.  They waded across a shallow stream, along its bank.  They followed a
deer trail, and she pointed out a hawk wheeling above.  She led him to a lake,
a waterfall cascading down into it.  The earth formed a sort of natural bridge
over one of its tributaries, and they sat down over it, looking down at the
water.
                “Do you remember me?”
                He looked at her, her red hair, her freckles.  “No,” he said,
and even felt sorry about it.
                She nodded, and shrugged.  She looked down, sad.  It almost
made him wish he had lied.  “This place is so fragile.  If I tell you
everything, I might lose you,” she admitted.
                He looked at her, and didn’t know what to say.
                She looked up at the clear blue sky.  “I wanted to show you
this place, when I was alive.  I wanted to show you so much…”
                Then the girl looked up at him, as if she might say more, then
her complexion paled.  She turned and fled, disappearing into the trees.  The
forest vanished, replaced by more of the landscape he was familiar with.  The
demon knelt beside him, watching him.  He looked at the demon, and simply rose
and walked away.
 
                A sixth week passed, and still the elf slept.  The healers
bathed him daily, changed the sheets often, and managed to get him to swallow
enough to keep him alive, but he simply did not move, for anything.  Nothing
could rouse him.  Danarius wondered if he would ever wake up, and the thought
caused a stirring in him that would not rest.  He couldn’t bear it any more.
                He cut himself, and summoned the Desire Demon.
                She came at his call, but in her own time; she disliked being
at a “mere mortal’s” beck and call.  “I have to wake him,” he said without
delay, staring down at the elf.  “He’s useless to me if he does not wake.”
                She looked down at him, and stroked her fingers through his
pale hair.  It was getting long, left uncut.  The redness was fading, and it
had been over a week since last he bled, but the skin around the lyrium had
been permanently scarred, he had seen, when it had healed.  “He dreams,” she
answered.
                “Bring him back,” he insisted.
                She stared at the boy.  “For this, I require more than what I
have asked before.  I enjoy helping you, Cillian, but I have limits.”
                No one called him by his first name since Roschelle died,
except his younger brother, and he hadn’t spoken to him in a very long time. 
It was strange to hear it on the lips of a demon.  He had never told her his
name either, but it was not surprising that she knew it.  He sighed.  He had
suspected that she would want something.  “What do you wish?” he asked.
                She glanced at him sidelong.  “What we all wish.  I wish to
experience your world through a mortal body,” she confessed.  Danarius stood,
reserved, unwilling.  He said nothing, but his expression must have been enough
for her; she laughed.  It was a deep, throaty, womanly sound.  “Any mortal will
do.  There are ceremonies for joining me with the un-gifted as well, as you
well know.”
                He paused.  Now that was something else entirely.  “Do you care
if they are elven, or human?”  He wondered if it were even possible for them to
possess a dwarf.  He made a mental note to test that theory one day.  He knew
they could possess a corpse, but that was altogether different.
                She paused.  “In your world, an elf is seen as lesser, is it
not?  Then make me human,” she said decidedly.
                He nodded.  “Do you care what they look like?”
                She paused, her tail flicking back and forth.  “Someone
attractive, and young.  I wish to enjoy it.  I care not for the sex of the
youth,” she added as an afterthought.
                He nodded amiably.  He could certainly understand that.  “I
think I have one suitable.”  His eyes strayed to the prone body of his slave,
glowing softly, even under the sheet.  The lyrium did that from time to
time—flared and died.  Under anything, he had discovered, it would shine.  That
one would never be able to be stealthy.
                “Then prepare the human.  I will return three days hence.  That
should be plenty of time, and I will bring you the boy’s mind back when I have
my body prepared,” she said.
                Danarius sensed her beginning to go.  He called out for her to
stop.  She paused, but clearly looked annoyed.  “Wait.  Where will you go?”
                She considered, thinking.  “I want to travel.  Near, far—it
doesn’t matter.  I just want to experience your world.”  She smiled.  “Kill
things, and people.  True, I will cause harm, but not to you, and not near
you.  I will be just another runaway slave.  For a while.”
                He considered.  Letting loose an abomination to cause unknown
havoc in the world, or risking the elf never waking?  It wasn’t something he
wanted to consider.  But he could not bear for his creation to languish.  “I
agree, demon,” he answered.
                She nodded, and was simply gone.
                He wasted no time.  He gave an order that all of his human
slaves were to line up and stand in attendance, outside.  Danarius gave them
less than an hour to assemble.  Most were there, and those not ran to join the
line.  He made a mental note to have them flogged for disobedience.  Better
yet—have them all flogged.  He frequently punished the entire group for one
individual.  And if he punished the elven half of his slaves as well—well, that
just further increased the carefully planted animosity between the two.  It
created a nice distrust for all of them, and decreased the chance of pity they
would have for one another.  It kept them from siding with one another, if they
should think to rebel one day.
                He walked down the line, immediately ruling out others as well
as listing some as possibilities.  Those he ruled out, he dismissed back to
their duties, though first he sent them to be beaten for tardiness, but others
he kept in line.  He walked back down the line again, continuing to eliminate
possibilities.  He planned on giving the Desire Demon the best choice
available, as was her due.  He debated silently for a time, and finally picked
one—a young girl, maybe about sixteen.
                She was pretty—blonde with soft brown eyes, bow lips and a
small amount of freckles.  Why had he not had her bred yet?
                He stopped in front of her.  “You,” he said.  She shrunk before
him, and he detected a faint tremble when he addressed her.  She was a meek
girl, suitable for a slave.  “Do you have any children?”
                She swallowed, her fingers twisting in her skirt—a nasty
habit.  His older sister had done that, he remembered, even after the madness
took her…  This place was bringing back memories—not all of them pleasant.  In
fact, most were not.  “N-no, m-master.”
                He wondered if she were nervous, or if she had a stuttering
problem.  “Are you a maiden?” he demanded.  If so, why?  Was there something
wrong with her in some way?
                She nearly burst in to tears.  “I—I…  I…” she stammered
miserably, before she began to cry.
                He nearly struck her, but another slave girl beside her spoke
up.  This one had brownish blonde, stringy hair, and an unfortunate nose, but
she was tall with a lean, strong body.  “She only recently came into her
womanhood, Master,” the girl finished for her, putting a comforting hand
against the blonde’s back.
                The blonde girl sniffed, swiping at her eyes, trying to stop
crying.  A late bloomer then.  That wasn’t out of the ordinary.  Still
perfectly acceptable.  “You’ll do,” he informed her, and sent the other slaves,
all but the blonde, to be punished immediately before going back to their
chores.  She had begun to cry again.  She probably assumed he was going to rape
her.  To be fair, it wasn’t her fault that she was ignorant.
                “Come,” he ordered.  He wasn’t interested in the girl, and
almost felt like telling her that, just to see if she would stop.  That would
probably just make it worse though.
 
                Acacia followed her master up to the big manor.  She had never
actually been inside it before.  She had lived in a place where the master of
the house had always been gone before, and it was strange enough with him
back.  Things were harsher in some ways.
                The overseer had beaten them before, all of them.  Sometimes,
he raped the women, or had them bred—it wasn’t something solely done to the
knife-ears.  That had always frightened her, though her late blossom into
womanhood had spared her much of what she had seen her fellows undergo.  She
had no hips, no breasts, for the longest amount of time.  Some of the boys had
openly mocked her, and other girls just pitied her, but she felt no self-pity
for it; she had seen the things that happened to the young women, and did not
envy them.
                Her friend, Damaris, was pregnant already, and had not enjoyed
getting to that point.  Acacia had lain awake, terrified, when she heard it
happen in the wooden pallet next to her, knowing that, for her, it was only a
matter of time.
                She had never imagined it would be the magister.  She was so
terrified, but she had to do whatever her master told her to.
                Acacia had never known any other way of life, or that there was
any other way of life.  Anyone who wasn’t a slave was almost like a different
being than herself—like she existed in one world, and they another.  They were
almost unreal to her, except some of the servants or the overseer.
                She had never dared to dream of anything else.  She lived every
day in the present, never thinking of her future, save the inevitable rape that
would occur.  All of her thoughts lay in doing whatever it took to avoid the
taste of the whip, or in getting all of her scarce meals.  The overseer had
denied her food plenty of times, and she knew what it was like to be hungry.
                She had never seen a real cooked meal up close, or even
imagined what it might taste like.  They were fed in the same trough as the
dogs, and she had to fight as well as anyone over what scraps she got, and had
been bitten by the dogs on more than one occasion.  But she, like nearly
everyone, had once stolen a grape from the vineyard, out of hunger.  She
disliked it, but she had never tasted anything like it.  It made her ill, and
someone had seen, and told the overseer.  She was punished, and never dreamed
of stealing food again, no matter how hungry she was.
                Acacia felt a certain measure of fear at actually venturing
inside the manor.  That was the servants’ place, after all.  She felt
immediately out of place, like at any moment the magister would turn and accuse
her of trespassing where she did not belong.  But she paid attention, and
watched for any cues that might indicate that he wanted her to do something
besides follow him.
                He did nothing, though.  He walked down halls, so grand she
could never have imagined they existed only a stone’s throw away from a place
she walked every day.  She passed tapestries—great works of weaving—that made
her want to stop and stare.  She witnessed priceless artifacts of some sort on
display, expensive-looking rugs (she was instructed, briefly, to not walk on
the rugs).  The polished wooden floors felt strange beneath her feet, the
marble tiles even stranger.  They went down a stair, down, down a winding
stairwell.  She had been on stairs before—once that she could remember.  These
were much, much longer.  It seemed to spiral for a longer time than she thought
possible, and then she stood at the bottom.
                There was a small room, all made of stone, with an iron door. 
He opened the door with a key that hung on a ring outside the door—that seemed
a strange thing to her.  Why keep a key next to the door?  Surely one must
enter the door…  But then what was the point in locking it?
                He went through the door, and she followed, for he had not told
her to wait.
                There was a hallway, this one not so grand as the others, and
not decorated.  It was dark down here, save for the light from the torch in the
hallway.  To her astonishment, the magister upturned his palm, and fire
appeared—from the very air!—on his palm.  She had never seen a mage performing
magic before either, and she must have gasped in astonishment, for he paused
briefly.
                She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment, then wondered,
What is going to happen to me? It was not the first time she had wondered this,
but perhaps this was the first time she had had such conviction behind the
phrase.
                He searched through the keys for a moment, and turned to a door
with his free hand.  He unlocked it, and pushed it open.
                “Get inside,” he ordered her.  It never even occurred to her to
protest.  Orders were easy to follow.
                The door shut behind her, and she heard it lock, and then he
left her alone in the dark.
                She had been expecting rape.  She had not been expecting this.
 
                The demon was trailing behind him again.  He turned and looked
back at her.  She did not pretend as though she were not following him.  She
looked at him, and smiled as if she knew things he did not—likely, considering
he felt like he knew almost nothing.  Not who or what he was, though he felt
like those things had been important, once.  Nothing seemed important anymore,
not really.
                He felt like this was the first time he had seen her this
close, but it wasn’t out of the question that she had been here all along.  He
waited, and wondered if she would say something, or do something.  When all she
did was look and watch him, he turned and continued his path.  Maybe, maybe if
he could keep walking, it would lead him to somewhere else.
                He wasn’t sure what he was expecting.  He only knew the sights
and sounds here, after all.  Maybe just something different.  Not only was all
the landscape the same, the only available path went around and around in
circles.  He could not venture off the path, and couldn’t even say why
exactly—he just knew it was impossible with the strange certainty of a dream. 
Sometimes, he would stop walking, or walk back the way he had come, or simply
stare into the distance at the Black City.
                And still the demon followed, at a short distance, watching and
waiting.
                For what?  Did she intend to prey upon him?
                “Why are you here?” he asked her.
                The Desire Demon sidled up beside him, brushing her arm against
his as she did so.  The path was slender here.  He turned to face her, and put
more distance between them.  “Why do you think I’m here?”
                He regarded her in silence for a moment.  “To prey upon my
soul, I suppose,” he said, and sounded bored even to himself.  At least that
would be a change.  Monotony was enough to drive one to madness, after all. 
For some reason, deep inside his mind—the places he couldn’t remember—trickled
out a small fear of going mad.  Among other things.  Though he did not know it,
the spell wasn’t completely locked in place yet; some things simply leaked
through—base things, such as fears.
                She laughed gently.  “Your soul?  Ah, I’ve no use for something
so broken,” she answered, and her smile became a little saddened.  “But a
lesser demon might want it.  Be glad of my company, for it will keep them
away.”
                He only turned, and kept walking, losing interest in this
conversation, just like he had lost interest in unraveling the mystery of where
he was, and was beginning to lose interest in discovering who he was.
 
                Acacia explored the confines of her cell, and found a small
stone bench.  She sat on it, and stared ahead, for there was little else to do.
                She waited, and later, a man brought down some things for her. 
A large jug of water, small loaves of bread, and another container she could
guess the use for.  He just as quickly left her alone in the dark again.
                She sipped at the water, so very used to partitioning
everything she had.  In reality, the bread was flat, tasteless, and unsavory. 
But Acacia had only ever had a few bites of bread--stale bread.  She was
interested in it, and did not know enough to be unhappy with it.
                She waited in the dark, wondering what would happen to her, and
the magister came back down.  He did things to her.  It didn’t hurt, exactly. 
It felt strange sometimes, and she found that she couldn’t describe any of
those things very well afterwards, even to herself.  He came back in intervals,
and gave her other things to eat.  She wasn’t sure what all of those things
were, but he told her to eat them.  She had never not followed orders from her
betters.
                He smirked in the dim light of the lantern.  “Do you want to be
down here?” he asked her.
                If she had known better, he would know that he was mocking
her.  She had only the faintest inkling that he was.  “I-I…  N-no, Master,” she
stammered.
                He raised an eyebrow.  “Are you a stutterer?” he asked her.
                She bowed her head low, ashamed.  “Y-yes, Ma-m-master.”
                He seemed oddly amused, and she couldn’t place why.  “If you
can count to… five…  I’ll let you go.  I’ll set you free,” he told her, vastly
amused.  “But you mustn’t stutter.”
                She blinked, not at all understanding what he meant.  “W-why… 
I-I d-d-d-on’t under—u-understand,” she choked out.  She didn’t speak very
often, and mostly chose to listen when she could.
                “Do you mean to ask why you should want to be free?” he
inquired.
                She blinked.  He put it so eloquently.  Sometimes, she would
like to not stutter.  “Ah, um…  Ye-Yes.”  Her brow furrowed.  “I… I’ve… a-
always been…  Why-why would y-you want t-t-t-o get-t rid of-f-f me?”
                It was practically a speech for her, and she knew it was
terrible, but it was heartfelt.  His offer only made her feel dejected.  She
was even unwanted as a slave?  Was she so useless?  She had thought…  She had
always done a good job before…  But he only laughed, terribly entertained, and
she knew it was at her expense, but she couldn’t manage to figure out why.  “I
only hope my pet becomes just like you,” he mused to himself, and left her
alone in the dark.
                Acacia had no way of judging how much time had gone by, but she
ate, drank, and slept.  She slept a lot.  There was little else to do, and the
stone bench and floor were not too far a cry from the wooden pallet, though the
pallet had been warmer.  Tevinter was usually a warm place, but the ground was
cool enough, especially in the winter months or when the rains came.
                This was high summer though, and she didn’t mind getting away
from the mosquitoes.  She didn’t like bugs very much.  She felt idle though. 
She should be helping farm the grape vines.  There was work to be done, after
all—always.  Why was she here?
                It was her master’s business, she decided, and left it at that.
 
                The wandering soul was not certain of how he came to be here,
but he found himself walking up a cobblestone path.  The city was oddly vacant,
yet somehow cheery despite all that.  As he walked, he saw someone leave a
building, and come out to walk beside him.  He studied this person, frowning.
                The elf smiled back at him, but said nothing.  He simply walked
beside him.  This elf had auburn hair, and leaf green eyes, and always looked
at him like he wanted to say something, and didn’t.
                They just walked together, down the lonely streets.  “Are you
alone here?” he finally asked the other.
                “I’ve been waiting,” the elf replied.
                “For what?”
                “For whom,” he corrected, with a smile.
                The wandering soul fell silent for a time.  “For whom are you
waiting for?”
                “Those most important to me,” he said, and looked at him
intently as if the wanderer should know.
                He looked at him, but it was simply a riddle.  “I’m sorry” was
all he could think to say.  The other nodded, and they continued down the
road.  “It must be worth the wait.”
                “Yes,” he said with an agreeable nod.
                They fell back into a comfortable silence as they walked.  They
passed by empty shops, and empty houses, an empty market.  The demon sat on a
bench in the park they passed through.  The elf took one look at her and fled. 
He watched him go, and looked back at the demon.  He sighed, and would have
continued on, except the city with its cobblestone path had bled away.  The man
was gone too.  There was nothing else for it, except to continue.  The demon
watched him go.
 
                Acacia only wondered if she had done something to displease her
master in some way, or if this was how she was serving him.  She didn’t really
understand very well.
                Her bread was gone, despite eating only when she was very
hungry, and the little water left was stale, and the chamber pot stinking.
                She heard the door open, and thought that if it were her master
again, that if he wanted her to live, he should order someone to bring her a
bit more bread, and water ultimately.  And for his convenience, someone should
empty the chamber pot.  She could do that, she reasoned.
                But, rather, it was a servant, and not come to give her these
things, but come to collect her.  She was confused, but followed the servant
out.  What was going on?
 
                He felt like he had been here forever, as long as he could
remember anyway.  Which, granted, wasn’t much.  At least it felt like it wasn’t
much.  The troubling part was that he had no idea.
                He dreamed, and didn’t understand the dreams.  Most of them
were memories of pain.  Sometimes someone was yelling.  He’s not breathing!
                What did that mean, anyway?
                He’s not breathing.
                Who was “he”?  And why was it important?  It sounded important
in the dreams, significant.  But he couldn’t understand why.
                He felt vastly lonely.  His dreams were empty, and felt
hollow.  He slipped and tumbled through them, and most of them were the same. 
He relived the same dream over and over again, oftentimes very much aware that
he was dreaming and trying to steer the content of the dreams away.  But he was
unable to.  It was always the same.  Just a world of pain, and the same person
yelling, right before oblivion.
                He preferred this sort of dream.  He wandered in a lifeless
world, alone.  Forever alone.  He saw no one.  No friend, no stranger.  This
was a world of loneliness, and even here, he felt the dull, throbbing ache. 
Why wouldn’t it just go away?
                But it was better than the blinding pain from the other
dreams.  The memory-dreams.
                He was startled when he felt the presence of another being. 
She walked beside him, tall and proud.  From the core of his being, the word
for what she was stamped across his mind:  Demon.
                “Don’t be afraid,” she told him.  He wasn’t sure that was very
good advice coming from a demon, but did not say so aloud.  “Are you lost?”  He
felt like he may have seen her before, but everything was so jumbled together,
and far apart at the same time—so confused!—that he couldn’t say for certain.
                A long pause before he answered, “I feel lost.”
                She smiled, a little sadly, it seemed to him, though
knowingly.  “I understand,” she offered.  For a time, they walked in silence,
she beside him.  “Do you like it here?”
                A longer pause than last time.  “No,” he answered.  “Why?  Is
there… anything else?”  He sounded hopeful.  Surely, the demon, after all, must
have come from somewhere.  Or was she just another manifestation of his dreams
and nightmares?  Was that it?  Was he insane and dreaming up demons, just to
have someone else to talk to?  The thought made him uncomfortable.
                “Be careful what you think, here,” she advised him, as if she
read his mind.  Maybe she had.  “You will summon far worse than I, with those
thoughts.”
                “Then you’re real?” he asked, feeling relieved.  Relieved that
he was not mad.  For some reason he couldn’t name, not being mad seemed
terribly important.
                She nodded.  “I am as real as you are.  Though I am immortal,
in a sense.”
                He frowned.  “How can something immortal possibly be real?”
                “Your kind were immortal once, elf,” she told him.  He didn’t
know what to say to that, so simply said nothing.  “Though no longer.”
                He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  It only seemed to prove
his point, not hers.  “So.  You’re an immortal demon, then,” he said,
reiterating all that she had told him.  He was so starved for companionship
that he was willing to accept the talk with the demon.  After all, what could
possibly come of it?  She had already said…  Had she said--?  Hadn’t she said
that she didn’t want his soul?  He couldn’t remember exactly.
                “Yes,” she answered, and there was a silence again as they
walked.  It was only then that he realized that she seemed to be leading him. 
He saw no reason not to follow her.  What else was there to do?  And, with her
leading, there seemed to be new paths opening for them.  “There is a world
beyond your dreams, mortal, though you do not remember it.”
                He paused.  “Why are you telling me this?”  He stopped and
looked at a large vein of lyrium.  When he got too close to those, the
throbbing ache seemed to grow worse, reminding him of it.  As if he could
forget.
                She cocked her head to the side as she looked at him.  “Do you
not wish to return to it?”
                He frowned.  “Why?  What’s there?”
                “Beauty,” she answered, simply, and stopped to look around the
world he knew:  The Fade.  “People.  Life.”
                He listened.  He was so incredibly lonely…  And this place was
wrought with wrongness to him.  It would not be so bad to leave it.  And…
life?  He felt a deep stirring at the core of his being at the meaning of the
word itself.  A desire welled up inside him—the desire to live.  More than
anything else, to live.  He realized, with the sort of slow realization of a
man rousing from the succubus of drink, that so long in this world meant to
teeter on the edge of death.  With that realization came the horrifying reality
that he had been willingly blind to before.  The Void seemed a neighbor to the
Fade.  If he stayed too long…  If he slept—for that was what he was doing now,
he was dimly aware—for too much longer, he would slowly fade into the Void. 
Maybe parts of him already were, or had.
                “I want to live,” he whispered.
                She smiled.  “Hold on to that thought, and let go of everything
else,” she told him, reaching out her hand to his, taking his hands in both of
hers.  She had claws, and she pulled him against her, her firm breasts mashed
against his chest, and her lips were cool against his.  But he felt everything
else go—all of his dreams, this conversation, the demon herself.  All of it
faded the way dreams tend to do, and let go.
 
                It had been hours.  It might feel like only a few minutes in
the Fade, but time passed differently here.  In a dream, hours went by in
minutes, and vice versa.  And the elf was in a coma.
                They hadn’t cut his hair, he noticed, and it came nearly to his
shoulders.  Danarius was inclined to let it grow.  His hair looked… nice,
against his darker skin tone.  It also amused him to let the pale hair grow. 
An elven goddess had white hair—he couldn’t remember all their names; they were
strange—but it amused him to make his pet not only a mockery of the Qunari
customs, but of the “elvhen” ones as well.  It was a striking contrast anyway,
and he liked it with the lyrium too.  He just wished the damn elf would open
his eyes.
                As if on cue, the elf began to stir, shifting for the first
time, breathing irregular.  He was trying to wake…!  Danarius sat up in the
chair, anxious now.
                The elf’s head rolled, away from him, toward him, and stilled
for a moment.  Fingers twitched, legs kicked.  He had read that that happened
to those asleep too long—their minds tested their bodies.  The lyrium’s glow
brightened, and then the blue glow consumed the elf completely—which was mildly
alarming at first—then it subsided back to its more regular pale glow.  He
jerked his head again, and his green eyes fluttered open.  They opened halfway,
blinked, and opened wide.  Then the elf let out a long sigh, eyes sliding
closed again, as he passed into a more normal sleep.  A sleep that he,
blessedly, moved in, shifting uncomfortably, then stilled.  At the same time,
Danarius tested him, touched his arm.  The elf barely stirred.  He gripped the
elf’s forearm, hard enough to bruise it.  His slave jerked, eyes opening again,
but didn’t seem quite capable of staying awake—not yet.  Danarius understood;
his pet was exhausted.
                Fine; he could rest.  So long as he would wake again; he could
rest.
                He turned, and was not at all surprised to see the Desire Demon
standing behind him.  “What of our deal?” she asked him, and nodded to the
elf.  “Your slave will wake.  Give him an hour, maybe two, and he will wake.”
                Danarius paused.  “I want him capable of cognitive thought and
reasoning.  He’s useless to me if he can’t understand me,” he informed her.
                He was briefly annoyed when she laughed.  “I never do things by
halves,” she said, though also seemed indignant.  “Your slave will need… help. 
He’ll be able to talk, and function, but has not moved in weeks; you’ll need to
be patient with him.”
                He frowned.  “What are you saying?” he demanded.
                She shrugged a shoulder.  “He won’t be able to walk
immediately.  He may have trouble so much as sitting up for long periods of
time at first.  Don’t be cruel to him; it’s not his fault—it’s yours.”  She
smirked.  “You should have called me sooner.”
                Danarius pinched the bridge of his nose, as if that would
stifle the headache he felt coming on.  He reasoned that he had plenty of
time.  Two years.  “Will he be able to fight like he used to?”
                She shrugged.  “His body knows what to do, and deep inside, his
mind does too.  It will just be a matter of re-learning it.  He will do so
quickly, I suspect.  Don’t worry.  He’ll be everything you want of him if you
are gentle… if you let him recover.”  And she looked back at the sleeping elf,
and her expression became unreadable.  “He will awake with no memories—all the
learning abilities of a child, but with the mental capacity of an adult.  If
you are cruel to him, he will not forget it.”
                He nodded, impatient.  “Yes, of course,” he said.  “Now, about
that brat you want—she’s prepared for you.”
                “I mean it, Cillian,” she said softly.  “Be careful that your
desires do not cloud your judgment.  Do not let your accomplishments be your
own undoing.”
                “Come, the girl is in the room next door, and everything is
prepared,” he said, moving past her.  The hall was empty, and the demon did not
follow him, so much as pass through time and space, and appear when he was
ready for her.
                When it was done, and the stuttering girl was there no longer,
and in her place, stood a demon in human garb, she said that she would depart. 
He offered her clothing, and she took that.  With no form of dignity, she began
stripping in front of him.  Danarius found himself looking away out of a sense
of propriety.  He offered her gold, and she turned it down, saying that she had
no need of it.  She reminded him that she still had more than her share of
power as a demon, and that the “garment” she wore was merely her means of which
to see and experience his world.
                So he let her go, in the dead of the night, cleverly evading
the guards, and she was gone.  What havoc she wreaked, what mischief, he didn’t
care to know.  He had his pet, after all.
                He went back to the room the elf lay, and sat, and waited,
patiently, for his eyes to open, truly open, for what was the first time, for
all sakes and purposes.  The elf was already stirring when he entered the
room.  Was it pure chance, or some last gift of the demon, who could say?  But
the ceremony to instill the demon in its human vessel had taken a fair amount
of time.  It was impossible to say.
                Finally—finally!—those pretty sage eyes slid open, slowly.  His
gaze tracked the room, and Danarius sat, and waited, watching him look,
watching him blink.  He watched his facial expression contort first to pain,
then confusion, and back to pain.
                The lyrium was painful, of course.  It was a dangerous
substance, after all, to all but mages.  And even then, some would argue that.
                The elf fumbled for a moment, and tried to sit up, but fell
back on the bed weakly.  “Don’t get up yet,” the magister advised.
                His eyes tracked to his master, the confusion plain on his
face.  “What… why…?” the elf stammered, half-formed questions.  Perhaps too
many questions to name at once.
                “All in good time,” he told him.  He imagined his slave was
hungry, thirsty.  He had best attend to that immediately.  “I imagine you’re
hungry.”  It wasn’t a question, and the elf only looked at him, still clearly
confused as ever, and just as clearly in pain.  He rose.  He had sent the
servants away from this hall, for this, so he would have to physically go to
the one he had waiting a short distance away.  He disliked yelling whenever
possible, after all.  He should have the forethought to have a bell or
something—he had been too anxious for this.
                “Wait…” the elf said haltingly.  Danarius gazed down at him. 
“Who…  I mean…  I don’t remember…”
                “I’m your master, a magister of the Tevinter
Imperium—Danarius,” he answered, though that may not have been what the elf was
asking of him.  “You will address me as ‘master,’ as is proper for a slave. 
You will…”  He found himself sighing, and giving up on the matter as the elf’s
eyes began to close.  “You will learn all the proper etiquette in time, my
pet.”
                “What’s… my name, Master?” he asked him, eyes opening again,
trying to stay awake.
                And the magister answered him, “I will call you ‘Fenris.’”
                The sage eyes blinked again, and slid closed, falling back
asleep.  It would take some small amount of time for the servants to steep a
broth right now anyway, so it was all right that he slept again. 
                He regarded the elf with the same admiration a craftsmen did a
fine tool that would serve him well.  All he had to be was patient.  He had
learned patience.  He could be patient with his pet.  His poor Fenris could
barely stay awake right now.  He was too weak to sit up.  It would, clearly,
take time.  And work—mostly work.  He had the healers he had hired.  They would
have to help him re-learn to walk, and do the other therapies his pet would
need until he was again dexterous and strong enough to take up sword fighting.
                From his research, it would take a few months, but it would be
worth the wait in time.  All he had to do was be patient—and, gentle, the demon
said.  Whatever that was supposed to mean.
 
***** Accidents *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris is making some amount of progress in recovery while Danarius
     reminisces about his teenage years. Hadriana is thrown out of her
     home and left alone with nothing.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                                   Part Four
                Hadriana had seen Minrathous once, when she was but a child. 
She had gone to have her phylactery made, which, in the Imperium, was a
formality more than something she had to do.  And so she had been promptly
turned out of the city, with its grand cathedral, the palace, the towering
spires, manors, markets, beaches and docks, flags and statues, painted
carriages and burning incense, to milking the cows and tending the sheep, to
peeling vegetables and sweeping the floor, to feeding the chickens and
collecting eggs.
                At the time when she could have protested this, in front of
other mages, she had been too little to want to be separated from her family,
and so she had not.  Once, the matter would have been pressed and she would
have been ripped from them as soon as her magic was discovered, but this was
Tevinter, and the Chantry’s practices sickened the mages, and it had been
greatly debated and ultimately lobbied that this would no longer happen.  Some
mages were still old enough to remember being ripped from their families, and
held the practice in no high regard.
                In some cases, she would not have been given the option, but
there was a mage who lived just outside her village and was willing to teach
her, so she had gone back home rather than the nearest Circle, under the
understanding that she would go back to the Circle for more formal training
when she was older and more learned, a concept she disliked almost as much as
her mother’s desires to marry her off to the wealthiest merchant she could
manage.
                The hermit-mage had agreed to tutor her in magic, for a small
fee her family could scarcely afford, and resented her for it.  She did her
best to help the family, and learn useful spells, but still they hated her for
her birthright.
                Not because mages were not seen as valuable in the Imperium,
but because her being mageborn meant that she had a certain freedom her sisters
did not, did her sisters resent her.  Her sisters were married off young and
begot with children as quickly as possible, for the more hands to work the
fields the better.  Hadriana had only recently come of an age where it was
appropriate for her to be wed, and so her mother had looked for a match for
her.  Hadriana had refused, and she had the power to back her refusal… and woe
to the one who tried to force her hand in marriage.
                She didn’t want to marry, much to her mother’s displeasure.
                She had never done anything pleasing to her mother’s eyes.  She
had tried very hard for most of her life, but had lately come to realize that
nothing would ever please her, so much as if she were to become Tranquil.
                Well, she did not want to become Tranquil, very adamantly.  Her
sisters had tried to convince her to undergo the process, as had her mother. 
Her brothers didn’t care, and had scarcely noticed her existence it seemed to
her.
                She remembered when she had become a woman, and her mother told
her that she had a match picked out for her, the only remaining attribute to
the match the small matter of her dowry.  Hadriana had dug in her heels and
stubbornly refused.
                “I will burn him to ash if he touches me!” she had screamed,
and fled the room.  Later, she overheard her parents arguing.
                “…  I don’t know what to do with her,” her mother said to her
father, exasperated.
                Her father looked up from his work, repairing a tool.  “She’s
young yet.  Might be that she will change her mind,” he offered peaceably.
                Her mother rounded on her spouse.  “I rule this house, if you
rule the field,” she said, as if quoting something to him.  “We agreed that I
would raise our children, while you supported the family.”
                And he fell silent, and did nothing to rebuke his wife, not
even in his gentle way.  And, oh, how she and her mother had quarreled in the
days to come.  Hadriana often went to bed hungry and in tears over their
arguments.  She wanted to go to her father for help, but it was as her mother
had said, and thus she barely knew the man.  She had, in an effort to make
peace with her mother, offered that she might go to the Circle if someone would
take her the long way to Minrathous.  This idea was not met fondly either; all
the money, clothing, and food that went into raising Hadriana would be wasted
if she continued her education, her family felt.  What good, they had demanded,
was an education?
                Finally, her mother had it with her.  “If you won’t obey my
rules, then leave,” she said.  And her words might as well have been law.
                Hadriana looked to her family, who were scattered—in the field,
at the block chopping wood, the chickens, and the garden.  All looked away. 
None came to help her.  “But I…”  She had nowhere to go.  This was the only
place she had ever known!
                “Harrietta…” her father said, resting a big, callused hand on
his wife’s back.  “She’s just a girl…”
                “Then she should obey her mother,” she insisted.  “Hadriana.” 
She whirled back to face her daughter, her husband’s hand falling away.  “You
will marry that man, or you will leave.”  The man she wanted to wed Hadriana to
was a wealthy Soparati merchant from a neighboring town, only interested in her
because she was a mage, which meant some social climbing and status for him. 
And he was over twice Hadriana’s age.  They said it was a very good match,
because Hadriana had such a humble birth, and he had outlived two wives
already, and sired several sons.  But she wanted so much more than that.
                Abashed, she had turned to the road with nothing.  No food, no
water—just the clothes on her back.  And her magic—at least she had that.  She
went to her tutor.  The path to the shack he lived in took two hours in the
forest, and it seemed longer than usual that day.
                The Tevinter sun was warm, but the forest provided a shade, the
trees and plantlife naturally cooling.  A gentle breeze ruffled the leaves. 
Birds twittered, and sometimes she saw  one—a sparrow here, a swallow there. 
It was a lonely path, and always had been, twisting away from the village, into
the forest.  The path was brightly lit, sunshine spackling the forest floor.
                Her parents had never really gotten along, not in truth.  They
may have several children together, but her mother disliked her father.  She
said that he was a selfish man.  He owned the mill and fields.  Neither were
particularly prosperous—just necessary to support the small village.  But they
did seem well-run, and clean.
                She remembered walking down the dark hall at night, and
overhearing her parents talking.  “He has six children to feed, and he’s out of
work,” she had said.
                Her father glowered.  “That doesn’t excuse thievery,
Harrietta,” he said firmly.
                “His children were starving.  Would you do anything for our
children?” she pleaded with him.
                Her father hesitated.  “I suppose…  He could work it off,
rather than rot in prison,” he said, a bit reluctantly.
                “But he needs to feed his children now.  The poor things are
starving, and the mother is cripple,” she went on.  Her mother was considered
an upstanding citizen, always eager to help those in need.
                Another pause.  “I will… garnish his wages then,” he said,
again, reluctantly.  “I could use another set of hands loading wagons.”
                Her mother had lifted her chin a little.  “He has a bad back,”
she countered.
                Her father had scowled.  “That didn’t stop him from having six
children,” he muttered.
                The woman had stiffened as if she had been struck. 
“Johnathan!  You have resources, food, a family, a good home.  This man just
needs a job to feed his children—surely you can give him that.”
                And he made a face, and scratched his stubble a bit more.  His
hand touched the small of his wife’s back, gently, though she stiffened at his
touch.  “I’ll find something,” he told her.  She nodded, but stepped away from
his touch, and left him there alone.  Hadriana had watched from the dark of the
hall.  She had been little enough to not really understand, but she had
understood enough to just go back to bed, and ignore the way the tree outside
scratched on the wall, sounding like some monster at the window.
                Hadriana stopped to catch her breath when she reached the top
of a small hill.  She usually took the path more slowly, but the events of the
day had spurned her to walk quickly.  She always walked faster when she was
upset about something, as if she could really hope to run from her problems. 
If only she could.  If only problems were tangible things that could be run
from.
                Her mother had told her that her father was a selfish, vile man
who only ever thought of himself, and only was redeemed from his nature because
she could make him see the light of the Maker.  She said that her work, the
work she did trying to help others, was the Maker’s work.
                But Hadriana wasn’t so certain.  She had fervently believed in
her mother, about everything, and helped her pass out bread to the poor, and
did other chores.  But when her mother wanted to marry her off to a wealthy
merchant, and said that she could better do the Maker’s work as his wife, she
had begun to lose her faith—not only in her mother, but in the Maker.  Why was
marrying that man the Maker’s work?  Her mother had told her that it was so she
could continue her work in another city, and that her father would no longer
have to support her, so that money could be used to help the poor.  And there
had been other reasons too, but Hadriana just didn’t want to marry, no matter
how reasonable it sounded.
                The path opened to a wide meadow.  She had always thought, if
she could paint, she would enjoy painting this meadow in the late summer to
early fall.  It was picturesque, with the flowering trees, the honey bees
buzzing softly.  Butterflies mingled with the flowers in the grass.  Birds
scratched at the dirt.  The garden was fenced in by a mish-mashed fence of
different woods, moss growing on it.  Sometimes, she would spot a deer nosing
at the herbs and vegetables, a rabbit in with the lettuce.  The one-room hut
rose out of the grass as if it had grown there, moss covering the stones, the
ivy curling over the thatched roof.  There was a well-worn path through the
grass to the hut.
                Hadriana strode up the path, rapping gently against the door of
the hut.  There was no answer, which was peculiar.  If he wasn’t in the garden,
he was often in the hut.  Perhaps he had simply gone on a walk, like he tended
to do.  She knocked on the door again, this time more loudly, and first thought
to wait for him, so she did.  She waited nearly all day, and well after dark. 
She went to the stream nearby for water, and there was a privy pit nearby, so
she did not have to go far.
                She grew hungry, and walked in the woods, looking for anything
edible.  It was getting in to fall, which was fortunate; there was a wild apple
tree nearby.  She wasn’t very good at climbing, but it was simple to use the
staff her tutor had helped her to make to knock an apple down.  It nearly hit
her on the head on the way down, and she ate it greedily.  She tossed away the
core and the seeds, but still felt hungry.  She knocked another down, and took
it with her back to the shack—maybe he had finally come back?
                But the shack stood empty.
                She sat again, and waited.  It was boring, and the mosquitoes
started to buzz.  She thought about putting up a barrier, just to ward out the
insects, but she couldn’t maintain it indefinitely, and it would only leave her
tired afterwards.  She needed to get inside somewhere.
                Rather than anger at her tutor’s continued absence, she felt
concern.  Where could a blind old man possibly go for so long?  Had he fallen
somewhere, and was hurt?  She was tempted to go looking for him, but it was
already dark.  She resolved to go in the morning, and see if she could find
him.
                Hadriana hesitated, and ventured into the shack.  It was a
small, one-room hut, with a stove in the corner that vented from a chimney in
the roof, a single pallet for a bed, two shelves, a cupboard, and a haphazard
clothespress she had never actually seen him use.
                Jameson was an odd man, she had always thought, to delight
living in such squalor.  He had always told her that he “had everything he
needed”.  She had never been quite satisfied with that, though, but she had her
own ideas.  The man looked like he might be Chasind.  If so, he was a long,
long way from home, but he never made any real mention of where he had come
from.  If it were true, it wouldn’t surprise her.  Rather, it would only make
sense; he didn’t mind living in the middle of nowhere in squalor.
                She wondered where a blind old man like him could have gone,
anyway?  She hoped he weren’t hurt somewhere, needing help.  Or, worse, dead.
                But his pack was missing, she noticed.  That wasn’t so unusual;
he would go looking for herbs in the forest sometimes.  She had no idea how he
discerned which were which, though, and was too embarrassed to ask.  She felt
like it must be rude to point out his obvious disability, but sometimes
couldn’t help but stare at his nearly white eyes.  He had once mentioned that
he had fought Qunari years ago, and one of their mages—Saarebas—had blinded him
in battle, and he had been considered useless and allowed to retire after the
event.  She had no idea why a blind old man would want to live alone in a shack
so far from civilization.  It seemed so lonely.
                Hadriana stoked a small fire to help ward off the evening’s
chill, and was going to brew tea—just in case Jameson was merely late.  She
reasoned that he would welcome some hot tea with her news.
                But she opened the jar of leaves, and found it was empty.  She
put the jar back on its shelf, and sighed.  Well, no tea then.  She poured the
water out, and put the kettle back in its place.  She paced about the room, and
decided to try to read a little.  It was dark, but she was a mage and could
summon light enough to read.  He had a couple of books that he kept in a
cupboard, where a normal person kept dishes and cups.  And where a normal
person might put books, he kept his cups and dishes.  The shelf, now that she
thought about it, was missing a couple of things.
                But when she opened the cupboard, she felt suddenly cold, and
like a weight had dropped into her stomach.  Her mouth felt dry.  The books
were gone.  There were only three, but all of them were about magic.  Had he
been robbed?  She felt like that was rotten at its worst—to rob from a blind
old man.
                But why would someone take one of the dented tin cups?  And she
noticed a bowl was missing too.  Now that she began to look, there were other
utensils missing—a cooking pan, a spoon, and other things.  Suddenly concerned,
she began to look with more earnest.  She checked the other containers, and
found that they were either empty or gone.  She knew about the small trove he
had—a loose plank on the floorboard.  She lifted it, and found the small pouch
of coins gone, along with the most rare of books he had—the one he hadn’t let
her read.  He had said that she wasn’t ready for it yet, but he had promised to
teach it to her in time.
                She wanted to cry.  He was gone now.  He had left her alone,
and never even told her that he was leaving.
                She shoved the board angrily back into place.  She curled onto
the floor, and shook with grief.
                Her family had cast her out.  Her village had shunned her.  And
now Jameson was gone too?  Was she alone in the world?
 
                “I quit,” the woman said with all the surety of one who had
already made up their mind.  “And I’m only telling you as a courtesy.”
                Danarius was not amused.  “May I inquire as to the reason,
ma’am?” he asked, very politely.  He had been expecting this conversation
sometime today, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it.
                Miss Amaryllis looked positively outraged that he would even
bother to ask.  Her teeth ground together in fury, fists balling angrily. 
“Your pet elf murdered Larissa!”
                He looked at the woman, not at all roused to emotion by her
outburst.  “It was an accident,” the magister said smoothly.  “I believe my
poor pet was quite devastated.”  It had been an accident.  No one had really
guessed the extent of Fenris’ abilities.  He had been re-learning to walk,
nothing more.  His legs were still shaky, and he couldn’t stand up for long
periods of time—which was to be expected; he had spent six weeks in bed not
moving.  His little wolf had wasted away to practically nothing—a shadow of
what Leto had been before.  But it was really only a matter of time until
Fenris put back on the weight, the tight corded muscle; Danarius had absolute
faith in him, and Fenris was making progress anyway.  Larissa had been helping
with the physical therapy—walking with him, someone who was there when
he—inevitably—had to stop, or pushed himself too hard and fell.  The demon was
right; Fenris was doing everything he could to please Danarius, and he was
always so apologetic when Danarius checked up on him and he still had to have
help everywhere.
                He liked that—a lot actually.
                At any rate, the elf had tripped, and Larissa had caught him. 
His hand had gone right through her—the woman had died almost instantly. 
Fenris had been sick over the entire episode, but Danarius imagined that he
would get over it.
                “He didn’t even try to kill her.  I don’t want to die because
your slave can’t control the abilities you gave him,” she snapped.
                Danarius blinked slowly.  “I warned you that he was dangerous
when I hired you, Amaryllis,” he said smoothly.  “It’s even in your contract.”
                Her jaw set, her brow drawing down in a glare.  “That the
lyrium was dangerous.  That being in close contact with it might be dangerous.”
                He sighed.  “Then I believe you need to review your contract.” 
He opened a desk drawer, and flipped through it.  He had a copy of Larissa’s
contract here—just one of the forms he had on hand that he would inevitably
need when her family tried to complain about it.  It was identical to
Amaryllis’s.  He flipped to the proper page.  “’I understand that my close
proximity to the subject is dangerous.’  The latter half of this paragraph
details the manner in which lyrium is dangerous, yes, but the next section also
makes mention of how the subject—Fenris—will undoubtedly be dangerous.  You
must see him much as an untrained mage at present.”
                She stared at him as if he had suddenly sprouted a second head
and it was offering her tea.  “Untrained mages rarely accidentally kill people
by touching them.”
                “Why did you think I was paying you so much?” he mused. 
“Because there wasn’t a chance of death or dismemberment?”
                “He’s your slave.  That makes him your responsibility.  Control
him.”
                He grew weary of this conversation.  “I presume you are
forfeiting your bonus, then,” he said.  He had promised the attendants a bonus
if they stayed until he dismissed them.
                 She raised her chin.  “Yes, and glad of it!  Good luck getting
anyone to take care of him in the meantime!  Do it yourself,” she snapped.  And
with that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the room.  Well, that had
been pleasant.
                He imagined that he had more than one slave, though, who would
only be too happy to get away from the fields for a while.  Any mother could
help Leto—Fenris—re-learn basic skills.
                He must remember to call him Fenris.  Rarely, but still
occasionally, he thought of him by that name.  Leto and Fenris, for all sakes
and purposes, he was discovering, were entirely different people, and it was so
much more than the simple difference of what he had imbued in his skin, or the
colour of his hair.
                Leto had been afraid of him.  Fenris only tried to please him. 
Every objective of Leto’s had been for his family.  Fenris just wanted to be
able to walk, and not need help.  Again, he almost wished he had known Leto
better, as a person.  It would be fascinating to note all the minor differences
between them.
                One thing he had noticed almost immediately, though, about
Fenris:  Leto had had a slightly different accent.  It wasn’t blatantly
obvious, but he had noticed the difference.  That, thus far, had been the
strangest thing about the memory wipe.  His accent had lost all traces of his
Seheron background, and now reflected more of the Tevinter accent—which was
normal, considering that that was what he heard.  Still, it was strange. 
Speech patterns were a bit different too, now that he thought about it.
                He should go check on him.  It had been a while.  The last time
he had seen him, the elf had been in a state of shock over what he had done. 
He would get over it, in time.
                Danarius was tired of the endless paperwork anyway.  He was
having to issue some formal decree stating that he would be interviewing
candidates for his suddenly vacant apprenticeship over the summer.  He disliked
the matter entirely, but with Raith gone, he needed someone else, both to
please the Circle and because he needed a likely heir.  But that didn’t mean he
had to enjoy the process.
                A reprieve would be nice, and he did like to check on his
progress.  He left the room, and Amaryllis had already disappeared, likely to
collect her things.  He took the longer route to where he was going, down
hallways, stairs, and paused in a large entry hall that housed portraits of
each generation’s head of household.  The styles changed the farther he walked
down the hall, with the newest ones farther from the entrance.  The family
resemblance was plain.
                He had told them to move the elf to one of the guest rooms. 
What was the use in having a bodyguard, after all, if he sent him all the way
to the slave quarters, and the servant quarters were simply too far to be
practical as well.  So, it made sense to have him down the hall instead, even
if Fenris wouldn’t be useful as such for a while yet.  It was better that the
elf learned the layout of the manor.  Besides, it sort of tickled his fancy to
put his new favorite pet in one of the nicest rooms in the manor.  And didn’t a
master usually spoil a favourite pet?
                But he hadn’t specified.  Still, the coincidence was… amusing.
                There had been a remodel six years or so ago in this wing after
a fire, and nothing even looked the same, but that wasn’t the point; the point
was, they had happened to put his little pet in what, in the distant past, had
been the room his mother had happened to die in.  Across the hall from where
his room had been, next to his brother’s room.
                Oh, he had avoided that room for years after her demise, as if
he could still feel her ghost wandering it, and down the hall.
                Later, in his teenage years, he had actively defied the
feeling.
                Shallise…  That had been stupid; he saw that now.
                Stupid to ignore his father.  Should have listened, should have
attended to his studies, should have done a number of things differently.  But
he hadn’t.  Fifteen and reckless, a young mage and felt invincible.  And
Shallise had been a year older, and pretty, with a lilting laugh, and had a
funny way of trilling her r’s when she spoke that, she told him secretly, was
the remnants of a speech impediment when she was younger.
                He had first happened across Shall when she was, in theory,
dusting the main hall.  She was alone, and didn’t see him.  She was in a world
of her own, really—he suspected that was usually the case.  She danced about
the room, jumping, turning on her toes, lifting herself up on toes, spinning
and never getting dizzy, to music only she heard with her pointed ears.  Her
skirts swirled, climbing to her knees as she moved.  She had fantastic legs.
                And he, oh, he just couldn’t help himself; he stayed in the
shadow and watched, utterly fascinated, as she danced.  She cleaned, but mostly
she danced.  Her dance came to a frenzy, and she moved so quickly he couldn’t
follow all of her movements, and could never hope to mimic them.  When she
finally swirled to a halt, taking a bow to an invisible audience, he clapped.
                She had frozen, alarmed, turning around to face him so quickly
that she stumbled back.  She was breathing hard from her dance, her face
flushed.
                He had praised her, and kissed her hand, and she had giggled,
and told him to come watch again sometime. 
                In the present, Danarius walked on, and only thought of Shall
again after he climbed the steps to what was now a wing for honored guests.
                In the distant past, he had found her again a week later in the
hall.  This hall, for that matter, dancing again, with a cloth as she polished,
her black opalescent hair pinned up to keep it out of her face.  She was in the
uniform of a maid, but she seemed to look different in it to him—or maybe he
was just distracted by the length of her calves.
                Anyway, she had spied him early on this time, and danced, and
spun, and kicked up her skirts.  She stopped, her back against a door, smiling
shyly at him.  One of her legs rubbed against the other, the smile staying
about her lips, and she had slipped into the room—the same one his mother had
died in, and he would have had it no other way.
                Following her in, accepting her invitation, had been an attempt
to slay the ghosts that haunted his thoughts.  He insisted that it couldn’t be
there, and would prove it.  His mother’s ghost would never allow this, after
all.
                He hadn’t thought his father would find out—that had been
foolish, for find out he most certainly did.  He himself was scolded, punished,
and sent away to apprentice under another magister.  Shall, he had discovered,
had been fired, of course, but he saw her again, years later, at a ballet, and
thought she must be happier there.  He hadn’t tried to speak to her; didn’t see
a need.  She looked happy—he had supposed that was enough.
                A part of him had wanted to approach her, to ask if she
remembered him, but, well, he had been married at the time and had simply let
the chance slip him by.
                He also supposed… that was why he wanted Leto—Fenris.  They
looked alike—most elves did, to a degree.  But they both had the same
hair—well, Leto and she.  She was fairer of skin, but still tanned, and they
had the same look in their eyes that meant strength, confidence, the heart of a
warrior.  He had wanted her too, wanted to possess her, to cherish her.  Maybe
he had even loved her, once, before he really knew what that meant.  And she
had been taken from him.  Well, no one could take Fenris. 
                He wouldn’t allow it.
 
                The door opened.  Danarius didn’t have to look about the room
to find Fenris.  It was daylight, and the room was bright.  The lyrium glowed
softly, but that was not what drew his attention.  Rather, to Danarius, ever
since the Ritual, the elf’s life had shone like a single candle in a void.  He
felt, with a sense of assurance, that no matter what, he would always be able
to find Fenris.  It was as simple and natural as breathing.
                The same “light” as it were that he could “see” was also a link
between them.  The same spell that had sustained Leto’s life then now channeled
Fenris’ power.  To Danarius, he was like a living battery—a storage supply of
lyrium that could not run out.  He had experimented with it, but it only seemed
to work in proximity to one another—which was fine, considering Danarius’ plans
for his slave.
                The elf looked up, and tried to sit up.  “Master,” he said,
just as quickly averting his eyes.  It was important, in elven slaves, to make
it clear that they were not looking at their betters; their wide irises made it
more difficult for a person to tell what they were looking at.
                He was learning quickly, at least.  “Don’t,” he said, stopping
him from the attempt.  His pet was gaining back some of the lost weight, but he
had never been particularly heavy, and just looked frail right now.  Danarius
was keeping him well-fed—things that would help him gain weight in a healthy
manner and gain some strength back.  But in the meantime, he looked frail, and
was frail.  Though not as frail as he looked, he reminded himself.  But that
was hard to remember, because he looked like nothing but skin and bones right
now—gaunt, tired, and shaking when he was too active.  The first week had been
the worst of it—he had to sleep more often than not, and sometimes just talking
had worn him out.  But it was endearing how hard he had tried, when Danarius
asked him everything he could remember about the Ritual, and Fenris had been
able to tell him next to nothing. 
                Fenris had stared down at his hands, and thought, and his green
eyes slid closed for a moment, and when he opened them they looked haunted.  “I
remember screaming—someone was screaming,” he reiterated.  “And it hurt so
much…”  But that was all he remembered, and Danarius had been careful about
questioning him.  Oh, how his slave had apologized, and looked up at him
worriedly.  Danarius had been calm, and told him it was all right that he did
not remember.  The lad had been visibly relieved that his master was not angry.
                Fenris ceased trying to sit up immediately.  He was sitting on
the window cushion.  His mother had liked to sit there, toward the end, and
read while she watched the birds outside.  Similarly, she also could not get
around so well.
                “You look better,” Danarius commented, walking closer to him. 
Fenris stared downwards, until his master told him to look up.  He looked at
him, watching his eyes for recognition, for thoughts—for anything.  His
colouring was better since he had woken.  Food had helped a great deal, and
moving around, but it was said that it tired him out quickly.  “Are you able to
walk very far?”
                Fenris looked nothing but remorseful.  “No, Master—I’m sorry,”
he added quickly, and seemed truly regretful of this.
                He wants nothing but to please me.  All my slaves should be so
loyal.  “Take your time.  I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he told him. 
“But I’d like to see you walking normally.”
                “I’m sorry, Master,” Fenris said again, sounding miserable. 
Because he thinks he failed me,Danarius thought to himself.
                Well, let him think that, even if it wasn’t his fault exactly. 
Maybe it would make him push himself a little harder—there was no harm in that,
so long as he was careful not to hurt himself.  “How are you getting on since
Larissa died?”
                Fenris absolutely wilted.  There was no other word for it.  The
elf stared down at his hands for a moment, then back up at his master; he had
not been told to look away.  “I…  I’m not certain, Master.”
                “Don’t fear your gifts; I gave them to you,” Danarius told
him.  “You will learn to use them—all of them—in time, my pet.”
                And there it was.  Leto had flinched every time he had referred
to him by the term.  Fenris barely blinked.  “I will, Master,” Fenris promised
him.
                “I know.”  He glanced out the window.  It overlooked the
vineyard, and he could see some of the winery from here.  “When you can run
again, I have a sword master who will train you.”
                He could tell the news startled the elf, at least a little, and
then he only seemed to wonder at it.  Danarius bid him farewell, and informed
him that he would have a new pair of attendants come in the morning.
 
                Fenris watched the door click shut, and looked back out the
window.  He wasn’t allowed outside—yet.  But he liked the sunlight, and it was
more interesting than the confines of the room.
                Somehow, it saddened him to see the slaves in the vineyard
below.  They worked from before dawn to well after dusk, and he was confined in
here, recovering from some ordeal he could barely remember, save for the pain,
and that wasn’t something he cared to remember.  But it wouldn’t go away.
                He didn’t see why not.  Everything else had gone away—a bitter
thought.  None of it would go away though, and every moment still hurt.  But it
was all he knew.  He couldn’t remember not being in pain.  Everything was
pain.  His master had been giving him things to help stifle it—a variety of
tablets he had to swallow, leaves he was supposed to chew or drink steeped as
tea, some foul-smelling liquids he had to choke down.  It all helped, some more
or less than others, but he would take anything for it just to be dulled for
even a little while.
                He felt lost.  Alone.  Some part of him knew—knew beyond a
shadow of a doubt--that “Fenris” wasn’t his real name.  And it bothered him,
just a little.
                Little wolf, hmm? What did that mean anyway?  Was there some
ulterior meaning behind the name?  Why would he call him that?  His master
called him his “pet”.  But it still didn’t make much sense, and he doubted it
ever really would.  He supposed it didn’t matter—in truth—what he called him,
exactly.  Fenris certainly didn’t remember his real name, and his interest in
it faded more and more every day.
                For the first week, he had been obsessed with the idea.  He had
asked, tentatively, what it had been, of Larissa.  Amaryllis barely tolerated
him at all, but Larissa had tended to indulge him whenever she could.  She
confessed only that she had never met him before they were introduced, and so
she did not know his name either.
                Oh, why couldn’t Amaryllis have died instead of Larissa? 
Larissa, who always spent extra time with him, who took the time to talk to him
about the way he would need to behave once he was well again.  At least someone
had taken the time to tell him about the etiquette he would need to follow.
                He looked down at his hands, imagining his right hand covered
in blood, soaked up to the elbow.  It had gotten under his fingernails, and he
had felt like it would never come off.  Of course it came off—that was
ridiculous.  But…
                He didn’t want this.
                Why would anyone want this?
                There was no doubt at all in Fenris’ mind that the constant
pain he felt came from the lyrium.  And sleeping at night was nigh impossible
between the pain and the light; it was never dark, and the lyrium somehow just
seemed brighter in the dark.  That was an illusion, but he did petulantly feel
that way; it just showed up more at night.  Nothing to be done except to half-
smother himself with a pillow, and the pain—there was nothing for that except
the ways to dull it; it never got rid of it completely.  The light at least
would be better if it were consistent—sometimes it was fainter than other
times, and he felt like sometimes he could control it, but then was quickly
proven wrong.
                Larissa…
                He had never intended to hurt her.  He had never wanted to hurt
her.
                Fenris wondered if it were possible to get rid of the lyrium. 
He didn’t see how, except to carve it out, and he was reasonably certain that
that would kill him.  And Danarius, he didn’t think, would approve anyway, so
he banished the thought.  He wanted to please his master.  Something compelled
him to do so.  Maybe because he was the first person he had seen upon waking,
or because he sought some kind of acceptance, from anyone.  But the why didn’t
really make much difference.
                He shifted on the seat, frustrated by how much effort it took. 
They called it “muscle atrophy,” and had explained to him that he had been
comatose for about six weeks.  They had moved him every few hours to help
prevent bedsores, but there was nothing that could be done about the atrophy
except him waking.
                He felt like he had already failed his master by staying asleep
for so long and letting his muscles deteriorate.  He knew, on some fundamental
level, that that really wasn’t his fault exactly, but that changed little.
                Fenris just felt that much more determined to be walking
normally and gain back the lost muscle mass.  Six weeks didn’t seem like a lot,
but it did its damage.
                Even without the assistants today, he had tried to walk on his
own.  Not far, not even out of the room.  He kept a hand against the wall, and
tried to walk around it as many times as he could.  It was exhausting, but he
needed to keep it up.  I’ll get stronger, he promised himself.  It was so
frustrating, and if it had just been Amaryllis, it would be humiliating.  But
Larissa had always been encouraging, didn’t treat him like a child, and been
more than helpful.  Amaryllis had just treated him like a child, had glared
when he fell, and rarely offered assistance.
                Larissa had been the one that cooked and brought him lunch, and
sat down to eat withhim, gently helping him figure out the motor functions of
that process.  His fingers didn’t feel as dexterous as they should be, but she
had barely seemed to notice.  It would have been embarrassing, except that she
just smiled and told him that she believed in him.  If it had only been
Amaryllis, he knew he still wanted to get better, but he wasn’t so certain he
would be quite as willing.  Amaryllis had always been disheartening at best. 
All the looks she gave him just reminded him of his failures—how he couldn’t
stand at first.  But Larissa had put one of his arms around her shoulders—she
had had broad shoulders for a woman—and, slowly, walked with him.  She had had
to half-drag him at first, and it took effort for both of them.  But he got
better.  He had improved.
                He didn’t know what he would do
now.                                                     
                Maybe once he could walk again—unaided and for longer periods
of time—he would be allowed to go outside on his own, or somewhere else around
the manor at least.  He was getting impossibly sick of this room, and the
hallway, the bathing room, privy.  It had been a trial just walking to the
garden, even aided, from here to practice his lyrium abilities.  It was either
practice those, or when he phased by accident, fall through the floor, so he
had to practice.  He hadn’t even seen all of the manor, or the manor grounds. 
He was sick of these rooms, and now that Larissa was gone, he wondered how
often he would get to go to the garden.  Those were the only places he had seen
so far, and he would be only too happy to be away from them and see something
new.
                Not only that…  He wanted his master’s approval.  Every time he
looked at him, he had studied him—that was fine—but he was judging him, and
Fenris always felt like he was falling impossibly short.  Maybe he was just
embarrassed and self-conscious that he couldn’t walk yet.
                Study swordplay after he was well enough to run again?  It
seemed impossible, as things stood now.  He had seen a couple of the house
guards carrying swords.  His hands were callused—fading calluses, but still
callused.  He didn’t know why exactly.  Maybe before the ritual, he had studied
swordplay, or had he done any kind of work like the other slaves he had seen? 
He wished he knew.
                But why would his master have put a common field laborer
through this “ritual” anyway?
                He flinched, looking out the window.  The overseer was hitting
a human girl—a slave—down below.  In the fields, he noticed, elves and humans
were kept separated.
                It was sort of embarrassing…  When he woke, he knew
instinctively that he was an elf.  He had words and terms and meanings, but he
lacked history—that was what was embarrassing.  Larissa had told him about
elves, humans, and the other races—about their differences, and a bit about
their history, at least in Tevinter.  He had listened with rapt attention,
absorbing facts like a sponge absorbed water.
                He looked at his hand, at the lyrium carved into the flesh.  A
couple of weeks ago, before Larissa had died, he had fallen asleep—right where
he was now, at the window.  Anyway, he always had such vivid dreams, and it had
been an alarming enough dream that his body had just reacted to what it
perceived as threat, and he had phased—right through the damned floor.  He had
woken falling through the floor, and was alarmed enough that he fell four
stories before he made it stop, and hit the polished wooden floor of the great
hall badly.  He had broken his leg in two places.  So, in agony, naked because
he had lost his clothes when he had phased, he had lain on the floor gasping. 
Thankfully, someone had seen him falling, and the servant had gone to check all
the lower floors, just in case.
                A man had found him there, and immediately called for help to
get him to the infirmary.  Fenris had been embarrassed—more than
embarrassed—about it.  Of course the mage there healed his leg, but it had done
nothing to help his recovery.  Danarius wasn’t angry about it, but he seemed
disappointed in him, which in a way was worse.
                All the same, Danarius had even seemed a bit concerned after he
had broken his leg, and had come to see him in the infirmary on the second
day.  It still hurt, and he had been told it would for several days.  He was
kept on bed rest in the meantime, and was just sedated enough not to randomly
phase.  Just in case, they had carefully put two large beds directly underneath
him, for three floors.  That was embarrassing.  Worse, that he was grateful for
it.  Danarius had sat in the chair beside the bed, and asked him about the
fall.  Fenris had apologized for it, and confessed that it was difficult.
                “Fenris,” Danarius sighed.  “Your ability is exactly what you
make of it.  If you believe you will be clothed, that the floor is solid, and
whatever else, it will be.”  He had lifted Fenris’ hand, and traced the lyrium
along his arm with his fingertips.  Fenris watched him.  “I understand how your
ability works, pet.”  He smiled, just a little—a pleased, contented
expression.  Fenris thought darkly, At least one of us does.  “You are afraid
it will happen, so it happens.”
                The other made a face, then flinched when he shifted his leg. 
“I don’t… understand, Master,” he said quietly.
                The magister touched the lyrium, and the branch ignited at his
touch, giving the room a bluish glow.  “You are afraid it is true, so for you,
it is true.  Fenris, you, my beautiful, perfect creation, are the only one in
the world capable of creating their own reality, to a point.”
                Fenris still hadn’t understood what he meant.  What did any of
that mean?  However, despite that his master never explained it to him, it was
actually true.  If he could convince himself that he would not fall, he
didn’t.  If he convinced himself his clothes wouldn’t fall off of him, they
wouldn’t.  If he told himself he could lift an object while he had phased, he
could.  Alternately, he could walk through solid objects the same way. 
Danarius had been pleased with him when he made progress in that regard too,
and it had made him strive to try harder.  Besides, practicing that had been
the only time he had been allowed outside in the little garden.
                He had sat down and talked before—long, numerous conversations
with his master about the lyrium.  Danarius asked him questions about it all
the time, in fact, always making notes.
                What does it feel like?  It hurts.  It’s terrifying.  But he
hadn’t said that aloud, not to his master anyway.  He couldn’t say something
like that to him.  He had been troubled, and looked around the room, trying to
remember the sensations he felt when he phased and his body was swallowed by
the lyrium.  His eyes slid back to his master, then he looked down.  “It feels
like I’m the only thing alive in the entire world…”  His voice was soft. 
“Nothing else looks real, or even feels real.  It feels like… like I’m
dreaming.”
                Danarius had been silent for a long time, making notes, maybe
coming to conclusions he did not divulge to Fenris.  The magister looked up
again.  “How does it look?” he inquired.
                That one had been more difficult.  The elf thought about the
question, trying to put into words what he saw.  “Everything looks…”  He
struggled.  “Faded.  As though I were viewing the world through a fog,
perhaps.  There’s a… wrongness.”  Fenris sighed, flustered at his inability to
describe it.
                Danarius had leaned forward, intrigued.  Fenris didn’t know
what he had garnered from that bit of knowledge, but far more than Fenris could
puzzle out.  Danarius scribbled furiously for a long time, and looked up
again.  “Do you hear anything when you’re there?”
                Fenris felt confused, like he was missing a part of the
conversation.  “Master?”
                Danarius blinked, as if realizing what he had said.  He
frowned.  “When you phase.”
                He frowned, trying to remember what he could hear.  The sights
were always so distracting, and what was happening to his body for that matter,
it was hard to puzzle out.  “The lyrium… seems louder.  That’s all, master.”
                That one hadn’t been as interesting to Danarius, but Fenris had
always wondered what epiphany his master had discovered when he would write so
quickly, and seem so pleased.  What did his master know about him that he
didn’t?
                The door creaked open again.  He looked up, but it was just
open, all by itself.  He looked at it for a moment.  It seemed so far away.  In
reality, it was about ten feet, but that seemed impossibly far for him right
now.
                He was half-inclined to leave it like that, and decided that he
should.  He glanced back out the window.  The overseer had stopped beating the
girl, and she was limping, carrying a heavy basket off to the winery.
                He had been watching them for days, and sometimes wondered if
they knew.  He felt like he knew some of them, just by watching.  The humans
were closest to the manor, and he saw the elves less often, but knew they were
out there somewhere, because he saw them walk by at night.  One thing both
groups had in common was their downtrodden, soulless looks about them.  All the
life and will crushed out of them if it had ever been there to begin with.
                Something sprang up beside him, little claws gripping the
cushion, and a small furry body crawled onto his lap.  It was one of the
manor’s cats—for catching mice.  She was gray with random splotches of white,
with blue eyes.  His first instinct was to push the cat away, but she was warm,
and seemed to genuinely want his company—no one else did—so he left her there.
                She laid down in his lap contentedly.  Without thinking about
it, he scratched her ears, rubbing her head.  In a moment, he found himself
stroking her fur.  He heard her purr contentedly.  He leaned his head against
the wall, feeling tired for some reason.  All he ever did was sleep.  Why was
he always so tired?
                The simple answer was that he had been malnourished and was
suffering from muscle atrophy.  But that was hardly a suitable excuse to
Fenris.  He felt useless.
                He sat with the cat, and had to shift again after a long
while.  The cat grumbled her displeasure, but found another suitable spot on
his lap to fall back asleep on.  When the day wore on, and a servant did come,
with a tray and a cart, the servant tried to shoo the cat away.
                “No, it’s all right,” Fenris insisted as the cat darted under
the bed rather than out the door.
                The servant sighed, flustered, and gave up on the matter.  “You
keep that cat out of the food, and off the furniture, then; she’s your
problem,” the woman muttered, tromping off with the cart.  She shut the door
behind her.
                Of course, she had placed the food on the table, and not
somewhere closer.  And the cat couldn’t possibly open the door by herself if
she needed to go out.
                He sighed to himself, and, slowly eased his feet to the floor. 
With a hand against the wall, he steadied himself as he rose.  He teetered for
an instant, and held his breath as if it could help.  He regained his balance
and, swallowing, took a nervous step forward, then another.  One foot in front
of the other, and he had reached the table.  He was halfway there, and he
hadn’t even had to hold on to anything.  He took a deep breath before
continuing to the door.  Once there, he rested briefly.  His legs were aching,
his joints complaining with every step.  He was half-tempted to just lie down
on the floor, and stay there.
                He opened the door, just enough for the slender cat to make her
escape if she needed to, and started the journey back to the table.
                Fenris was a bit proud of himself when he didn’t fall. 
Maneuvering the chair was difficult, and he was shaky by then, but he pulled it
out enough to sit down.  He more or less collapsed in it, shivering, and waited
for the shakiness to stop before he even looked at the food.  His eyes slid
closed.  Part of this was the pain.  Some combination of the constant agony
from the lyrium, the pain he felt from trying to walk, and the amount of effort
he put into it sometimes made him feel physically ill, even if only for a
little while.
                Reminded that he needed to eat, he lifted the lid on the plate,
and lost his appetite.  Fish.  He hated fish.  They smelled disgusting.
                Well, there were vegetables on the plate.  That didn’t make the
fish smell any better though.  He felt little paws on one of his feet, a warm
body rubbing against his leg.
                He frowned down at the cat, not sure he trusted himself to lift
the little thing so soon.  Well, if he didn’t push himself, he’d never get
anywhere.
                So, he leaned down, and lifted the little cat around her
middle, settling her back on his lap.  She rubbed against his torso, and lifted
her paws easily up to his shoulder, rubbing her head against his face.  It was
irritating, but somehow comforting.  She didn’t care about the lyrium.  Not one
bit.
                He looked away, rubbing the cat’s fur affectionately as he
did.  Amaryllis had been weary of getting too close to him.  The servants tried
to avoid him.  Larissa had been careful to never touch his bare skin if she
could help it.  Even Danarius seemed a little reluctant to get too close to
him.  They were afraid of the lyrium, of what it could do, of what powers it
granted to him, and the radiation from it.
                But the cat didn’t care—not one bit.  “Do you want the fish?”
he found himself asking her, which was stupid.  She had no idea what he was
saying, and she didn’t care.
                “Mrrew?” she inquired, and he tore off a piece of it, offering
it to her.  She licked it, and ate it right out of his hand, daintily, and
licked his fingers, but never once went for the plate itself.  The manor’s cats
wouldn’t last long if they made habits of jumping on tables, after all.  He
ended up feeding her nearly all of the fish, and she licked his hand clean with
her rough tongue, before she curled up on his lap to sleep contentedly.  Only
then did he pick at the vegetables, sip at the mint tea, but he did taste the
flavor of the leaves they brewed along with it to help with the pain—there just
wasn’t any disguising that.
                He sat in the chair with the cat for some time, and was
disappointed when she got up and simply left him there.  Fenris reasoned that
maybe she would be back.
                He covered the remains on the plate with the lid, and made his
way to the bed, where he laid down for a while, listening to the manor for the
most part, and half-hoping the cat would come back.
                The door creaked again, and he felt hopeful for a moment, and
turned to look.  His hope turned to surprise, however, and he made an attempt
to sit up, only really succeeding because of the headboard.  “Master?” he said
quizzically.  Twice in the same day?
                “You have been sleeping poorly,” he told him, rather than asked
him.
                Fenris did not make eye contact.  He had been instructed not
to, very clearly.  He said nothing, unsure if the statement warranted a
response or not.  But it was true; he was always tired and could never seem to
fall asleep easily, because of the pain he felt from the lyrium, because of how
sensitive his skin was and that he tossed and turned.  Because of the light,
and inability to block it out—though he tried.  And above it all, the faint
ringing he was mostly used to, but if it were too quiet, he could hear it.  He
assumed it was the lyrium, but who could say?  It was incredibly faint, and
high-pitched.
                “Drink this,” he told him, and passed him a silver flask.
                The elf, given an order, accepted the flask and unscrewed the
stopper.  He drank a bit, and made a face.  It burned going down his throat.
                “It’s wine,” Danarius told him.  Wine wasn’t normally kept in a
flask, but it was easier to carry that way, and maybe something else was mixed
into it.  Unbeknown to the elf, this was true, and the flask concealed the odd
colouring that the “something else” had given the wine, even if the flavor was
masked enough.  Fenris was also reasonably certain that he would drop a heavy
wine glass.  “Not particularly good wine, but I do own a winery, and you need
better rest.”  He turned.  “Drink all of it, and leave the flask in a place the
servants will see it.”
                “Yes, Master,” Fenris replied as the man walked from the room. 
The door shut on his way out.  So much for the cat returning.
                He sighed, and propped himself up on the headboard, sipping at
the contents of the flask.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, exactly.  He
didn’t mind the taste in his mouth so much, but the aftertaste was foul, and he
wasn’t sure he liked the burning sensation.  It tasted better toward the end of
it, and he felt a pleasant buzzing sensation.  The pain was dulled, and he felt
more relaxed than he could remember being.
                He set the flask down on the stand by the bed, and slumped
against the pillows. 
                His eyes slid closed.  He felt like sleeping would be easy, he
was so relaxed.  And the pain was so much… less than before.  His breathing
began to even, and he slept.
 
Chapter End Notes
     I was excited to finally get to where I can add Hadriana. I really
     enjoyed writing her back story.
***** Abandoned *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris, Hadriana, and Varania are all feeling isolated and alone.
     Each of them has a way of dealing with the feeling and trying to
     cope, though some do it better than others.
                “He’s getting so big,” Lura giggled, tickling Shai.  He
squealed, kicking and laughing.  It had been six months since Shai and his twin
had been born.  He was sitting up, and kept putting his hands on the floor, and
moving as if he wanted to crawl but had not quite figured out the motions just
yet.  Lura was usually the one to play and care for him, so Shai had grown more
attached to the elf that had been a whore than his own mother.
                She did not resent Lura for that.  To the contrary, she liked
that.  It gave her time to do other things.  Mother had a job now.  It had been
hard the first couple of months, but she had a job.  She worked a lot, but it
was enough.  Lura was very pretty and confident, and had found a job of her
own, working nights at a local bar in the alienage, as a barmaid not a whore.
                An “alienage”, Varania had learned, was a place of open sewers,
of brown, brackish water, a place that always smelled faintly of piss even when
there were flowers—mostly weeds—blooming.  It was a place of ramshackle
buildings and little sunlight.  A place of cracked tiles and broken
cobblestone.  If someone were to paint a picture of misery, they only had to
paint the alienage in Seheron.  Or, at least, that was what the young mage saw
it as.
                Lura and Mieta saw it as a place they could live, a place where
they did not have to call a man “master” or fear to go.  It was a place they
could be a family together.  It was a place that they could build relationships
with their neighbors and make friends.  It was a chance at a new life.
                Humans could do almost anything they wanted with the elves in
the alienage.  They would hit them, yell at them, and all around bully them if
they could manage it.  And there was no justice for it.  No one would do
anything about it.  City guards would frequently just look away... if they
weren’t a part of it.
                As a slave, she had some protection from it; her master would
never tolerate his property being abused unless he gave the order.  She had
never been afraid to go outside as a slave, and now she didn’t dare venture out
of the city walls.  It became quite clear to her very quickly that to venture
alone outside the alienage—especially outside the city—was dangerous.  She was
glad that she was a mage; she wasn’t as helpless as some.
                Every day there, she saw elves in the streets—thin vagrants
surviving off of garbage and catching rats, and sometimes even cats.  Some
elves went to bed hungry, and others had naught but a few scraps for supper. 
Why not just sell themselves as slaves, though?  They would be fed at least. 
Varania supposed, again, that she was more fortunate than most—for her mother
had a skill people would pay for, as did she, and Lura had a job.
                A month ago, an elven woman had been raped.  No one had done
anything, because it had been a human who did it, and the other elves disliked
it, maybe even were angry with it, but the reasoning was that it had occurred
outside the alienage, so if they stayed in the alienage, this wasn’t a problem.
                And it wasn’t that the elves weren’t allowed to own property
elsewhere, like maybe by the docks, but when they did, they always moved back
to the alienage.  The alienage may have an open sewer that flooded sometimes,
and rats, and it was crowded, but humans rarely ventured down there; humans
always broke their windows outside the alienage, robbed them, sometimes even
killed them.
                Mieta made no mention of it, always saying that it was nice to
not have to address a man as “master,” that she was happy to be able to cook
for herself and her family, and that she was glad to see her grandchild grow up
free.
                Varania didn’t understand at all.  As a slave, she had food,
she had shelter, and someone to provide her with clothing, and tutorage, and
everything she needed.  No one had spit on her since the others her age had
matured past that, no one had thrown rocks after that either.  It hadn’t
smelled.  There weren’t rats—mice maybe, but no rats.  Now, she was treated
like scum by the humans and called names.
                Lura didn’t even seem to notice, which made Varania angry
sometimes.  Lura said that she had had silk gowns and jewels, and a big feather
bed with fine linen sheets, but that she was more than willing to give it up
for this.  Varania didn’t understand that at all.  She understood that Lura had
been a whore, but all the nice things she had, no one was allowed to hit her or
be cruel to her--didn’t she understand the value of that?
                The food was better, though—Varania would give her mother
that.  She had never known her mother could cook before.  But she could.  And
she had wasted no time at all trying to teach them to read.  She had bought a
large piece of parchment, and some charcoal sticks, and was teaching Varania
and Lura their letters, and just getting into sounding out words.  The process
was slow, as Mieta worked all day and was tired at night, but she was
determined.  And Varania did remember her promise to Leto.
                She missed him.  She missed him more than anything.  He was her
confidant, her friend, her brother.  She wished she could see him again.
                She couldn’t imagine a world in which he was gone from her life
forever, and it filled her with a sick sadness to think that it could be so.
 
                About three months had passed since Fenris had opened his
eyes.  Danarius gave it another three or more before he was running and well
enough to handle a sword.  In the meantime, he was well enough to listen to
lectures from the sword master, so that was what he did.
                He also made Fenris get riding lessons.  Not so much because he
wanted him to learn how to ride horses, but because it wasn’t too strenuous for
him, and would still help build muscle in his legs.  The horses needed to be
exercised anyway.  It kept his pet busy.
                Fenris’ learning rate was… disturbing.
                The Desire Demon had been absolutely correct:  He learned
things at the rapid rate a child did.  He absorbed facts like there weren’t
enough.  Danarius never had to repeat himself, and the sword master told him
that the elf was a devout pupil, good at memorization.  Danarius sometimes
wondered if Fenris might end up accidentally learning how to read if he weren’t
careful.
                He was looking much healthier now that he had gained some
weight and was sleeping well.  The elf was developing an addiction to the wine,
and Danarius controlled, utterly, his access to it, exactly as planned.  He had
no need of harnessing this weakness he was instilling into the elf at the
moment, but reasoned that it may be useful later.
                Fenris had abilities he had not planned on.  But that made
sense:  It was impossible to really know how he would turn out.  He had known
he would have untold power.  He had known he would have a connection to the
Fade.  What Danarius had not realized is that Fenris would actually pass into
the Fade when he phased.  He had talked with him a lot about it, and come to
the natural conclusion that the elf’s soul and mind would exist in the Fade
while his body remained active in the real world.  Part of the Ritual had
involved making that transition safe and easy to accomplish.  He had been
expecting that much—it was one of the many reasons Fenris’ very soul was bound
in the lyrium and lashed so strongly to Danarius for that matter.  It was why
the elf had such vivid, probably very lucid, dreams.
                What Fenris described when he phased was very, very like the
Fade, and not reality at all.  Or, at the very least, a part of it.  His body,
for all sakes and purposes, did not make the full transition into the Fade that
his mind and spirit did.  The Fade was technically whatever you made it out to
be, drawing memories and reality to form what was around the individual.  In
that light, it made perfect sense that Fenris had learned to bring his clothing
into it, in time.  He had even learned, more recently, to hold objects while
doing it.
                His slave could phase through furniture, through walls and the
floor—most of that by accident presently.  And the reason he could do this was
that, for him, in his reality, those things stopped existing for him.  Fenris
stopped existing in the real world.  Half in the Fade, and half in reality, he
was part of neither and moved through the Fade as if it were reality, and
through reality as if it were the Fade.  Fenris would always exist in a
twisted, warped version of reality, a world that was only limited by
imagination really.  He could pass through solid objects because, for him, they
had stopped existing.  Moreover, and much more pleasing, Fenris was awake
throughout the process, unlike when a mage would use lyrium or blood magic to
enter the Fade.  Fenris’ existence would make it much easier for Danarius to go
into the Fade, if he ever needed to for some reason.
                Fenris was learning to selectively choose what pieces of
reality were real to him, what objects were real.  He could interact with the
world around him, but right now, mostly he would just pass through things, like
a ghost.  He did most of his practice outside; for a long time, he would just
fall through the floor when he did it, but curiously not through the earth. 
Fenris had tentatively asked the magister if he could be moved to a ground-
level room, but Danarius had refused, and gently mentioned that the manor sat
three feet off of the ground, and there was a crawlspace under it.  Fenris had
flinched at the idea of being trapped under the manor, and agreed to stay on
the fifth floor, even though for quite a while, he would fall through about two
floors on a semi-regular basis.
                The ability was complicated.  Danarius imagined scholars would
flock to study the enigma that was his little wolf.  The subject was
fascinating, and already, he was getting requests by scholars and other mages
to study the phenomenon.
                For the moment, Fenris was occupied, and determined.  He was
obedient to a fault, and almost painfully loyal to him.  Leto had been flippant
at times, irritable and rude at others—and always whiny.  Fenris had none of
that.  Aside from the accent change, the most noticeable difference between
Leto and Fenris was the way they walked.  Leto had never walked so much as
strutted, especially with a sword in hand.  Off the sands of the coliseum or
the training ground, Leto was more cautious but never exactly timid—he was
confident.  It may change in time, once the elf relearned the sword, but he
still walked differently than Leto had.  Part of that was that Fenris spent
most of his time indoors, whereas Leto had been the opposite.  Barefoot,
Danarius’ slaves, he had seen, learned to walk one of two ways:   The first was
to step carefully but solidly; the second was what Leto had done—to walk
primarily on his toes, which strengthened his calves (he had had nice legs,
Danarius lamented), and also forced him to stand more erect to keep his
balance.  Fenris had a tendency to slouch, and walked very much flat-footed. 
Leto, Danarius mused, had been significantly more poised.
                The magister studied his most recent letter from his younger
brother.  His oldest was getting married, and he had sent him an invitation.
                The mage glanced out the window, wondering if he should accept
the invitation.  It would be a two-day journey to the city the wedding was to
be.  He would have to send a gift no matter what he chose to do.  He watched
Leto trotting the dappled gray mare he rode.  He certainly had a good reason
not to go, if he so chose.
                He sent his niece gifts every year of course, for her naming
day.  But he never actually saw her that often.
                It would keep up appearances well if he were to attend, of
course.  And leave Fenris, he supposed.  He would be fine.
 
                “You’re breathing harder than the horse,” Damaris commented,
strolling into the barn.  She was supposed to be with him at all times,
whenever he was walking, as he was still occasionally unsteady.  It would be
weeks before he could not need her.
                Fenris looked up at her.  Damaris was pregnant—and just
beginning to truly show.  She said that she was about four months along.  He
wasn’t at all certain that she should be doing half the things she did, but she
always insisted that she would be fine.  He was dubious of the point.  “The
horse has four legs,” he interjected.
                “You were riding her, though,” she teased him, offering him a
hand to help him off the hay bale.
                He accepted, but put more weight against the post at his back
with his other hand—something she noticed and scowled about.  “She wasn’t
comatose for six weeks,” he shot back.
                “So you should be well-rested,” she said with a devilish
smirk.  “Come on.  You reek of horse—time for a bath!”
                The bath had other purposes too, but it was also to not smell
of animal and possibly offend his master in some way.  He was always insistent
that he be clean.  Fenris followed her out.  He had to rest a couple of times
before they made it into the manor; his legs still got shaky, and he felt bow-
legged from being on the horse too long.
                Damaris already had the bath ready, she promised, all the long
way up to his room.  He did not cherish the idea of the walk up there, but the
hot water would be welcome.  It wasn’t so much about the washing as that the
hot water was good for his muscles too.
                He hooked some of his hair behind a pointed ear.  He didn’t
like it always getting in his face.  Damaris had once offered to teach him how
to braid it, but he had turned her down.  Maybe he should see if that offer
still stood.
                She also said that it would help with his dexterity he was
still trying to gain back.  The shakiness was awful.
                And he knew that she was pleasant to him only because she had
been told that she had to be.  He could sense it in the disinterest in her
eyes, and the way she regarded him.  She disliked him, and he suspected it was
because he was elven.
                He had never wanted to point it out though.  He didn’t want to
cause problems, but he did know that she was only here because she had to be,
and she preferred it as to the vineyard.  So she only hated him less than the
vineyard.
                Fenris had only asked about the vineyard once, and that was all
it took.  She had whispered to him about what it was like, in the hot sun day
after day.  She spoke of how their clothes soaked with sweat and stuck to their
backs, and dried day after day, unable to wash them—for those that had clothes
anyway.  She told him how closely they were watched, and the labor they had to
do.  She spoke of how heavy the baskets became, or about how heavy the manure
was, but no matter what she was doing, it always hurt her back.
                She confessed that she had never stepped foot in the manor
before she was told to assist him.  The first time she had seen the meals the
servants gave him, she nearly cried.  He hadn’t understood then, and she had
told him about the trough, and fighting for scraps with the dogs.  Fenris
hadn’t felt inclined to eat at all for the rest of the day, and now only felt
guilt—terrible, crushing guilt—every time he consumed anything.
                But he had to eat.  Danarius had told him that he must, even if
he would rather give it all to Damaris.  And the slaves both knew he had given
her several things from his plates, but she had usually declined, saying that
she would rather not know what she was missing.
                She thought he was spoiled; he saw it when she thought he
wasn’t looking.  He saw the stares she gave him, the glaring, how her lips
would curl in a sneer, only for it all to vanish when she saw him turn his
head.
                The water in the bath was still hot though, no matter her
dislike for him.  The girl left him while he bathed.  He wasn’t quite certain
of what she did when that happened, but she may have simply stood in the hall.
                He sunk into the tub up to his shoulders.  The bathing room was
originally designed for guests using this wing, but there was no one visiting. 
His entire body ached.  It always ached, but there was something different
about the lyrium ache and the muscle ache.  The latter could be soothed, and
the hot water helped.  The glow was even more evident under the water.  It was
beginning to even out—the lyrium glow didn’t spasm so much anymore, and it was
faint enough now to be, comparatively, barely noticeable.
                He looked at his hand, and concentrated for a moment.  It was
getting increasingly easier to control—the lyrium pulsed, then flared to life,
all over his body.  He could feel it in the same sense that someone could feel
their blood pumping through their veins, and the brightness was the difference
between a candle and a roasting fire.  It cast an eerie glow about the room
too.  He took a deep breath, and let it recede, sinking deeper into the tub.
                The steam on his face felt good too.
                He slipped under the water, holding his breath as long as he
could before coming up for air.  His hair stuck to his face.  He swiped at it
again.  He was reluctant to ask, but maybe Danarius would allow him to cut it? 
It was getting so long.
                Fenris wondered if his hair had always been white, or if it had
aged prematurely.  Elves didn’t have a whole lot of body hair, so he had no
other point of comparison, except for his eyebrows, which were stubbornly
black.  That didn’t mean much—he had seen a servant with brown eyebrows and
blonde hair.
                He finished with the bath, and hauled himself out of the
water.  He glanced down at the lyrium.  His skin had become a bit red from the
heat of the water, and the lyrium stood out in stark contrast to it.
                Larissa had told him that she had first “met” him when he was
comatose.  He had inquired, respectfully, about the lyrium markings, and she
had been quiet for a moment, before she told him.  He wished he hadn’t asked,
after she described in the minutest detail how his skin had looked.  The lyrium
had been carved and burned into his flesh, and the skin around it had reflected
that.  She said that it had been red, cracked, broken.  She said that it had
bled occasionally while they washed him, and had to bandage him.  She said that
in places, it had blistered and boiled, and it looked painful.  She had said
that, perhaps, it was a small grace that he had slept while it healed.
                True.  If his whole body had been covered in scabs, he would
have been tempted to scratch them, which would of course only make it worse.
                He toweled off his dripping hair, and dressed.  When he emerged
from the room, Damaris ushered him to lunch, and she disappeared for a while
again.
                Life was never a routine though, and Fenris couldn’t quite
understand why not.  A routine would be so much more efficient.  But the times
of day he did things changed every couple of days.  Nothing stayed the same. 
He was never even sure if it would be Damaris with him, or Irie.  The only real
constant in his life was Danarius.
 
                Danarius summoned his little wolf to him, who came, escorted by
his nurse maid—more or less what the women were to him.  No matter; he would be
independent of them soon enough.  And perhaps Danarius would sell them—that
should keep Fenris well enough in line.  It wasn’t a lesson of some sort; he
just wanted to keep the elf feeling lost and alone for as long as possible.
                It was really quite all right that Larissa was dead and
Amaryllis gone; it was just one less constant in Fenris’ life.
                He told the human slave to depart, and wait for Fenris.  The
door shut, and they were alone.  He wondered how long Fenris could stand.  He
glanced at him, and went back to his work—reviewing his records books, and
making tallies, writing out sums.  He took his time, and there was much to do. 
When he finished, he reviewed the work, and set it out-of-the-way.  He closed
the books, and put them aside, and began reviewing another paper.  Still Fenris
waited.
                And waited…
                Danarius only looked up when he heard the elf collapse.  He
judged it had been almost two hours.  Not bad.  He looked up, away from his
desk.  The elf was dazed, but climbing to a kneeling position.  “If you stand
with your legs locked for too long, you’ll faint,” the magister reprimanded the
elf.  He saw the protest and denial on his pet’s face.  The only thing Fenris
had remotely in common with Leto was how expressive he was.  “Or are you still
too weak to stand for so long?”
                Fenris looked down.  “I--Yes…  It’s difficult, Master,” he
admitted.
                Danarius nodded once, and set his pen in the inkwell, studying
his little wolf.  “You’ve improved quite a bit, my pet,” he praised him.  “I’m
going to be leaving you—for about two weeks.”
                The elf’s lips parted in the beginnings of what seemed to be
shock, then closed, saying nothing.
                Amusing.  Just another constant in his slave’s life—removed. 
“You will continue your training and work as before.  I hope to see you further
improved upon my return,” he said.  It wasn’t so much a hope as a command. 
Fenris only nodded.  Danarius dismissed him, and the elf climbed to his feet. 
A little unsteady, he bowed low, and left.
 
                Danarius had been gone for three days.  Fenris hadn’t thought
that he would feel, well, abandoned, but he did.  Like he had left and forgot
about him—unimportant.  He was just a slave, after all.  Maybe an expensive
slave, but a slave.  A worthless one too—he couldn’t even stand for too long.
                He had tried…
                Was it because he couldn’t stand?  Would he have brought him if
he could only stand up without falling?  His legs had just given out.  Tired,
and drained, and shaking; they had just stopped supporting him.
                He felt worthless.  What good was he to anyone if he could only
just barely walk unaided?
                It felt like it was taking so long.  He wondered if he would
ever get better.  Danarius had been—seemed to be—understanding.  He had told
him that it takes a long time after so long asleep, and that the lyrium might
be effecting some of his progress too.  But Fenris just felt like his master
was making up excuses for his slave’s failures—because he was supposed to be
some kind of prized possession.
                He had left him behind.
                Fenris couldn’t sleep.  No one was bringing him a glass of wine
before he slept any more, and it was almost impossible to sleep without it.
                By the end of the first week, he wondered if he hadn’t simply
been forgotten.  But he was determined to prove himself, determined to get
stronger.  He worked harder at it, even knowing it was a process that took a
lot of time.  As if, if he could just become strong enough, he wouldn’t be left
alone and forgotten.
                The second week came and went, and his master was late.  Fenris
grew anxious.  Not worried exactly—just anxious.  He didn’t want to be
forgotten.  He felt useless, certainly, but… he could be useful.  He really
could.  He just… needed more time.
 
                Danarius arrived home—what he thought of as his childhood
home—two days later than planned, and no worse for wear.  He had simply stayed
later in the city than he had intended.
                After he rested and washed off the dirt of the road, he went to
visit his pet.  The elf was alone in his room.  But, rather than resting, was
pacing from one side of the room to the other.  He stopped when Danarius opened
the door all the way, and bowed his head respectfully, but he was pleased to
see him working so hard.
                “My little wolf.  You seem steadier on your feet now—come
here,” he told him.  Fenris walked up to him—Leto would have drug his feet. 
But Leto was more leery of Danarius than Fenris was.  Fenris had some of his
hair hooked behind his ear, but the rest was free.  The magister reached toward
his slave, and felt himself hesitate, looking at the lyrium.  Something primal
made him not want to touch it, then he realized how ridiculous that concept
was.  Was he a mage, or was he not?  He put two fingers under the elf’s chin,
and lifted his head.
                He had intended to study the lyrium, but he found himself
looking at his slave’s eyes instead.  They were wide, and pleading.  Not in the
same way Leto’s had been—Don’t fondle me—but something else.  “What is it,
Fenris?” he asked him, idly taking a lock of his slave’s hair between his
finger and thumb, rubbing it gently.  It was fine, and thick, and even in the
places it was growing over the lyrium, it felt the same.  “You may speak freely
to me of whatever troubles you—for the moment.”
                His sage eyes blinked.  “Master…  You… left me…”
                Abandonment. He has a fear of abandonment.  “No, pet.  Never,”
he promised him, running a finger from the lyrium vein below his lip, down his
neck.  “I will never abandon you.  You are my most cherished and valued
possession, and I will never abandon you.”
                He wondered if the lyrium would change anything in bed, but he
was… unwilling as of yet to find out.  He didn’t know enough about Fenris’
abilities.  Maybe once his pet gained more control over it…
                But right now…  With the elf looking at him with the saddest,
most forlorn expression he had ever seen…  He thought about just shutting the
door behind him.  Deeply considered—gently—pushing Fenris onto the bed.  Leto
had been a whiny, reluctant brat, and he hadn’t at all minded hurting him. 
Fenris, though…  Yes, gently, onto the bed.  Gently undress him.  Gently ease
inside him and find out if the lyrium made it any different.
                But Fenris barely had a grip on his abilities at all, and
Danarius didn’t know enough about it either, so he dropped his hand away from
his pet’s neck, realizing he had slid his entire hand against the side of the
elf’s neck, and his slave had only continued to look at him with the same sad
puppy expression.
                “Keep training, and learn quickly, and you will come with me
everywhere I go,” he promised him, and meant it.  He turned, and left—quickly,
before he couldn’t stop himself.
 
                Hadriana spent two days at the hut, sulking mostly.  She ate
the things she could find that were good to eat.  She could have stayed in the
hut.  Maybe she should have stayed there, worked the small garden, and made a
life for herself there the same way that Jameson had.
                But she was more ambitious than that.  She wanted more than a
life as a hermit.
                She obviously couldn’t go home.  She had no money or resources
to speak of, no friends to call upon for aid.  This was what it was to truly be
“alone.”
                However, despite everything, Hadriana was a mage.  She could go
to the city.  She could find work, certainly.  And the road was easy enough to
follow.  She wasn’t worried about robbers or anything—the Imperials did keep
the roads well enough patrolled, and even though, she was a mage.  And nothing
would happen to her—certainly.
                She was confident that she would be all right.  But she was not
confident in how long it would take to get there.  What if there was no food on
the way there?  Or fresh water?  What if she couldn’t find anywhere to sleep? 
She had no money, after all.
                She was afraid to go.  Afraid of the dangers on the road, and
knew she could not be awake to watch for wolves and bandits all the time,
realistically speaking.  She was afraid that she would get hurt, all by
herself.  Or that she might eat something bad and get sick.  She was afraid of
going so far from home all alone.  She would just be some worthless vagabond on
the road…
                But…  Now she was being silly.  Surely nothing would happen in
a civilized society?
                So, in the morning, after a wash and an unsatisfying breakfast
of the things she could find, she packed up some apples, nuts and gooseberries
in a tin.  The food wouldn’t last too long, but there wasn’t anything else she
could use to carry more.  There was some hemp cord, and she wound it into a
sort of sling, and attached it to her belt.  It jangled, and was annoying
bumping against her hip, but it was better than carrying it.  She carried her
staff with her, and set out on the road.  She had to walk back toward her home
village to get on the main road, but she skirted the town by a wide berth.  She
didn’t want to see any of them again, if she could help it.
                And she did not.
                She was almost disappointed—almost—that one of her brothers
working in the field did not come to her, tell her that her mother was sorry
and wanted her to come home.  By the time the village was behind her, she
despaired that no one had come to her.  As it grew farther and farther away,
her heart felt heavier.  No one had cared.  She wondered if they had even
missed her.
                The afternoon wore on, and she imagined her siblings sitting
down to luncheon.  She pried open her tin and popped a berry in her mouth, and
took out one of the apples.  She tied the tin back up again, and walked as she
ate.
                She took a break shortly after, venturing away from the road to
find a stream.  She drank deeply—traveling was thirsty work apparently.  But
when she knew it was time to move on, she found that she did not quite have the
heart to.
                Hadriana was alone, truly alone.  If she stayed in the hut,
maybe even for just a few more days, maybe her mother would change her mind. 
She could see it all so clearly.  She could stay in the hut, and maybe visit
town some time later, and her mother would hug her and tell her to come home,
that she had been wrong and everything was all right.  Her family would accept
her back with open arms.
                She found that she was standing, and had taken an uncertain
step back, back the way she had come.  They would accept her back—they had to. 
She was family, after all.
                But then Hadriana thought about the way that she and her mother
had fought.  She thought about her blanket-greedy sisters, and uncaring
brothers.  She thought of her absent father.  And let’s not forget the merchant
that her mother wanted her to marry.
                That did it, and she turned on her heel, and kept on toward
Minrathous.
***** Sorrowful Hope *****
Chapter Summary
     In which everyone looks for hope in sorrow, and sometimes they even
     find it.
Mieta worried about Varania, that was no secret.  She saw her daughter grow
more estranged by the day, and her depression only worsened.  She could not
entirely understand why, though.  They had good food, their own house, they
called no one “master”.  It wasn’t Schavalis, true, but this was a good life,
as good as any.
                Compared to slavery over the past fifteen years, this was
amazing to Mieta.  She felt that a yoke around her neck had been removed.
                She could laugh again, and freely.  She openly taught her
daughter and Lura to read, who she considered to be an adopted child, of
sorts.  She should have been her daughter-in-law, and she felt some sorrow for
that.  But no sorrow could live in her as long as the joy of freedom… save one.
                Her son.  Her talented son, who had sacrificed everything he
had left for his family.  True, he may have been a slave his entire life
regardless, but sometimes a slave could be granted their freedom, particularly
gladiators.  He had forfeited any such chance, slim as it was.
                He had deserved so much more than what he had gotten.
                She wondered what had become of him.  She felt she would give
anything to see him again, just once.  Just to tell him how important he was in
her life, how proud she was of him, how much she loved him.
                Her hands were bothering her again.  Perhaps she should mention
it to Varania.  The girl was getting much better at the healing arts, and was
eager to practice.  In her practice, she had begun to treat the other elves in
the alienage, free of charge or just a few copper pennies.  It was good
practice, and the others began to like and appreciate her for it.  Maybe, in
that way, Varania could become content with this life.
 
                The road seemed just as endless as time itself to Hadriana,
like it just went on and on forever.  And so, as the road would never end, so
too, would her journey.  Minrathous was a mythical place she could never hope
to reach.  It was a place for people with carriages and horses, or slaves
carrying litters.  It was not a place she could reach alone on foot.  Or
perhaps it was just going on and on in loops for all she knew.  That the
scenery and the path changed made little difference.  There was still the
walking.  She slept little at night—and woke at every sound.  She heard wolves
howling once, and had lain awake until dawn.  She was most afraid of bears, but
didn’t see nor hear any.  She came across no bandits, though the Imperial
guards on the road did once warn her about the dangers of traveling alone.  She
only said that she understood, and they let her go on.
                She envied the people who passed her on horses or wagons, as
she had neither.  She passed by villages, and smelled their pies and pasties,
and couldn’t afford any of it, and, worse, looked it.  She hadn’t seen a brush
in ages.  Her boots were sturdy, and practical, but worn after so much use. 
Her robe was tattered with the road, and she feared she looked like a vagabond.
                She passed by a caravan she knew to be slavers, but she worried
not.  They did not take citizens, after all.  And she looked so filthy that
they wouldn’t be bothered to try it too, she imagined downheartedly.  The empty
cages rattled past.  They would return filled, she bet.  The Imperium craved
slaves.  They were the lifeblood of the empire, and there was more to that than
pretty words—or so the rumors had it.  She wasn’t certain, and, to be honest,
didn’t particularly care.  Why should she care about someone she didn’t know,
had never met?
                The closer she got to the city, the more frequently she passed
caravans of every sort.  Merchants, slavers, simple travelers, and farmers. 
They paid her no mind, and she was again reminded that she was filthy and half-
starved.  She looked like a pauper, and that was despairing by itself.
                She went off the road a way, and found a small ravine—more like
an enclave to be fair.  It was partially enclosed, and a short distance away
from the road, and well-hidden.  The stream that struck through it was just up
to her waist, but it was more than enough.  She wished she had soap, but pulled
off her boots and cleaned them.  She scrubbed her stockings—they had holes in
them by now—as best she could and hung them over a nearby branch to dry.  It
was a warm day, but a certain modesty made her reluctant to take off her robe,
but the itching finally prompted her to shrug out of it.  She washed it first,
scrubbing it clean against a large rock and the water.
                Her mother often had her do such chores.  She said that it
built character, and taught her a lesson in humility.  She had said that just
because she was a mage, it didn’t make her better than others.
                When Hadriana had first discovered that she was a mage, she had
been frightened, and ran to her mother in fear.  Her mother had prayed for many
days and nights to the Maker to take away the magic.  She had anointed her
daughter with oils, tried to exorcise demons from her, and in the end, had
taken her to a priest, who had only said that she needed a phylactery and a
tutor.  Her mother had insisted, brazenly, that she was possessed.  Hadriana
had fought that idea, even at a young age, tooth and nail, but her mother had
insisted that “demons have their claws in you, Hadriana, and by Andraste, I
will not let them have you!”  Even the priest hadn’t believed her.
                She could practically hear her mother’s voice in her ears, and
it made her teeth clench, and she wanted to hit something.
                Hadriana hated the way she had treated her, the chores she had
made her do, how she was so insistent that she must serve others, always.  Why
should she enslave herself just because someone else had need of her ability? 
That wasn’t fair.  She was the one with the power and ability.  They should not
enslave her.  She had fought this idea, saying that the Imperial Chantry said
the opposite of mages.  Her mother had countered that she was a Laetan mage,
not Altus—the Altus were the ruling class.
                She hated her mother.  She had fought against that oppressive
feeling for so long, and she felt free just thinking it.  All those times she
had had to tell her mother she loved her, how she had to sit through not one
but two exorcisms and her siblings laugh and snicker about it for days
afterwards, how her mother had tried to cast the demon out by locking her in
the cellar with no food or water for two days, and any number of other
abominable acts—all in the name of purging an imaginary demon.  How could
someone do those things to their own child?
                She hung her robe up to dry when she had scoured it of dirt and
sweat, after she rung it out as best she could of course.  She washed her under
things, and put those in the tree with the other things.  Then, she got into
the water herself.  It was warm enough, and she welcomed it.  She washed, and
scrubbed, and wished she had scissors to cut her hair.
                As always, she tried not to look at the scars that marked her
arms—permanent memoirs of making soap.  It had been a children’s chore to stir
the vat of bubbling fat, and the other children had always tried to splash her
with the liquid, and ruin her clothes.  When she had cried about the burns, her
mother had only chided her.  Her father had, politely, made mention that
Hadriana could find a different chore, but her mother only had words with him
in private, away from their children, and Hadriana was sent back to the vat in
the morning anyway.
                She scrubbed her hair out thoroughly, and washed herself clean
with the sand she discovered in the stream.  She laid out in the sun until she
was dry, but had to wait longer yet before her clothes were dry enough to put
back on.  She drank, and foraged a bit for food on her way back to the road,
but found little.  She walked on, feeling much better about herself, and her
confidence showed in the way she walked.
                When she finally saw the city, her eyes lit up.  This was it. 
This was her chance.  She had come so far, and now she had a chance.  Her
spirits lifted, she pressed on.
 
                Kylie crept around the hallway, silently down the shadows.  She
stole across the hall, unseen, and prided herself on her childlike stealth.
                She padded around the corner, and, timing it just right, snuck
into the kitchen.  The kitchens were a busy place that she was not at all
allowed.  All around her, the servants were rushing, and hurrying.  Slaves ran
back and forth running all sorts of errands.  She kept to the corner, and no
one noticed her; they were too busy, and she was too small to see over the
counters still.
                She waited, and dashed to the counter where the hot scones had
just been removed from the oven.  She reached up over the counter, and had just
wrapped her fingers around one of the delicious treats when a spoon came—out of
nowhere!—and smacked her on the hand.
                “Ow!” she exclaimed, jumping back in both alarm and pain,
letting go of the treat.
                A scowling headmistress stared down at her in stark
disapproval.  “Young miss, you’ve been told not to come into the kitchens
before,” she scolded her.
                “B-but,” the girl stammered.
                The headmistress turned her around, toward the door, and
swatted her on the bottom with her wooden spoon.  Kylie jumped, yelping in
pain, and darted for the door.  She pouted.  She had been caught, and got a
spanking.  Worse, now her mother would know within the hour, and she would be
in trouble!
                Her stomach growled in complaint at her failed thievery.  It
wasn’t fair.  She was hungry…
                Frustrated, she marched outside, through the servant’s
entrance, which was less bothersome.
                She found a secluded corner of the garden, and sat down
angrily, her back to the wall.  Someone called from the garden gate.  Curious,
she got up and walked over to the gate.
                “Oh, good child,” a woman in rags, her head in a scarf, said. 
“The children are so hungry, and we’ve no money.  But you’re a good girl,
aren’t you?”
                She looked on, her heart moved to pity.  “You have kids?” she
asked.
                The woman nodded, bringing her young daughter forward.  She
wasn’t much older than Kylie was herself.  “Yes, and we haven’t eaten in so
long.  If you could but get us some money—you have plenty of money in that
manor, don’t you?—then I could buy something for the children to eat.”
                She looked at the girl, and then saw the swaddled babe in the
mother’s arms.  She felt a lump rise in her throat.  She couldn’t leave them
hungry.  “I…  I’ll get my father…”
                But the mother smiled kindly.  “Don’t bother your father with
this, dear.  He’s a busy man, and we don’t need much.  We only need enough to
eat, and that much wouldn’t be missed, would it?”
                No, she supposed it wouldn’t.  No one would miss some money to
eat with.  But how much was enough to eat with?  Kylie didn’t know too much
about money…  “I’ll be back soon—you wait here,” she said.  She didn’t want
anyone to go hungry, after all.  That was so sad!  That poor woman, and her
hungry children!  They looked so miserable, and hungry, and filthy.  Who was
she to steal a scone?  Why, she had eaten breakfast already.  She could wait
until teatime for the scones, surely.  Those poor people hadn’t eaten in days,
she bet.
                But something felt wrong about getting them money.  That was
stealing.  There were things inside that could be sold, sure, but she had been
told not to touch those things.
                She bit her lip, trying to think of what to do without asking
an adult for help.  She could do this by herself.  She wanted to help other
people, after all!  And she wanted to prove that she could help others without
asking someone else to helpher help them.  That was what being an adult was,
wasn’t it?
                The kitchen, of course.  It was food they wanted, and the
kitchen had lots of food!  She hadn’t been very stealthy last time, but she
hadn’t had such need.  And she would need something to carry the food in too… 
She could put it in the skirt of her dress, she supposed…
                Kylie waited nervously for a moment before sneaking back into
the kitchen.  She snuck about, keeping out of the way as much as possible, and
unseen—that was the important bit.  She looked up at the counter and found a
roast chicken in a pan, waiting to be carved for sandwiches.  That was good,
and filling.  It was perfect.  But how could she take it?  Well, no one was
paying any attention to her so far.  She looked about herself, and reached up. 
The chicken was small, but she had only seen four summers, and it felt heavy
enough to her.
                She plucked the bird out of the pan—it was hot and scorched her
fingers so she had to be quick--and put it in her dress.  She carried it by the
ends, carefully, and hurried out of the kitchen.  It smelled so good—she had
better hurry and get this to them immediately!
                She had barely left the kitchen when one the servant boys
grabbed her by the arm.  “Young miss, you’re ruining your dress,” he warned
her.
                Her blue eyes widened.  Oh, no!  He’d tell, and they’d think
she was up to no good again!  “Oh, please don’t tell Mistress Obelia!” she
cried.
                He frowned.  “And why not, you little thief?”
                She bit her lip.  “Some people really need this,” she insisted.
                He raised an eyebrow.  “Is that so.”
                “It is!” she said, her lower lip jutting into a pout, and with
that, she turned and ran for the door.  She made it outside, triumphant, and
hurried to the gate.
                “I have food,” she said.
                The woman looked down at the chicken as the young girl lifted
it from her stained dress, and passed it through the bars to the other little
girl, who took it greedily, thanking her for the food.  But the woman had an
unhappy expression on her face, like she had bitten something sour.  “Oh, but
darling, that won’t last.  We have no money to buy food, don’t you see?  And
one chicken won’t last very long.”
                “I…  I’ll get more,” she promised her earnestly.  “I can get
more.”  And now she was worried that she had made a mistake somehow.  An adult
could have done better, she was sure.  “I’ll go now.”
                “Honey, just bring us something to buy food with—you don’t want
to ruin your nice dress,” she said.
                Kylie was already on her way though, hurrying back toward the
kitchen.
                “Miss Annalkylie Danarius!” Headmistress Obelia said from the
door, hands on her ample hips.
                The girl froze in place, nervously.  She lowered her head and
walked up to the headmistress of the kitchens.  Obelia swatted her immediately
before asking her anything.
                “I was just trying to help!” Kylie cried.
                Mistress Obelia paused.  “Help who, child?”
                She looked up at her.  “The woman by the gate, with two
children.  She says they’re hungry.”  Her eyes grew large with concern.  “They
look hungry, and tired, and dirty.  Oh, I couldn’t just leave them!”
                But instead of her features growing soft with Kylie’s concern,
Obelia’s lips pursed, her eyebrows raising.  “Oh, I see,” she said, gazing off
at the gate.  The girl looked at her hopefully.
                “So you will help them?” she asked.
                She patted the young girl on the head, affectionately mussing
her mop of blonde curls.  “I’ll see what can be done with such… poor
unfortunates,” she said.  “You go get cleaned up, darling.”
                Satisfied, the girl rushed past her into the house, pleased
that the woman was getting the help she needed.
                Or perhaps, not the help she needed, but the help she deserved,
for trying to trick an innocent, kind-hearted child to steal for her.
 
                Lura walked home alone, late at night.  The alienage was a
place of dark shadow, but it wasn’t a small place exactly.  And she lived at
one side, and worked on the other.  She walked carefully over the board that
served as a bridge over the gutter, cringing at the thought of slipping.  She
had done that once, and she felt like she would never be clean again after
that.
                A shutter creaked somewhere in the night.  A cat yowled.  A dog
barked, and someone yelled at it to shut up.  It didn’t, of course, but she
heard a door open, a whining sound from the dog, a loud thunk, another whine,
and it fell silent.  She doubted it was dead, just smacked.  Who would kill a
dog just because it was barking?
                No candles burned at this time of night, no fires glowed. 
There were a couple lanterns in the alienage, to light the way, but for the
most part the district was dark, making forlorn pools of dismal light to
illuminate the despairing sight of the elven alienage.  The sky was the dark,
deep blue of night, hours before morning.  The starlight glistened overhead,
and it just made her feel lonely.  The moon hung swollen in the sky, and that
made the loneliness worse.
                She fished her key out of her pocket—it was a heavy, brass
thing whose weight she would immediately miss if she were to drop it.  She
unlocked the door and strolled inside.  All was quiet here.  She locked the
door behind her.  Mieta and Varania were always long in bed by the time she got
home; that was fine.  She liked to be alone for a while anyway.
                She wiped her feet on the matt, and washed her face and hands
in the basin.  She sighed as she walked to her room.  It was the smallest of
the three and was more a large closet than a room, but she did not mind so
much.  Varania needed the extra room, with a child, and Mieta had earned the
larger room.  Lura was only here because of Leto’s kindness, and sacrifice.
                She felt a pang of more emotion than she felt she could
handle.  Grief, disgust, sorrow, anger—pain.
                Lura shut the door to her room, and put the key on the small
stand.  She undressed, and shrugged into her dressing gown in the dark.  She
slipped into bed, and lay there awake, no longer desiring the quiet hours of
the night to be alone.  She didn’t want to be alone.
                She closed her eyes, curling into a ball on the bed.
                She wanted Leto.
                She wanted his arms around her.  She wanted to push her nose
against his chest, and wrap herself in his embrace, in his scent.  She wanted
to bury her fingers in his dark hair, and kiss him.  She wanted to hear his
voice again.
                But she never would.
                Her grief consumed her, as it did from time to time.  Her loss,
her pain, her grief.  They were not pleasant feelings, but they were hers.  She
felt like so few things were truly hers—especially when she had been a slave. 
She had learned to value her memories, her emotions, because they were all she
really had to call her own.
                Was love always this painful?  Was love always this cruel?
                She would gladly give her life and all the world if he could
hold her for just one hour.
 
                The massages seemed to be helping, considerably actually. 
Danarius had bought a slave skilled in such things while he had been
away—something one of his fellows had suggested when he mentioned that Fenris
was having to re-learn to walk and move.
                It had been one of the few good suggestions anyone had given
him in regards to Fenris.
                The slave was a eunuch, in the barest sense of the term,
because she was technically female.  He could have had a “male” eunuch, but he
preferred to look at a woman as opposed to a man—rare exception being Fenris: 
He could look at Fenris almost all day, he felt like--studying him mostly, and
there was nothing wrong with admiring his life’s work.
                 Speaking of which, his “life’s work” was improving more and
more every day.  A few more weeks, and he would be fit enough to do more than
listen to lectures on swordplay.  Not much more, and only for short spurts at a
time at first, but the long soaks in hot water, the massages, good food, and
the exercise were doing his pet some real good, and keeping him busy too.
                All of this was good news for the magister, because for the
time being, he had other things requiring his attentions.  He had already told
the court that he was going to his country house for a year or two, and at
first that had been fine, but some details still required his attention and
correspondence.  He may have to journey to Minrathous soon—in winter no less.
                At least Tevinter’s winters were mild.
                He tried not to think about it much, but he did wonder about
that Desire Demon.  He wondered what she was up to, what people she had killed
in her play.
                There were reports of murders all the time, but that meant
little.  People killed more people than demons did—and that was the truth of
the matter.  The sooner the other countries learned that the better; it was
barbaric to keep mages locked up like common criminals for fear of what they
might do.  Why not cut everyone’s hands off—can’t everyonehold a knife?  If
they were worried about mages summoning demons and abominations, the best cure
for that wasn’t Tranquility; it was education and a peace of mind.  Tevinter
had fewer apostates than any other country, specifically because they didn’t
cage them like animals.  And, Danarius mused, prizing educating their mages,
possessions were actually quite rare.  Most demonic possessions came from
either mages going mad (something the Imperial Circles attributed mostly to the
way anyone would go mad were they caged), or an unlearned mage.  Blood magic
had little to do with it.
                His brother had sent him a letter as well, insistent that he
come to visit him, or vice versa, them being so close suddenly.  He wrote him
back welcoming his younger brother back to their childhood home.  He was
careful to mention that the orchards were particularly lovely in the
springtime, and his daughters might like the garden in bloom, his son the
hunting to be had.
                Iden’s youngest, he read, was quite the handful.  Annalkylie
had not been present at the wedding, and Iden wrote that this had put her out
rather a lot, but a formal occasion such as that was no place for a young
child, incapable of sitting still.  The twins, Agasius and Caleigh, were as
alike and different as one would expect of a boy and girl their age.  The
oldest, of course, was Iden’s recently married daughter, Cristabelle.
                Danarius leaned back in his chair, thinking about Roschelle,
and his dead child.  Dead children, if he counted the bastard-born half-elf. 
He had had several mistresses, but he dismissed them once they became too
clingy, or if they were got with child.  If they wouldn’t shed it, he made sure
they died, usually.  He wasn’t interested in having bastard-born brats crawling
to him wanting handouts when they were older.  At the time, he had never even
considered Varania’s brat to be an issue; he had assumed it would grow up a
slave was all, if it even lived.  Well, no matter.
                He had two possible alive bastard-born children, come to think
of it.  The first of them, he had it on good information, was dead, died of
fever some years back—though he took any information with a grain of salt as it
were.  The half-elf, though… that was nothing to him.  His mother would likely
never talk about it, and the child was, according to the demon, a mage anyway. 
If any of his children ever came to him wanting handouts, he could justify
giving said handouts to the mage-child, blind and half-elven or not.  It would
probably die anyway, even if he didn’t have a hand in it.
                He suddenly stood up, unable to stay sitting any longer, and
walked from the room.
 
                He bent, his knees dug in to hold on.  “Run,” Fenris whispered,
heart racing.
                The horse’s ears flicked, and she responded to the word, going
from a steady trot to an all-out sprint in an instant.  Most days, it was more
of a trial holding her back than getting her to go faster.  She raced across
the yard—fast, faster.  Her hooves scarcely touched the ground as she almost
flew over the grass, the animal’s lean, muscled body warm beneath him.  “Jump!”
he cried, and rather than kicking up dirt as she turned at the fence, she
leaped.
                For a moment, he felt like he was flying.  Seamless silence,
faultless movement.  A moment of crystalline perfection, and everything in the
world was beautiful.
                Then her hooves hit the dirt, and she was running again. 
Someone was yelling at him, which he recognized with all the care of someone
with wings being told not to fly.
                All the same, he reigned the horse in, and both horse and rider
were disappointed.
                He held his breath, waiting for the scolding from Master
Taggart, the swordmaster—who also served a few other duties as well.  Namely,
the one who had taken over Damaris’ job once it was no longer a question if he
could get around well.
                Taggart’s horse trotted up to the fence, and he scowled at the
elf.  “Get back in here.  You’ll be drilling ‘til you drop for that stunt,” he
threatened him.  Fenris resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  He drilled him
like that anyway.  For the time being, the elf still didn’t have the stamina to
run and wield a sword at the same time.  However, the horse did have the
stamina, and he could train in some things from her back.  Taggart had said
that that was more difficult, and most people learned the opposite way.  Fenris
reasoned that going from horseback to on-foot should be simple, then.
                “Yes, Master Taggart,” he called back, privately pleased with
himself.  Naturally, the easiest way back in to the field, after all, was to
leap the fence again.  The horse’s ears pricked, obviously catching on to his
mischievous mood.
                He backed up the horse a good enough distance for her to get a
running start for the jump, then paused.  Fenris looked across the yard.  There
was an enclave in a grove of trees, a path, and a family cemetery enclosed in a
low stone wall.  He could see some of the stonework from the headstones.  But
what he didn’t normally see from here was his master, walking very purposefully
out to it.
                He blinked, curious but not so much as to step out of line over
it.  The gate opened—he heard it creak as the wind rustled the branches in the
grove.  His master passed among the monuments, and then stopped at one that
Fenris couldn’t see, and stared, and knelt and disappeared from view.
                “Fenris!” Master Taggart’s voice brought him back to the task
at hand.
                The elf sighed, and spurred the mare into a gallop.  She jumped
the fence, and landed with grace, and an arrogant flip of her tail.
                The human raised an eyebrow.  “Now, the purpose of this
exercise is… what, Fenris?”
                The elf replied, “My master is vulnerable while traveling.”
                “Right.  And you will better learn how to defend against riders
if you know how to attack from horseback, and…”
                The lecture continued as they walked the horses back across the
field.  He would have to learn how to fight horsemen, how to protect his master
from such attacks, as well as a number of other things.  It was generally
accepted that he would most likely be on foot, but not necessarily.  If his
master were traveling, Fenris would always be close at hand.  Traveling was
swifter by horse than walking, and Taggart considered it his holy duty to drill
into Fenris every possible method of both attack and defense imaginable as well
as a few that Fenris suspected were not only improbable, but impossible.
                Some of his lectures were about Qunari tactics as well as the
Imperium’s.  Some were about war—though those were fewer because it would be
less important for Fenris to learn them.
                Though, the vast majority of his lessons were defensive,
because that was his primary duty.  For the time being, at least.  Taggart
assured him that sometimes defense required attack, and not only as a general
rule, but to attack first, but that was a later lesson.
                Somewhere amidst the drills, he glimpsed Danarius walk away
from the cemetery, back toward the manor.  Something about his posture
suggested an air of grief.
 
A welcome warm breeze softly billowed the curtains.  Sunlight spilled in
through the window.  The air was fragrant with the season.
“You are too gentle with him,” Danarius reprimanded the old knight.
                Taggart frowned at him.  “I won’t beat him, if that’s what
you’re saying,” he said carefully.
                The man had no tact, for all his battlefield prowess.  The
magister frowned.  “He does things that you do not tell him to, nor do you
approve of those things—yet still he does them.”  Jumping the fence on the
horse was merely the latest thing.  Fenris might obey Danarius perfectly, but
everyone else seemed to be a different story.  And, while the magister could
reprimand Fenris about it, he thought of it in the same manner that one
properly trains a dog:  You don’t train the dog; you train yourself to train
the dog and the dog follows.
                The knight only shrugged a shoulder.  “He’s young—a teenager…”
he began, and broke off when he saw the look on the magister’s face.
                “He’s a slave, and must do as he is told, and nothing less,” he
quipped.
                Taggart looked like he wanted to object.  What did he hope to
say?  That he was a “person,” not a possession?  Couldn’t he be both?  That was
what a slave was, after all.  Or perhaps he meant to insist that Fenris was
young and needed to be let loose once in a while, like a stallion?  Well,
horses were meant to be broken.  Just like slaves.  “Serrah—“
                “I won’t have it,” Danarius snapped.
                Taggart’s back stiffened.  “The boy would do anything for you,
serrah.  He’s just a kid; he should be allowed to--“
                The magister’s glare cut him off.  “He’s property.  Nothing
more.”
                “Serrah, please—“ he beseeched him.
                “No.”
                “He’s not even twenty—you just can’t—“
                The magister frowned.  “Fenris remembers his age?”
                The man frowned back at him, and blinked.  “Well, no, but…  He
looks so young, I…”  He shook his head.  “Serrah, you just can’t do this to
him—“
                Danarius had none of it.  “If he must be broken to get the
obedience I desire from him, then break him,” he said in a tone that brooked no
argument.  “Dismissed, ser knight.”
                Taggart bowed stiffly, and left the room.  Danarius let out a
long sigh after the door shut.  If there was one thing he wouldn’t tolerate, it
was disobedience.  He would even tolerate the occasional insolence—Leto had
been insolent enough, he knew.  And he had tolerated it, if it had been
strained.  But some of Leto’s insolent, self-indulgent behaviour had leaked
through to Fenris, much to Danarius’ dismay.  Taggart just blamed Fenris’
youth.  How old was the lad now?  19?  Or was it 18?
                Danarius mulled the thought over for a long moment.  Man, he
reprimanded the thought.  Like it or not, Fenris was a man by rights.  Just at
the age where he should be chasing after a woman’s skirts.  Danarius would
wonder if Leto might not have fathered a couple of brats from before, but the
whelp had been a virgin for so long.  If he had been less virginal, he imagined
that he would have at least one child by now; he was of an age.  How old was he
exactly, anyway?  The magister would need to remind himself to look through his
records sometime.
                He wondered if Fenris could even beget a female with child. 
Possibility of sterility.  He’d have to find out one day—far in the future. 
Some reward, perhaps.
                He’d find a pretty elven girl with fine hips and gift her to
his pet—selected for breeding, solely.  But that was a long way off, if ever it
happened.
                And he would have to get over these mischievous notions first.
***** Fallen Snow *****
Chapter Summary
     The Imperium sees its first snow in a long time. Some are filled with
     wonder at the sight of it, others sadness, longing, a sense of quiet
     beauty, tranquility, and misery.
                The woman worked at his feet first, slowly, working her way
up.  Each toe got special attention, each tendon, every inch of flesh.  The
oils soaked into the skin.  Her dexterous hands were like a magic of their own.
                It wasn’t the first time she had done this for Fenris.  Matter
of fact, she had done it every day for nearly two months, and still had not
offered Fenris so much as her name, and he was beginning to think that she
might not have one, as she had been free enough with other information, and
every time he broached the subject, she changed it.  He had been kind of shy to
appear naked in front of her, at first.  She had only frowned at him and
informed him that she had seen dozens of naked men, and the only different
between he and they was the lyrium.  He had been unconvinced, and she had only
said that she technically wasn’t much of a woman anyway.
                He hadn’t known what to say to that, if anything.  She had
calmly explained that she was a eunuch, and he had been a little too
embarrassed to ask how a woman could be a eunuch.
                But two months had gone by since then, and the curiosity was
driving him mad.  “How does a woman become a eunuch, anyway?” he had to ask.
                She laughed.  Her laugh wasn’t really a pleasant sound; it was
a barking thing that was almost offensive to the ears.  But it was genuine.  He
felt like all the emotions from everyone he knew was not genuine.  He felt like
it was all suppressed or entirely false in one way or another.  The only
emotion he was sure of from anyone were the slaves—and that was nothing but
misery.  A misery that he felt by association, but was excluded from by his
master’s choice.  “When I was a little girl, I was cut between my legs with a
knife, much like a man.  I can show you the scars, if you like,” she offered
teasingly, knowing he would refrain, which he did.
                “No,” he said immediately, his stomach tightening at the mere
thought of it.
                “After the cutting, there was some stitching, and then acids
were used, carefully, and destroyed my womanhood.  That left scars too.  Would
you like to see those?”
                “No!” he said, with a little more feeling than he had intended.
                She laughed a little, working up to his ankles, which were
sensitive enough that he sometimes squirmed when she touched them.  She was
silent for a long time.  “So.  I heard that you can kill someone by touching
them,” she said.
                “You certainly enjoy uncomfortable subjects, don’t you?” he
muttered.
                She snickered.  “My presence makes others uncomfortable, when
they think about what was done to me.  I imagine you’ve noticed that your
presence is treated with the same discomfort.  But yours is more obvious.”
                Put that way, they were very alike.  And lately, he was
discovering other things the lyrium had granted him.  Danarius had him
practicing some of those abilities—namely, the one that had killed Larissa; he
hated it.  “No one insists you learn how to rip someone’s throat out with your
hands though.  Or their heart, respectively.”  He didn’t practice on live
people, but pig corpses sometimes—after long, boring lessons in anatomy, and
where all the organs were.  If his master told him to tear out someone’s
spleen, he had best know precisely where that was, and whatnot.
                Her hands worked on his calves.  “I still had to learn that if
I’m not careful, there are things I can do when I walk across your back, or
massage your neck that will kill or hurt someone.”  She paused, her fingers
lightly touching the back of his neck.  “I remember all of those things.”
                He snorted, and his eyes closed.  He had learned to just enjoy
the feeling of all the tension in his muscles being eased out by her hands. 
She went back to his legs.  She was silent up until she reached his back. 
“You’ve never been afraid to touch the lyrium?” he asked her, quietly.
                She paused.  “It doesn’t matter, because I still have to,” she
said with a shrug.  And they were quiet again.  “Someone once told me that the
quickest way to a man’s heart was through his stomach,” she commented,
seemingly out of nowhere.  “But I always thought that was messy, but it does
avoid that whole ribcage business if you just go under it.”  Fenris almost
wanted to smile; he liked her.  “At any rate, I disagree; it’s six inches of
steel.”
                “Or my hand,” he said blandly.
                “That sounds messy too,” she said. 
                And he felt better.
 
                While Danarius was in Minrathous, attending court sessions, and
not at all seeing why it was so detrimental that he had to be there, he also
made it known that he was seeking a new apprentice, and would welcome any
applicants while he stayed there.
                The talk of the Circle, so his informants said, was the same
irritating things as usual—and one particular bit of gossip roiled his temper. 
It was quite a political scandal that Danarius’ apprentice, and thus heir to
his title, was dead.  It was a lot of work that Danarius had put into Raith,
and the boy had even been doing well, a Senior Enchanter by rights when he had
died.  But there was no one else in his bloodline that was a mage, which was
quite the scandal in an Altus house.  His mother had been Altus, but her mother
had been Laetan, and was even foreign, which was of course something that was
brought into the gossip.  Her foreign blood had poisoned his prestigious
bloodline, and it was said that when Danarius himself passed, so too would the
mages of his house.  It was true, and that was galling by itself but that
didn’t mean he accepted it being repeated.  Perhaps something could be done to
stop the gossip—like getting an apprentice, for one, would help.
                He imagined, with a shudder, what would happen if it were
widely found that the only mage he had ever fathered was a half-breed fathered
off of a Liberati mage.  He would never be able to quash the rumors and gossip
then!  He was thankful they were all the way in Seheron, but he began to wonder
if he should not kill the child.  He didn’t need the boy as a link between
Fenris and himself any longer; if the child were to die, it would mean
nothing.  Perhaps it would be best if the babe died, he decided.  It had been
prematurely born, and its mother had already slaughtered the sister, so perhaps
the other one would fall down that path as well.  Time would tell, and waiting
for it to happen naturally was less messy and drew less attention to himself. 
All the same, if the boy lived too long, he had best send someone after the
child, to protect his own reputation of course.
                All the affairs of state were running, if not smoothly, then
running at least.  He was diplomatic, a born politician.  He smoothed ruffled
feathers, he convinced his fellows of the best course of action.  The biggest
reason he had been called back to the capital was that some kind of conspiracy
had been uncovered, a plot to dethrone the Archon.  Naturally, this was cause
enough for trouble, but certainly not something that he needed to be there
for.  After the coup so many years ago, such things were taken quite
seriously.  Danarius had simply taken the right side in the matter.
                However, they discussed their best courses of action to route
out all the conspirators, did background checks on the guards, and he was
convinced he would have to stay in the city until at least the main
conspirators were brought to heel.
                It was horrifyingly droll, and he’d rather be, oh, drowning
himself in saltwater than listening to some of the magisters squeal with fright
like a stuck pig over the issue.
                The debate lasted several days as they talked—endlessly!—about
the conspiracy itself.  Was it a conspiracy?  Was anyone overreacting?  Was it
the Crows?  Everything had to be debated, from every possible angle, of
course.  Conclusions were come to, conclusions were dropped, theories tested,
proven, disproven.  It was infuriating.
                Earlier today, the council had decided to kill a young boy, and
use his blood to fuel blood magic used to read minds—not at once; they had cut
him for every mind read and eventually the boy had just bled out and died. 
They had caught some of the conspirators, and questioning took time.  It was
easier to read their minds, after all, so they did.  They still weren’t
finished yet, so more would have to be sacrificed, as was their duty.  For
small readings, the mage’s own blood would do, but there was so much that it
was just easier to kill a slave.  True, slaves were expensive, but they used
the old, the infirm; the boy had been somewhat touched in the head and
considered near-worthless.  The slaves being sacrificed were property, after
all.  That included their lifespan, their blood.  Even their death did not
belong to them—such was the tribute paid to the mages.
                It was their right.
                Far more interesting were his applicants, however.
                He saw them only in his spare time, and each one had an
appointment.  He did his best not to be late for those—down to insisting the
session must be ended, or he must be excused.  Both of those things happened at
least once.
                So far, he hadn’t found a particular mage he liked yet.  Most
were young, others older and wanting to be magisters.  Some were learned, some
were not.  All were social climbers—a fine pursuit in the ambitious.  Their
backgrounds varied, but most master mages could make decent pay in Tevinter
compared to the common folk.  Magic had so many uses, after all.
                He wasn’t as interested in a mage with talent as he had been
when he was younger.  Raith had possessed a lot of natural talent (though
lacked confidence), but simply hadn’t grasped politics well enough to pass
through the rank to magister very quickly and that was more important.  No, he
was looking for one who would work hard to please him, who would relish the
title more, who would work, and gladly, to earn that title.  It wasn’t always
about magical ability, though that helped secure the position once it was
attained.  It was about playing the game, and winning.
                He hadn’t quite found what he was looking for yet, but he had
only seen a handful of the applicants, and wondered if he would even have the
time to review them all before he left.  He wasn’t in any real hurry.  If they
really wanted the position, they could always seek him out, after all.  But in
the meantime, why rush?
                He left the council house.  It was long past sunset.  And, for
the first time he could remember since he was a boy, it was snowing.
                The snow fell down in large flakes, but melted quickly.  It was
bitterly cold, and he could see his breath in the chill air, but the carriage
was warm.  He took his time walking into the inn he stayed at—his mansion was
still under construction, after all.  The snow was oddly enchanting, in a way. 
Roschelle would have liked it…
                It had been so many years.  Why was he still thinking of
Roschelle?
                Instead, he turned from the snow, and into the light and warmth
of the expensive inn.
 
                Kylie woke from sleep, and couldn’t quite say why.  Something
just felt strange to her, a restlessness that bade her to wake.
                So wake she did, and she wriggled out of bed.  She hopped to
the floor, and was surprised to find the polished wood cold to her bare feet. 
Her toes curled in protest, but she couldn’t find her slippers immediately, so
she didn’t bother.  She tiptoed to the window curiously, and gasped with
surprise when she saw it frosted over.
                She stood up on the window seat to reach the latch, and pulled
it open.  Her eyes filled with wonder, widening at the sight before her.
                White things, like feathers, but cold, tumbled from the sky—but
so slowly!  It was like rain, but they were feathers.  And it felt cold—like
the stream, or like ice.
                Curious, she put on her dressing gown, and belted it at the
waist as she ran from her room.  She careened down the hall, down the steps,
and out the front door of the manor before the attending servant could stop
her.
                She vaulted down the steps, onto the cobblestone path.  She ran
out into the courtyard, and looked up.
                She laughed, even though it was cold.  She held her arms up
toward the sky.  The feather-like things melted when they touched her, but they
were sticking to the grass like nothing she had ever seen.  It was water, but
cold—frozen?—but it wasn’t ice.
                She giggled, and laughed, and raced through the cold-feather-
water, spinning in circles, and it was like traveling through the stars.
                She wanted to share this with her siblings.  That was
important.  They would want to see too!
                She ran back inside, past the servant, panting and gasping, but
laughing with glee.  She banged on her sister’s door.  “Caleigh!  Caleigh!” she
cried, and threw the door open.
                Her sister was awake, and glaring at her.  “What do you want,
Kylie?  Don’t you know what time it is?” she complained.
                “Look!  There’s cold feathers falling from the sky, and they
melt like ice!”
                Caleigh regarded her as if she were daft.  “You were dreaming. 
Go back to bed, Kylie,” she reprimanded her.
                “Look!” Kylie yelled as she ran to the balcony, undeterred. 
She fumbled with the latch.  Caleigh had big double-doors that led to a
balcony, so she just threw them open.
                Caleigh yelled at her when a breath of wind rippled through the
room, giving it a chill, scolding her for her childish foolishness.  “Kylie,
shut that door and go back to bed, you mad child!”
                Their brother poked his head through the door.  Agasius looked
sleepy.  “What’s going on?” he demanded, having been awoken by his sisters’
yelling.
                Kylie turned to her older brother.  “Look—look!” she cried
insistently, running out onto the balcony.  The twins looked at each other, and
followed their little sister out onto the balcony, for though they were seven
years older, they did not believe their sometimes eccentric little sister would
burst in like this for no reason.
                And the twins gasped, for they had never seen the snow falling
in their courtyard either.
 
                The chill in the room was enough to wake Fenris.  He rolled
over at first, and felt determined to simply fall back asleep and ignore it,
but his eyes opened anyway.  The cat sleeping next to him stirred, grumbling
her complaint at his movement.  He ignored her.  The drapes weren’t
drawn—something forgotten.  Lanterns were lit outside, and it illuminated…
                He sat up, rubbing one of his eyes.  What was that?  The cat
made another noise of complaint at the movement, but moved away from her
apparently mad bed-warmer.  She curled up in a ball on top of the comforter, a
small grey ball of fluff.
                He slid out of bed.  The floorboards were cold under his feet,
and he tried to stay on the rich carpet whenever possible.  He climbed onto the
window seat, and peered out.
                White fluff seemed to be falling from the sky.  There was a
word for that.  Something about rain, and ice…  Snow.  He couldn’t say who had
ever told him about snow, but the word was simply there in his mind.  It wasn’t
so strange to him; It was knowing how to speak without remembering how one
learned.
                The Tevinter Imperium usually didn’t have such things as snow. 
Frost, sure, and rain—lots of it in the dead months—but not so much snow,
except in the mountains anyway.  But it had been a colder winter than was
normal, from what he had been told.  So, there was snow.  He imagined that snow
was cold, if this room were anything at all to go by.  He had no desire to find
out either way.
                It was eerily beautiful, in a quiet way.  It seemed to call for
silence as it fell.
                It was beginning to coat the vineyard—dead at this time of
year—below in a thin layer of white that would be gone by morning.  It looked
lovely.  Strange that something that usually made him feel sad could also look
beautiful.
                He looked up, at the long journey each flake made on its voyage
to the earth, and its inevitable fate.  It seemed like such a long way to go,
just to melt.  But life was a long way to go, just to die.
                It was just as senseless.
                He drew his legs up against his chest, wrapping his arms around
his legs against the cold, but also for comfort.  Everything… hurt.  All the
time.  For a while, he couldn’t abide anything touching him—that had been an
interesting time.
                He had gotten used to it, of course.  He had to get used to
wearing clothing, but the constant rubbing, the clothes touching him, he had
hated it.  He hadn’t wanted anything to touch him.  The lyrium made his skin so
incredibly sensitive.  Something in pain was always sensitive to touch, and he
was always in pain.
                He was used to the constant ringing he heard—it was even and
steady, and he had learned to ignore it.  He barely even heard it, unless he
concentrated, and imagined with time, he would never hear it.  But the pain was
something else.
                He couldn’t sleep without a drought of alcohol.  He hated it
when Danarius left him, because he was coming to realize that he only received
the drink when Danarius was actually around.
                It was so hard to sleep otherwise.
                And he felt angry, not just in pain.  He had left him.  Again! 
He had said…  No, he had said that he wouldn’t leave him once he was properly
trained.  He wasn’t, not yet.
                He wanted to be.
                He closed his eyes, willing his master to come home sooner.  He
was exhausted, and just wanted to sleep, and couldn’t—not well anyway.
                The pain sometimes made it difficult to concentrate.  It was
worse without proper sleep.
                His thoughts drifted to the slaves that worked the fields. 
Were they freezing out there, in their ramshackle huts?  Why did it have to be
like that?
                The cold finally drove him away from the window, and back under
the blankets, but despite his efforts, he could not fall back asleep.  The cat
was most displeased.
               
                Hadriana shivered, alone in the empty crate she had been living
in for the past several days.
                The city had not been the haven she had hoped for.  Though she
was a mage, she was common-born, and had no credentials, no references.  She
was told that she may find a wealthy family to support her, and so she
petitioned for such support, but so far had nothing to show for it.
                She had followed the advice of one of the lesser magi from the
Circle, and went to the Chantry asking for support of some kind.  However, they
were… less  than helpful.  She had no particular skill to offer them in her
magic.  Nothing new or exotic, no talent someone else could not do.  The most
she had been able to do was put down her name as an apprentice mage looking for
someone to apprentice under.  She did not know enough to pass her Harrowing, or
she might have had an easier time finding assistance.  They had given her a
list of names instead of any real help, houses that might sponsor her.  Well,
that hadn’t turned out, had it?
                And so, she shivered in the cold, and watched the snow come
down.  She had never thought to see snow.  It would come the year she had been
kicked out.  Of course it came now, and not sooner, nor later.  Of course it
was now.
                It was colder than she had ever dreamed possible, and her
fingers and toes were numb.  She could not wear her boots, she discovered, at
night, though it was cold.  If she did not sleep on them, someone would steal
them for sure.  She was not usually a heavy sleeper, but the cold and her own
exhaustion made her doubt herself.  Why, someone had tried to knock her over to
steal them more than once.  Fortunately, she was a mage, and they did not think
to try again.  But she could not do magic in her sleep, and she slept on her
boots.
                The staff was a good wood, but there was enough rotting lumber
that no one was too interested in stealing a long stick for firewood.  At
least, not yet.
                She wondered if the snow would ever stop, and decided that she
didn’t like it at all.  How could people live in places where the snow was
common?  Why would they ever want to?
                She had been living in the streets for weeks, and had lost
track of the time.  She was filthy, though she tried to keep clean, just in
case she finally got in contact with someone who would sponsor her, or even
apprentice her.  That would be a dream-come-true.
                She was able to do a few minor healings for a few coppers here
and there, but she couldn’t charge any more, because the people who could
afford the treatment could afford better than a flea-ridden girl in filthy
rags.
                It made her want to cry.
                She was always hungry, it seemed, because the coppers she got
did not get her far.  She spent what she had earned on food, usually.  She was
told to go to the work house if she really needed coin and a bed, but… the work
house?  She was a mage…
                A beggar had told her that she had best learn to beg.  Her
foolish pride disliked the idea, but… what else could she do?  She was almost
willing to try it.  Surely, she looked pathetic enough for the task!
                And a man asked her, once, if she were hungry.  Said he had
needs, and it took her a moment to realize what he meant.  He wanted her to
sell herself for a bowl of soup and a crust of bread.
                She had ran away from him rather than face him.
                But sometimes, when she got really hungry, she thought about
it.  It couldn’t be that bad.  And she did need the money.  She was so hungry,
and she wanted a bath so much.  She wanted a real bed, and food.  She wanted a
fire, and clean clothes to wear.  She wanted new shoes.  And a home…
                Sometimes, she just couldn’t help it; she cried at night,
miserable and alone.  She scratched at the fleas that had made her their home,
and found no relief from them.  She managed to cut off her long brown hair,
hacked to the nape of her neck, because it was just so filthy and ratted that
there was nothing else for it.
                She feared when her boots would fall apart.
                Hadriana wondered if coming here had ever been a good idea. 
She should have stayed and taken her chances in the shack.  She should have
come to her mother begging forgiveness.  Maybe she should have even married
that fat merchant man.
                And when she thought those things, she found tears in her eyes
as she realized how desperate she had become.
                The snow continued to fall, heedless of her troubles, because,
despite how miserable a single individual is, the universe and reality will
crush them, and keep going, as if they were never there.
***** Cold and Fire *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania is doing the best she can out of slavery but still has doubts
     about freedom while Fenris sees nothing but tragedy and sadness
     around him. Meanwhile, Hadriana finds salvation at last when Danarius
     narrowly avoids being assassinated.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Varania was learning her mother’s trade as best she knew how,
while she looked for work as a mage—something that would accept an elf with no
credentials or contacts of course.  It was harder than it sounded, on both
accounts, even though mages weren’t exactly commonplace.
                One thing about Seheron was that she was always worried about
the war going on.  Why her mother wanted to move here was beyond her—she
worried constantly about the Qunari, but Mieta was always so unconcerned. 
Though, she had said, she had grown up with Qunari frequenting her city.
                Varania had never particularly enjoyed sewing the way that
Mieta had, so she learned more slowly.  Though, there were things she could
help with at the shop, and do.  She learned to measure for garments, to
calculate yardage, among a few other details.  At first, she simply memorized
what she needed to know—the thing about not being able to read or write meant
that one often had a good memory for such things.
                But, with her mother’s instruction and studying alongside Lura,
she was getting better at reading and writing.  Numbers made more sense to her,
and she still struggled a bit with some words, but she managed now.
                It was exciting, in a way, to know that she could read, and to
be confident that she would get better at it with time.  It was something she
wished she could share with her older brother, and for that, she was
downhearted.
                Varania wondered what had become of him.  She wondered what
that ritual had made him look like, what it had turned him in to.  She
wondered, oftentimes, if he thought about her as much as she thought about him.
                She wanted to tell him so much—about Seheron, and the
alienage.  About working, and Shaislyn growing up.  His hair had been a
brownish gold when he was born, a shade somewhat prevalent in Mieta’s side of
the family, but as he got older it had darkened to a coal black—a texture and
shade Varania assumed must be from Danarius’ family, to her dismay, as it
appeared nowhere in Varania’s heritage, as Mieta quietly stated, and Varania
had argued with Leto as evidence.  Mieta had only looked at her oddly, and
reminded her that Leto’s shade of black was a blue-black, and Shaislyn’s was
the grey black of coal with scattered strands of brown like a hearth after the
fires had burned out--and the texture was all wrong anyway.
                His sister had looked more human than he did, she reflected. 
It was like all the human in both of them had gone primarily to her, and left
Shaislyn looking like something caught between elven and human—but a part of
neither world, not really.  He looked too human to be elven, and too elven to
be human.  Everyone who saw him stared, and couldn’t seem to help it.  She had
asked, and heard that most half-elves look completely human, down to their
eyes.  Shaislyn… was not so fortunate.
                But, she was determined to learn to love him, if it killed
her.  Leto had wanted her to love Shaislyn, so she wanted to too.  And it
wasn’t Shai’s fault—it had never been Shai’s fault.  She had her regrets, her
sins, but wanted to live each day anew.  If she was always burdened by the
past, no matter how painful, she could never move forward.
                It was hard sometimes.  Sometimes, she felt indescribable guilt
over what had happened with her daughter—and worried sometimes that she was
mad.  Other times, she felt like she could never love Shai, for the sins of his
father, and that worried her too.  She worried about her brother.  She worried
about her mother, when her hands bothered her, when she would shake.  She
worried about the suddenly uncertain future before her.
                And yet…  She had been born a slave, and she was free now.  Her
son would be free.  Her mother would be free.  All of that, for her brother’s
sacrifice.  It was more than a fair trade, of course, but it was a hard one.
                As she scooped up her son from the floor, she smiled.  There
was something about a smiling toddler that prompted others to smile.  He didn’t
know he was blind.  Didn’t know he was half-elven, not yet.  And, for the time
being, he was happy.  She wished that happiness could last.  She wanted it to
last for him, and, for the moment, it was the best she could do towards loving
him.  But it was a step.
                She swung him around, and got herself dizzy rather than him,
since he couldn’t see to be as dizzy.  She collapsed into the old rocking
chair.  It groaned with the sudden weight, but it was steady.  One of Lura’s
customers at the bar had given it to her.  Lura was quick to make friends, and
everyone seemed to want to be friends with her too.  In that, Varania was a bit
jealous; she was very shy around strangers.
                The toddler squirmed, and she set him on her lap, seizing his
little hands in hers.  He squirmed again, kicking, and she tickled him, and
hugged him.  She could see his father in his smile.
                Danarius, you bastard, she thought as she plopped her son down
on the floor.  You sick son-of-a-bitch.  What are you doing to my brother right
now?
 
                The snow from the night before had melted away, and the sun
beat down confidently overhead.  It wasn’t as warm as was summer of course, but
it was more what the Tevinters were used to seeing.  Clouds in the distance
seemed to hint at a possible rain later in the day, though—normal for this time
of year.
                Fenris was outside, as per usual, doing drills.  They were
getting into more complicated maneuvers now, and the memorization he had done
before was paying off.
                Taggart stopped for a breather, and Fenris leaned in the
saddle.  The leather creaked.  His legs had long ago stopped aching from
riding, but he still was anxious for a time to come when he could trust himself
to be able to make the movements he needed to on foot.  The horse was fun, in a
fashion, but it wasn’t the same.  Furthermore, he was assured that once they
were back in Minrathous, he may not use the maneuvers he learned on the horses
hardly at all, so it wasn’t as important.  They were really doing nothing but
wasting time on it, he felt.
                But, no, that wasn’t true.  In travel, he would encounter the
horses and riders.  He felt like after this, fighting on foot should be
easy—controlling the horse and wielding even just the wooden swords was
difficult.  It would give him a good foundation, at any rate.  Until he could
move like he should again.  How long was it supposed to take anyway?  He was
getting impatient.  Sure, he did some drills and maneuvers on foot, but he did
not have the same endurance he had on the horse.
                Something caught his eye, and he looked up, beyond the practice
field.  The slaves were doing something.  Digging trenches, it looked like. 
What for?  Damaris had talked to him a bit about spring and how it rained quite
a bit then, but this looked like more than an irrigation trench.  Not that he
knew what that looked like either, though!
                He left the mystery be, and was ready for more drilling when
Master Taggart was.  When they led the horses to the barn, he happened to look
up again, and stopped.
                Some of the slaves had died overnight, in the cold.  Some of
the others might be sick.  And, it didn’t matter—human or elven, the bodies
were thrown in to the same ditch, after they were stripped naked.  The other
slaves were silent throughout the process.  The overseer, too, looked on in
silence.  He saw Damaris carrying a small bundle—her baby.  He had never
actually “met” her baby, but he knew she had given birth several weeks ago.  He
saw her kneel, and unwrap the bundle, and take out a small pink thing that must
be her baby.  He wondered what she must be doing, then the truth dawned on
him.  He felt his throat go suddenly dry.  The entire world seemed to narrow
down to a young mother wordlessly dropping her lifeless child into a mass
grave.
                He remembered the snowflakes--to go through so much only to
melt.
 
                Hadriana was lost.  Minrathous was a big place, and there were
some sections a “beggar” simply wasn’t allowed, but there were so many twisting
back alleys and paths that she was quickly lost.
                And she had been lost for two days.  Not that she knew where
she was going, for that matter.
                It was such a big place, after all.
                Toward sunset of the second day, she saw the Chantry of the
Black Divine, and felt relieved to see the magnificent structure; it meant she
had some idea of where she was.
                It being late in the day, many of the merchants were packing up
their wares.  That is to say, shackling their slaves and ushering them back to
warehouses for storage.  She watched all of this from the shadows for a time,
and when most of the people had gone, she walked where the stalls had been,
running her fingers along the cages.  At least the slaves were fed—and cleaned.
                She was so hungry.  Desperation and half-starvation had led her
to become considerably less picky about the food she ate, and would even eat
things she thought unfit for consumption even just six months ago—the sort of
foods fed to slaves, and sometimes even worse than that.  She had even consumed
meat—and the thought of cooked flesh normally made her convulse.
                Hadriana was worried that she was getting sick.  Sometimes, she
felt dizzy, and weak, and wondered if that was simply the hunger, or if the
cold and starvation were both getting to her.  She was thirsty too.  Fresh
water was sort of difficult to come by.  There were public wells, of course,
but the best of them she wasn’t allowed near, and the ones she was were… filthy
and brackish.
                She wondered if she might have made a life for herself back in
that little hut, or even out in the wilderness.  She supposed that she could
always go back to it, and become a hermit.
                The thought filled her with despair, but it had to be better
than dying alone in a ditch somewhere, nameless, her body simply hauled away
like so much rubbish.
                She thought dismally, she could always sell herself into
slavery.  Though, she believed that was actually an “indentured servant” not a
“slave.”  Was there really a difference, truly?
                And anyway, who would take some flea-bitten girl anyway?  This
whole venture had been mad from the start.  Why did she think she would ever
have amounted to anything?  She wasn’t special.  There was nothing outstanding
about her.  Mages were cultivated in Tevinter, and many apostates fled to
Tevinter, so there was no real… shortage of them.  What had she ever been
thinking?
                At the bottom of her despair, head hanging, something glinted
in the light of the fading sun.  She turned toward it, and her eyes widened. 
She hurriedly scooped up the dropped coin—it was silver, real silver!
                She clutched it tightly, and quickly cast about for anything
else that might have been dropped, but no such luck.  Still, she was so very
hungry!
                Her stomach growled in agreement with that thought, though she
was so weak that it was more like a plaintive whine.  She changed direction and
headed to another part of town; she had a better idea of where to go from
here.  With coppers, she could spend that anywhere, but silver—someone might
try to rob her, and she was so tired and hungry that she didn’t know what she
would do.  Defend herself, she supposed, but at what cost?  Magic was tiring on
an empty stomach and ill-rest.
                She hurried, eager for her first real meal in… she didn’t know
how long.  It felt forever.
                A woman screamed, and she stopped in her tracks.  The wind
shifted, and she smelled smoke.  Hadriana turned to look, and saw the flames.
                It was nearby—in one of the nicer districts, the one with the
high-end inns.  She wondered how that could be.  There were mages, and guards,
and other such in those districts—why would it be burning?  And how had it
caught flame?  She watched the flames climb for a moment, wondering how it had
gotten up so fast, then she turned, remembering how hungry she was.
                She had gone maybe three steps before she stopped again.
                It wasn’t the sound of the hurt and the fearful screaming and
crying out that caused her to stop; it was the realization that she was a mage,
and if she went to help, she may receive the opportunity she so desperately
needed.  So, she slid the coin into her pocket, and turned, running toward the
flames.
 
                Nice try, Danarius thought, standing a block away from the
fire.
                And the lyrium bomb might have worked to kill him too—it was
certainly proving effective right now—but he had decided, randomly, to see the
progress on the manor before he retired to his rooms at the inn.  Someone had
set it off anyway.
                Of course, there was no way to prove the explosive had been
meant for him, but…  Well, what were the odds otherwise?
                He pondered over who the culprit could be.  He certainly had a
few enemies amongst the magisters, and it was far from unheard of for the
magisters to try to kill one another; though that normally happened in duals
more frequently than assassination, but it wasn’t out of the question
entirely.  It could even be Qunari, though then it wouldn’t be lyrium, but that
powder they used that made their ships so deadly, and mages all the more
important in the Imperium.  Or something more sinister—revenge for that coup
perhaps?  He wondered.  There were so many different possibilities, some more
likely than others.
                Perhaps he would never know the truth, and he was resigned to
that idea if that is what it came to.  He was curious, but not exactly appalled
or shocked.  Rather, it was perfectly expected.  It was a good chance to kill a
magister, to be sure.
                His guards stood around him, ever watchful, and silent.  He had
sent a servant to another inn a decent distance away to prepare proper
accommodations for him, but in the meantime, he thought about it.
                People rushed to and fro, and he thought it was interesting how
people had a tendency to stand and watch a tragedy, rather than do anything
useful about it.  Also interesting to note was that it was instinctive for
people to, once immediately free of a burning building, to turn around,
sometimes just beyond the door, and stop moving, blocking the way for others. 
Fascinating, really, and the stupidest thing in the world to witness as a
bystander.
                He saw one girl—it looked like a poor begging girl—kneel beside
the wounded who had been drug out and set aside, but ignored in favor of
dragging out more wounded.  He wondered if she was going to frisk them for
change.  But, rather, a blue healing light sprang from her fingers.
                A mage?
                He felt oddly intrigued.
                A mage, a beggar?  He supposed it wasn’t completely unheard of,
just unlikely.  Well, perhaps if she had been born poor, or cast out for some
reason…  No friends, no contacts—yes, it was possible.
                The girl went from one injured person to the next, and he saw
her grow tired.  There were other mages now too, but still she worked, and
helped, and then someone spoke to her, and she lent her power to the spell to
contain the fire.
                His carriage came, the room prepared.  He told them to wait. 
He strode past the onlookers, right up to the begging girl, and tapped her on
the shoulder.  She jumped, startled, and looked up at him.  She was filthy, and
her hair was ragged, but her eyes were clear and blue.  “What’s a mage doing
begging in the streets, girl?” he asked her.
                She looked down, her face flushing under the grime.  “Mesere?” 
And she swallowed, and her back straightened with forced confidence.  “I was
cast out from my family, and I came here.”
                He had guessed right at least.  He looked at her, really looked
at her.  She was exhausted, and about to drop.  She looked half-starved and
miserable, but more determined than she had any right to be.  He wasn’t… beyond
charity.  And he wanted an apprentice.  A girl plucked from the streets like
this would be eager to please, and beyond grateful.  He considered for a
moment, but only another moment.  “Come with me,” he told her.
                “M-mesere?” she squeaked, surprised.
                “I’m in need of an apprentice.  Isn’t that what you wanted?” 
And he began to walk away.  The girl hesitated only once, and followed him,
still in shocked silence.
 
                Hadriana couldn’t believe it.  She felt like she was in some
kind of dream.  If so, she didn’t want to wake up to the life she had been
living before.
                While she had slept—in a real bed!--he had a small package
delivered to her room.  It had been a robe.  Plain, but clean, and it fit
properly.
                She was washed and clean, belly full, her hair brushed and
trimmed to something more suitable.  Her new master had promised her new robes,
and in the meantime, had simply handed her a small purse and all but shoved her
out the door.
                Her blue eyes gone wide with shock, for the umpteenth time
since last night, when she discovered that it was mostly silver.  She had never
even seen so much money, and he had just given it to her, and told her, in no
uncertain terms, that if she came back with so much as a copper left in it,
that she would be reprimanded for failure to obey.
                She felt wonderful.
                Danarius had saved her, she knew.  He had saved her from the
streets, from the fleas and lice, from starvation, and from her own misery. 
She’d do anything for him.
                She was so happy that she could cry tears of joy.  And to
think—she had almost not stopped to help!
                This was…  It was the best thing that had ever happened to her
in her life.  There was no mistaking it; this was it.  No matter what, she had
to be a good apprentice.  She had to be attentive, and dutiful, and do
everything in her power to please him.
                But, in the meantime, there was the small matter of the purse
of silver.  She almost giggled at the thought.  And she had been so pleased
with her single silver piece!
 
                It was… pleasant… to see the girl so happy.  Hadriana was,
overall, a hard-working apprentice so far.  He had set her, in the past few
days, to a series of menial tasks, and she worked hard at them to excel.
                He judged that she was about the same age as Varania, actually,
now that he thought about it—maybe a year older at the very most.
                He asked her only once what her last name had been.  She had
only looked away.  “I’ve none any more, master; I’m disowned.”
                So Danarius nodded, and left the matter be.  If she ever wanted
to talk about it, she would, he reasoned.  There was no need to question her
about it.  Besides, she seemed happy enough now.  Gone was the miserable girl
of a week before.
                He thought of Fenris.
                He seemed to… collect… broken things.  And if they weren’t
broken to begin with, he pushed, prodded, and forced it until they were.  Yet,
he still wasn’t quite certain as to why he did that—only that he liked to, and
didn’t see a point in not doing it.
                It wasn’t just Fenris and Hadriana either, when he thought
about it.  All of his former mistresses had had some problem somewhere.  One of
them had a type of separation anxiety (similar to Fenris), another had gotten
off on being insulted, and another one had… father issues—just to name a few.
                He had once commented on it to a woman.  She had looked at
him—right in the eyes, and said, “You’re drawn to people like that… because
they remind you of yourself,” she said, and downed the rest of her scotch.  “I
suggest you just get over it and move on.”
                She hadn’t known exactly what she was referring to—just a
problem he had, she had assumed.  But it was Roschelle, in reality—Roschelle
and Shallise.  He didn’t want to just… get over it.  It seemed cruel and
insulting to Roschelle, at the very least.  Shallise was one thing, Roschelle
quite another.
                No, he never truly wanted to get over Roschelle’s death.  It
had been his fault.  It had been utterly avoidable.  Was Varania not perfectly
fine?  If he had only known, she need not be dead now.  His child wouldn’t be
dead either.
                When he thought about it, he realized that the child would be
about twenty-three years old.  Married, probably.
                He wondered, dimly, if he would ever truly just get over it. 
He had been told more than once that he needed to, that it wasn’t healthy, that
he was going to drive himself to an early grave because he wouldn’t let go.
                But there was work at hand, and he had best stop dwelling on
the past.
 
                Hadriana disliked Fenris almost immediately.
                It wasn’t that he was an elf, or a slave, or any of those other
trivial things, like that he was taller than she was or even that he had
abilities that non-mages should never have.
                No.  It was because the first thing her new master inquired of
his steward was about Fenris.  It was because she had to listen to a long
lecture from her master, in grave detail, all the work that had been put into
creating his little slave, and that she must never speak of it as well, to
anyone.  She didn’t know how that could ever come up in conversation, but she
agreed to the terms.
                And then she had actually met the slave in question.  He was
well-mannered as would be expected, but Danarius fawned over him like his
prized possession.
                And Hadriana quickly realized that Fenris was his prized
possession.  And her distaste grew to dislike with the same realization.  She
was his apprentice; she should be more important.  But Danarius had… hinted…
very strongly—that his former apprentice had died for Fenris.  That stupid
slave meant more to Danarius than…
                Than all the slaves he had sacrificed.  More than the two mages
he had sacrificed, and all that money on top of it.  More than any of that.
                If…  If it ever came down to it, he would sacrifice her for
Fenris too, and the thought made her throat tighten with fear.  He was a
slave.  She was a mage—a human mage!  An Imperial citizen at that!  She was
more important than he was!  She should be the one he fawned over.  Not… not
the other way around.
                But he did fuss over Fenris.  There was no other word she could
think of for it.  He had Fenris brought to him, and introduced her to Fenris. 
The elf had bowed low to her, keeping his gaze fixed to the floor.  It was
actually a very courtly, practiced, graceful movement—his bow.  It didn’t even
seem to bother him that he was a slave, which was one of the most infuriating
bits about it.  He should be beaten and low, and humiliated, and ashamed; she
would be.  But he didn’t seem to feel—that she could see—any of that.  If he
had, she may have been at least a little satiated, but this was simply not the
case.  She couldn’t understand it.
                And when introductions were over, Danarius started drilling the
elf about what he had been doing since he had left.  After he answered those
questions, the magister started asking more personal questions—how Fenris was
getting along physically, how he was sleeping.  “You look tired, Fenris,” he
commented, raising the elf’s face to look at him, and inspected his eyes.  “Are
you having trouble sleeping?”
                The elf’s face, she thought with some venom, was extremely
expressive.  “Yes, Master—I’m sorry,” he quickly apologized, looking truly
regretful.
                The worst part about the entire thing was that she was positive
that it was genuine.  She may have been able to keep from outright hating
Fenris, except that the elf’s devotion to his master was genuine, and not just
because he was his slave.  He would be that devoted anyway.  The term “slave”
was just a formal title for him, a physical title.  But Fenris was his slave in
mind and spirit as well—he would be lost without Danarius.  It was baffling to
her.  “I want you to go directly to bed,” Danarius decided.
                Fenris looked very much like he would like to protest, and
seemed to have some inner struggle over it.  The compulsion to obey his master
ultimately won out.  “Yes, Master.”
                And he sent him away.  Once Fenris had left, Danarius summoned
another servant, and gave instructions to deliver brandy to the damned elf.
                Once the servant had gone, Hadriana saw her master smirk.  “He
can’t sleep without a drink,” he commented, obviously pleased with something.
                “Master?” Hadriana inquired.
                He turned to her.  “Here’s a lesson:  Manipulation.  Take my
pet, for example.”  He flicked his wrist in the direction Fenris had left in. 
“I mentioned to you that he is in constant pain.  I keep him on a steady supply
of medications to ease the pain, and if I ever have to punish him, I’ll take
them away.”  He paused.  “The best way to punish someone and correct their
behaviour is by withdrawing a reward.”  He glanced at her.  “But the
medications aren’t enough to completely banish it—which is also by design. 
Fenris is still in too much pain to sleep very well without the drink, and I
withdraw that every time I leave.  Why do you think I do all of that?”
                Hadriana paused, and thought about the answer.  “You’re…
creating a dependency on the medication and the alcohol,” she said slowly.  He
nodded, but looked as if he would like her to go on.  Why would he stop giving
him alcohol when he left?  “Oh—and he’ll associate your presence with being
able to sleep.  So, he’d… associate you with…”  She struggled for a moment, and
felt like she had lost her train of thought.
                “Comfort,” Danarius finished.  “I make him slightly
uncomfortable when I am gone.  I change his schedule frequently, and eliminate
people he sees too often.  The only consistency in his life is myself, and when
I’m gone, he’s unable to sleep.”
                It all seemed so clear to her now.  Of course that was a good
idea.  She could only wonder, why?  A slave was a slave, and would work
regardless.  He had mentioned that he wanted Fenris as a sort of bodyguard, but
it was all the same.  A well-trained slave still took up arms in their master’s
name.  He could be trained and disciplined just as easily as manipulated.  So…
                “You seem confused still, Hadriana,” he commented.
                She sighed, and shrugged.  “It just… seems like a lot of work
for one slave,” she admitted.
                He nodded.  “Perhaps.  But Fenris is special. And, frankly, too
powerful for me to use more common methods.”  Special.  And that had sealed the
deal:  She hated him.  “And anyone works harder and more loyally when they feel
a need to beyond simple obedience.”
                Lesson learned, he summoned another servant to show her to her
rooms, saying that he was certain that she was weary from the journey.  It was
true.
Chapter End Notes
     I thought about it a lot, and could not think of a single good reason
     that Hadriana would go after Fenris herself. The game states clearly
     that she is a magister herself at that point, so it couldn't be
     because she was following Danarius' orders. I decided it made
     infinitely more sense if she felt she owed something to Danarius. I'd
     say, following the plotline of my story, I would be eternally
     grateful and very loyal to anyone who picked me off of the streets
     like that, gave me a life, and training into a career that would be
     my dream job. No, loyal would not even begin to cover how I would
     feel about that person.
     And, yes, I think I would be very jealous of and thus dislike Fenris
     in her situation, knowing that my master's former apprentice had been
     sacrificed so that he could live. Knowing that, despite my loyalty
     and gratefulness to my master, that he would kill me in a moment
     without hesitation in the same situation. From that perspective, I
     understand completely why Hadriana dislikes Fenris and would strive
     to childishly make him miserable. It's also important to point out
     that Hadriana is a young, impressionable teenager at this point in
     the story.
     --This one was much later than usual! I was working a lot the past
     week.
***** Tattoo *****
Chapter Summary
     Each character evaluates different aspects of life, finding hope in
     darkness and beauty in ugliness.
                The trees were in flower; it was spring.  The rains came—light
showers.  The way the wind was blowing with the rain created a steady drumming
against the windowpane.  And so much work to be done.
                Fenris had made some very impressive improvement, and was
nearly back to, physically, the way he had been before—but there was still work
to be done there as well.
                Danarius had decided to catalogue some of the differences he
noticed between Leto and Fenris though.  Mostly, he had done it because he was
constantly comparing and contrasting mentally, so if it were down on paper, he
felt he could stop dwelling on it.
                Rather, it had the opposite effect; he looked for more small
differences.
                The dislike of fish was one.  Though that one made sense; it
was almost all Leto would eat right up until the Ritual, so, somewhere in his
mind was the association, and thus the dislike.  That bothered Danarius, more
than it had a right to.  It was like a red flag, warning him that all of those
memories were very much still there, and affecting Fenris, just more
subconsciously and subtly.
                Fenris had yet to do a single thing to displease him, which was
something.  He worked so hard to please him that he didn’t think he would ever
really need any of the punishments he had in mind.  Still, time would tell the
difference.
                The speaking patterns were different, even some of the
gestures, and posture.  As should be expected, facial expressions were the
same, and when he fought, to Danarius, he looked the most like Leto had.
                And, the more he noticed the differences, the more he decided
that Leto and Fenris could be related in theory, but were definitely not the
same person, even remotely.  They were, in the end, two completely different
people.
                It was fascinating, in a light.
                But distracting from what he really needed to be doing.  His
brother and his family should be arriving within the next few days, and there
was so much to do.
 
                Kylie was proud to be able to ride her pony alongside her older
siblings on their horses.  She had begged, and pleaded, and ultimately allowed
to bring Felicity so she could ride her instead of sit in the stuffy
carriage—that was boring.  She didn’t know how her mother could stand it; it
seemed so dull.
                But the woman had a couple of books, and seemed more than
content with the matter.  Her older sister frequently sat with her, practicing
embroidery, talking, or reading.
                That was not for Kylie, though, and the girl knew it.  She
didn’t want to practice embroidery, and she wasn’t interested in music or any
of the “feminine arts.”  She wished she could be a mage, then she could choose
what she did with her life!
                It could still happen, she decided.  After all, she was only a
child of five.  Plenty of mages were older when they discovered they had magic.
                But sometimes she worried.  She knew that magic ran in her
bloodline, but it had skipped by all of her older siblings and her father.  In
the living family, only her uncle was actually a mage—most worrisome.  Though
she didn’t know, the subject was actually the cause of gossip among the other
magisters—saying that the bloodline was bleeding out, that they weren’t
“breeding true” any longer, as it were.
                Kylie trotted Felicity up to Agasius.  “Father says you’re
going to hunt deer in the forest,” she commented.
                He nodded eagerly.  “I’ve been waiting for a season,” he agreed
with feeling.
                “I want to come,” Kylie said with all the innocence of a
child.  The spring rains dripped off of her oiled rain cloak, some of the
droplets catching in what was exposed of her golden hair.
                He scoffed.  “You’re a girl.”
                She felt deeply offended.  “So?  Why can’t I go?”
                “Mother would never let you,” he said, looking down at her.  He
swiped at his brown curls, dripping rainwater onto his face.
                She pouted.  It was true, after all.  She had said that she
could have a hunting hawk one day, but that was all.  It wasn’t the same—not
nearly the same!
                But if she were a mage…  She could do whatever she wanted and
no one would ever be able to tell her otherwise!
 
                There was so much more to learn than just fighting to be a
bodyguard.  The drills weren’t just reacting to a threat, they were
interpreting them.  They were about not losing his master in a crowd, or
identifying possible threats.  In a word, a fair amount of paranoia and knowing
when to apply it.  He had to learn when people were watching, and
interpret—accurately—the difference between watching and simply looking.
                Taggart had taught Fenris everything he knew about fighting,
but he was seeing increasingly less of him in favor of a dwarven woman who was
teaching Fenris about this new portion.  Mogren, he was beginning to believe,
might be completely insane.  Taggart had drilled him and taught him things he
may never use and thought might be impossible.  He had learned maneuvers and
basic sword fighting skills, the care and keeping of his weaponry and armor,
and other drills.  With Mogren, however, she would drag him out into an empty
field, ankle-deep in mud, and train there.  She would take him onto the roof of
the manor when it was raining, and tell him he had best keep his balance while
she came at him with a wooden stave.  He had fought her in water, in mud, in
the pouring rain.  She taught him how to fight blindfolded, saying that one
day, he might be somewhere so dark he could not see.  When he learned how to
rely on his hearing, she used wax to deafen him and sent him into the woods,
where she would “ambush” him repeatedly until he learned how to use his eyes. 
She would bring him into town on market days and tell him to keep his eyes on
her at all times, and then she would try to distract him and slip away.  She
had him walk along a beam while she trotted by him on a horse, occasionally
swinging a long pole at him.  He had a wooden stave, and could block, but
obviously could not attack if he were to stay on the beam.
                The hardest lesson, so far, was when Mogren had brought from
somewhere a giant disc of metal, which she had pristinely polished, laid out on
the grass and then had oil poured over it.  When Fenris managed to, carefully,
get to the center of it, she lobbed rocks at him, and it was his mission to not
only keep from falling, but to dodge the rocks.  It was even harder
blindfolded.  He had a healthy respect for her ability to throw stones.
                There was so much to learn and memorize—sometimes he doubted he
ever would.  But he was getting better at it.  He had to; there wasn’t anything
else but to please his master, and his master’s will.
                Hadriana though…  She was something else entirely.  She gave
him some nasty looks on occasion, but so far interacted with him as little as
possible, far too busy in her studies for anything else really, though she
occasionally came with Danarius when he checked up on him.  A part of him was
dimly concerned that when she was more certain of her position that she might
use her power to make him miserable and something about the way she glared at
him told him that she wanted to.  Maybe he was over-exaggerating.  Time would
tell.
                The female eunuch was gone—simply wasn’t around.  Perhaps she
had ran away, or Danarius sold her—he would never really know.
                Nothing in his life ever seemed to stay.  Not his memories, not
the people around him.  His master sold off so many of his slaves, he had seen,
and he bought new ones frequently too—another inconsistency in his life. 
Everything constantly changed.  There was no real routine.  Fenris expected to
do drills, to listen to lectures, and other such every day, but the times this
happened changed frequently.  Lately, he was even woken at odd hours of the
night for it.
                Sometimes, he would come back to his room at night, and
everything would be moved around, or the colors were changed, or the furniture
was swapped with another room and he had to double-check himself.
                It was confusing, and made him uncertain.
                The only thing that never really changed was Danarius, and he
didn’t even see him frequently enough to call it “consistent.”  So even then,
that left him with… that little gray cat, he supposed, that still came to visit
him from time to time—and the horse, when he thought about it.
                There was a glass of port sitting on the little table.  He
didn’t even think about it; he was exhausted and knew he couldn’t sleep without
the aid of the alcohol.  He had never been able to sleep well before anyway,
and there was no reason it would change now, and it helped a bit with the pain
he felt too.
                Before he drank it, he found a small vial next to the glass. 
He picked up that one first, and eagerly.  His master rotated the medications,
but this one was the best one so far.
                And the concoction he had drank this morning had worn off an
hour ago.  Being alive was a misery without it.  His entire body felt like it
was on fire—burning without the heat--and there was nothing he could do about
it, except this.  He broke the wax seal, and swallowed the liquid quickly.  He
wouldn’t feel its affects for a few more minutes, though.  He set the empty
vial down, and picked up the glass, and put it to his lips.
                The door creaked open, and he glanced at it.  It was just the
cat.  He had taken to leaving the door to the hall ajar so she could push it
open.
                He felt her rub against his legs, wanting to be picked up. 
“Not now, Cat,” he said.  She sat on his foot, impatient.  Given time, she’d
crawl up his leg if he let her, and her claws were sharp.  He swallowed the
contents of the glass, and set it down, taking a deep breath.  He climbed onto
the bed, and Cat jumped on after him.
                He had felt like the cat should have a name, considering that
she insisted upon being his companion of sorts, but had thus far done nothing
outstanding that brought any names to mind—hence, “Cat”.
                He felt the alcohol before he felt the medication—which was
fine.  He was pleasantly buzzed, and it took his mind off the pain he felt, and
allowed him to relax enough to find some modicum of comfort.  But Fenris only
really fell asleep when the medication dulled the pain.
 
                “Don’t run!” Varania cried, catching on to her son’s arm as he
ran past her.  She tickled him, and tried to act like she was playing along
with him, but to be honest, she really didn’t want him to run.  He was blind;
what if he hurt himself?  He couldn’t see to know to move out of the way, or
slow down.  It would be so easy for him to crash into the doorframe, or trip,
or something--anything.
                It was hard to believe that he had been an infant a year ago,
and talking now.  Not well, of course, but Mieta said he was talking more than
either Varania or Leto had.  Varania assumed that this was because he relied so
much on his hearing.
                “Ou’siiiide!” he cried, and struggled out of her grasp.  She
had no idea how he knew where the door was, even though she had just turned him
completely around, but he ran to it, out of breath, and tried to reach the
handle.
                She crossed her arms, smirking.  “Nope,” she said.  Mieta and
Lura took him outside.  Varania was afraid to.  There was so much outside…  How
could he not get hurt there?  She imagined being blindfolded, and just didn’t
know how her son could ever manage it.
                She sighed, and sat down, watching him continue to struggle for
the door.
                He looked like Danarius, she reflected with no small amount of
sorrow.  His father’s eyes were a pale winter-sky shade of blue, and his were
only paler, but almost the same colour.  His hair even fell in soft curls.  Of
course, when he was a teenager, she’d be able to see what he would really turn
out to look like, but so far…  Well, the colours might be from his human side,
but the shape of his eyes, his cheekbones, and nose—all of that was purely
elven, his lips more like his father’s, his jawline, maybe other things as he
got older.  The size of his irises, though, were more elven, which only seemed
to make it more blatantly obvious that he was blind.  His ears were pretty
human though.  They had some point to them, and her mother said, jokingly, that
they sort of resembled Qunari ears, but smaller.  Varania had decided to let
his coal-black hair grow out, and cover them a bit. 
                Another reason she didn’t want Shai going outside so much was
because she worried about what the other children would say to him.
                Lura told her, privately, that hiding him from the world was
the worst thing she could do, and that she needed to simply treat him like any
other child, but Varania just couldn’t.  He was handicapped, and a half-breed,
and she didn’t want him to grow up feeling like he was less of a person because
of it.
                So she wanted to keep him inside, away from the people who
would stare, and mock.   She remembered all the children who had thrown rocks
and dirt at her just for the crime of her birth and something she could not
control—and they couldn’t even tell by looking at her!  What would such
children do to someone with such visible differences?
                Teaching him the words for things was difficult for her
sometimes.  She had to put it in his hands, and let him touch it, or show him
with his hands.  Oftentimes, she felt lost when dealing with Shaislyn, who was
blissfully unaware of his handicap, to the point where it sometimes frustrated
her.
                She would be so miserable.  She wouldn’t know what to do, or
how to behave.  She would never want to leave her house, for fear of getting
lost or hurt.  The child, she reasoned, just didn’t know enough to be afraid.
                She watched him for a moment as he struggled with the door,
trying to reach the chain, but he would never manage.
                “Shaislyn,” she called, and he turned, partway, his ear toward
her more than his face.  “Come here, sweetie.”
                He pouted.  “No!”  And she sighed when he took off down the
hallway, and ran directly into Lura, though from the way he grabbed on to her,
it seemed to be more on purpose than an accident.
                “Lu’a,” he said, and tried to climb her like a tree.  The young
woman scooped him up off the floor, and laughed.  Varania had no idea how the
child could possibly know which woman was which with so much consistency, and
hardly any hesitation.
                “Aw, can’t we go outside?” Lura said, her cute bow lips curling
into a pout.  “Please?”
                Shai caught on immediately.  “P’ease?”
                Varania sighed.  “Oh, all right, but just a walk around the
alienage, all right?  We can bring Grandma lunch.”
                “Yay!” Lura cried, and tossed Shai up into the air without
further ado.  Varania’s stomach tightened, but Lura never dropped Shaislyn, and
the boy loved it.  Mieta had told Varania that her father had done that with
Leto too, with similar results:  Mieta terrified and Leto giggling with glee.
                Varania worked on wrapping up the meal.  She had intended to go
by herself and leave Shai with Lura, or vice versa, but—Oh, well.  It was a
nice day, anyway. 
                The sewers were so lovely in the springtime.
 
                Mieta was happy to see her little family come to visit her. 
Varania mostly spent time at home minding the house, sometimes doing healings
or other such.  She occasionally had to report to the Circle, but that was
nothing that they could not work around.  Shaislyn had to come with her once,
which Varania said had been frowned upon, but there was nothing else for it
sometimes.
                She supposed it was better than hiding an apostate, and at
least…  At least this was the Imperium, and she wouldn’t be plucked from her
family.  Varania was actually doing social networking when she went.  She was
shy, but showed promise, and was gaining confidence in her craft.
                She seemed happier then, when she came home.  It would last for
a day or so, but then her usual brooding came back, and the despair at her
surroundings.  In Tevinter, mages were valued enough that they would look past
her elven heritage, though—so in that, the young girl had some hope for her
future.
                And her daughter was the one reason she would not change the
way things had turned out.  What would she have done, realistically speaking,
if the Imperials had not conquered Schavalis?  What would happen when she
discovered that her daughter was a mage?  The Qunari called them Saarebas, and
the least of what they did was collar them.  They would take her, strip her of
her very name, and treat her like a criminal—one they would only turn loose
against their enemies.  She could have harbored her as an apostate, but
untrained mages were dangerous, even (or maybe especially) to themselves and to
those around them.
                Which left… running to Tevinter, where they would all very
likely have been enslaved anyway.
                Sometimes, she wondered if, in a strange way, things hadn’t
turned out for the best.  But when this was the best, she shuddered at the
worst.
                There wasn’t a day that went by that Mieta didn’t think about
her son, and worry for him, pray for him.
                She didn’t think that she would ever see him again.  When she
died, he would never know-- would never even know where she was buried.
                And… if something happened to him, she would never know.  That
thought scared her, more than anything.  That was the thought that kept her
awake at night with worry.  She couldn’t bear it.  But he was her own blood. 
He was her firstborn.  Surely, she would know, deep down in her soul, if
something horrible were to happen to him?
                But all the same, Mieta smiled and exchanged pleasantries, and
thanked them for the meal, before the girls and her grandson left.
                Her family, though, would always be missing something without
Leto there too.
 
                Kylie had spent the entire two days sulking around the manor. 
She had begged, and pleaded, and still everyone said no.  She wasn’t allowed to
go with the men hunting.
                So, she had glared angrily as she watched them depart, and
skulked about the manor.  Her sister, Caleigh, was happy to take tea in the
garden with her mother, and she was, of course, expected to attend.  She had,
and made no secret of her displeasure.
                “I wanted to go with them.  Mother, why can’t I go too?” she
demanded.
                Her mother had raised an eyebrow.  “It’s unbecoming for a girl
to partake in such activities,” she had said.
                Kylie had pouted.  “Then I’d rather be a boy!” With that, she
hopped from her chair and raced out of the garden, her mother shouting at her. 
She had since avoided them, except at mealtimes, but it wasn’t always
possible.  There were lessons, of course, and things she could not slip away
from.
                But, while her governess had her back turned, Kylie had slipped
from the room, and hadn’t returned.  And no one was likely to find her either;
she had hidden herself in the hay loft in the horse stable.  She preferred the
company of the horses to that of the people in her life.  She felt trapped,
like she could never be or do anything she wanted, but only what was expected. 
And that had been fine for her older siblings, but it just wasn’t for her.
                So she had pouted, and even cried a little, but mostly been
angry.  She had fallen asleep in the hay some time ago, but woke when the door
opened.
                She heard footsteps, and someone walking inside, with horses. 
A few horses, actually—the person kept coming in and out.  Was the hunting
party back?
                She poked her head down from the trap door, trying to get a
look.
                The horses were being led inside, and turned into the stalls. 
They would be brushed and curried after all were attended to.  The horses
looked weary.  Felicity was somewhere in the stables too, she remembered.
                She wished she could run away with Felicity, like in stories. 
But Felicity would just ignore her when she got tired, and walk back home,
despite anything that Kylie could do about it.  The pony made a good
babysitter, and it was frustrating; she liked Felicity, but the pony wasn’t
very adventurous.
                She saw the person leading the horses back in, and pulled her
head up, hoping they hadn’t seen her.  She waited a moment, and peered back
down again, upside-down.
                Her eyes opened wide.  It was that elf—that one that
glowed—attending his master’s horses, it looked like.  Alone, from what she
could see.
                He had gone with them on the hunting trip, along with a few
other slaves to take care of the animals.
                But he was the weird-looking one she had yet to get a good look
at.  As he walked back out, she was so intent on getting a good look at the
markings that she didn’t notice when he looked up at her.  She gasped, her
mouth forming a big “O” of surprise, and pulled her head back up quickly.
                She heard him continue his chores again, and waited for a
moment, before she—so slowly—peered back down.  He was unsaddling the horses
and putting away the tack—which was heavy work.  She’d never be able to lift
something as heavy as a saddle.
                And, he was busy enough to where he didn’t seem to notice her
watching him, so she actually got a pretty good look at him, and the weird
markings that she could see, sort of like tattoos.
                “Did those hurt?” she asked him, unthinkingly, before she
realized that she was supposed to be hiding.
                “Is someone there?” he said, and looked mildly amused.  She
squeaked, and pulled back, cursing herself for doing something so stupid.
                Maybe he hadn’t heard her though.  Maybe…
                But she was curious, so she stepped down the ladder, watching
him work, utterly fascinated by the markings.  She had never seen anything like
that before!  Only a child stared so openly and so intently.  She missed a step
on the ladder, and cried out, slipping.  She gripped the rail, skinning her
palm.  A hand was at her back, holding her steady.  She looked back around, and
it was the elf.  She stared at him—for the moment, down at him.  “You look
funny,” she said, again without thinking.
                He didn’t deign to respond, but lifted her easily off of the
railing, and set her down on the floor of the barn.  He raised the
ladder—likely so she couldn’t get back on it—and went about attending to the
horses.  She trailed after him like a shadow.  “I want to help,” she declared.
                “My lady, you should get back to the manor,” he said instead.
                She made a face.  “They want me to learn embroidery and
practice table manners,” she protested in horror.
                He rolled his eyes, though she didn’t see him do it.  “I’m sure
someone is missing you right now,” he said gently.
                She ignored this.  “Did it hurt, though?” she asked him again.
                “Falling off a ladder when I should have been practicing table
manners?” he inquired.
                Kylie scowled.  “The things on your skin,” she said, pointing
at him.
                He picked up a brush, and went over to one of the horses that
had just gotten back.  A towel was nearby already, and he toweled the animal
off first—it was covered in sweat.  She was shocked when she discovered that
this slave was ignoring her.
                “I’m your master’s niece,” she complained, irritated that he
was ignoring her like this.
                “But not my master,” he answered, and her jaw dropped.
                “But… but…” she stuttered.
 
                Annalkylie—that was the girl’s name.  His master had told him
all of their names, once, but he had only seen his master’s brother, Iden, and
Agasius, his nephew.  Agasius had a twin and an older sister who was wed
earlier this year, but this must be the youngest.
                Fenris had been told, in no uncertain terms, that just because
someone was his superior, it did not make them his master.  Danarius had told
him that he had but one master, and he was to serve that one master, and anyone
he was told, explicitly, to obey.  Short of that, he answered to one person
alone, and was simply courteous and respectful to any others.  A bodyguard
wasn’t particularly useful if they bowed and scraped to everyone, now were
they?
                It granted him certain… privileges that the other slaves would
never have.  And certain disadvantages—he would have to deal with the
inevitability of some other magister not liking that he wasn’t bowing and
scraping to them too someday.
                Danarius had told him to take care of the horses.  Just a
reminder that he was a slave before he was his bodyguard, first and foremost. 
It wouldn’t do, after all, to give him too much special treatment.  But he
didn’t mind the horses so much.  They were simpler than people, easy to be
around, and with.  The horses were greedily tucking into their freshly filled
troughs, or drinking from the buckets.  So much work to be done…
                The girl, though, was kind of amusing, in her own way.
                “But… but…” she stammered, clearly confused.
                “My lady, if you don’t go back to the manor yourself, I’m
afraid I will have to escort you.”
                She made a face.  “You can’t do anything to me,” she snapped.
                Spoiled little thing.  Curious and adventurous, and with no
interest in feminine arts, but spoiled.  She had grown up with slaves in the
household, though.  She thought nothing of slavery, nothing of others bowing to
her every whim.  It was to be expected that she should react the way that she
was.
                He chose not to respond, and that seemed to frustrate her
more.  She sighed, and sat down in a flustered heap on a short stepping stool. 
She pouted for a while, then walked back to him by the time he had moved on to
the next horse.  “What’s your name?” she asked him.  “I’m Kylie.”
                “Fenris,” he answered.
                “’Fenris,’” she echoed.  “I’ve never heard that name before.” 
She blinked up at him, and spent the remainder of the time in the barn
seemingly being as underfoot as possible, but she did follow him outside, and
by then it was dark.  She looked around outside, staring up at the stars,
stopping in her tracks to look around, as if seeing the yard for the first
time.  “It looks so different after dark.”
                “I’ll walk you back to the manor,” he offered, thinking
suddenly that it might be frightening for such a young child by herself.  A
young, possibly very sheltered child.
                She made a face.  “I’m not a baby—I don’t need someone to—“  In
the distance, a wolf howled, and she jumped, clinging suddenly to his leg with
a cry.  “Agasius—Agasius says wolves eat little kids!”
                Her little hands clutched his wrist, looking up at him
desperately, her blue eyes wide with dread.  “’Fenris’ means ‘little wolf,’” he
told her, his voice gentle, despite that he was teasing her.  She was touching
the markings, though, and—what was more—didn’t even seem to notice it, let
alone care.
                She stared up at him.  “You’re not going to eat me, are you,”
she said, dubious.  Whatever he was going to say was lost when another wolf
howled—or maybe it was the same one—and she shrieked in terror, and made a
failed attempt to climb up his torso, as if being off the ground would help
her.
                He dislodged the frightened child.  “They won’t come past the
fence—don’t worry,” he found himself assuring her.
                She made a whining noise, and sniffed, but nodded bravely. 
“All right.  But… can we run to the manor?”
                Fenris was not in the mood to indulge her—and never really
would be for that matter, but, he thought of an alternative just as quickly. 
“But they’ll see you better if you run.  So walk slowly,” he told her.
                So she did, alongside him, still occasionally clinging to him
when a wolf howled, but getting better the closer to the manor they got. 
“You’re not little,” she complained.
                “Sorry?”
                Annalkylie looked up at him.  “Elves are supposed to be shorter
than you are.  How are you a ‘little wolf’?” she demanded.
                Good question.  “What does your name mean?”
                She blinked.  “I…  I don’t know,” she admitted, and lost track
of the conversation in the way of a five-year old.  When they were within sight
of the door, she abruptly abandoned him, running to the manor like he had told
her not to, and disappeared inside, hungry no doubt.  She would likely be
scolded and sent to bed rather than fed though.
                And she would deserve it, doubtless.
 
                As the weeks went by, Danarius did agree that the children lent
a certain… quality to the house.  It was nice; it felt more lived-in.
                There was a difference in a household between a single man and
a family, even if the house was the same size.
                The children seemed to fill it, with their laughter, with their
fighting, and teasing, and play.  Agasius was serious, mannered, and more than
knew that his role in life was the family heir, and took that task to heart. 
Caleigh was a perfect lady in every way, just like her older sister,
Cristabelle, who she adored.  They were making plans for Caleigh to wed in a
few years, and Caleigh was accepting training for marriage with gusto—there was
much to learn about being the lady of a house, even if she did marry well,
which she would.  Little Annalkylie, though, was another story entirely.
                Much to the dismay of her parents, she had no interest in the
womanly arts her sisters excelled at.  She did not see her place in the world
as clearly as her brother did.  Rather, she was more interested in the
forbidden.  Not to say that she was interested in something evil, simply
forbidden.
                But she kept tearing her dresses climbing the apple trees, and
when Iden put a stop to it, she pestered and begged the guardsmen for archery
lessons until she found someone willing.  When that, too, was put a stop to,
she only moved on to the next forbidden fruit.
                “You should just stop forbidding her things; she’d lose
interest in it,” Danarius advised his younger brother.
                Iden made a face.  “My lady wife disagrees.”  He sighed
deeply.  “I don’t understand it.  Her sisters were never this… unruly.”
                Annalkylie was unruly--and headstrong and determined.  She
would make an excellent mage, if that is what she turned out to be.  It was
still possible, after all, and not unlikely.  “Perhaps it’s a phase and she
will grow out of it,” the magister said reasonably.
                “Grow out of being herself?  She’s always been like this,” Iden
complained, and moved over to the window.  The two brothers were as alike as
they were different.  Iden had always been a “second son,” as it were, in every
way—knowing he would inherit nothing his brother did not grant him, and more
disappointing still to have not been a mage.  Yet still, the pair looked very
much alike, with the same pale blue eyes and looking very much like their
father.  Iden, however, had the blonde hair that was most prominent in his
family, whereas the older brother’s was brown.  “I see she’s skipping her
lessons again.”
                “Shall I send a servant to collect her?” he inquired.
                Iden shook his head.  “No; she’ll throw a fit.  But I’ll have a
talk with her afterward.”  A pause ensued, and Danarius glanced out the
window.  Annalkylie was standing on the fence, watching Fenris and Taggart try
to hit each other with blunted swords.  “She likes to watch that slave of
yours—she likes to watch for when he glows.”
                “Fenris,” the magister supplied.
                Iden frowned.  “That can’t be his real name.”
                “It is now.”
                His brother cocked his head, looking at him sidelong.  “Was his
real name so terrible that you had to change it?”
                Almost.  “It was simply more… convenient this way.  And I feel
it suits him.”
                Iden frowned.  “I’ve heard a lot of… rumours about ‘Fenris’. 
Are they true?”
                “Which ones?” Danarius asked wearily.  He had heard a score of
rumours as well, and a lot of them were nothing but fiction.  Oh, how servants
gossiped though…
                He blinked.  “Well—can he walk through walls?”
                Danarius almost laughed, then thought about it.  “He can put
his hand through a man’s chest, and bypass armor.”  Things they had learned,
with pig corpses primarily.  He’d like to see it on a real person one day, and
had every intention of making this so.  Fenris was learning how to pick and
choose what he could phase through, and for the most part it was going well. 
“I suppose it wouldn’t be impossible for him to walk through a wall; he’s
fallen through the floor a few times—by accident.”  He frowned.  “But, right
now, he would probably destroy it in the process, so I don’t recommend it.”  At
least for the moment, but he’s still learning.  Danarius could coach Fenris a
little with the ability; casting it had granted him certain insights, even
though a lot of it was a mystery to him.  Still, he did understand the basic
mechanics of it, and he understood, generally speaking, what it did.  Fenris’
ability was remarkably similar what it was like in the Fade, and in that
regard, he could help his slave.  Only a few months ago, Fenris had figured out
how to keep his clothes on when he did it—that had been amusing enough at
first.  Presently, he was working on plucking out items from a desk drawer
without destroying the desk—an interesting ability.  He seemed to, for the most
part, have mastery over his hands but when it went up past his elbow, sometimes
something was ruined.  He lamented that Fenris had such trouble in the
beginning with it; falling through the floor had scared him enough to be
extremely reluctant to practice, but in the end, Fenris would rather break his
leg again than risk displeasing or even merely disappointing his master.
                “What about the rumours about him bleeding lyrium?”
                He snorted.  “Hardly.  You could, I suppose, compare it to a
tattoo, if you must.  Slicing open the lyrium won’t make it drain out any more
than an ink from a tattoo would spill out.”  Pretty piece of work, that one. 
Lyrium, no matter how it was refined or what it was mixed with, would never be
ink.  And making sure it couldn’t be marred by cuts was just another delicate
intricacy he had written into the Ritual.  After all, if a mark became flawed… 
Well, the markings weren’t random, and even though it was a design, it wasn’t
purely art.  Each stroke had a meaning, and if one stroke were removed or
marred, it would disrupt the meaning.  It was like a language—in one dialect,
one could say, “Where is the privy?”  In another dialect, the same words might
translate to, “Go stick your head in a privy”.  In a word, if it could be
marred, everything about the lyrium would change—maybe for better, maybe for
worse.  But change right now was not something Danarius would welcome.  Or
Fenris either for that matter.
                He frowned.  “Then it’s all lies?” Iden wondered, sounding
distinctly disappointed.
                Danarius shifted in the chair, knitting his fingers together. 
“Not at all.  Fenris is a skilled warrior, and the lyrium did grant him a few
abilities.  Nothing horribly far-fetched though.”
                Iden seemed unconvinced.  “He can put his fist through a man’s
chest, and that’s not ‘far-fetched’?” he demanded.  Well, he’s not a mage… 
“I’ve heard of a fighting style called a ‘spirit warrior.’  Is it anything like
that?”
                “Ultimately,” Danarius agreed.  “But not exactly.”
                Iden fell silent, looking more at his daughter than at his
brother’s slave.  “A ‘spirit warrior’ is the equivalent of a blood mage, but
without magic.”
                It was an innocent enough observation, and one Danarius took
great note of.  His brother suspected, but he would suspect.  He was not so
naïve to the goings-on as most; his father had been a magister and his brother
was a magister.  He had insight most others did not have.  Danarius chose his
next words with care.  “So some say.  Though others would argue that reavers
are worse, and that has nothing to do with the Fade.”
                “Some would say that Tevinter has more abominations than other
countries.  But perhaps those some are untraveled,” he observed.
                That was practically an accusation.  The magister’s eyes
narrowed.  “Iden.  Be grateful you’re my brother.  Some have died for less.”
                Iden’s eyes shifted to him.  “I am only observing that what
some say is not always true,” he said innocently, and looked back outside. 
“You are very defensive.”
                “Is that so.”
                Iden either did not notice his brusque tone of voice, or chose
to ignore it—more likely the latter.  “One… notices… that all your slaves in
your estate in Minrathous… disappeared,” he said, his tone quiet and gentle,
meant to soothe.  Iden had always been diplomatic.
                He’d have to kill him.  If he was going to cause trouble, he
would have to go; it was as simple as that.  Not now of course.  No, it would
have to be some other time, some other place.  Somewhere where he was not
associated.  Or perhaps… nothing so drastic.  There were other ways, after all,
of silencing someone.  “Next year at this time, I will leave for Minrathous. 
If Annalkylie has not outgrown this phase of hers, perhaps tutorage, away from
home in a different setting, will calm and inspire her.”
                Iden stiffened for a moment, and his eyes got a little wider. 
He swallowed, and relaxed, but it was a forced effort.  “Perhaps she will calm
on her own,” he said curtly, and turned to leave the room.  As he walked past,
he paused, and decided to speak.  “You know what you’re doing, Cillian.  But
sometimes I wonder if you know all the consequences.  I only say it because I
worry about you—nothing more.”  And he turned and walked away, ending the
discussion.
 
                Hadriana was happy.
                She had everything she had ever wanted in life.  She had a home
again—bed, food, clothes, baths…  Simple things she now appreciated like only
weeks of homelessness can make a person appreciate it.  More than any of that,
though, her master had a genuine interest in her, praised her, and had higher
expectations and hopes for her than simply to marry a fat merchant.  That was
the best part of the whole thing; she would never be forced to such things
again. 
                She was a mage.  One day, she would be a magister.  She felt
that future with a sense of certainty and enthusiasm she had never felt
before.  She carried herself with a sense of dignity, command, and self-
confidence she had never felt before she had met Danarius.  It was heart-
lifting and sometimes she was filled with glee over it.
                But she had things she had never had too:  Servants, slaves, a
certain level of power she had never wielded before in a household.
                And Danarius was insistent that she learn to use it and wield
it.
                She had been shy and docile at first, but months had passed,
and she grew bolder.  She was no longer shy about ordering the servants, though
she rarely saw the slaves… except Fenris.
                She hated Fenris.  Everything about him, actually.  Every time
she saw him, she began to feel brimmed with rage over his very existence.  He
angered her.  Someone who wasn’t a mage should not command that much power.  It
was indecent.  He was leashed lightning, and she didn’t understand why her
master didn’t seem to see it, and she was growing bolder, but not bold enough
to point it out to him.
                But he was her master’s pet, and she decided it was best to
simply be elsewhere when he was near, for the time being.  He was so rarely
near, after all, and Danarius didn’t seem to think too much of it that she
devoted herself utterly to her many studies.
                Her hair was growing out long and pretty again.  She longed for
when it was back to its original length, before she had to cut it all off. 
There had been nothing else for it and it was worth it at the time, but
sometimes it was embarrassing now, to have hair as short as a boy… when Fenris
had hair as long as a woman’s.
                It was past his shoulders now, straight and white as fresh
snow.  When he fought, it was braided.  A part of her wanted to burn it all
off.  But Danarius seemed to like his hair, and she would do anything for the
man that saved her.
                She realized now that she would have died, ultimately, in the
streets.  Disease, starvation, dehydration even, exposure—a blade between the
ribs even—there were so many ways to die in the streets.  It scared her, just a
little, when she really thought about it.
                But then she looked at where she was, and smiled to herself. 
It was all worth it, in the end.  She had worked so hard for this, and gone
through so much sorrow and heartache.  It was well-worth it.
                “Master?” she said as she stepped into the room.  “You summoned
me?”
                Danarius was in his solar that overlooked the garden—it had a
splendid view.  “Yes, come and sit, Hadriana.”
                She did, and the two discussed her studies briefly.
                “I was going over your bookkeeping,” he began.  Hadriana
straightened.  She was new at it, but learning fast.  She had thought she was
doing everything appropriately…  He stood up and went to his desk, and brought
back a small file.  He sat, and lifted a piece of paper.  “In the future, this
page needs to be behind this one.”  He lifted the second page.
                She frowned, looking at them both.  “Why?  This one—“  She
pointed to the first one.  “—is the one that you use.”
                He set both pages down, in the correct order.  “Because when I
double check your bookkeeping and look at the files, I will see this page
first, and I will think that you transmuted a number or something.  The most
recent page needs to go first, even if it is not the one we actually need. 
Thus, I might not look at it at all, or think the account is not current.”
                Receipts, she thought with some loathing.  Money lending.  If
he were to glance at it, it would look like the account was not current, but
the first page was the tally page for that account.  His filing method made no
sense to her.  She frowned, watching him put everything back in the file and
set it aside.  She had done all of that yesterday, and she knew he had found it
in less than two hours this morning.  She internally debated on the pros and
cons of pointing this out to him, as he had obviously not looked over it, and
it had obviously not gone unnoticed.  “Certainly,” she said instead.
                “Have you any family to speak of, Hadriana?” he asked her, his
voice mild.
                The question caught her off-guard.  Her blue eyes shifted
away.  “I… I do.”
                He took a sip of honeyed tea, and set the cup down on its
saucer before speaking again.  “Do they know your whereabouts?”
                She paused, and shook her head.  “I told you they turned me
out,” she said, uncomfortable to be bringing this up again.
                He either didn’t notice her discomfort, or chose not to bring
attention to it by fording on ahead.  Or didn’t care.  “Family is important,
Hadriana.  One day, you may find that it is all you have,” he said, voice even
and smooth, and sounded perfectly reasonable.
                She wanted to protest.  She wanted to shout, and shake with
rage, and tell him how awful they had been to her, how they had turned her away
and spurned her.  Rather, she took a long sip of her tea to calm herself, and
to buy herself time to collect her thoughts before she answered.  When she did,
her voice was cool and detached.  “It was made quite clear to me that they were
no family of mine.”
                “Words spoken in anger,” Danarius assured her.  “Write to
them.  Tell them that you are well off, and they need not worry for their
wayward daughter.  You do not need to do it now.  But… do this.”
                Her lips pursed, and a protest danced in the back of her mind. 
She could think of all the things she could say, and wanted to say.  She could
say all the petty things she thought about her family, how her spite for them
had grown, how angry she was.  But rather, she nodded.  “I will… consider it,
master.”
                He looked at her, with such a look that said that he did not
entirely believe her.  “Do that, and consider that if they had not turned you
out, you would not be here now.”
                She considered his words with care, and grudgingly saw the
truth in them, though she did not want to.  Hadriana did not want to thank her
family for anything.  “I… see,” she said neutrally, and finished her tea.  “If
that is everything, I will return to my studies.”
                “See that you do.”
                She set the cup down, and rose.  She bowed her head, thanked
him for his time, and excused herself.  Before she had gotten to the door, he
called, “Hadriana.”
                She paused, and looked back.  “Yes?”
                “Send me Fenris.”
                The fingers of one of her hands clenched, then unclenched with
effort.  “Of course.”
                She gave the order to the nearest servant she saw, who rushed
off immediately.  She felt some resentment that she had been ordered to summon
him.
                The spoiled brat.
                She had to work for everything that she had.  She had been
homeless, flea-bitten, lousy with lice, starved, filthy—all of that and more to
get where she was now.  And he had one of the best rooms in the manor.  He had
good food, a teacher—everything he needed was just given to him.  If Danarius
had always treated him like this, he had no idea what hardship was.  He was
just a spoiled elven brat, and a slave, and that made it more unfair than
anything else.
 
                “You summoned me, Master?” Fenris inquired at the long moment
of silence as he stood by the door.  He had never been into the solar,
actually.  He wasn’t intimidated by the room, but he definitely was uncertain
of what he had been summoned for.  If his master had questions for him, those
were usually something that waited until nightfall or the morning—before or
after he had gone to his training.  But then, his schedule was so inconsistent…
                “Yes—Fenris, come closer.”  He did, and stopped a few feet
away, and stared downwards.  “How confident are you with a sword now?”
                The elf paused, and considered.  Taggart had taken to getting
several of the guard to attack him at once, and Fenris got hit sometimes then,
but he could hold his ground.  “I am in need of more training, Master,” he said
carefully.
                Danarius snorted, but seemed to generally approve of the
answer.  “Isn’t everyone,” he muttered.  “Very well—you have another year,
after all.”  The magister looked at him, his eyes unreadable even if Fenris had
looked up to see them, which he did not.  “Come closer.”  Wondering what his
master could desire, Fenris did as bidden, stopping just within arm’s reach. 
“One more step.  Good.”  And Danarius pulled a small knife from a sheath at his
belt.  Not particularly pretty, but good steel.  “Extend your left arm toward
me.”
                Having a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, Fenris
obediently did it anyway.  He watched the blade move.  Danarius made no point
of hiding what he had intended, nor did he make any show of it.  He simply
reached out with the his knife-hand, pressed the tip against Fenris’ forearm,
and slashed shallowly across it, slicing through the lyrium markings.  Fenris
flinched, but didn’t back away or jump, even though a part of him screamed that
he needed to.  Obeying his master was a stronger compulsion than following his
instincts.
                Danarius’ free hand hovered over the shallow cut.  The blood
steamed and evaporated, coalescing around the mage’s hand.  His fingers flexed,
and a small smile spread across his face, and even touched his eyes as the odd
red steam-like substance seemed to vanish.  “You really are my favourite pet,
Fenris,” he said, sounding pleased but Fenris couldn’t think of why.  “Bind
that, and go back to your training.”  With that, he dismissed him.
                Blood trickled down Fenris’ arm, and he tried to keep it from
dripping to the floor as he walked to the infirmary—a place he had cause to
visit on many occasion in the past.  The woman there bound his arm, and he went
back out to the field, and resumed, exactly as bidden.
 
                The amount of power from just that shallow cut had been
enormous.  There were a couple of reasons that Fenris supplied more power than
an ordinary person would to Danarius though.  For one, there was the lyrium to
consider.  For two, Danarius could already use Fenris like a power source just
by being in the same vicinity as him.
                Not only would Fenris be useful as a bodyguard, he would be
useful to have nearby for duels.  He would be useful to have for simply killing
other mages if need be.  And visually striking, of course, and he had seen the
way people looked at him; they were afraid of him.  Frightened men were easy to
control.  Fenris had so many different, practical uses.
                It had been worth the cost, even the cost of retraining him. 
He couldn’t bring him with him to some places if he wasn’t useful, after all. 
A bodyguard went with the one they were guarding everywhere—including most
restricted areas:  Practical.
                His life’s work, and so much more practical, more real, more
awe-inspiring than any scholar’s research.
***** Lost *****
Chapter Summary
     When Annalkylie seeks adventure and runs away from home, somehow it
     falls to Hadriana to find her.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Annalkylie dropped to the other side of the low wall, and snuck
through the stand of trees.  Only once she could no longer see the yard for the
trees did she start running.  The sense of adventure thrilled through her.  The
unknown, the dangerous, the things forbidden.
                If she were a boy, she would be able to do those things.  If
only she had been born a boy…
                But she saw no reason that that should ever stop her.  She
continued on anyway, praying for a miracle.  She prayed that someone would find
her, take her on some fantastic journey and she could do all the things she had
only read about.
                Her parents scolded her for skipping her lessons, but she
didn’t want to learn to be a “proper lady”.  She wanted adventure and
discovery, and more than she could put into words.
                She had argued and tried to convince them to let her do the
things that Agasius did, and they would not listen.  Her uncle seemed more
lenient than they, and had been sympathetic to her plight when she had
complained to him, and asked him to intervene on her behalf, but her parents
had the final ruling, and their word was law to Kylie.
                So she was running away, and she would find her adventure—she
was certain of it.
 
                The door to the study burst open suddenly, one of the doors
rebounding against the wall.  The magister looked up.  Iden marched through the
doorway, distress marking his features.  “Kylie is missing,” he announced
without preamble.
                Danarius frowned.  “Missing?” he inquired.
                Iden raked his fingers through his disheveled blonde hair. 
“Gone.  The servants have looked everywhere.”
                “Did you check the barn?”  That was where she had been last
time—and come back smelling strongly of horse with hay stuck in her flaxen
hair.
                He nodded, and began to pace restlessly.  “She’s just…
disappeared.”
                The mage’s frown deepened.  “She couldn’t just disappear.”
                “It’s been hours,” Iden insisted.  “She’s gone.”
                The magister straightened.  Sunset was only two hours away, but
the estate was a very big place, and the child could simply be either moving,
or very well hidden—both were completely possible, and the two brothers would
know; they had grown up here.  “Very well.  Have the guards search the
estate—it’s a big place.  If she hasn’t turned up by nightfall, I’ll send the
guard out to look for her.”
 
                But little Annalkylie was not back by nightfall, or even by the
next morning with the entire estate scourged, and the guards returned from the
wood fruitless, though they were no woodsmen.
                Iden and his wife had been wracked with grief.  Danarius was
not so ruffled, but not because he was unconcerned; he had a way of finding
her, even if the means was inconvenient enough that he had not resorted to it
the night before.
                After the last incident, he had made something for her—a jade
bracelet with a jet stone in it.  It was pretty—and he made a gift of it to
her.  More importantly, it was new, and she had liked it, so she would be
wearing it, he hoped.
                Hadriana had bespelled it to his instructions before he had
made a present of the bracelet to Kylie—a spell to find the item again.  It was
similar to a phylactery, but it tracked the item instead of the person.  The
apprentice had to spend half the night waiting on the spell.  Magic did not
always work instantly, and they had to fine tune the compass to the bracelet,
and give it a few tests to make absolutely certain that it was working as it
should.  They had not expected to need it so soon!
                Unfortunately for Hadriana, it meant that she was the one who
had to track it down.  Danarius had smiled, as if bemused, while he told her
that she had to go trekking through the woods after the lost child.
                “And bring Fenris,” he had added, almost as an afterthought. 
“He can help protect you, and Annalkylie likes him anyway.”
                So here she was.  Tromping through the forest, again.  They
brought horses at least.  She would have liked to bring a few more guards, but
it was generally agreed to that that was unnecessary.  There were but two more,
and an extra palfry.
                They followed Hadriana, who followed the pull of magic, her
blue eyes fixed to the spelled compass in her hands, its needle pointing in a
direction that was distinctly not northward.
 
                Kylie was lost.  What had seemed a grand adventure the day
before, in the warm daylight, had turned to a nightmare when the sun went down
and she couldn’t see.  The wolves howled, and terrified her.  Fenris had told
her not to be scared of them, and she tried not to be, but they were scary.
                The family crest is a howling wolf, she reminded herself.  That
hardly mattered to her, but sometimes it made her feel better, sort of.
                But the night had been long.  She had listened to the night,
cold and frightened under the boughs of a tree as she listened to the wolves,
and the screeching owls.  The other nighttime creatures worried her too, and
the creepy-crawly bugs skittered over her, and made her shiver and wish she
hadn’t come.  If this was adventure, she was quickly losing her taste for it.
                It was not until an hour or more after dawn and it grew warmer
that she even noticed that she had lost the pretty bracelet her uncle had given
to her.  She had tried to search for it, but it was just as useless as trying
to find home.  She mourned losing such a gift.
                By morning, she was hungry and miserable, and just wanted to go
home.  She had tried, but sometime in the night, she had gotten so turned
around that she didn’t know what way was the estate.  She had decided to start
by looking for water, and when she drank, that seemed to sharpen her hunger. 
She had gone in search of food.  It was spring, and there were berries in
season, but she didn’t find too many unfortunately, but she ate what she
found.  They looked like the sorts she had found in the kitchens or in food, so
they should be edible.  She hoped they were, or she’d be in even bigger trouble
soon.
                Oh, why had she done this?
                Mother had made her angry.  She had wanted to practice with
swords and bows, like Agasius, and Mother had said no.  Kylie had been so
angry…  She just wanted to go back home.
 
                Hadriana pushed back the fern leaves, expecting to be
confronted with a dirty, hungry little girl.  Rather, she saw nothing.  Well,
at first she saw nothing, then she bent and picked up the jade bracelet with a
sigh.  All that work, and nothing. 
                She turned to face the guards looking at her.  Fenris was
studying the path.
                Danarius was testing her, she knew.  What was the right thing
to do right now?  None of them were trackers.  They would need someone skilled
at tracking to find tracks from here, or they never would.  It should have been
a simple matter once she had found the bracelet; they should not have needed a
woodsman.
                “You,” she pointed at one of the guards.  “You come back with
me—we’re going to get help and report what we found.”  She looked at the other
two—the guard and the slave.  “You.”  She looked at the guard.  “Stay here with
the slave.”
                The guard nodded, and glanced at Fenris, then paused.  “What
are you looking at?”
                Hadriana had already disregarded the two as she remounted her
horse.  Fenris pointed.  “I think those are a child’s footprints in the mud,”
he commented.
                The mage stopped, and turned her head in the direction the elf
was pointing.  She frowned, and swung off of the horse again.  The mare stayed
steady as she walked away from her.  She studied the prints, noticing that they
seemed to go off in one direction.  But that didn’t mean the prints would
continue, or that the signs would be consistent, and this had to have been
hours ago at least.  Fact of the matter, they still needed a good tracker, and
she knew that she would be useless for this.  And she would be happy to give
the report and send someone else in her stead.
                She frowned to herself as she tried to make another decision. 
“Fine then.  Slave, you follow the tracks, and come back here when they
stop—see if you can find any sign of her.  And don’t get lost.”
                Fenris turned the horse around, and slogged off along the
path.  Hadriana swung back into the saddle, and she and the guard hurried back
toward the manor, the three leaving the second guard alone with the palfry.
 
                The prints actually didn’t last very long—he followed them for
half an hour at most, guessing parts of the trail because she had seemed to
have been on a deer trail for a fair distance.  The girl had scrambled over
some rocks, and animals had marred the path.  Fenris was no tracker; he wasn’t
particularly good at reading trail signs, but the girl had carved a path a
blind man could follow for a while at least.  It stopped at a large pine tree,
and he saw a single print leading away from it, but she had been stepping on
the stones or something, and he hadn’t seen any other tracks.  Hadriana had
been explicit; follow the tracks, see what there was to see, and come back.
                Well…
                He looked at that single print, and thought about it.
                Kylie was just a child, and every moment that she was alone out
here was another moment she could be sick, or eat something poisonous, or be
“eaten by wolves”.
                It wasn’t exactly disobeying, when he thought about it.
                The branches, though, were too low for the horse.  He hobbled
the mare, and went further on foot.  He disliked tromping about in the forest
like this completely.  He had to carefully walk over deer pellets, could smell
fox piss at one point, and imagined that he was walking through feces and urine
with every step.  Not to mention the insects—they were the worst bit of the
entire ordeal.  Shoes, he reflected, weren’t such a bad idea.
                He came across a shallow brook, just a little too wide to step
across.  He looked up and down its bank for tracks as well as a better way
across it.  There—in the mud on the opposite bank, a partial child’s footprint;
he was certain of it.
                “Annalkylie!” he called.  The forest gave no answer.
 
                Kylie paused, and looked around herself.  Had she heard
something…?  No, she was certain that it was nothing.  Sometimes the wind
played tricks, and sounded like a voice when it wasn’t.
                She and the twins had played with echoes once—in the great
dining hall when it was empty.  They had shouted, and tried to see what the
walls would echo back to them.  She had learned that echoes were strange
things, and even though they seemed to fill a void, they only defined it.
                Kylie slogged onward in the direction she sincerely hoped was
the manor.  She really wanted to go home though.  She was tired of her uncle’s
manor, and she just wanted her room again.
                She was tired of adventure.
                As she headed up a particularly steep hill, she missed a step
and fell forward, and tried to keep herself from falling, and in so doing, fell
backward instead.  She cried out in alarm as she lost her balance and fell
back.  She felt the earth on her back, and she tumbled backward, screaming,
rolling.  A blackberry bush caught her, her hair becoming trapped in it, her
clothes becoming netted.  The thorns scratched her, and the more she struggled
against the vines, the more they seemed to stick.  She wanted to thrash and
scream, but something told her to keep calm or she would only make it worse.
                “Annalkylie!”
                She paused, listening.  Had that been a voice?  Someone was
looking for her?  Her heart soared.  “Here!  I’m here!” she answered as loudly
as she could manage, and struggling in vain against the vines, but she was well
and thoroughly stuck.
                “Miss Annalkylie?” a voice inquired, and sounded closer this
time.
                She frowned.  That sounded like…  “Here!” she insisted.
                Someone knelt before the bush, and the elf quirked an eyebrow. 
“It’s not the season for blackberries,” Fenris pointed out helpfully.
                If he were just a bit closer, and if her legs were free, she
would have kicked him in the face for that remark.  Sometimes, he had terrible
manners for a slave.  “Help me!” she said piteously instead.
                “I don’t have a knife to cut you free,” he pointed out, and
observed the tangled mess she was in.  Was it hopeless?  Would she be trapped
in here until he could go get more help?  Her hopes sank.  And she had thought
she was rescued…
                “Are you alone?” she asked suddenly, and started pulling at the
vines again, but that just seemed to make it worse.
                “They’re stuck—here,” he reached his hands in—delicately—and
gently pried the vines from her sleeves.  She held on to his forearms, and he
gently helped ease her out of the brambles.  She cried out in pain often when
the thorns scratched her bare flesh, or caught.  She was past the point of
caring about her clothes, but it hurt when it pulled her hair, and she was
bleeding and scratched in several places when he finally pulled her free.  She
stared up at him, and her eyes started to well with tears.
                “I’m lost,” she whined, and fell to her knees, exhausted,
hungry, and so relieved to have been found that she didn’t know what else to
do.  She sobbed, and wiped at her eyes furiously, frustrated that she was
crying.  She was a big girl—they don’t cry!  But she was so relieved that all
she could do was cry.  She was found, not lost, and soon she would be warm,
dry, clean, and fed.
                “Are you hurt?” Fenris asked her, kneeling beside her.
                She wanted to say that she was, but she got the idea that that
he didn’t mean cuts and bruises.  Kylie looked at her scratched hands.  “I’m
scratched up.  And bleeding.  And I hurt everywhere.”  She looked at him with
wide, mournful eyes.
                “Can you walk?”
                “Yeah,” she said glumly, and he led the way back, the way she
had come.  She trailed behind him, and he had to stop frequently for her to
catch up.  She hinted that he should carry her, but the slave seemed oblivious
of her hints, and she felt weird just demanding he do so.  Besides, she could
walk.  That was what her feet were for.
               He stopped at the stream, and helped her wash the cuts.  “I look
like a ragamuffin, don’t I?” she said, distressed at the thought of Agasius
seeing her.  He would tease her endlessly for this.
                “You look like you spent the night lost in the woods alone,” he
said diplomatically.
                She pouted.  “A vagabond,” she said dramatically.
                He lifted her to keep her feet out of the water, and set her
down gently at the opposite bank.  She watched him for a while, quiet this
time, too tired to keep talking.  Kylie watched him step on a centipede, and
couldn’t help but giggle at the way he sort of hopped away from it, and seemed
to cringe.
                “If you don’t like dirt, why don’t you just wear shoes?” she
asked him, her eyes still shining with laughter and lips curved into an amused
grin.
                “Why don’t you bring a compass with you next time you run off
into the woods?” he suggested, voice amiable.
                She briefly debated on kicking him in the back of the leg… but
that was a most unladylike behaviour.  Her mother would have a fit for her even
thinking about it, even if he was a slave.  “I’ve heard that when dirt gets
under your toenails, it can get infected,” said Kylie cheerfully.
                When she looked up, she saw him make a face, and she smiled,
satisfied to herself.  But rather, he countered, “With a compass, one could
tell which direction they needed to go to avoid getting lost.”
                She paused, unable to think of a good comeback.  “For a slave,
you do a lot of talking back,” she informed him.  He made no reply, as if
solely to spite her.  She scowled at him.
                Troubles temporarily forgotten, she darted ahead of him, but
stayed well within sight.  She hopped up onto a fallen log, and walked along
beside him, arms out for balance.  It was moss-covered, and big enough to be
easy to tread upon.
                She came to the end of it, and looked at the small drop to the
forest floor, and at the small gap to the next log—this one cutting over the
path.  She watched Fenris step over it.  She backed up a bit, and ran, and
jumped…
                She landed, and gave a cry of alarm when one of her feet sank
through the rotted log.  She scrambled out of it, and dropped to the ground. 
Fenris was watching her, bemused.  Her face reddened.  “What are you looking
at?” she demanded.
                He shook his head, and continued forward.  She doggedly trailed
after him, until she heard the angry buzzing.
                Something stung her, and she looked about herself, and shrieked
in mortal terror.  “Eeeek!” she cried, and ran, screaming, through the woods,
the angry hornets chasing after her, stinging and buzzing madly.
                “Stop screaming!” Fenris cried out, but she couldn’t seem to
help it; she kept screaming, and yelling, crying when they stung her.  She
crashed into a stream, and splashed water furiously all around her, stopping
sometimes to listen, only to start up again.  Finally, the hornets receded. 
She turned and went to climb out of the stream, but slipped and fell in the
water, landing on her rear end.  She was completely soaked now, and shivering,
in pain.
                She heard the elf sigh, and picked her up again.  He set her
down on the stream bank.  “Did you get stung?” he asked her.
                Her lower lip quivered, eyes watering.  She nodded.  “Uh-huh,”
she said, and showed him her arms.
                He knelt, and seemed to consider.
 
                Mud, he thought, would help with the swelling and the itching. 
He wasn’t sure why he knew that.  Was it… was it something from his past, so
clouded in mystery to him?  There was no way to know.  Perhaps it was just
knowledge—the same way he had woken up knowing how to speak but not knowing his
name.
                Fenris let the matter go, and knelt, getting the soil by the
stream wet enough to make mud.  She watched him curiously.  He took her arms,
and dabbed mud onto them.
                “Hey—that…  That feels better,” she said suddenly.  He said
nothing in reply, and looked at her face, checking for any more stings.  Most
of it seemed to be on her arms though.  “Why didn’t they sting you?” she asked
as he dabbed a bit more mud on her arm.
                “They did,” he answered, inspecting her for any more stings. 
Finding none, he started on himself.  Two stings—both on his arms.  She had
over half a dozen, and they were swelling and red.  She was shaky enough to
stumble as she walked beside him, and on the steeper slopes, he picked her up
and carried her.
                By the time he reached the horse, she had her arms wrapped in a
half-strangle hold around his neck, and was crying.  From pain, relief, or
terror over all of her ordeals, he couldn’t say; she was just a child after
all.
                He pried her off of him, and set her on the horse.
                “He’s too big for me!” she complained, sitting side-saddle.
                Fenris took the bit.  “A young lady like you?  Nonsense.”  And
that made her fall silent as she felt determined to ride in the saddle.  He did
not quite make it back to the place he had parted with the others when the dogs
found him.  They barked excitedly, slobbering.  Their handlers came next, on
foot, followed by a few guardsmen and even Serrah Iden.
                The man pushed his way to the forefront when he spied his
youngest daughter.  “Kylie!” he said, the relief evident on his face.
                “Papa!” she cried, and reached her arms out, but the drop was
too far for her to get out of the saddle.  No matter; the man went to her and
lifted her out of the saddle.  She held her father, and cried, and he breathed
in relief that she was well.
                He looked at Fenris around his daughter’s head.  “Thank you,”
he said, and seemed to mean it, which briefly surprised the elf—both that he
meant his thanks and that he had bothered to thank him at all.  Fenris bowed
his head, and waited for the party to move on.  He heard the girl and her
father talking.  “Why are you covered in mud, little one?”
                “I stepped in a hornet’s nest,” she said.  “I screamed, and
ran, and they chased me!  Then I fell in the stream.  Fenris put mud on me.”
                Iden laughed.  “The mud helps when you don’t have anything
else.”
                “Will Uncle help with the stings?” she asked, a little
hesitant.
                Iden looked at her sternly.  “I’ve half a mind to leave you
with them until they heal naturally—you scared all of us, little girl.”
                “I’m not a ‘little girl’!  I’m five!”
                “Of course,” Iden said, as if just remembering.  “A lady
grown.”
                Fenris found himself beginning to wonder…  Had he had a family
once?  Someone who had cared about him, the same way that Iden and Annalkylie
cared for one another?
                Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea.  It was ludicrous. 
Even if he didhave a family, what did it matter?  He was here now.  All that
mattered now was pleasing his master, no matter his shadowed past.
                Danarius praised him—if briefly—for the task completed and
well.  It made him… not happy exactly, but was it pride he felt?  He was
finally able to do something.  Something useful.  It was a good feeling.  He
wanted to be sure not to lose it.
 
                Iden and his family left with the summer, but on somewhat
lukewarm terms.  Annalkylie wanted to come back the next year, but her mother
told her that her uncle would be moving back to the city by then.  She was
disappointed for all of ten minutes before she said, “I wouldn’t mind visiting
there—I want to see the ocean,” she insisted.
                “Perhaps,” Iden had said idly.
                The brothers discussed it, but left the matter open-ended. 
Things were still precarious between them after Iden’s accusations of blood
magic.
                That summer was much hotter than others—and the magister was
glad he wasn’t in Minrathous for it, though that didn’t help his paperwork
any.  Rather, it just seemed to stack. 
                One of his slaves in a brothel had gone “missing.”  It had been
two days by the time they had bothered to report to him.  Either they had found
the girl by now, or she was gone for good.  It was a wound to his pride—but a
small one.  She could have just as easily been abducted by some admirer, and
they would find her chopped up corpse somewhere, eventually.
                Another report was just about repairs after some stupid slave
boy tripped, knocked over a lantern, and set an expensive silk rug on fire.
                It seemed like a day couldn’t pass that nothing interesting
happened.  He ordained the boy be beaten for the price of the rug, and moved to
the yard where he was less likely to burn down expensive things.
                This would go much more smoothly once he was back in
Minrathous.  His steward there would attend the more intimate matters, for the
time being, but the final say was always the magister’s.
                Anyone could do this.  It doesn’t have to be me, he thought,
scanning another report.  This one was not from his personal reports—the
businesses he owned and the like—but a city report, over the district he
ruled.  There were judges and guardsmen, and they oversaw much of the goings-
on, but some things he had to have a hand in.  It just never ended.
                A knock on the door prompted him to leave the reports alone for
the time being.  “Come in,” he called, and looked up expectantly.  It was
Hadriana.  She would be pretty when she was older, he imagined.  She looked so
different than she had when he had met her—flea bitten, lousy, filthy.  Now,
she looked properly a magister’s apprentice.
                She bowed her head respectfully.  “Serrah,” she said, and
raised her head to meet his eyes—something no one else in the household had the
privilege to do since Iden left with his family.  “You summoned me?”
                “Yes…” he drawled, and set the report down in its stack,
neatly.  His fingers laced together, placed on top of his desk.  “Fenris
fainted yesterday.”
                She barely blinked.  “I see,” she said noncommittally. 
“Sunstroke is not uncommon, serrah.”
                Danarius’ lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line.  “Seems
he hadn’t eaten in two days before then—then spent all day in the sun.”
                She remained resolute.  “I see.”
                Danarius leaned back in the chair.  “I don’t care if you want
to teach him a lesson now and again and keep the lad in his place.”  He watched
her for a moment.  “Or any of the slaves or servants for that matter—you are
above them, and it is your right.”  He cocked his head to the side.  “What I
don’t approve of is starving him and sending him out in this heat.”  He
frowned.  “He fell off of a horse.  He could have broken his neck, and my
little wolf was expensive.”  That was how my father died, more or less.
                She looked down.  “I…  I apologize, Master.”
                “Let him resume his meals.”  He considered for a moment. 
“Rather, from now on, Hadriana—I want to put you in charge of all of my
slaves.  Make their schedule.  Plan what you will have them do each day,
including Fenris.  Remember that I want him to spend most of his time training,
and that his schedule needs to change day to day.”
                She seemed thoughtful, and nodded.  “I will work on this at
once, Master.  Is there anything more?”
                He shook his head.  “No—dismissed, Hadriana.”
                She bowed, and excused herself.
 
                Hadriana was pleased by this, actually.  She relished being in
charge, now that she was becoming more confident.  She liked planning out
schedules, and giving orders.  She enjoyed it.
                She worked on the slaves’ schedules immediately.  There were
certain things that needed to be done, certain works overseen.  Other things
that were sometimes neglected she intended to get done immediately.  When that
was finished, she moved on to Fenris.
                Why was he so special anyway?  She had half a mind to send him
to the vineyard along with the rest of the slaves—it was where he belonged.
                Her master treated the elf in such high regard.  Why?  He was
an elf.  True, there were the markings to consider.  It was Danarius’ life’s
work.  That wasn’t the point though.  Danarius treated him like a prized
possession.  What if that made Fenris cocky and arrogant?  She had every
intention of seeing any hint of that put down.
                She made a rigorous training schedule for him, designed to see
him exhausted by the day’s end and up at dawn again the next day—each day
rotating what was done.  She posted a question to her master, and her plan was
approved.  A week later, she sent Fenris to the vineyard.
 
                Fenris fell into the bed, and a part of him died for the simple
act.
                He curled into a loose ball, eyes open and uncaring.  He had
been working in the vineyard for a few hours every day for the past week, after
sword practice.  It wasn’t that he hated the work—he did, but that wasn’t the
point.
                He felt dead inside because of the misery he saw every day. 
Because of how little they had to eat, because of the sunken looks in their
eyes.  Because his clothes were clean every day, he had a bath at the end of
the day, because he was fed a real meal, and they ate from the same trough as
the dogs.  He was laying on a bed stuffed with goose down and linen sheets. 
They slept on a narrow wooden pallet on the beaten earth in a shack.
                Fenris knew it was just his master’s fancy to have him inside
the manor, in such conditions, and that he had no real say in it.  But he hated
that it was him, when there were so many other people who could use the warmth,
the bath, the food, the clothes more.
                He knew this was just how it was.  He knew there was nothing
else, could never be anything else.  He knew that.  But…  A part of him still
broke for it.  His heart still ached for all of it.
                But… no.
                This was their existence.  Everything was exactly how it had
always been.  There was nothing wrong with it.
                Was there?
Chapter End Notes
     I actually really like Kylie, which is rare for me. She brings out a
     good side of Fenris too, and I feel like it gives his character a
     little more depth when we "see" him interacting with Danarius' niece.
     I like showing all the different aspects of a single character
     through multiple other character's viewpoints. It's interesting, to
     me, how a person will act with different people and alone. More
     interesting still, is how different people will describe the same
     person in different ways, and see different aspects of their
     personality that another might never see.
     If you don't like Kylie, don't worry, because Fenris won't like her
     much either by the time her part in the story comes to an end.
***** Ashes to Ashes *****
Chapter Summary
     On the anniversary of his wife's death, Danarius is once again
     drowning his sorrows with alcohol, which of course ends badly for
     Fenris. Hadriana learns of a tragedy.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Summer went on toward fall and the season ebbed toward winter. 
Winter chases summer, with fall and spring between them to keep them apart.
                Something about it sounded familiar.  Maybe Fenris had heard a
servant telling a story or something.  It sounded like a story, or like it
should be a story, but he didn’t remember it.  Just something about the
seasons.  It seemed like a nursery tale to remember the seasons, that was all—a
simple tale for children.  That thought made him wonder.
                The hole in his memory wasn’t gone as if it never was.  It
would be far kinder if that were so.  His mind was not a house whose wall had
been brought down and made as if it had never been; it was a house missing a
floor that was never patched together.  He was aware that it was gone, in the
same sense one could see that a floor had rotted away.  But it was just as
substantial, and the feeling was even more useless.
                There was little use in dwelling on it though, so he frequently
did not.  Sometimes, a thought here, a comment there, would threaten to sound
familiar, but that was all.  He had learned to disregard it; it never came to
anything, so why bother?
                Danarius was happy with him.  That was all that really
mattered.  He had offhandedly commented that Fenris had become everything he
desired of him, and ahead of schedule.
                He had come a long way from the half-starved young man who
could barely stand up on his own to the man he was now.  It was relieving.
                Fenris watched his master the same way he observed everything
else in the room—with a lack of personal interest, but watchful and diligent
all the same.  He had only recently been deemed suitable for the task that was
to be his ultimate design and function, and glad of it.
                He still spent a couple hours a day practicing swords and other
such, but he was no longer sent to the field at least.  Sometimes, he would
accompany his master down to the winery, though, or other places.
                He had noticed that, today, Danarius kept staring out at the
yard.  The ink had gone dry on the quill in his hand.  Fenris wondered if he
noticed; he seemed distracted by something or other.
                Danarius finally seemed to notice the quill in his hand, and
looked at it as if it had suddenly appeared there.  He looked at it for a
longer moment, then set it down, wiping his hands of the small ink stain on a
cloth.  It was mostly dry, though, but the man didn’t even seem to notice it. 
He wasn’t noticing much today, it appeared.  And those were the days Fenris
needed to notice more than usual and be especially alert.
                The magister sighed, and leaned back in the chair, sliding a
ring off of his finger, and stared at it as if it were the only thing in the
world.  All this Fenris watched, attentively, from the corner of his eye.
                “Fenris.”  The elf blinked, turning his head toward his master
automatically, but not looking directly at him; that was rude.  “Leave me.”
                He bowed, and took his leave without a word, and waited outside
the door.  He hadn’t dismissed him, after all, or given him some other duty.
                It was a long time before the door opened, and the magister
breezed past his slave without even seeming to see him.  But that was fine. 
Slaves should pass their existence as such.
                Fenris didn’t even hesitate; he followed him.  A poor bodyguard
he would be if he didn’t, and his master said nothing of it.  He followed the
magister down the hall, down the steps, another hall, and out the back door to
the garden.  He didn’t linger here, though; he walked through it.  The gate was
closed, and Danarius stopped to open it.  Fenris would have stepped in front of
him to do so, but the path was narrow here, and he couldn’t politely get
around.  He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to look.  A
lop-eared rabbit nibbled delicately on a clover.  The creature had best get out
of the garden though—they were pests here, after all, but they did taste good.
                Danarius was passing through the gate, and Fenris was quick to
follow after him.  Down another path, and the magister produced a key to this
gate.  The wall was low enough that the gate was, in truth, reduced to a
nicety, but it had a key all the same.  He pushed that open too, and seemed so
distracted by whatever was on his mind that he left the key in the gate, and
only the wind blew it shut.  Fenris hesitated.  This was his master’s family
graveyard.  He waited at the gate, to give him some semblance of privacy.
                He looked away, but saw out of the corner of his eye when he
stopped in front of a particular grave, and looked down at the plate affixed to
the headstone.  Fenris turned his head to look at it.  It was a statue, like
many of the others.  Some were bells, weeping saints, holy symbols, and other
such.  Toward the back, there was even a large and very old sepulcher.  But the
one he had stopped at seemed different somehow.  It was stonework, like all the
rest, and at first the elf assumed that the statue must be a saint of some
sort, but the way Danarius was staring at it implied otherwise.  He was pretty
sure this was the same statue he had stopped before at about this same time
last year.
                Weather had worn down most of the finer details, but he could
see that the stone woman was not beautiful.  Comely, yes, but not beautiful. 
If it were simply artwork, it would have strained for perfection; this was more
than artwork.  That statue had been someone once, most likely, and not just a
fanciful design.  The stone woman held a bundle in her arms that was clearly
meant to be a child.
                Maybe it was the person in the grave.
                Danarius stood, and looked at it for a long, long time.  Fenris
shifted from one foot to the other, and looked about the yard.  He watched a
cloud drift by, thought he may have seen a deer in the forest.  A young colt in
the field was running.  He shifted, but the other way lay the vineyard, and he
could never look at the vineyard for long these days if he could help it.  The
work they endured, the rations, the conditions…  No, he couldn’t bear to watch
it.
                The gate opened again, and Danarius locked it, and took the
key.  He heard his master sigh, and trudge back to the manor.  Fenris followed.
                But he didn’t go back to the study, or his quarters.  Rather,
he went into the east wing, and climbed the stair, up to a place Fenris had
heard about but never been, all the while muttering to himself about how he was
too old for this, and should just send someone else to do it.  But he did it
anyway, and climbed every single step.  The door’s hinges were so rusted that
the door was difficult to open for him.
                “Fenris,” he said, taking a few steps back on the landing, and
gestured to the door.  The elf heaved against it.  It grated, and its hinges
voiced their complaints, but he shoved the door open when he threw all of his
weight into it—with more than a little straining.  He held it open as his
master went inside.  Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.
                Danarius walked to a window, and shoved back the curtains to
let in the light, doing the same with the others, then turned back to the
room.  Sunlight filtered through the faded drapes and the dirty glass.  The
room was littered with old furniture, antiques, and numerous wooden boxes. 
Most everything was covered in a draping, which in turn was covered in a thick
mantle of dust.  The magister stopped at a large four-poster bed, running a
finger along the carvings, the digit coming away grey with dust.  He stopped
for a moment, and looked at the carved figures, pained.  The carvings he traced
were of horses—galloping horses, rearing horses.  A young girl’s bed, Fenris
assumed, by the faded pink paint.  There was a long, heavy chain affixed to the
floor near the bed, and he shivered.
                Why, he wondered, was there a chain by the bed? He watched his
master as he turned from it, stepping over the chain as he passed.  No, the elf
realized.  Who was the chain for?
                The magister disappeared behind a curve of the wall, and Fenris
was quick to follow him should he be needed.  Danarius stood frowning at a
large, heavy trunk.  “Fenris,” he said again, and nodded to the trunk.  The elf
bent, and pulled it out of the way enough for his master to get by it.  He
stood several feet away, and watched his master peel a drapery off of a large,
heavy painting.  It raised a lot of dust, and the magister coughed and choked. 
Fenris felt his eyes water for a moment, then sneezed as the dust plumed.
                Danarius cursed, dropping the drapery, which of course just
made it worse for both of them until the dust settled.  Fenris held his breath
until he couldn’t any more, and the worst of it had seemed to pass.
                The magister lifted the large painting in its gilded frame, and
set it on top of a nearby surface that may have been a table or a desk—it was
covered in a drapery too.  In the dim light, Fenris couldn’t help but look at
the painting, watched his master’s hand reach out, and touch it gently, almost
reverently.  No… lovingly.
                The painter had managed to capture the life in the woman’s
eyes, the smile she almost managed to conceal.  She wasn’t beautiful, but
something about the life and laughter in her face made her lovely.
                If he had been able to see his master’s face he would have seen
something else—pain.
                But the man turned away from it, and the look was gone.  “Pick
it up—carry it down the stairs.  If you damage it, elf…”  His eyes narrowed
dangerously.  “Don’t damage it.”  He breezed past him, leaving Fenris to manage
the big painting by himself.  He heard him begin the descent down the stairs,
and sighed, staring at the big painting.  He lifted it, experimentally, trying
to figure out the best way to carry it.  It wasn’t that it was incredibly
heavy; it was awkward; all the weight was along the outside, after all, on the
frame.
                But he managed to lug the awkward painting all the way down the
stairs, and was relieved to find a pair of servants waiting at the bottom, who
took the painting from him wordlessly, and hurried off.
                Fenris found his master again in the study, all trace of whim
gone from him—strictly back to business again.
                Or so it would seem.
                As the day wore on, and Danarius struggled to catch up on his
paperwork with the time he had wasted away, the hour grew late.  The magister
ultimately gave up on the matter, and called for a light supper, and sent
Fenris away to eat.
                The elf came back later; he still hadn’t been dismissed.
                He was right where he had left him—one stack of papers had
simply grown larger than the other in the time he had been gone.
                Danarius stopped what he was doing, and turned, and looked at
Fenris, studying him the way he sometimes did, half admiration, half… something
else?  And the magister took a long drink of his wine, and emptied the glass. 
He glanced at the empty contents, then to the bottle.  “Fenris,” he called him.
                The elf approached him, and saw his master’s eyes flick to the
bottle.  The elf lifted it, gently in both hands, and refilled the glass, and
set it back down, and moved back to where he had been standing before.
                The contents of the glass was gone very quickly.  He’s drunk,
Fenris thought reflectively.  Or close to it.  The magister was staring at him
again, and seemed to be thinking about something.
                “Fenris,” he said again.  The elf went to the bottle, and
poured the last of it.  He hoped he hadn’t drank the entire thing.  That was a
good way to get sick, and then Fenris would have to listen to the vomiting that
would doubtless ensue.  The magister didn’t eat that much normally…  “Fenris.” 
The elf paused, wondering what more he could want from him.  To fetch another
bottle, perhaps?  The magister sat in the chair, the glass in one hand. 
“Kneel.”
                It wasn’t such a strange command, and he knelt in front of
him.  Danarius drank, and set the glass down, empty.  His hand touched the side
of Fenris’ face.  It was warm with drink.  Instinctively, he wanted to shy away
from it; for the past year and a half all anyone had tried to do with him is
shy away from his touch.  In the end, he had only learned to shun others the
same way, for their sake.
                But it was his master’s hand, and he did not do it.  His master
lifted his head with two fingers under his chin, between the markings there. 
“It’s been entirely too long,” he murmured.  Fenris had no idea what he was
talking about… and it made him uneasy.  The magister’s fingertips touched his
lips, and the elf’s stomach tightened involuntarily.  His fingers pushed
against his lips, and Fenris understood a little of what was wanted.  His lips
parted  “Keep your teeth away.”  His finger pushed into his mouth, against his
teeth, and they opened, just a little.  “But use your tongue, and as much
saliva as you can manage.”  Fenris still felt horribly confused.  “The farther
back into your mouth, the better, my pet.”  He pushed his fingers back into his
mouth until Fenris gagged unexpectedly, and the magister smiled, just a little
bit, his fingers running against his tongue.  They tasted like ink.  “Use your
hands.”  His finger rubbed along his tongue.  Fenris swallowed hard, but
carefully with his finger in his mouth.  Something about this…  It made him
wish he had stayed in his quarters, even if it were wrong to do so.  “Whatever
you can’t fit in your mouth, put in your hands.”  The elf had no idea what he
could possibly be talking about.  But it sounded like…  No…  No, it couldn’t…
                But it was, and the magister lifted the robes, his finger
leaving his pet’s mouth, his hand gripping him by his long white hair, and
pulled him forward.  Fenris didn’t even cry out in alarm, not even when he
pushed him down in his lap.  He took a deep breath, and understood the
instructions his master had given him.
                His eyes slid closed, but his mouth opened, his hands raising
to help him.  His master’s fingers tightened in his hair as he moved, breathing
from his nose.  He gagged more than once and it was more in his mind than in
his body—he almost never choked on anything--and his eyes watered.  But as he
forced him to move faster, he knew he had to be approaching an end.
                He hated it.  He had never been more sure of anything in what
life he remembered, but he hated it.
                And at the same time… didn’t hate it.
                Some part of him hated it more than anything, with a cold
certainty.  And another part… another part just saw it was his duty; something
else he had to do.  It was no different than standing at attention, than
carrying the portrait earlier.  It was just something he had to do. 
Eventually, that part buried the hatred he felt.  If he hated, it would fester,
so he suppressed the feeling, buried it.  It was no use to him here, and never
would be of use to him.
                Hatred and anger were things he had no use for.  He was a
slave.  If Danarius wanted him for this, he had no choice but to obey.  If he
wanted him for this, or to work his vineyard again, that was his entire
existence:  To serve.
                And he remembered that when he forced himself hard against the
back of his throat, and he gagged, and choked, and his master hissed at him to
swallow before he vomited, and he did, barely capable of the act.  His throat
continued to convulse, and he fought down the panic, his nose against the
cluster of hair at the base.  He tasted bile in the back of his throat, among
other things.  He made himself calm, and with the calm, his throat relaxed. 
The compunction to gag left him as his heart stilled.
                It wasn’t so much an act of swallowing as letting it run down
his throat, and he wilted in his mouth.  Danarius pushed him back, sending
Fenris toppling backwards, unbalanced.  He automatically swiped at his lips,
and swallowed several times.  He thought he tasted bile, and salt.  Danarius
took a long, deep breath, and straightened his robes, and smirked, before he
went back to his paperwork, as if nothing had ever happened.
                As the days passed, Fenris began to wonder if it ever did
happen.
 
                When she had been summoned to her master’s solar, Hadriana
hadn’t known what to expect… but not this.
                Strangely, she felt numb.  She didn’t shake, or cry.  She just…
felt numb.
                The house had caught fire.  Not the manor, no.  The little
house she had shared with her family.  There had been an accident.  Her mouth
felt dry as ash.
                There had been no survivors.
                Her master had bade her to sit before he gave her the slip of
paper.  He had found her family, against her will, despite that she had done
everything she could to hide them.  They were embarrassing, and poor, and her
mother was mad with her blind devotion to the Maker.  She was convinced,
utterly, that should she have a connection to them, it would ruin her
reputation before it even began.  And when he found them, they were dead.
                How many times had she wished for this to happen?  How many
times had she wanted her uncaring family dead?  And now they were, and she
realized that it had never been at all what she had wanted.
                “I’m sorry,” he told her, voice gentle as ever.
                She scarcely heard him.  “I…”  She set the slip of paper down. 
She may have put it in her tea; she wasn’t really looking.  She rose to her
feet.  “Forgive me, I must go.”  She bowed, stiff and unseeing, and turned to
go.
                “Do you want to go to the village?  It’s not far from here,” he
offered.
                “That’s… very kind of you.  But there’s nothing for me there.” 
And she left.  In her rooms, she lay on her bed, and cried for all the things
she had lost.
 
                As the days passed, Hadriana felt less numb, and more bitter. 
Maybe if she had been there, maybe if they hadn’t have kicked her out,
unwanted, they wouldn’t all be dead.  Alternately, she also felt like… if she
had only gone back and apologized, they would all be alive.
                She had no family any more.  There was just nothing left. 
Maybe it didn’t matter, or maybe that was all to the good; what use was a
family that scorned her so?
 
                Along with the usual stack of reports consisting of complaints
and sniveling, Danarius also received a letter from his brother.  He wrote
about his eldest daughter, briefly—how it was recently learned that she was
pregnant with her first child.  Good for her, he thought.  And the twins of
their schooling and development.  His lady wife.  Good for all of them.
                But then he got to little Annalkylie, and that was when
Danarius straightened in the chair.
                Well, how about that.  Kylie was a mage after all.  At least
the bloodline wasn’t running out completely.  It was really for the best that
his half-blood child was in Seheron; it would be the gossip of the country that
the only mage-born child he could sire was a blind half-elven brat.  Better no
children at all.
                He would just have to leave everything to… Kylie, really.  He
mulled that thought over for a moment, and went back to the letter.  His
brother beseeched him for help finding her a mage to apprentice under.
                The mage considered this.  That was a delicate process.  He
thought of the magisters he knew.  Which had apprentices?  Which were willing
to take more than one at a time?  Which would be the best tutor?  But most
importantly, which could he use?  Kylie could just as quickly become a hostage
in some situations as opposed to a sign of favor and political alliance. 
Sometimes, the magisters, after all, would go to war against one another. 
Usually, it was more common in the country.  In Minrathous, those battles were
fought with words and ink.  Sometimes, they were no less bloody though.
                He already had an apprentice.  Besides, the child would do
better learning from someone with fewer ties to her family anyway.  She may
grow nervous knowing that her teacher was also her uncle, and conversing with
her father.  And her family may visit more frequently than would really be
necessary…
                It would require some thought.  In the meantime, she had a
tutor they had wrestled up from somewhere, but it would only be suitable for
her to apprentice to a magister long-term.
                Shame Raith was dead; Danarius would insist upon it.
                He went through half a dozen without coming to any real
conclusions.  Well, it would all come in time.
 
                Hadriana was excited.  In spring, they were going to make the
journey back to Minrathous—to live there.  Her master had a mansion in the
city.  She could scarcely wait.  She had been training so hard—at all her
lessons.  Social etiquette, politics, magic—all of it and more.
                The last time she had gone to the city had been as a beggar in
rags.  Now… Now, she would be going to it as a magister’s apprentice in fine
silks.  She liked to daydream of what her life would be like there, of the
things she would do and see, now that she was an apprentice.  She dreamed of
the parties, the balls, the feasts, the magical duels, even the coliseum. 
Danarius had a penchant for the coliseum.  She could see where it would be
interesting to watch people fight for their lives.  Most of the battles weren’t
to the death any more, but the captives who could not be tamed were brought
there, and they fought to the death.
                Sometimes, they had captured Qunari (this was rare), or escaped
recaptured slaves—all facing punishment.  She had studied all about that too,
in an effort to impress her master.  He had promised to take her already, as
well as the balls and the feasts too.
                Right now, her master was out… hunting.  Frankly, she didn’t
know why a mage would be interested in such a sport, but he was off with the
dogs and horses right now, a couple servants and slaves too.  She wished him
the best of luck murdering some helpless animal.  Hadriana herself was a
vegetarian.
                He said that a mage should have a strong body to go with their
spells.  She knew that the staffs got heavy sometimes.  Some spells required
more movement than others, and the staff had to be raised, lowered, spun, and
everything else.  They got heavy, especially with most of the weight just being
at one end.  Danarius told her to find a physical activity she enjoyed and work
at it.  His was hunting, and archery.  He said it was a bit like casting magic,
and wasn’t as strenuous as swordplay.  Hadriana didn’t know what kind of
“physical activity” she should do.  She didn’t really like such things.
                When he asked her about it, and she only shrugged, he had
gently reminded her of why, and sent her off to practice with her staffs.  She
always ended the hour-long sessions coated with sweat and exhausted,
complaining that the staff was too heavy to do what needed to be done.  But
Danarius flatly refused to cut her a lighter staff, particularly if she didn’t
want to do anything physical.
                It seemed backwards to her, and eternally frustrating.  Why was
it so wrong that she would rather study?
                She could lose herself for hours in a good book, the way each
page seems to send her into a different time and world and before she knew it,
an entire day had come and gone, and she would wonder what had happened.
                It was a nice day, so she went out onto the big balcony off of
the ballroom—it overlooked the forest, and was filled with potted plants and a
few sun shades with the furniture.  She carried a stack of books and set them
on a table, and curled up into a chair to read.  She wrote notes on her vellum
when applicable, and any time she tired of one subject, switched to the next. 
There was so much to learn, and she wanted to know enough to not make a fool of
herself or something.  When Danarius got back, he was going to host a party,
for a few reasons.  For one, it would keep the magisters from coming to him
individually, both to get a gauge on his new apprentice, as well as to see
Fenris.  A good social event like that was a show of power—political,
financial, and possibly even magical.  It also gave him the chance to use his
freshly remodeled ballroom.  Best get it all out of the way at once.
                She only fretted over what she was going to wear, and say—she
had better study, so she had a better idea of conversational subjects at
least.  It was months off, and still she was nervous.  She couldn’t believe
that she had been here for over a year.
                It was… amazing.  She found herself looking northward, the
direction of what was her home town.  But the fire took that.  Her family was
dead now.
                She bit her lip.  Maybe she should go see their graves.  But…
no.  It was nothing.
                She looked back to her book.  This was more important.  The
past was gone.  It was her future that needed tending to.
 
Chapter End Notes
     That last sentence in Hadriana's narrative goes for Fenris, too...
     and really, everyone.
***** Heart's Blood *****
Chapter Summary
     Hadriana kindles her hatred for Fenris while she is mocked and
     ridiculed by others in the Circle. Fenris is party to Danarius'
     wicked deeds and hates himself for it.
“Wasn’t that expensive?” Varania asked while her mother set down the small
package of strawberries.
                “Yes,” she said, making a little bit of a face.  Lura peered at
the brightly coloured berries hungrily.  Mieta stared at her, daring her to
cross the threshold into the kitchen to try to steal one.  “But it was worth
it.”
                Her daughter frowned.  “It’s just food.”
                “Can I have one?” Shaislyn asked, already reaching for them.
                Mieta batted his little hand away.  “Not until after supper.” 
He pouted.  Mieta looked at Varania, who had never had a strawberry.  “You
won’t say that after you have one.”
                The young mage rolled her eyes.  “Whatever.”
                “Strawberries are delicious, sweetie,” Lura told her, and
glanced longingly at the basket.  “But I’ll wait.”
                Mieta smiled, satisfied, but put the basket in a cupboard out
of sight while she cooked anyway.  Tonight was special only in that it was the
anniversary of the day they had all boarded the ship for Seheron.  Last year,
the day had been treated like any other, maybe a comment here and there, but
Mieta felt like something more was in order.  Besides, they had a little bit of
extra money lately and they never spent it on anything more than what they
needed.  It was nice to just enjoy something now and again, and this they could
all enjoy equally.  And Varania had never had a strawberry besides!
                So Mieta spent the evening with Varania cooking, and Lura
played with Shaislyn.  They sat down to a pleasant meal, and talked.  It was
nice, but Mieta had always felt like there was something—someone—forever
missing.  The meal was finished, the table cleaned up, and dishes done, and
only then did Mieta allow everyone to sit down to dessert.  She had made small
cakes and a bit of cream to go with the strawberries.  They were all divided up
fairly, and consumed with all seriousness.
                Mieta had a bite of her first strawberry, her toes curling in a
girlish glee.  The sweet scent of the fruit, its succulent skin.  The rich,
supple texture and juicy interior.  The burst of flavour on her tongue, each
time she chewed seeming to only increase the intensity of the flavour.  The
juices ran over her mouth, flowing over her tongue.  All of that, complimented
by the sweet flavour and smooth texture of the cream.  Such a simple pleasure,
but one she had thought, years ago, that she would never have again, and that
made it all the sweeter.
                “I had forgotten how good strawberries are,” Lura moaned in
delight.
                “Eat it slower, Shaislyn,” Mieta said.  “You should enjoy it. 
You never know when we can have some again.”
                The two-year old slowed, with no small amount of effort.  Mieta
noticed one person who wasn’t enjoying it as much as the others.  “Varania?  Is
something wrong?”
                The girl nudged at her plate a little bit.  “Just… thinking…
about Leto.”  Everyone else fell silent, even Shaislyn who only knew him by
name.  “And how it’s been two years since we’ve seen him.  And…  I wonder if
he’s okay?”
                No one had the answer for that, nor even words of comfort, for
the man they knew as their friend, brother, son, uncle—was out of their reach
forever, and trapped with a madman for a master.  When they had left, Varania
was not the only one who felt like she was abandoning Leto either.
 
                This was going to be Hadriana’s life, at the height of her
career.  To see it filled her with a sense of wonder and excitement.  It was a
glory to behold.
                They had arrived in Minrathous a fortnight ago, passing between
the golems—the Juggernauts--that watched over the city gate, and it had been
everything she had dreamed of and more, with her elevated station.
                She was dressed in a gown of flowing silks, and looked very
much a proper lady as she went about the party, learning to mingle, sampling
delicacies she had never heard of, and different drinks.  She met other
apprentices as well as magisters and other high-ranking mages—she had never
known there were so many.  Her master was talking with the Archon, and had been
insistent that she be introduced.  She had been impossibly nervous, and his two
bodyguards were so huge she felt like they could crush her in one hit.
                Hadriana was infinitely less nervous when she was with her
fellow apprentices, and they did seem to keep more to themselves.  She noticed
that the Altus apprentices had a tendency to talk down to the Laetans.  She
understood, very quickly, that this was something she would have to deal with
the rest of her life, being Laetan herself—and from a poor family to boot! 
                They played a less intense version of the game they would be
expected to play when they were magisters and other high-ranking magi—forming
alliances, learning about one another, plotting future betrayals.  Anything for
their own gain.  And of course, getting an idea of each individual’s
abilities.  Hadriana was careful to mention only very little about herself, as
her master had warned her that anything at all she might say could, and likely
would be, used against her in the future.  This was not the career for making
friends.  It was difficult, because the others would of course ask her, in the
politest ways they could manage, one of the Altus boys smiling and flirting
with her as he tried to guess her heritage.  But she was used to the cruel ways
of other teenagers, and ignored his charming airs for what they were; a cruel
way to learn of where she had come from.  Her only answers to him had been
“somewhere” and “you haven’t heard of it”.  He had eventually given up.
                She had also discovered that Danarius’ greatest political
scandal was a rumor that his Altus bloodline was failing.  It was no great
secret amidst the Minrathous mages that he had no children and thus no
biological heir.  She realized, quickly, that she needed to fill that position,
and she found herself to be heartened and emboldened by this.  There had been
so many people he could have chosen, but Danarius had picked her.  The talk of
his failing bloodlines was only quieted when he came back to Minrathous with an
apprentice, and soon after, his niece was found to be a mage, to the relief of
his entire family, and none more so than the magister himself.
                The girl Hadriana was talking to broke off to become distracted
by a tray of suckling rabbits, which she confided were a “weakness” of hers. 
Though it repulsed Hadriana, she smiled politely and said nothing.  She had
never been comfortable eating something that had been alive once.  It wasn’t
the killing of it that bothered her; it was just the eating of it.  When had
that ever sounded like a good idea throughout history?
                Oh, look—a fluffy little bunny.  Let’s bash its head in and eat
the muscle—that’s gotta be tasty!
                The idea almost made her ill.  She liked fur—she just wished
Tevinter could be cool enough to justify wearing it more often—and leather was
useful.  Those things were all very well and good, but why would anyone ever
want to eat it?
                One of the other Laetan boys took note of her lack of ever
eating meat.  “Don’t you eat meat?” he inquired.
                She stiffened.  “Absolutely not,” she replied.
                “Does the idea of killing some poor, defenseless creature
bother you?” a younger Enchanter inquired, a wisp of a smile on her face.
                “No—“ Hadriana tried to say.
                “She must be squeamish,” the boy went on.
                “That’s not—“
                The Enchanter shook her head.  “You won’t get very far in the
Imperial Circles, my dear, if you’re squeamish.”  She laughed.  “Apprenticing
to a magister, and you can’t even stand the idea of an animal dying!”  The
others nearby, who had heard, laughed.  Logically speaking, she knew, in the
back of her mind, that the Enchanter had to simply be jealous that Hadriana had
the position and not herself.
                Hadriana’s fists clenched, her temper rising.  They hadn’t even
let her explain herself!  “Look, I’ve butchered animals before—that doesn’t
bother me—“
                The Altus boy perked at this.  “You’re a butcher’s girl?” he
said, and laughed.  The others gathered, sons and daughters of merchants and
magisters alike, laughing.
                Hadriana’s mouth opened to protest, but all she saw around her
were the laughing mages, mocking her, and she didn’t know what she could say to
make them stop.  What was something witty she could say?
                “So when you found out you were a mage, you were trying to
barbecue pork and couldn’t get the fire going or something?”
                “Please tell me you burned the shop down—I bet it smelled
delicious.”
                Hadriana looked desperately from one person to the next,
finding no one who wasn’t laughing or mocking her.  She could barely believe
it.  “I’m not a butcher’s girl!” she insisted.
                “Denial.  You gonna try to say your parents are Soporati?  I
bet they were Liberati—that’s why you won’t talk about it,” the Enchanter said
scathingly.
                Hadriana wanted to cry.  “They were not!  They were never
slaves!” she cried desperately.
                “Then where are they?”
                “They’re dead,” she said quietly, the hurt of their death
resurfacing, mingling with her anger.
                “They get stuck in the butcher shop when you set it on fire?”
the Altus boy went on, adding to their fabricated story.  Hadriana was shocked
and appalled that this could be happening.  How callous!  Worse, they had died
in a fire.  They could not have known how close they were to the burned truth.
                This was not how she pictured this night going.  “They weren’t
butchers or Liberati!  Don’t you have anything better to do?”
                The Altus boy gave her a superior smirk.  “Of course I do. 
You’ll never be a magister, butcher girl, but maybe I’ll hire you as servant
when I am.”  She glared, seething, as he turned and walked away, downing the
rest of her drink.  She shook with rage, and stomped angrily away from them,
out on to the lonely balcony.  The night air helped her calm down, and she
worked to hold back her tears, her body shaking with barely controlled rage. 
She would become a magister one day.  And when she did, she would only smirk at
that boy, and know she had done better.
                As the night wore on, more people left, and the crowd grew
thinner.  She saw a group of magisters and Senior Enchanters, some of them
having traveled from other Circles, around her master—and Fenris, discussing
him, from the snatches she had heard.
                “… What was your power source to fuel the spells, I wonder,”
one of them said, a knowing smile about her lips.  Hadriana recognized her as
the First Enchanter of the Minrathous Circle.
                Hadriana glanced around the room, noting that all the non-
mages—the entourage, the wealthy people who had been invited as courtesy—they
were sparse and had seemed to have gone, as if by some signal.  Or was this the
after party, and meant for the mages alone?
                “I had enough lyrium, and two other mages,” Danarius said, but
his eyes glittered as if it were a joke between the magisters, and everyone
laughed.
                “Yes, now what happened to those two mages again?” another
magister goaded him.  More laughter.  Hadriana realized they were drunk.  Where
was the Archon?  Had he gone when she had been out on the balcony?  She sighed;
he must have.  She had retreated more than once away from the others, and
quickly realized, with a sinking disappointment, that her new nickname in the
Minrathous Circle was “butcher girl”.  “And all your slaves—I heard you had to
replace so many of them?”
                “Shall I show you?” Danarius said, then he said something to
Fenris.
                Hadriana watched the elf stalk away, with an expression like he
would rather be anywhere else.  She wondered what was going on.  The elf
disappeared into the servant’s passage, and seemed to take his time coming
back.  Hadriana sipped at her cider and listened to the talk around her.  The
magisters were joking and laughing—all of the jokes obviously inside jokes. 
The apprentices had split off into groups, and it was plain which of the
magisters houses were allies, and which were not, by the apprentices more than
the magisters, most of which did not play the game as well as their masters. 
She had noticed that it was all about false smiles and pretending to be friends
and friendly with everyone, keeping the others on their toes, and working a
knife to hand and a blade to their back—metaphorically speaking.  She was
determined to best them all.  She could be better than all of them; she was
determined to be.  More than that, now she felt, she had to be.
                Fenris came back.  She looked at the elf.  He was in the most
revealing outfit she had ever seen on a man—made to expose most of the
markings.  It made sense; that was one of the reasons for the party after all;
everyone wanted to see the damned elf.  It was all sheer silk and embroidery,
and the only bit about it that covered anything halfway decently was in the
front, and it didn’t hide much.  She noticed that the magisters all stayed a
healthy distance away from Fenris at all times, like she had originally. 
Hadriana still flatly refused to get too close to the elf; something about
those markings frightened her.  Lyrium could make anyone but a Tranquil mage go
insane, or even kill them.  That couldn’t be good to have imbued in living
flesh.
                She noticed something else.  A small elven child—a slave--was
close behind at Fenris’ heels.  What was going on?
                It all became quite clear to her when Danarius beckoned the
child closer.  The magisters spread out a little, and Fenris looked positively
ill.  The knife flashed once, a sharp stab in the back.  Mercifully, the child
died very quickly.  Danarius raised his hands, the magic pulsating in the air
around him.  He held it as the boy collapsed, dead.  The body’s fall seemed to
echo in the room for a moment.  The blood magic—that was what it was—was then
fed back into the body, animating the corpse.  It rose, slowly.  Danarius
casually removed the knife, cleaning the blade on the corpse and sheathing it
again.  Danarius gave it a silent order, and the corpse moved, stiffly.  All
the apprentices had fallen silent, and were watching now, as the corpse gently
lifted a bottle of wine, and walked back, and refilled Danarius’ glass.
                The other magi laughed, and applauded.
                Hadriana knew nothing about blood magic as yet, but an older
apprentice near her commented, “It takes a lot of control to get a corpse to do
movements like that.”
                Hadriana turned toward him.  “How so?”
                He shrugged.  “It’s easy to get a corpse to fight—any demon
that possesses a corpse will do that for you.  They might not do it well, but
they can do it.  But the corpse isn’t possessed; just animated, and that makes
doing movements like that… actually pretty impressive.”  Hadriana noticed that
the older boy spoke with his hands, gesturing frequently.  “Think like trying
to operate a marionette, without actually touching it.”  Hadriana began to
comment that she had never tried to play with a marionette, but he began to
speak again.  “It’s kind of inspiring.  Hey, that’s your master, isn’t it?”
                And their talk turned to another subject, and he, fortunately,
was not one of the ones who had been mocking her earlier.  When the magic had
dissipated, the corpse collapsed again, thankfully after it had put the bottle
back on the tray—but she heard bones crunch when it collapsed again, making her
impulsively flinch.  Danarius called for his slaves to clean up the body, and
the blood, and the magi moved elsewhere while they did it.
 
                Fenris felt numb.  What’s more, he was fairly convinced that
his master was mad.  Why would someone…?
                It was just a child…
                He could barely finish his thoughts, and how he had kept
himself even mostly composed throughout the remainder of the night, he had no
idea.  At least… it was over.
                It shouldn’t have been over for that child.  It had been so
senseless…  To impress his party guests?  How…?  Why…?  And that child’s
mother, who must surely be weeping now…
                He had been bidden to go collect a child from the kitchens. 
Under ten summers, he had been told.  There had been three children in the
kitchen of that description.  How could he have chosen one to die over the
others?  How?  But he had.  He had been a party to the magister’s depravity,
unwilling or no.  And he had selected the most sickly of the three.  It hadn’t
been random; he had calculated it.  That was one of the worst parts.  Hehad
condemned a child to death—to amuse a handful of people!
                Fenris felt like he should be sick, but he curiously wasn’t. 
At the time, he had felt bile rise in his throat.  He felt like he should cry
for the child, but he didn’t do that either.  He just felt numb.  A child had
died, and all those people had laughed…?
                It wasn’t even that it was an elven child, and they were human:
  Some of the Circle were elves—not all of them, certainly, but there were a
couple, and a small number in their apprentices too.  Yet even then, they
laughed and applauded.
                Just go to sleep.  Sleep, and forget about it.  He didn’t think
he would ever forget about it.  He was more likely to forget the way Danarius’
cock felt down his throat.
                His fingers touched his lips, and his hand clamped over his
mouth as he swallowed.  It had happened, and he was sure of it.  And lately he
worried that his master would make him do it again.  Or worse.
                It was that thin, scanty outfit that he made him wear that got
him thinking about that, coupled with some of the looks Danarius gave him. 
Like he wants to eat me.
                Fenris hoped, fervently, that he never had to again.  But he
would sooner do it every day, for the rest of his life, than witness another
child murdered to amuse and impress a crowd of onlookers.
 
                I hate being alive…  The sun was blinding.  The headache
pounded on the inside of his skull like a war drum; it even pulsated with a
tempo.  I hate everything in the world…
                Danarius had his appointments for the day canceled, and had
Hadriana get to work on running the household.  He made sure that a servant
informed Fenris of what Danarius wanted him to do—train with his sword or
whatever weapon he pleased primarily—and immediately crawled back into bed, the
heavy drapes pulled to block out the sunlight.  But still the damned light
prevailed, leaking around the edges… mocking his futile efforts.
                His late uncle had once told him that the best cure for a
hangover was hair of the dog.  Well, that was idiotic at its best.
                A tray laden with food sat untouched at a small table, but he
drank some of the mulled cider.  He hadn’t had a hangover in years.  Too much
wine perhaps.
                He never would have killed that slave boy if he hadn’t been
drinking.  Hell, what had been the purpose of that?  That was an expensive
party trick.  Wasteful, and stupid to boot.
                His morning was just full of regrets, wasn’t it?
                I do stupid, regrettable things when I drink, he thought in the
back of his mind.  I do a lot of stupid things when I’m drinking. His teenage
years could attest to the truth of that.
                Sitting in a prison cell, angry that someone had dared imprison
a son of a magister, but there it was.  His father walking down the hall,
stopping at his cell, arms crossed, glaring menacingly down at him.  Cillian
Danarius had looked up at him, and smiled weakly.  “Good morning,” he had said
to his father, who was staring at him with such a look of intense disapproval
that half of him wanted to crawl under the nearest rock and stay there.  The
two had stared at each other for a long time, and the young Cillian
straightened, as if he were sitting in a plush, elegantly carved chair instead
of a stone bench.  “If this is about my bail, I don’t need you, Father.”
                “You and your friends were stealing people’s lawn ornaments,”
he repeated, likely right from the report.
                “Mostly small statuary, but I think we defaced a couple of
gardens too,” he added.  The look on his father’s face made him flinch.  “We
were… playing… guards and robbers,” he said lamely.
                “Literally.  Were you drunk?”
                “Not… drunk, no, I don’t think.”
                Cillian had gotten caught when he had stopped to help a cute
girl over the fence, and ended up caught himself trying to scale it before the
guards came; he hadn’t made it.  He should have just left her.  After his
father drug him out of the cell and all the way home, hit him twice, and
forbade him to leave the manor grounds for the rest of the year, he made him go
find his stash of collected ornaments and give them back to their owners, in
person, and apologize. 
                Just thinking about it made him cringe inwardly.
                At least Hadriana was well, and this was a good time for her to
start practicing her future status anyway.  Some good could come of his horrid
hangover.
                The hangover stayed with him all day like an obnoxious little
sister you don’t really want around but cannot convince to leave.
                It was a shame that magic didn’t fix hangovers.  It wasn’t an
illness, after all.  There were some potions he could drink for it, to help
with it, but he was determined to suffer the consequences of his own actions
like a man.  Roschelle would have poured it down his throat and called him a
stubborn jackass.
                Maybe I should remarry.  Maybe…
                He dismissed the notion as soon as he had it.  Maybe I should
take a fucking nap.  That seemed more likely.
 
                Shaislyn came into his magic early—far earlier than was
normal.  But Varania hardly batted an eye.  She had been half-expecting it,
after all, with both his parents being mages.
                She brought him to the Circle, and held him still while they
bled him for his phylactery.  He cried, and whined, but they healed him
afterwards, and the mage there gave him a cookie, and he fell silent.  The old
mage had smiled, nearly toothless in her old age.  “I’ve had three children,
and they all have children,” she explained.
                Only in the Imperium, Varania thought, with satisfaction. 
Everywhere else in the world, if a mage had a child, it was plucked from its
mother’s arms at infancy, and given to the Chantry.  Only in Tevinter did that
not happen.  Only in Tevinter did the Circle rule the country and have
influence over the Chantry.
                For that…  For that, Varania was happy to have been a slave in
the Imperium, rather than free elsewhere.  Besides, freedom for mages outside
the Imperium was laughable; they were imprisoned or killed.
                So for that, she was grateful, and her son would be too one
day.
                One thing that she disliked, though, was that the Circle in
other countries meant food, clothes, a bed, and an education of sorts.  Here,
it was not guaranteed.  True, mages were revered and much more respected than
she had heard they were in other places, but she supposed that only went so
far—especially for an elf with no support or contacts, who was Liberati on top
of that!  She supposed, you gain some, you lose some.
                Shaislyn was really just like any other two-year old, though,
for his blindness and magic.  Lura had acquired a set of building blocks, the
paint faded almost completely away.  Not that colours meant anything to Shai. 
He was playing with them now, and Varania thought it nothing short of a wonder.
                He felt each of them carefully, and seemed to have to think
about it before he placed one somewhere, gingerly touching where each of them
were.  She wondered how that could even be fun for a child who couldn’t see
what they were making.
                Varania looked back to the book in her lap.  Two years ago, she
thought she would never learn how to read.  And yet, here she was; reading. 
Leto would be proud of her.  He had told her to learn to read, and she had.
                She missed him so much that it hurt.  She had quietly confessed
as much to Lura, who had looked away, and said not a word, but hugged her for
her hurt.
                The mage looked to her son, and watched him construct his
tower.  That was what it seemed to be, anyway—a tower.
                When she was finished with it, he seemed to appraise it with
the tips of his fingers.  “It’s as big as you are,” Varania praised him.  She
wondered how it would be for Shaislyn growing up.  He was blind, noticeably
half-elven, and a mage, but his family were Liberati, and he only wasn’t by a
very thin margin.  Was he even considered a full citizen, given his bloodline? 
She didn’t think so.  But his bloodlines—ha!  Half Altus, the highest, purest
class in the Imperium, and half Liberati, the lowest social class in the
Imperium.  Maybe…  Maybe one day he could make something of himself.
                He looked toward her, which was unsettling, considering that he
couldn’t see.  “Is not!”  To prove it, he stood up.  It came up to his
shoulder.  She frowned at him, wondering how he could possibly know that when
he had been sitting just before.  He placed a fingertip on top of his tower, to
demonstrate.
                She chuckled, because he couldn’t see her smile.  “All right—I
was wrong, Shai.”
                He seemed pleased with himself.  A knock at the door made him
fall silent.  His head turned toward the sound.
                Who could that be?  Varania rose from her chair, and went to
the door.  She peered out, and smiled, opening it wider.  “Come in,” she said
to Vellus.
                He returned the smile, and stepped in, wiping his feet on the
matt.  “My mum sent me,” he said, blushing.  He was handsome—even Lura said
so.  A year ago, he had been gangly and awkward, but he was sixteen now, and
something had changed over the year.
                And Varania was beginning to get more confident as she
developed into her womanly figure.  Lura teased her sometimes, playfully. 
“Oh?” she asked him.
                “Oh!” he said, as if he had forgotten that he was holding it. 
It almost made her giggle when he brought the bundle forward.  “She worries
that you have no time to cook.”  He flushed, presenting her with a neatly
wrapped meat pie.
                Varania was delighted.  “Oh, that’s so nice of your mum,” she
said, relieving him of his package, and walking into the small kitchen.  She
set the pie down.  Vellus followed her in.  “I’m certainly no good at cooking.”
                He smiled shyly.  “My mum also says that if you want cooking
lessons, she’d be happy to give them.”
                “Did she now?” Varania asked him.  He had the cutest dimple she
had ever seen when he smiled.  And his eyes were the deep sea-blue of the
surf.  “Oh, but what would I do with Shai?”
                Shai stood at the corner of the kitchen, and jumped when he had
been noticed.  Varania giggled, but he ran toward her, his fingers latching
onto her skirt.  She lifted him into her arms, balancing him on her hip.  “I
can stay by myself,” he insisted.
                “My sister is a few years older than he is—I don’t think she’d
mind looking after him,” Vellus suggested.
                “I’ll have to do that then,” Varania decided.  Vellus seemed
pleased.  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?”
                He blinked those pretty blue eyes of his.  “I…  Well…”
                “I’m sure your mum won’t mind,” the mage went on.
                He flushed, glancing away.  “Well, that is…”
                Shai reached toward him.  “Please?  I’m stuck with girls all
the time!” he cried.
                “Oh, the horror,” Varania agreed with him.
                Vellus laughed, and took Shai from her.  “Is that so, mage?” he
asked the child, who only laughed in turn as he tossed him into the air. 
Varania held her breath, all the while worried that he would drop him.  He
never did.  All the harm that looked to befall Shai had happened in the womb,
when she had asked Leto to hit her.  It was her fault Shai was blind, she
felt.  Though, to be fair, Leto was not the only one to have struck her while
Shaislyn was growing in her belly.  Maybe she should just be grateful that he
was only blind, and not further handicapped.
                Vellus agreed to stay, and when Mieta got home, she teased him
and tousled his unruly mop of blonde hair as if he were family.
                Vellus was just another elf in the alienage.  The others had
eventually warmed up to the family.  Varania was still treated with some
suspicion throughout the alienage, being a mage, but she healed people for
naught but coppers, often as not, so they accepted her, and when she got older
and more shapely, she noticed that the boys started to look at her.  But so
far, Vellus was her favourite, even with his shyness and his blushing. 
Especially with his shyness and his blushing.
                Lura would not be home until late tonight, so they left a slice
of pie out for her, and Mieta sent Varania to walk with Vellus home.
                “Normally, it’s the opposite, you know,” he commented as they
walked to his house.
                Varania smiled.  “Normally, the girl isn’t a mage,” she
countered.  His lips curved into a small smile.  They arrived at his doorstep. 
He started to go to the door, and turned back to her.  He moved forward, his
lips brushing hers in the most chaste of kisses, leaving her stunned and, when
she had the sense, blushing red as a rose.  He was blushing too, and nervous. 
He smiled, easing some of the tension, and stole into his house.  She walked
back home as if in a dream.  Vellus had kissed her.
                He knew she was a mage, and used to be slave, and a mother, and
still he had kissed her.  He must be the makings of a saint.  And he was so
handsome…  She was still blushing when she came home, and her mother only
smiled knowingly.
 
                Hadriana walked through the slave market, inspecting the wares,
keeping a close eye on the people around her.  Trust no one.
                Anyone could be a cutpurse.  And her purse was plenty heavy
enough.  She kept one hand on it at all times.  It had sufficient sums for
Hadriana to buy a couple of slaves--among a few other things she had been sent
to market for.  It wasn’t that her master was treating her like a servant. 
Rather, he wanted to see how she handled herself, and, more importantly, learn
how to haggle, and about pricing.  There was only so much she could learn from
books and a ledger, after all.
                She had a guard with her, and a servant for errands, but was
otherwise alone.  The city was a busy place, and Danarius had sent her during
the busiest time of the day.  The slave merchants called out to her and anyone
else who looked to be buying.  The last time she had been here, it had been as
a beggar, lost.  She still had the silver coin she had found, for luck.  It had
been lucky to her anyway.
                She saw a couple of Circle mages, and cringed inwardly, her
stomach tightening.  She pretended not to notice them, but she heard them when
they said “butcher girl” to one another and laughed.  Her cheeks burned in
fury, but what could she do?  She could do what she came for, that’s what.
                Her master had need to replace the boy he had killed, and his
mother who had thrown herself from a tower in her grief.
                So Hadriana looked for one likely, inspecting the assortment of
wares.  Her master had been explicit:  He wanted elves.  She had questioned the
wisdom of this, initially, but when he explained it to her, it made sense.
                He kept elves in his household because they were easier to
manipulate.  Centuries of slavery had beaten most of them down, and if one ran
away, they were easier to find than a human:  All a human had to do was keep
their mouth shut and their head down; there were more humans in the world than
elves.  To prove his point, he told her that one of his slaves in a brothel had
run away, and, while they had been found, it had not been for over a month
later; that slave had been human.
                He had an assortment of human slaves, too—just not at the
manor.  He didn’t want them mixing.  Something about keeping each of them in
their proper place.  His gladiators were an assortment of elves and humans—but
the humans he kept off the manor grounds.
                He liked the games.  She wanted to find him something exotic. 
Something…
                Hadriana stopped at a cage, and smiled.
 
                Hadriana had insisted that Danarius come to the next
gladiatorial match.  When he said that he may be too busy to attend, she had
hurried to help him in all his duties, and simply had none of it; he was going.
                Bemused, he consented to this.  It had been a long time anyway,
and he’d like to watch the slaves bleed a little.
                Hadriana went too.  She was more interested in the games than
her predecessor was, even if she were female and of humbler birth.  She sat
with a straight back at rapt attention, watching the fighting eagerly below.
                Fenris stood at attendance, a blank look on his face.  Since
that night Danarius had killed that child, his pet had been practicing keeping
his expressions blank.  So far, he wasn’t particularly good at it, but Danarius
approved of the effort.
                One game ended, and another began.  Hadriana grinned,
practically bouncing in her seat with her delight.  He wondered what she could
be…
                “From the far-away jungles of Par Vallen…” the announcer
drawled in a booming voice, his words echoed around the stadium.
                “There!” she cried, pointing.
                “… Across the Boeric Ocean…”
                The gladiator walked onto the sands of the pit, to the raucous
cries of the crowd.  Some of the Imperials threw garbage at him.  Hadriana
laughed with glee.  “I bought him for you, Master.”  Her eyes sparkled.  “So
you may watch him die.”
                “Captured in brutal combat against our own brave soldiers in
the fields of Seheron…”
                Danarius looked on with interest as the Qunari walked to the
middle of the sands.  The Proving Grounds were big enough that few now had the
arm to hit him there with their missiles.  They threw them anyway, but their
accuracy was failing.  “He must have been costly.”
                “Caged and shackled—they could barely contain this giant!”
                She laughed.  “What else am I to do with all the gold you give
me?” she inquired, her eyebrows arching.  “You attend to my every desire.”
                “The giant sailed the Ventosus Straights, across the waves of
Nocen Sea, and arrived in our fair city after killing not one but three of his
captors!”  The crowd booed and hissed.
                He nodded.  “As I well should.”  A master should always care
for what was his.  “And you deserve it, fair one.”
                “He has come all the way from Par Vallen, from the land of
torture and death!”  More loud noises of complaint from the crowd.  “And now he
will die here, for your amusement, crushed by the might of the Imperium!”  The
crowd roared their approval.
                She laughed.  “Ah, look.”  Danarius glanced back at Fenris, who
was watching the sands now, but his green eyes still flicked about the platform
every few seconds.  He had become a good guard.  He had been a little uneasy
about bringing Fenris here, worried about the buried memories, but he had been
all around the manor, and nothing had triggered them.  By all rights, Fenris
should be firmly… “Fenris” by now, and “Leto” and those memories should be
sufficiently buried.  “It’s starting!”
                The Qunari stood alone.  He was a big specimen, obviously the
fighting sort, from his stance, and the way he hefted the long iron sword.  No
doubt, he had been captured at war.  Ordinarily, his sort were tortured and
killed, but apparently the slavers had gotten to him first, which did happen
from time to time.  Mayhap a deserter, then, or a scout—Tal-Vashoth?  It made
no difference; the end result was the same.
                Other slaves entered then, the opposing team, owned by the
arena and not any one magister.  It would be insulting if that were so.  They
rode out on fine horses, and wore the gleaming armor of the Imperium.  One of
them even had a banner.
                “Very good,” he told Hadriana.  “Was this your idea?”
                She beamed.  “Yes,” she admitted.
                It was a good idea.  Not only was he enjoying the show so far,
it was a good play for the commons too.  They would do well to remember their
gallant soldiers fighting and dying for them.  It would hearten them to see the
display.  A speaker announced that this display was funded by Danarius—another
good ploy.  Keep the commons happy, keep them complacent—and above all,
entertained.  Give them something to talk about and enjoy.  Even from a
personal political standpoint, it was a good idea.  He believed that his
lowborn apprentice would soar to great heights in her career.
                The soldier-slaves turned the horses about and galloped around
the arena to the cheers of the onlookers.  They threw favors and flowers. 
Wanton women screamed out obscenities to them—more appropriately, what they
would do to them, and for them.  Men cheered them on.  The Qunari, though, had
not moved.  He stared straight forward, transfixed.  Qunari were giants, but
even giants could not climb the walls to the crowd.  The walls were simply too
high, and there were spikes on the walls of all sizes besides.  And if not
that, then the crowd themselves, so crazy for blood that they would do all in
their power to see the slave beaten back down into the pit to die.  No slave or
captive bothered trying to escape the pit into the crowd in ages; it couldn’t
be done.
                The slave-soldiers’ galloping circle moved in ever-closer to
the Qunari, who stood like a stone sentinel.  He did not seem to see the
flashing hooves or the steel that came ever closer to him.  The slave-soldiers
broke off, and one tossed the heraldry to the crowd with a mighty throw.  The
crowd seized upon the flag, and hoisted it up high, chanting:  “Tevinter!
Tevinter!”
               One of the slave-soldiers lowered a lance, and moved his white
charger forward.  The horse tossed its head, and seemed to know what was going
to happen.  The animal was chomping at the bit for it.  The lance lowered. 
Still the Qunari did not move.  He had not even turned to face his opponents. 
So the lancer trotted his horse to face him.  He kicked the animal into a run. 
It was an armored horse—heavy with enough force to destroy a man.  The Qunari
was almost naked and savage, armed with only the longsword.  And still when the
animal charged, the Qunari did not move.  Danarius felt disappointed.  The ox-
man would be simply run down—all that pretty fanfare for a quick end.  It
wouldn’t do.
                At the last possible moment, the Qunari stepped aside, nimbly
out of the way of the lance.  The mounted slave wheeled the horse about, and
got the Qunari back in his sights.  He charged again, and the Qunari did the
same trick.  A third charge, and Danarius expected another dodge. 
But—finally—the Qunari struck.
                The sword swung round, striking hard into the horse’s unarmored
leg.  The big charger stumbled and fell, bearing its rider down with it.  The
crowd seemed to lean forward, and watch anxiously.  Even from Danarius’ high
seat, he heard the bones crunching, heard the slave cry out in agony.  His leg
was crushed.  The horse screamed, drowning out the man’s voice.  There is no
sound worse than a horse in pain.  Both rider and mount had broken legs,
Danarius did not doubt.
                The Qunari only glanced at them, and stepped away.  Either he
was giving the slave-soldiers’ brothers in arms leave to take him away, or else
he did not care to end it.  The crowd screamed for blood.  They may have
cheered on their country, but now one was hurt.  There was no saving that leg,
and the horse’s cries were harrowing.  And besides, had not the slave-soldier
shamed his country?
                Death was a suiting end for those.
                But the Qunari only walked by, and did not end it.
                The crowd booed their displeasure and still the Qunari only
returned to his place in the center of the arena, as if deaf to their cries and
to that of the slave and the horse’s.  The other four slaves were whispering to
each other, Danarius noticed, trying to decide what to do without their master
there to tell them.  Stupid creatures.
                The slaves decided to continue the fight, and ignore their
fallen comrade.  It was no less than he would have done for them, Danarius had
no doubt.  Another came now—another lance.  Two dodges this time, and the
Qunari practically plucked the slave from the saddle, throwing him into the
sands.  The slave tumbled, losing his lance.  The armored man reached for his
sword, but the giant was upon him.  The Qunari’s sword found a chink in the
armor.  The slave bled to death in the sand in seconds, missing two arms at the
elbow.  The Qunari kicked an arm aside, and stood again at the middle.  The
horse seemed suddenly lost.  One of the mounted slaves caught the creature, and
led it to a gate.  The gate slid up enough for another slave to dart quickly
out, take the horse, and hurry back through it.  The Qunari did not even turn
to look.
                The remaining three were nervous now, and spoke amongst
themselves.  The crowd screamed ideas to them.  He could not hear them
individually, but he imagined they ranged from brash to ludicrous.
                One of the remaining slaves tossed his lance to the side, and
drew his sword, spurring his mount toward the Qunari.  But the Qunari were
giants, and the horse, which would have given the slave the upper hand to a
normal opponent, did not mean as much to the brute.  Perhaps if at least two of
them had come at him at once…
                They clashed, and dueled, and the Qunari killed that horse too,
but this man was faster than the other, and was out of the saddle in time.  He
rolled to his feet, and fended the attack, dodging, weaving.  The clash of
swords was loud, and the cheering of the crowd louder still.  Another mounted
slave joined the melee, and together they attacked.  The last one looked on. 
Everything looked to be well in hand now.  A good show—enough tension and drama
to satisfy, and make the ending all the sweeter.
                But when everything looked well in hand, the unhorsed slave
tripped over the severed limb of one of the dead.  The Qunari killed him—simple
butchery, and turned on the other.  It was as much about the skill of the horse
as the horseman, and the horse was no stranger to battle.  Its teeth gnashed,
its hooves danced, and kicked, and lashed out at the giant, and still the giant
gave no ground.
                The other rider charged, in that moment, with lance down.  The
giant did not turn to meet it, did not even seem to notice it.  Now the ending
would be only more dramatic.  The crowd held its collective breath as the
slave-soldier charged.
                The Qunari spun with all the smooth grace of a dancer, his
momentum bringing the greatsword to meet the horse.  The animal managed to get
away with only a knick to the neck, but startled, it reared, and the slave,
unbalanced, fell from the saddle.  The other slave was quick to protect his
temporarily vulnerable brethren, and charged his own horse toward the giant. 
The Qunari dodged, and feinted to one side, but struck from the other.  The
blow glanced off the slave’s armor, but it dented it.  It would leave bruises,
to be sure.
                The other slave, by now, was on his feet, and had his horse’s
bit.  He was moving back into the saddle.  The swords clashed again, the rider
driving the Qunari back—back toward the spiked walls.  The giant was getting
tired.  A trapdoor sprang open suddenly, making the crowd gasp in surprise. 
The creature lunged from the opening--at first glance a wolf, but then Danarius
saw its mutilated, maddened form and knew it for a Blightwolf.  It was half-
starved and completely mad in its hunger and bloodlust.  Its dripping fangs
lunged for the Qunari, but its quick movement frightened the horse more than
the giant.  The horse screamed, rearing back in fright.  Its rider stayed in
the seat, but the horse got the bit in its teeth and dashed away from the
animal.  The Qunari danced away from it nimbly, and the beast’s hidden handlers
yanked on its chain, bringing it back into its pit.  The door closed again.
                There were other such surprises littered about the arena.
                While the rider struggled with his frightened horse, the other
slave rode down upon the Qunari, swinging his sword down.  The giant met it
with a clash of steel.  Unnoticed to all but a few unseen, the Blightwolf
snarled and lunged against the trap door, mad for meat and blood.  Its handlers
struggled against the creature.
                The slave and captive clashed, their steel striking against the
other.  The slave seemed to have the upper hand, and the other slave was riding
close now, his horse again under his control.  Then the trap door all but broke
open and the wolf leaped forward against its chain.  Its jaw sank into the
horse’s flanks.  The animal cried out in pain, all else forgotten in its mad
rush to dislodge the wolf.  Its handlers yanked on the chain, and it grew
taught.  Between the handlers and the slave, the wolf was pulled from the
horse.  In the confusion, the Qunari struck, knocking the slave from the
saddle.  The wolf lunged toward the fallen slave, its jaws clamping around his
struggling arm.  The crowd was screaming for more, even when the handlers
yanked the wolf back… and it drug the struggling slave down after it.  The trap
door banged shut ominously.  The crowd screamed, a mixture of shock and
approval.
                There was but one slave left, and no longer looked quite so
confidant with the sound of the other slave’s screams echoing above.
                The Qunari only moved back to the center, and waited.
                The crowd urged the gladiator on, and the slave had no choice
but to make the attack.  He rode forward, the horse tired.  An armored horse
was a fine weapon—they were big animals, strong, and could do substantial
damage on the battlefield.  However, the animal was tired after the fight; all
that armor was heavy even for a destrier.  The horse charged forward anyway,
ears back.  The animal fought as much as the slave riding it as they bore down
on the giant.  It bit, and kicked, stomping its steel-shod hooves.  Plumes of
dust rose around it.  The Qunari moved back, away from the flashing hooves and
the steel sword.  The horse lifted its front hooves, as if in warning before it
sprang forward, over 2000 pounds of animal, man, and armor came charging toward
the giant.
                The ox dove to the side.  The horse spun, kicking up its
hooves.  It had done this before, and knew what it meant when the opponent was
down; it was the time spring, to stomp and crush.  It moved toward it.  The
captive scrambled to his feet, bringing the sword between himself and the
animal.  At the flash of the steel, the horse reared, lifting its neck away
from what would have otherwise been a fatal blow to the animal.  Its hooves
struck forward, one of them hitting the captive hard in the wrist.  The Qunari
dropped the sword, stumbling back.  The animal’s hooves hit the ground solidly,
and it moved forward again.  The Qunari moved away, dodged another onslaught,
and dove back to his sword.  The horse came toward him, its rider ready.  The
swords clashed, and the horse rounded around the Qunari, kicking up sand, teeth
snapping as they ran around the creature.  The animal kicked and sprang, the
rider matching his own movements to the horse.
                The Qunari wove to the side, and slashed.  The blow had not
been meant to kill or disable; he slashed the reigns in two.  The horse shook
its head.  The dropped the tattered reign, wheeling the animal to the side with
the remaining half.  It was something new, something the crowd had never seen a
captive try to do, and they all leaned forward, cheering and eager.  The horse
and rider wheeled back to face the Qunari, charging again.  The ox dodged, and
rolled to the side.  The armored horse wheeled back toward him, breathing
hard.  The captive reached forward, bent low to the ground.  As the horse came
at him again, he threw a handful of sand into the animal’s eyes.  It stopped,
snorting, tossing its head.  It wheeled.  The rider, unable to get the animal
under control with the loss of half the reigns, kicked it into a gallop, away
from the Qunari.  The animal stopped quickly, tossing its head.  The Qunari ran
forward.  The rider blocked his sword expertly, and the horse kicked
violently.  The Qunari was struck by a hoof, and tumbled back.
                The slave got the horse back under control, and wheeled toward
the Qunari.  The captive hesitated only once, and threw the severed limb of the
slave’s comrade toward the man.  The horse, startled, whinnied and shied away. 
The crowd booed the foul play and distaste.  The horse and rider charged
again.  The Qunari wove away from the flashing hooves and biting teeth, blocked
a harsh blow from the sword, and with one strong arm ripped the slave from the
saddle, throwing him down into the sands.  The slave was up in moments, sword
in hand.  They fought, giving ground, gaining ground.  The Qunari kicked the
slave’s legs out from under him, and the slave fell into the sand.
                It was over in moments, and the slave was impaled on the
Qunari’s sword.  The Qunari resumed his stance, and waited.
                The crowd booed their displeasure at the Qunari’s persistence. 
Five armored horse had not been enough.  Perhaps they had been too bold.
                “Do the magisters here today have a team they wish to test
against the captive?” roared the master of the arena—with the voice of his
slave.
                The crowd cheered to encourage their magisters.  But the
magisters were silent.  They did not look at each other, on their raised,
shaded pavilion.  If their own teams should fall to this giant, it would be
shameful.
                Danarius felt he had nothing to prove either; Hadriana had
bought the Qunari for a spectacle, and he was proving to be just that.
                “No champions?” the slave bellowed.
                Hadriana’s eyes flicked to Fenris, once.  Danarius frowned in
thought.  “Fenris.”  The elf looked to him.  “Can you kill the Qunari?”
 
                Fenris didn’t even think about it.  “Yes, Master, if that is
your wish.”
                Danarius nodded.  “It is.”  He rose.  “I have a champion!”
                And Hadriana laughed, and applauded the idea.  Fenris was taken
by two slaves, down to the bowels of the arena.  He was not dressed for combat,
so they found suitable leathers and armor, and a sword that he approved of, and
they sent the elf into the sands.
                He waited for the gate to raise, and felt a sense of nostalgia
that he couldn’t place.  The crowd cheered him, the sun beat high overhead.  It
had been cool under the silk shade by his master, but the sand made it even
hotter.  It was hot under his bare feet, reminding him to be quick and not
linger.
                The Qunari was waiting, and stood facing him.  All the world
narrowed down to this.  The roar of the crowd was deafening, but it was
meaningless, just white noise in the background of his world.  Nothing but his
own breathing.  He judged the angle of the sun, and stepped, and circled until
it was at his back.  He paid the trap doors no heed, just like the blood. 
Slaves had caught the horses.  The carcasses would have to wait for later,
though, just like the wounded slave and horse that still lay bleeding in the
sand.  The sooner this was over, the sooner they could both be given peace.
                It was his master’s wish that he destroy this Qunari, so he
would.  There was no option except to succeed.  Failure would be to disappoint
his master, more than it meant that he would die.
                The Qunari watched him, weary, spattered with blood, but, he
noticed, not without his own wounds.  It would make him slow, and he was tired,
and the sun beat down on both of them—a warm day in winter.  A breeze whispered
over the sands, carrying the scent of the sea that cradled Minrathous.  It was
the first day of the Wintersend Tourneys.
                Fenris walked toward him, then began to lope.  He let his
momentum carry the sword forward.  The Qunari blocked it, almost effortlessly. 
How had he ever been captured?
                The pair exchanged a flurry of blows—the Qunari, largest of the
races, and an elf, known for being lithest.  It would have been comical, and he
had no doubt that some were laughing at his master’s presumptuousness and
foolhardiness.
                But it wasn’t size that won a battle; it was skill.  He has a
better reach than me, Fenris thought.  And maybe eighty pounds heavier—maybe
more.  Their swords rang and echoed, and they danced across the sand.  Fenris
stepped in blood and gore half a dozen times and paid it no heed.  Nothing
mattered but the dance of swords.
                Down at his core, he felt like this was what he had been born
to do.  And he never felt happier than when he had a sword in hand.  The
feeling was beautiful but fleeting, like a flower, for he would always have to
put the sword down eventually.  But for the moment, he felt complete.  He was
invincible, and he was doing what he was born to do.
                What his master wanted him to do.
                And the lyrium was glowing blue and bright, and the crowd
watched in fascination.  The Qunari’s blade broke against his, and Fenris
struck.  The broken blade half-defended it, and it was not a mortal blow, but
still the Qunari staggered.  The blade had been stuck on the bone in his
shoulder for an instant, but had done no further damage.  Fenris swung again. 
The giant dodged, and started looking for the fallen slaves—for their weapons. 
The elf knew to keep him away from them.
                They stepped, and Fenris attacked, and the Qunari dodged, and
the two worked around the other, always trying to herd the other one in one
direction or another.  Fenris heard a chain creak, and broke his attack to roll
suddenly to the side, narrowly avoiding the lion as it lunged toward him—all
teeth and claws.  It came toward the Qunari, but the giant eased away.  The
beast between them, the Qunari finally had the opening to make a break for the
fallen slave’s weapon.  Fenris struggled back to his feet, and gave chase.
                He heard a creaking noise, and froze, teetering in place,
scarcely breathing.  The pit opened suddenly.  His eyes wide, heart pounding,
he stood on the edge of it, the sand between his toes falling into the pit.  He
could smell the corpse of the last slave who had fallen into the pit.  Just
deep enough to break a leg, but just shallow enough to live and wish for
death.  One more step and he would have fallen down below.  It snapped shut
again, and the Qunari had reached the weapon.  The Qunari spun back toward
Fenris, and waited, catching his breath.  Fenris stood panting, but knew—by
some instinct—that if they waited too long…  Well, there were other surprises
in the arena.  He charged forward.
                The Qunari blocked, and their swords rang and echoed, the sound
all but drowned by the roars of the crowd.  Fenris dove to the side again, back
away from the Qunari.  That time, the giant was not quick enough, and the door
opened, the Blighted Bear charging forward, held by chains as thick as Fenris’
wrists.  It snarled as it charged, its powerful claws swiping the Qunari’s
thick legs.  The giant fell, and gave a cry of alarm as he turned to face the
maw of the creature.  Fenris breathed hard, and watched as the Qunari fended it
off for a few precious seconds, always keeping his blade between the corrupted
bear and his person.  Then the heavy chains grew taught, and the creature
gasped, and choked, and struggled against its chain as it was pulled back.  It
seemed to stop struggling for an instant.  The chain went slack, then it lunged
forward.  The Qunari barely brought the blade up in time.  Its teeth locked
around the blade.  The sharpened steel bit into its mouth.  Blood dribbled
around it.  Powerful teeth bit into the metal, and it only dropped it when it
was yanked back inside.  The blade was ruined, though—but better than nothing.
                Fenris dashed forward.  The Qunari rushed to his feet to meet
the attack.  Fenris re-angled his attack at the last moment to counter how the
Qunari had moved.
                The blade whistled through the air.  He imagined the blade
cutting through bone, bits of blood and brain flying through the air.  Instead,
the Qunari ducked, and the blade bit through one long horn, then the other, and
the blade caught awkwardly on it.  Fenris struggled with it for a moment, and
the Qunari seemed just as eager as he was to get it out.  It would have been
funny, really, if it weren’t so critical.  He heard some in the crowd laughing.
                Frustrated, he let the sword alone, and came toward the Qunari
with his bare hands, glowing bright with the lyrium.  He reached forward.  He
had done it before.  He had practiced with pig corpses and later cadavers, and
he knew where the heart was.
                His hand plunged into the Qunari’s chest as if it were
pudding.  His fist clenched around a pumping muscle, and he yanked his hand
backwards.  The Qunari did not have time to scream.  Fenris crushed his heart
in his hand, blood rushing over his palm, between his fingers.  The giant
dropped, and Fenris stepped away, dropping the bloodied thing in his hand.  The
crowd was cheering, but Fenris looked up to the magisters, to his master. 
Danarius was smiling, well pleased.  That was all that mattered.
                He heard the wounded slave, trapped under his horse and still
whimpering, but another was already coming to give the gift of mercy.  Fenris
walked away from the carnage and hot sands to the tune of over a thousand
cheers.
 
                Hadriana wanted to be happy and pleased with herself, but
somehow she was just annoyed.  This had gone from a lovely death match to her
master gloating over his favorite pet—again.
                A high-ranking mage commented to Danarius that he “should have
paid him the six hundred when I had the opportunity.”  Whatever that meant, it
made her master laugh.  And people were even more afraid to get too close to
Fenris, she noticed.  She supposed that that was… good, in a bodyguard.  He
wasn’t intimidating by himself.  He was tall for an elf, and wielded those big
two-handed weapons, but that by itself wasn’t that intimidating—the markings
were.
                What he could do with them was definitely intimidating.  If
Hadriana didn’t know that Fenris was a perfectly… domesticated and obedient
pet, she might even be concerned.  As it was, she was simply annoyed.
                She would not have cheered had Fenris fallen in the battle;
that would be unbecoming.  …But she would not have mourned.  Even if the elf
had simply lost an arm, it would serve; he would be useless.  Magic could do
many things, but even magic had some limits.  He would be reduced to nothing,
save perhaps as an ornament of sorts.  And for that, he might as well kill him,
and skin him.  Tan the hide and hang it in the hall, if he wished, but he would
be worthless to him.  She had heard that it was possible to reattach or even
regrow a severed limb, but she did wonder what that would do to all the
markings.  If each one had meaning, and part of the “writing” on him was gone… 
It would be like a book with a page missing, maybe a whole chapter.  It made
her painfully curious sometimes.  What would happen if a piece of him were cut
off…?
                And she hated Fenris for making her jealous of him.  It was all
the worse that he did not do it on purpose, nor did he even seem to notice. 
She felt like he must notice, and his ignorance had to be feigned.  How could
it not be?
                Danarius hosted a small party that evening—a more intimate
gathering than before, with just a few high-ranking Circle mages in
attendance.  They left their apprentices, and so Hadriana was instructed to
make herself scarce.  But Fenris was made to pour the wine, in an elegantly
brocaded silk draping she could hardly call clothing.
                Her master dressed the elf in silks, expensive leathers, and
angora wool when applicable.  His hair was gleaming, his skin oiled, and he
smelled like perfume.  She tried to tell herself that the elf was an object,
but all she ever seemed to see was how much Danarius fawned over said object.
                Like a child who sees their parent care for a priceless vase
over themselves, she longed to break him.  If only it were so simple as pushing
him off a table and watching him shatter.
                It means nothing, she told herself.  One day, I will be a
magister.  And that’s all that matters.
***** Beauty Met the Beast *****
Chapter Summary
     Danarius sends Hadriana on an errand and Mieta meets an old friend's
     lover.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Slaves were rioting in the north.  The Magisterium had
convened, and made orders to put them down.  Any one that surrenders would not
be killed, simply punished.  The leaders would be dealt with accordingly.
                Hadriana was progressing smoothly.  It would be many years yet
before she was ready to pass her tests and gain the rank of magister, but she
was well on her way.  Danarius was confident about her.
                She sat in the chair opposite to him, sipping honeyed tea, and
perhaps wondering why she had been summoned.  “I want you to make a trip back
to my country manor—Vinewood,” he informed her.  He would go himself, but he
thought she could handle it, and he’d like to put her to the test anyway. 
Besides, he had to head in the opposite direction to oversee the putting down
of a small elven riot—they were tiring.  He would just enslave them all if he
could, but there were a few laws against that.
                She set the cup down on its saucer.  “As it please my master,”
she answered with a sweet smile.  “May I inquire as to the occasion?”
                His fingers laced together.  “I’ve reason to suspect some of my
servants of theft.  I want you to pay them a surprise visit.  Take a few men
with you—the road will be dangerous.”
                She seemed pleased by this errand.  “I would love to.  When
would you have me depart?”
                “On the morrow,” he answered coolly.  “Come back once you’ve
gotten to the bottom of it.  I trust it won’t take you very long.”
                “Have you selected the men I will bring with me?”
                He nodded.  “Yes.”
                She finished her tea.  “Is that everything?”
                “For the moment.  I suggest you pack your things.”
                She smiled pleasantly.  “Fond advice, Master.  I shall.  I bid
you good evening.”  And she left.  Such good manners.  Much better than Raith. 
More pleasing to the eye too; she had developed into a fine woman.
                Speaking of young women, though, there was also the matter of
his little niece.  But he would inform Hadriana of that in the morning, before
she left.  For the moment, he would rather not daunt her with the thought of
“babysitting” the girl on the way back.  He didn’t want to tolerate a sulking
teenager for the rest of the day.  He knew she wouldn’t be fond of the idea. 
Better not to mention it.
                He would send his breeding destriers too—war horses, some just
a little too old to be put in the field any more, but ornery creatures that
needed a long journey and some exercise to keep them from being mischievous.
 
                Hadriana scowled, but held her tongue, and smiled pleasantly. 
Of course it was perfectly all right that she escort the highborn brat to
Minrathous.  Of course it was.
                And of course she didn’t mind Danarius insisting that Fenris
come with her—mostly as a personal nurse maid to Annalkylie.  The elf seemed
uncaring either way, as usual.  Of course, she had tried to argue, saying that
her master needed his bodyguard with him at all times.  He assured her that the
next few weeks he would more or less be living at the council house,
deliberating what to do about the recent outbreak of riots, among other things,
and thus Fenris would just be at the manor most of the time anyway, and not
guarding him either way.  He also claimed that Annalkylie liked Fenris for some
reason, so it couldn’t hurt to bring him along, to keep the girl happy if for
no other reason—she would be more likely to tolerate the elf’s presence as a
guard than the others.
                More like, the girl just liked looking at strange things.
                But they set out anyway, one of the men with a team of horses
and a wagon of supplies.  The others rode, including Fenris, which was more
comfortable anyway.  There would be a carriage on the way back, for the comfort
of the child.
                It was little over a week to the manor, and the wagon was slow
even with the team.  There were inns along the way, and part of it even took
the Imperial Highway, so they camped but rarely.  She was glad that it was late
autumn; the sun was cooler now, and more pleasant.  She had grown used to the
city, though, and its smells.  The country seemed strange to her now, and,
while nice to look at, she preferred the life of the city.
                And she hated camping.  That, more than anything else in the
world, she hated.  She was pleased to note that Fenris relished it no more than
she did.  Perhaps even less so.  He was a city creature, same as she.  That
thought disturbed her, to think that they might be even a little alike.
                But as the days passed on the road, in long empty silences
between herself and her entourage, she got to thinking.  It had been three
years since she had been on this path—almost four since she had been this way. 
So much had happened since then.  She had grown, in body, mind, and magic.  She
was a woman, an accomplished mage, and well on her way to becoming a magister.
                She had not done it for years now, but she found herself
thinking of her family.  Some part of her felt hollow for that, as she thought
about her stern mother, her distant father, and her brothers and sisters.
                All dead, she thought.
                And she drew up her horse to a halt.  The village was just down
this road.  It was only an hour’s ride, maybe a little more, if she hurried,
and it was only midday.  “Wait here,” she told the men, and kicked her horse
into a trot.  She was annoyed when someone was following her, and more annoyed
when she saw who it was.
                “Are you deaf, slave?” she snapped at him.
                He regarded her as if from a lofty distance—an expression she
especially hated on him.  If not for the distance between them, she may have
slapped him.  She did it often enough when she thought she could get away with
it.  Fenris wasn’t the sort to tattle on her, as it were, but Danarius was,
well…  Danarius was the only one allowed to harm Fenris in any way, and he
rarely had cause to so much as scowl at the slave.  “My master decreed that I
am not to allow you to wander off alone,” he told her.  He left unsaid that
this was because of the outbreak of riots going on, even though that was miles
away.
                She hated that.  She couldn’t even order him to go away.  She
ground her teeth, and kicked her horse into a gallop.  But she should have
known better; he was a better horseman than she, and she hadn’t lost him at
all.  She sighed, and stood up in the stirrups, trying to relieve some of the
saddle sores she felt.  When she dismounted after the day’s ride, she walked
bow-legged, and her legs hurt something fierce.  She could always ride in the
wagon, and had on occasion, but the horse was less stuffy and more
comfortable.  On the way back, she may ride in the carriage, but she doubted
that would be much better.  She hated traveling.
                She held the reins in one hand, and rubbed her thighs with the
other, grumbling to herself about horses.  Fenris observed her for a moment,
and seemed very much like he wanted to say something.  She glared at him. 
“What is it, elf?”
                He frowned.  “You should tuck in your knees more when you ride,
and lean with the horse when she runs… you’d be more comfortable.”
                It was good advice.  Helpful advice, with good intentions.  Her
mother had good intentions, when she had wanted to marry her off.  Good
intentions when she had tried to perform and exorcism, to drive the imagined
demons from her with starvation, dehydration, and depravation.  And she was so
very, very tired of people talking down to her, belittling and mocking her—how
dare this knife-eared bastard say such things to her?  Hadriana wanted
desperately to hit him.  Rather, she reigned in her temper, and stopped her
horse, and smirked.  “Elf.  Get off the horse, and walk.  You can lead the
animal, but you’ll walk.”
                It would have satiated her if he had made some expression or
noise of complaint or discomfort.  Rather, he made no expression at all, nor
any sound, robbing her of any satisfaction she may garner from this.  He simply
swung out of the saddle with a grace she lacked, and gently led the creature by
its reigns.  The horse nuzzled against his shoulder, begging for attention. 
Her own horse seemed to shun her.
                She walked her horse, and seemed all the more annoyed that
Fenris seemed perfectly content leading his, as ordered.  Less than half a mile
of that, she drew her horse to another halt.
                She swung out of the saddle, and Fenris stopped, waiting. 
“Trade horses with me,” she snapped.  Even when everyone in her village had
known she was a mage, they still had never treated her with the respect she had
deserved.  They had shunned her, called her selfish for not knowing enough
useful spells, and whispered about her when they thought she didn’t know.  And
now, she had come to Minrathous expecting such things to stop, and they had
not; they had only evolved into something different.
                At that, he raised an eyebrow.  “Mistress, I must object—“
                She slapped him, and he did nothing to prevent the blow.  His
face was red where she had struck him.  Everyone talked back to her, no one
treated her with any kind of respect, her entire life.  She was alone and
miserable, and so angry that he would be so impertinent.  “Don’t talk back to
me, slave!”  A fire took them all away.
                But the insolent brat just started again, “Siren is a destrier,
not a palfrey—“
                Her family had plow horses—common creatures.  Her older
brothers had once ridden the creatures bareback, armed with sticks, and played
at being knights.  “A horse is a horse,” she hissed, and slapped him again.  He
dropped the reigns into her hand, bowing his head.
                “Apologies, Mistress,” he said, and slunk to the side. 
Satisfied, she watched him take her bay mare, but led her, scratching the mare
on the neck affectionately.  She nuzzled against his chest.  All the horses
liked him.  But that made sense.  He helped take care of them at night.  Years
ago, it had been her older brothers’ job to care for the horses and the other
herds beasts—sheep and goats mostly.  The women had taken care of the two dairy
cows, and the chickens.  For everyone else, it was the mill.  She huffed, and
climbed into the saddle.  She made Fenris adjust the stirrups for her, which he
did, and glanced at the horse again, and seemed anxious about something.
                The horse seemed pleasant enough.  That knife-ear was just an
audacious sot, that was all.  She should have done more than slap him, but she
so enjoyed doing it.  And oh, how he deserved it.  All of it and more.  She
found herself wanting to take out all of her hurt and anger upon him, and saw
absolutely no reason not to.  Her fingers wound in the reigns, putting on
tension.  In her anger, her knees dug into the horse’s sides.  There was a loud
snapping sound, and the horse paused for a moment, ears flat.
                She was lost in her thoughts when the horse got the bit in its
teeth, though was not experienced enough a horseman to see anything out of
sorts.  She looked about for the snapping sound, but assumed it was just a
twig.  There was a cry of some animal in alarm, and a bird shot out of the high
grass, its wings brushing the horse’s face.  Two other birds were startled out
of their nest, and their wings kicked up dust and gravel.  The horse was a war
horse, and horses were simple creatures.  It did not know the difference
between the kicked up gravel and the darting birds and a stone hurled from a
sling to kill.  The horse bolted. 
                She held on with her legs, one hand fiercely gripping the
saddlehorn, her heels digging into its side in her fright.  She tried to
control it, yanking back on the reigns.  This was a signal to the destrier to
move backwards, and Siren did so, trotting backwards, and to the side as
Hadriana pulled one way to the other, irritating the horse.  The animal tossed
its head, kicking up its hooves.  The reigns slipped out of her fingers like
sand.  Hadriana fell forward in the saddle, gripping the saddle horn.  One of
her feet fell out of the stirrup, putting more weight on one side.  She heard
Fenris yelling something, but couldn’t make it out beyond her terror.
                The animal, accustomed to this being a signal, wheeled suddenly
to one side.  All hope of gaining the reigns again was lost; she couldn’t reach
them, and was falling out of the saddle.  She struggled to get her foot back
into the stirrup, kicking the beast by accident while putting weight into the
other stirrup.  The animal whinnied, sharply pulling to the side again, and
reared.  To be fair, it simply lifted its front legs a bit and let her fall out
of the saddle before it darted off.  She tumbled to the ground, falling into a
field.
                Fenris whistled, and yelled something at the horse.  The animal
slowed, and turned around.  It whickered, sounding very much like a laugh to
Hadriana.
                The elf caught up to where she sat, inspecting her for any
harm.  He looked concerned enough.  She wondered how much of it was an act. 
The scheming knife-eared bastard.  “You—this is your fault!” she accused him,
and climbed to her feet, stumbling a little as she did.
                He looked taken aback.  “I… No, I…”
                “You—You made the horse do that!” she continued, pointing at
him, taking a half step forward.  He had whistled, and called out something,
and the horse had stopped.  Surely, there was some signal to make the animal…
go crazy!
                He took a step back from her, automatically, and that enraged
her.  “No, Mistress, I tried to—“
                She closed the distance between them and back-handed him, as
hard as she could, across his face.  He didn’t even stumble, but his pretty
face might be bruised in a few hours.  “You lying little bastard,” she hissed. 
“I’ll have you whipped for your lies.  If your master wasn’t so fond of you,
I’d have that lying tongue cut out.”
                He looked astonished.  “I…”
                She raised an eyebrow.  “You?” she countered.  “Get the damn
horse, slave.”  She yanked the palfrey’s reigns from his hands, and hit him
again, just because she was angry.  He slunk away.  She glared at him as he
went to the destrier, and calmed the horse.  She should hack off all that long
white hair.  Danarius had it cut a year ago, and sold it to a wig maker for a
very good price.  No doubt, he had intended to do that again; his hair was past
his shoulders once more.
                By the time he returned though, she was calmed, and got back on
her palfrey, but made the elf walk.
 
                He had tried to tell her.  He really had.  Fenris sighed
inwardly.  It wasn’t his fault if the mage would not choose to listen.  He just
wished that she didn’t blame him.  He hadn’t lied about anything, and being
accused of doing so bothered him, maybe more than it should.  Danarius would
have at least listened to him.  Oh, he might hit him, but he would at least
listen to him.
                He also wouldn’t have made the stupid mistake of trying to ride
a destrier.  Danarius had bought the veteran horses, and had taken an interest
in breeding them in recent years.  There was such a difference between a
palfrey and a destrier, especially to someone as inexperienced a rider as
Hadriana.
                Well… there was nothing to be done about it.  He had done all
he could do to prevent it from happening.  He disliked that she blamed him for
it was all.
                He did wonder what she was doing down this forsaken country
road, but she had such a determined expression that it had to have some point
to it.
                In another mile, they came upon the ruins of a village.  The
place had never been large, but some fire had burned down half of it, and the
rest had simply been abandoned.  There were fields of wild wheat and barley all
around it.  A river cut close to it, and Hadriana dismounted from her palfrey,
and secured it to a half-rotted fence post.  She walked amongst the ruins of
the village, running her hand along the charcoaled wall of a burnt out hut. 
The fields were claiming the village, slowly.
                She walked up to the mill, and Fenris followed her.  He left
his own horse nearby, and had to follow after her on foot, as this part was
littered with debris from the village remains.  She picked her way gingerly
through the rubble and the high grass to stand amidst the ruins of what had
clearly once been a mill.  Fenris stayed a respectable distance away, and
waited.
                Hadriana stood, silent as a sentinel, amidst the ruins,
watching the river as if she did not really see it.  She stood there for nearly
half an hour in silence, before she shifted, and knelt, as if in prayer, but
she did not pray; only stared, and then as if she saw nothing around her. 
Fenris kept an eye on the area, checked on the horses.
                He waited, and shifted from leg to leg, and she knelt there,
sometimes shifting, but mostly only staring, until the sun began to set. 
Fenris had, upon seeing that Hadriana likely would not be getting up any time
soon, hobbled the horses and removed their bits so they could graze, and would
remove their saddles too if he only knew how long she would be.  The hour grew
dim, and only then did she rise.  Her face was dry, and she had not cried, yet
still she looked hollow.  He knew it had been a penance for something—what else
could it be?
                “Did… you know someone who lived here?” he asked her, gently as
he put the bit and bridles back on the horses.
                She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were full of
unshed tears.  “No.  I never did,” she whispered, blinking.  One, solitary,
lonely tear spilled from her eye, trailing over her cheek.
                In that moment, she wasn’t Hadriana, his master’s apprentice
and a mage.  She was a little girl—lost and alone, and wretched.  She looked so
miserable that… if she were anyone else in the world, he would have tried to
comfort her.
 
                Mieta was nervous when she was sent to the docks for bolts of
cloth.  It wasn’t a place for elves.  How her blind grandchild ever got along
so well here, she didn’t understand, but she saw that the sailors, the whores,
even the pickpockets seemed to like the child.  She understood why.  He was
charming, and there was something humbling about speaking to him.  It made her
cherish her own sight, made her cherish what she had.
                And he led her boldly to the merchant unloading his bolts of
cloth.  Mieta was timid, but Shaislyn wasn’t.  He hailed the merchant—a rotund
fellow with a beard, and a thick stack of papers as he supervised his men
unloading the crates.
                The man turned toward them, and gave Shaislyn a friendly sort
of scowl.  “And what are you up to?” he demanded of the child.
                Shaislyn looked at him as if he could see him—something that he
had to learn to do, because it was less unnerving for others.  “Escorting my
grandmother to see you.  What else?” he asked.  “We’ve an order.”
                Mieta gave him the proper papers.  He reviewed them to see that
everything was in order.  “Ah.  The market changed on this last bolt—the
linen,” he said with a small nod.  “Cost of flax is down—so you’ve some change
owed you.  Kiersten!”  He turned, and bellowed the name again, toward the ship
this time.
                A middle-aged blonde woman leaned over the rail.  “What do you
want?”
                He laughed.  He had bad teeth.  “For you to get married—but we
all know that will never happen,” he joked, but Kiersten didn’t seem to think
it was very funny.  “Bring me a bag of silver and copper—I need to make
change.”
                It was rare to find a man unwilling to cheat an elf.  Or maybe
it was only because he liked Shaislyn.  Mieta would have to question her
grandson about just how often he went down to the docks—as well as the sort of
charm he worked on people.
                The man loaded up Mieta’s cart himself, and let her inspect the
fabrics before he loaded them.  Shaislyn dashed away to talk to the sailors. 
One of them was telling him a story about sailing while Kiersten stepped down
the gangplank.  She was carrying two small pouches.
                She was a pretty, middle-aged woman, and was probably quite
beautiful in her youth.  When she smiled warmly, Mieta could only wonder why
she was unmarried at her age.  “The linen, right?” she asked the elf woman. 
Mieta could only nod.  She counted out the change.  “Father used to cheat
everyone.”  She was smiling as she said it.  “But I set him to rights when I
wouldn’t let him leave me at home anymore.”
                Mieta returned the smile.  “I’m sure your customers are
grateful.”
                She laughed.  “We’ve a bit more business now, to be sure,” she
said, pleased.
                As she handed her the coppers first, Mieta heard herself say,
“How could such a lovely woman as yourself be unmarried?”
                Kiersten’s smile was cheerless.  “My love was a knight, and
sailed to Seheron to fight.”  She sighed wistfully.  “He died long ago.”
                The elven woman looked at her sadly.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”
                “I was too…  But I won’t believe them when they said he was a
traitor,” she admitted, as if defending something.
                Something about the story made Mieta frown.  Something…
familiar.  “A traitor?” she echoed.
                Kiersten nodded sadly, and counted the silver back to her. 
When she finished, she pulled the drawstring shut on the bag.  “Caught stealing
slaves from the army.”
                A chill ran up Mieta’s spine.  “What was his name?”
                Kiersten looked at her forlornly.  “Newlyn,” she answered with
a small sigh.
                Mieta almost dropped the money she held.  “Kiersten,” she
breathed.  “You and I need to talk.”
                The woman looked at her, confused.  “Talk of what?”
                The elf swallowed.  Her throat felt so dry.  “I think I knew
your Newlyn,” she told her.
                Kiersten blinked slowly, as if processing this.  She turned to
her father.  “Father, I’ll walk with this woman to the shop.”  He hadn’t been
listening, and only shouted that he had heard her.  She walked beside Mieta,
and Shaislyn walked on Mieta’s other side as she pulled the cart.  “How did you
know Ser Newlyn?”
                Mieta looked away.  “Shaislyn, why don’t you go run along now?”
she asked him.  He pouted, resenting being excluded, but sighed and split from
them.  Another story from the sailors was better than his grandmother’s
anyway.  She turned back to the other woman.  “He was a noble man.”
                Kiersten was silent for a moment.  “Yes.  And brave, and
good.”  She left unsaid that he had died, but it was apparent by her tone that
she was thinking it.
                The elven woman felt suddenly reluctant to go on.  She hadn’t
talked about it to anyone.  She had never felt the need or the will to do so. 
But Kiersten deserved the story.  She told her about her first meeting of
him—under the stairs in her basement.  He had let her and Leto go change their
clothing and get food.  He had treated them gently and with courtesy.  She told
her about the march, and how he had let her ride his horse Bluebelle while he
walked, and put her son beside her on the horse.
                Kiersten asked about her son.  “How old was your son?”
                “Three summers,” she answered sadly.  “A spring child.”  She
found herself missing her firstborn as much as she had ever missed him.  Her
body ached for missing him.  She wanted to hold him again, like she had when he
was a child, and he would be safe in her arms.  “He looked like his
grandfather, actually—with his eyes like sage and hair like jet.  I’ve never
known a braver child.”
                Kiersten was quiet a moment.  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she
said softly.
                Mieta shook her head.  “I don’t know if he’s alive or not.  But
let me tell you the rest of the story.”  She cleared her throat, and went on. 
She described the rain, the uprising.  She told how Newlyn had come for them in
the night with the fires all around, and they had ridden into the forest.  “He
was very gallant.”
                “Gallantry didn’t keep him alive.”
                “No.  It didn’t,” Mieta agreed.
                Kiersten looked at her sidelong.  “I do not mean to imply that
I would rather you and your child be slaves.  I understand.  But he was foolish
too.”  She shook her head, and her eyes were wet before she blinked it away. 
“He could have given you his horse, and that would have been better.  That
would have kept him alive.”  Mieta said nothing.  Maybe that would have been
better.  For everyone except Varania, that is.  And Shaislyn, she realized. 
The child would not exist had anything else but this happened.  “But I
digress,” Kiersten said, her words sorrowful.  “Go on, please.”
                Mieta went on, and told Kiersten about the run through the
forest.  She told him about the knife he had given Leto, and their sleepless,
hungry nights.  They arrived at the shop, but Mieta and Kiersten left the cart
by the door, and sat down on the steps.  Mieta continued talking about their
flight, and how the hounds had eventually found them.  She told Kiersten about
the mage, and that he had sent she and her son on ahead in the hopes that they
would be content with his death.  His death was old to Kiersten, and she did
not cry, but she seemed no less saddened for it.
                “Did you escape, then?” Kiersten asked her.
                Mieta looked away.  “They caught us too,” she confessed.
                Kiersten frowned.  “But you are no slave, Mieta.”
                The elven woman wanted to cry for that.  “Were I, I might know
where my son is.”
                The human woman considered.  “I think…  I need to know the rest
of this story.”
                And for some reason, Mieta told her.  She told her everything,
but left out the part about Mieta killing a man.  She told her about her son’s
first beating on the road.  She told her about the slave ships, and reminded
Kiersten that she had been pregnant with her daughter.  She told her about the
warehouse in Minrathous and the cages.  She told her about her son and the
magister, and about being given to the same man.  She mentioned Lura, of how
the poor child was left alone in the cage.
                “You were fortunate,” Kiersten told her, putting a gentling
hand against hers.  “Many are not so lucky.”
                Mieta looked down.  “It didn’t feel lucky at the time, but I
know that.”  She told her about the slave compound, and Kiersten looked fit to
weep.  Mieta knew it wasn’t the worst place, but Newlyn had once told Mieta
that Kiersten hated slavery something fierce.  He had said that Kiersten did
not see as others saw—that she saw a person’s soul, and not the body they had. 
Mieta told the woman about her master, and the daughter she gave birth to in
slavery.  She spoke of how her children had grown, of how her son was chosen to
train for the arena.  Kiersten looked on with sympathy.  She spoke of how
Varania was found to be a mage.  She even mentioned the Dalish girl, Ginger,
for the brief time she had been there before making her daring escape.
                She told her about Leto’s first match, and how frightened she
had been when he had left.  How she was terrified every time he went to the
arena, for any fight could be his last.
                “He fought a dragon once,” she heard herself say.  “He came
home boasting about its breath, how it singed his hair, he was so close to it. 
It was a young one, though—half-grown at most.”
                “It is no small thing to stand before a dragon,” Kiersten said,
but the words were not comforting for Mieta.
                “He won our master a good-sized purse,” she said
acrimoniously.  She spoke of how Varania had been raped then, and came away
from it pregnant.  Kiersten’s gaze flicked in the direction of the docks, and
Mieta knew what—or who—she was thinking of.  “Yes.  It’s Shaislyn.”
                Kiersten shook her head.  “Your story is only sadder and
sadder,” she told her.
                Mieta laughed bitterly.  “Danarius held a tourney—the winner of
which would become his experiment.”
                “That seems an odd prize.”
                Mieta shook her head.  “The winner was to get a large purse if
they were not a slave, an easy job, and one boon of the magister.”
                Kiersten frowned in thought.  “I remember the tourney,” she
said suddenly.  “I didn’t go—I never liked the games.  But I remember it.”
                Mieta nodded once absently.  “Slaves were allowed to compete.” 
She wanted to weep.  “Leto won.”  She smiled a little.  “Of course he won; he
had never lost, save once, and that was to a fever more than the opponent.”
                Kiersten suddenly understood.  “He used the boon to free you
and Varania.”
                “And Shaislyn and Lura—yes.”  Her eyes watered.  She swiped at
them, but it did little good.  She felt she had to tell Kiersten that Leto had
met Lura again, years later, and had begged for her freedom too.  “If he had
but lost, we might still be together.”
                Kiersten didn’t seem very certain of that.  “This… experiment…”
she said.  “One hears… dark things… about the magisters.”
                Mieta’s lips pursed into a frown.  “I had little interaction
with the man, to be honest.  Varania and Leto both saw him more frequently. 
But Varania is certain they are maleficarum.”  This last bit in a hushed
whisper that would not go beyond Kiersten’s ears.
                Kiersten had gone very quiet.  “The slaves in the compound. 
After this… experiment was over, and he shipped you off…  Did you ever see any
of them?”
                The elf didn’t quite understand what Kiersten was driving at. 
“No… Why?”
                She stared downwards, at her hands.  “At the docks, you hear
all kinds of things,” she said, as if it had nothing to do with the
conversation at hand.  “Servants on errands gossip there, and rumors are like
wind.”  She swallowed.  “Mieta…  I don’t think you would be alive had Leto not
won.”
                Mieta felt suddenly cold.  “Kiersten…”
                The other woman looked at her.  “A servant told one of my
father’s men… about the bodies.  They had to pile them into a cart, they said,
and they were burned, their ashes buried in a mass grave outside the compound.”
                The elf shook her head, refusing to believe what she had
heard.  “No… there were children…”
                Kiersten’s eyes watered.  “The servant mentioned the children
especially.  He said that they were all naked and bloodied.”
                Mieta licked her suddenly dry lips.  She couldn’t make sense of
it.  All those people… dead?  For some silly ritual?  Nothing could be worth
that.  “No…”  She thought of all their faces, their names.  She had
thought—miserable and in slavery, certainly.  But… this?  It was all the worse
that it had been years ago, and she had been ignorant all this time.
                Kiersten sat beside her as Mieta grieved without tears, and
silently.  She would mourn later, she decided.  “Thank you for telling me,”
Mieta finished.
                Kiersten nodded.  “Thank you for telling me the truth of my
knight’s death.  It is good to know he died for a noble cause.”
                And it is good to know that so many others died without even
good cause. But she would rather not live in ignorance of it any longer.  All
those people deserved more than that.  They deserved names, and someone to
remember them.  They deserved so much more than death and a cramped hole in the
ground.
 
                 Hadriana wasted no time once they arrived at the vineyard. 
She had once asked if the estate had a name and any kind of heritage.  He had
only replied that it was an old family estate, and called “Vinewood,” for the
forest as well as the grove.
                The servants were surprised at her arrival, but were quick to
see to their accommodations.  She had half a mind to send Fenris with the other
slaves, but decided servant quarters would do.  Her master didn’t want him
getting to know anyone—he wanted to keep him isolated--and a private room kept
him more secluded.
                She inspected the grounds thoroughly, and lightly questioned
the overseers, feigning nothing more than a surprise inspection.  The guards
had not been told why they were coming here, so she had nothing to fear of them
letting slip the real reason for their visit.
                Hadriana was tireless in her pursuit of the crime, and was
always watching, prowling.  She had two assistants who met her at the estate a
day after her arrival, who were to assist her in her search.  One of them
decided that the servant quarters needed a thorough “cleaning”—and gave them
but a few minutes’ notice before he oversaw the work being done.  Of course, it
was the slaves he used to clean them out, not the servants themselves.  No,
they were sent about their usual duties.  Some evidence was turned up—a small
stash of coin none of them could have possibly obtained except through ill-
gotten means.  The steward stammered and stuttered when presented with the idea
that one of the hired help had been thieving.  But it could simply be a
savings.  The purse was taken as evidence, for the moment.  Not an hour later
was further evidence found—a wax seal from one of the bottles.
                Hadriana felt that her work was nearly done, but still they
searched, just in case.  Justice was delivered; the penalty for theft was the
loss of a hand.  She had the man escorted to a block outside, ordinarily used
for chopping wood.  He babbled the entire way there, and continued babbling
when someone stoked a fire, to heat steel to seal the wound that would be
made.  It pleased her to have Fenris do the deed.  A slave to cow a servant.
                “Are you right-handed?” she asked the babbling thief.
                He stammered.  “I…  Y-yes, mesere,” he burbled.
                She nodded.  “Let it be said that I am not unjust.  The left
hand,” she said to Fenris with a curt nod.  He had a sharpened axe, the sort
used for cutting wood, but this would do.
                The man had to be held still by two guards, and still he begged
and screamed.  He squealed like a pig when the axe came down, and shrieked anew
when they burned it shut.  The hand lay on the ground.  Hadriana had it nailed
to a post by the brewery, so all may witness the justice.
                She promised a lesser punishment if the conspirators came
forward.  She promised a small finger, no more, if they confessed and repented
their deed, but for every day they did not come forward, another finger.
                The man could have given away his conspirators, but he hadn’t
really believed that they would cut off his hand until the axe fell.  Men were
like that, the lot of them; they thought themselves invincible.  It pleased
Hadriana to show them otherwise.
                She took a glass of wine in the solar, and summoned the slave
to pour her a second.  She looked at him over the rim of the glass.  “Danarius
had you bring a serving outfit, I trust?” she asked him.
                The slave hated those; it showed in the way he moved in
them—self-conscious and awkward.  He only really looked truly confident when a
weapon was in his hands though.  He seemed reluctant to answer, but did, “Yes,
mesere.”
                Just in case, she thought.  “Good.  We’re having company
tonight, so go clean yourself up and put it on.”  She didn’t finish the second
glass.  There would be plenty enough tonight, when her master’s daughter
arrived.
 
                Mieta had been working for most of the night, to catch up on an
order.  It had been slow lately, and there was reason for it.  Reason she would
rather not give.
                It only worried her daughter, and the owner of the shop was
always kind enough to send her home if she were feeling ill, but they were
running behind, and she had to catch up, so she stayed, and she worked by the
light of the lantern.
                Her back ached from being hunched over with her needle, her
neck felt cramped.  She straightened, and stretched for a moment, and bent back
over her work.  I’ll just finish this, then I’ll go home—get a bit of sleep.
               She told herself that, but the work did not go as quickly as it
had when she was younger.  Her hands were shaking, and it was so hard to get
her stitches straight.  Sometimes, it looked like all the colours were blurring
together.
                She blinked, then held her eyes closed for a moment, trying to
focus.  She was so tired, but she was almost finished.
                There was a knock at the door—a soft rapping.  It could only be
either the owner—unlikely, as she had a key—or perhaps Lura or Varania.
                She set her work aside, and walked to the door, surprised at
how good it felt to stretch her legs.  She peered outside cautiously from a
slit in the shuttered window, then opened the door wide, stepping aside for
Lura.
                The girl smiled warmly at her.  She carried a basket.  “I
brought you some soup…  You didn’t come home for dinner,” she explained,
stepping inside.  She wiped her feet on the matt, and went to an empty table. 
Mieta shut and locked the door behind her.
                Mieta smiled.  “You’re the daughter I never had,” she said. 
                Lura looked back at her, and echoed a sadder version of the
smile.  Daughter-in-law.  What should have been but wasn’t.  “You’ve been like
a mother to me since my own passed away,” she told her instead.  “Passed
away”—that was quite mild a term.
                They left out that Mieta had been separated from the child for
over a decade, and simply resumed the role of parent when they were reunited
again.  “And treat you like an adult?” Mieta teased.  “Never.”  Lura laughed
good-naturedly, opening the little basket.  She had a small tin, which she set
out, a flask, bread, and cheese.  Mieta sat down, surprised at how hungry she
was.  Lura sat across from her.  “You would have made a good wife, Lura.”
                The girl only smiled.  She hides behind her smiles—they are a
disguise she dons.  “Unlikely.  I never would give my husband’s parents any
grandchildren.”  Her words were light and meant with humor, yet there was a
tinge of sadness to them. 
                “That’s not all that being a wife means.”
                Lura laughed, clapping her hands together.  “Oh, yes—cooking
and cleaning.  I like cooking, but you know I do a half-assed job cleaning at
best; I always have to go over things again.  When it’s wet, it just looks
clean to me.”  She shrugged.  “I think I do all right with Shai, but I couldn’t
possibly run a household.”
                And there it was again—intentionally missing what Mieta was
telling her.  She opened the tin, surprised to find it still warm.  “I would
have wanted you to marry my son.”
                Lura smiled again.  “If he’d have me.”
                “I wasn’t going to give him a choice,” Mieta said amiably,
lifting her spoon.  “But he’d have you anyway.”  She had seen the way they
looked at each other.  She wished…  But she would never see Leto again, and
that… that was heartbreaking for a mother.
                Some of her thoughts must have shown, for Lura touched her arm
gently.  “I’m sorry, Mieta.”
                Mieta swallowed, and stared into the soup.  How long had it
been since she had seen her firstborn?  About four years.  She missed him so
much.  So did Varania, and Lura.  Shaislyn would have liked him, admired him. 
The boy needed a man around the house.  Speaking of which…  She looked up, as
if all her sorrows were forgotten.  “I’ve been so busy lately.  Is Varania
still seeing that boy?”
                Lura chuckled.  “He’s a man grown now, you know.  And yes—I
think it’s getting serious, dare I say.”  She leaned forward, eager to spill
the juicy gossip.  “He comes over quite often.  Shai is fond of him too.”  She
considered.  “I walked in on them kissing once.  You should have seen Varania
blush.”
                Mieta’s lips curved into a small smile at the news.  She was
happy for her daughter.  Varania deserved some joy in her life, after so much
sorrow and heartache.  “If they were to marry, I would support it,” Mieta
confided in Lura.  “If she talks about it, you may tell her I said so.”
                The young woman nodded.  “Yes, I shall.  Now--you eat, and
don’t let me distract you.”
                Mieta started into the soup, and used the bread to mop the
broth.  She knew it was Lura’s cooking after the first few spoonfuls.  Varania
was fair at cooking, but she had a tendency to become impatient.  Sometimes,
she would use magic to cook things, and it always tasted funny if she did it. 
She swallowed another bite, and opened her mouth to compliment her on her
choice of spices, then her vision began to dim.  She seemed to go deaf, but she
was aware of Lura saying something.  She looked concerned.  Everything was
going hazy—dark around the edges.  Pain lanced through her, and she was aware
of sliding downwards before everything went black.
                When Mieta woke again, Lura was kneeling beside her.  Varania
was there as well, looking as if she had run there from bed.  Blue healing
light was spilling from her hands, her brow creased in concentration.
                Varania’s hands fell away, and the girl looked exhausted. 
Mieta looked at the two.  Her lips felt dry.  “Water,” she croaked.  Lura
snatched the flask from the table, and helped her to sit up and drink from it. 
It was cider instead of water, but it was good all the same.  Though she
protested, Varania cleaned up the shop, and put the basket together again. 
Lura and her daughter took her home, and put her to bed.
 
                Annalkylie hadn’t seen Vinewood Manor since she was five years
old.  It hadn’t seemed to have changed a bit in the past three years, but she
certainly had.
                She was blossoming into a young woman—and the woman she was
becoming was nothing but dismay to her parents.  She never outgrew her love of
adventure.  She never outgrew her love of the unknown and wanting to learn.
                Unfortunately, everything she wanted to learn was severely
frowned upon.  She had bullied the cooks into teaching her to cook.  She had
enjoyed that, until her father found out about it, and he put a stop to it
immediately.  It was improper for a highborn lady, he had said, to chop turnips
like some farmer.  So, put out but undaunted, she sought out her brother and
the master at arms, and wouldn’t leave them alone until they conceded to give
her fencing lessons.  Her lady mother put an abrupt halt to that nonsense,
though, and Kylie had cried.
                She had tried the lance, too—a light one her brother gave to
her, and he started giving her jousting lessons, but her parents made her stop
that too, and Agasius was chastised thoroughly for his part.  So, she had
sought out a stable boy who knew how to juggle, and she convinced him to show
her.  She could barely juggle two oranges, though, before they made her stop
that too.
                Everything fun in the world was forbidden.
                Oh, they allowed her to go riding, and hawking sometimes—she
had a fine falcon and a beautiful black gelding.  But she couldn’t care less if
her stitches were crooked, or if her dress was soiled.
                Which was why she was being shipped off like so much baggage to
Minrathous, she assumed.
                She was courtly and ladylike when she met Hadriana again, and
the apprentice complimented her on how she was growing into a lady.  Kylie
smiled and did all the pleasantries she had been forced to learn.  But she
stole away from the meal as soon as she was able, leaving Agasius to tend with
Hadriana.
                Kylie crept out on to the balcony, looking out over the
vineyard.  She was watching two slave children chase each other about the yard
by the compound.  How they found the energy for it, after the work they had to
do, she didn’t know.  She disliked slavery, she had found when she was old
enough to understand the concept.  She couldn’t look into a person’s eyes and
send them into a field in chains.  Agasius only told her that she had a woman’s
heart, and at the time, had teased her about it until she hit him, then he
teased her some more.
                She looked at the children only a few years younger than
herself, and wondered what it would be like to have no past and no future.  All
the world, nothing but the present.  Her future loomed over her like a thing
alive ready to devour her.  She had heard talk of marrying her off to some
highborn man, likely twice her age, by the time she was ready for marriage. 
She made a pretty prize, after all.  For a peasant like Hadriana had been,
being born a mage might be elevating.  But not for Kylie, she had found.  True,
she would be married off to some pompous buffoon even if she were not a mage,
but being able to zap people with lightning bolts meant she was a rarer course,
best served selectively.
                But not until she had flowered, she reminded herself.  She
prayed it was years off—but who knew?  If her sisters were anything to go by,
she had a couple of years at least.  Maybe longer, if she were very fortunate.
                Tomorrow, maybe she could ride her horse, and take her falcon
out to hunt by the lake.  She remembered getting lost in those woods as a
child, and smiled at the idea of how foolish she had been.  Five years old
seemed so young to an eight-almost-nine old, three years a lifetime away.
                “My lady!” a servant cried.  “There you are—come inside. 
You’ll catch your death of cold.”  And, just like that, what little freedom
Kylie had managed to grasp on the balcony was whisked away, by a servant no
less!
                She was ushered into a parlor room, where Agasius and Hadriana
sat in cushioned chairs, sipping wine from tall glasses.  Kylie only sighed. 
Agasius smiled encouragingly to her.  “Sister, come sit.  Have a glass.”
                She made a face.  “Strawberry cordial, if you please,” she told
the servant, taking her seat.  And her brother and the apprentice made to
include her in their talk, but her answers were curt and did not prompt much
conversation, so the two quickly sought to fill in the voids she left behind. 
Soon, she was simply an ornament in the room, forced to be there.  She could
pretend that she was tired, she supposed, and send herself to bed.  Perhaps she
could stay up and read for a while—that would be pleasant enough.
                Hadriana seemed to be drinking a lot, she noticed.  Her mother
did that when she was stressed about something.  Perhaps Hadriana had cause to
be a bit stressed.
                Kylie’s eyes roved about the room.  Fenris stood off to the
side, she saw, just as ornamental as she.  She frowned.  Perhaps more so.  He
was wearing nothing from the waist up, and the silken sarong swept to his
ankles and was not sheer, but it was open at the sides, revealing his legs.  A
thin golden chain was all that connected the two strips of fabrics at the
sides.  There was nothing underneath it—that was plain enough.  His hair was
braided so tightly that it gave the illusion of it being short from this
angle.  He had jewelry too—more thin bits of gold; a gold collar, a gold snake
curled around his arm and another at the opposite ankle.  And of course, his
skin was oiled so it glistened prettily in the firelight.  She had seen her own
father’s slaves in less, and more.  But none of them were so heavily tattooed.
                She remembered him from her earlier childhood, and how he had
seemed so big and strong when he carried her through the forest—that memory
made seeing him like this seem silly.  So gentle when he dabbed mud on her, to
help with the bee stings—something that had never been required of him, but he
had done it anyway—which told her that somewhere in him, there was a sort of
kindness that was normally eclipsed by the deeds and will of his master.  He
had gotten older, she reflected.  Everyone had, and changed with time.  Agasius
would be married soon—in the summer, as a matter of fact, and his twin would
follow that path in the fall.
                Kylie only wondered who her parents would choose for her own
husband, but it just didn’t bear troubling herself over.  Whoever it was, she
just hoped he had land, hawks, and horses.  It was the only real pleasure she
was allowed in life, after all.
 
                Agasius and his sister retired.  More specifically, Annalkylie
was yawning—likely more with boredom than sleepiness—and Agasius took his leave
to escort her to her quarters.  Hadriana had said that a servant could do that
just as easily, and he had laughed and said, “My lady, you do not know my
sister.”
                So she finished off her glass, and made to stand, but the
ground tilted and tottered, and she fell, catching herself on the low table,
and knocking something off of it.  She scarcely noticed, and stumbled toward
the door.  She may be drunk, she reflected.
                She fell again, but someone caught her.  She looked up to see
Fenris lift her, and settle her back on her feet.  She pushed away from him,
but fell again.  Again, he caught her—dutiful as ever.
                It annoyed her.
                But it became plain that she would not make it to her quarters
unassisted.  She hated it, but swung an arm around his shoulders, and the elf
walked with her to her room.
                As she walked, her drunken mind wandered, thinking of many
things, but mostly Agasius.  He had avoided her, she knew.  He had rejected
her.  She was drunk enough to be easily taken advantage of, should he but move
first, and she would even be willing; he was quite comely with his soft brown
curls and broad shoulders.  But he was betrothed, and entirely too courtly for
such things, it would seem.  She had made it quite clear that she was willing,
as much as was possible with his sister in the room anyway.
                It dampened her mood, and lent a sour taste to her mouth.
                She fumbled, and almost made Fenris trip.  It was her
clumsiness, but she glared at him all the same.  Or, rather, tried to glare at
him.  The world was spinning quite a bit.  He has pretty eyes, even if they’re
as alien as any elves’, she thought before she looked back at the carpet.  One
foot in front of the other…
                All elves had pretty eyes.  And pretty faces.  Pretty hair, and
pretty skin.  It was why her ancestors had taken such delight in enslaving
them.  Jealousy inspires nothing but hatred.
                They came to her quarters.  He fumbled with the door; she was
too drunk for it.  He helped her through, and she almost fell again.  He lifted
her back to her feet, and brought her to her bed.  The dutiful slave set her
down on the big featherbed, and saw to a number of tasks she was too drunk to
fully comprehend.  Namely, tending the fire, fetching water, and closing the
windows to keep out the draft.
                She caught his arm as he walked by, and looked up at him.  He
stared down at her, those pretty sage eyes a mystery to her.  “I…” she began. 
“Don’t…”
                He remained aloof.  “Mesere, you’ve drank too much.”
                She sat up with some effort, but kept an iron grip on his arm. 
“I mean it,” she whispered, and stared up at him.  Don’t make me beg.  “Won’t
you stay with me tonight?  It’s cold.”
                He stared at her for what felt like a long time.  “The fire
will warm the room, Hadriana.”
                She wanted to become angry, but somehow couldn’t manage it.  “I
could order you,” she threatened him, and felt her eyes brim with tears.  She
had been rejected by Agasius, and now a slave too.  Everyone rejected her,
abused her, mocked her.  “I could force you to stay.”
                He only looked at her, his eyes full of pity, and she hated him
for it.  “Hadriana, you can’t force me to want you.”
                She ground her teeth.  “You’re a man.  Don’t you want to be
with a woman?” she demanded, and her tears spilled from her eyes unbidden.  “Am
I not pretty enough?  Not as pretty as an elf?  Is that it?”
                Her grip had slackened, and he gently pried her fingers off of
his arm.  “Danarius has forbidden that to me,” he reminded her, and moved to
snuff out the candles.  It didn’t matter to him if he wanted to have sex or
not, she realized with disgust; his master had forbidden it to him, and he
obeyed.
                She watched him.  “I’m his apprentice.”
                “He is my master,” he answered.
                Hadriana stared at him.  The room grew dimmer.  “No one ever
needs to know.”
                “I don’t want you,” he said, as gently, as tenderly, as softly
as he could manage.
                The tears spilled anew.  Rejection hurt more than she felt she
could bear.  Why was he doing this to her?  A thousand things came into her
mind in that moment.  She could plead with him, but she knew she could not
order him.  She wanted to spurn him then, to chastise him, torment him, hurt
him.  “Danarius is getting old.  Who do you think will be your master when he
dies?” she demanded.  He lowered his eyes, and did not deign to respond.  “Stay
with me—now—and I’ll give you anything you want later.  Anything.”
                He looked her in the eyes then, for the first time that she
could recall.  It was bold for slave, and insolent, but she was too drunk to
realize it.  “I want nothing,” he answered.
                She stared at him in open shock.  “Nothing?” she demanded. 
“Gold?  Jewels?”  She paused.  “Freedom?”
                “Nothing,” he assured her, and left her alone in the room, with
nothing but her thoughts for company.
                Nothing.
 
                Even if he had wanted Hadriana—and he didn’t—he wouldn’t have. 
He had been explicitly forbidden that.  When his master wanted him… bred… he
would tell him, no sooner.  That had been made quite clear to him.
                It was difficult to sleep.  He tossed and turned on the itchy
straw-stuffed mattress, and sighed to himself.  He wanted something to
drink—liquor or wine or something.  He hadn’t slept well in days.  He still had
the randomly selected pain suppressants, but they didn’t dull it enough.  And
then Hadriana…  A surge of emotion made the lyrium flare instantly to life.  If
only she had known how tempting that really had been.  How… enjoyable it would
be to dominate her—even for a few minutes, an hour.  Even if they never spoke
of it—even if she didn’t even remember it afterward—it would be… pleasing.  And
even so, well, he was a young man.  He regained a sense of calm with effort,
and the light faded away, leaving behind a raw ache in its wake.
                Fenris lay alone on the straw-stuffed cot and thought about
Perya.
                A year ago, his master hadn’t even considered such things.  He
had kept Fenris too busy to think about sex.  But, like it or no, Fenris was
still a young twenty-something, and couldn’t help but be distracted by a
woman’s skirt, even momentarily.
                Danarius had threatened to have him gelded.  It hadn’t even
been…  Nothing had happened.  Nothing.
                Perya was a slave at the mansion in the city—had been anyway. 
She was petite, even by elven standards, and the top of her head barely came up
to his shoulder—on tip-toe.  She was so tiny that he imagined he could carry
her one-handed without even noticing the weight.  Her hair was the color of
freshly tilled soil, and her eyes a soft golden hue, flecked with green upon
inspection.
                He had first met her when she had been struggling to lift a
simple bucket of water.  He had carried it for her, and she had giggled and
said that he was very strong.  It had made him want to blush, considering how
frail and weak he had been when first he had woken, three years ago at the
time.
                She served wine at table, and he saw her dressed in a serving
outfit a few days later.  He had to look away from her, lest he become aroused
and humiliate himself, and she seemed unaware of it completely.  He had lain
awake that night and been nearly mad thinking about the way her shoulders had
been bare, how the fabric swept over her hips and exposed her slender belly.
                He had finally succumbed to the urge to touch himself, and
thought about the maddeningly flimsy piece of cloth that composed her outfit,
her taught nipples showing under the fine fabric.  It had been chilly in the
hall…  She had such a slender waist that he could have covered it with a hand.
                He had woke thinking about her, and erect.  He saw her again a
week later, when his master sent him on an errand to the kitchen, and she was
cutting vegetables.  He had stared at her for what must have been an
uncomfortably long amount of time, before he realized it, and delivered his
message to the head cook, but she slipped out the door, to the yard, and he
found himself following her.  She had gone to get water from the well, and was
hauling the crank.  He did it for her, and she had smiled, and finally gave him
her name.
                They saw each other a rare handful of times later—exchanging
nothing more than furtive glances and half smiles.
                Someone took notice.
                Danarius had backhanded Fenris hard enough to knock him
backwards, his ring slicing open his cheek.  Blood had ran down his face while
his master threatened to geld him to keep him in his place, if that was “what
it took” he had said.  “You’ll be with a woman when I want you bred, and no
sooner—if that ever happens at all,” he had hissed to him, closing the distance
between them.  “I’ll choose her, and I’ll give her to you, but you are mine.” 
And his hand had clenched around the bulge between his legs, until Fenris cried
out in pain.  “Every.”  Tighter.  “Single.”  Tighter.  His eyes watered.  He
couldn’t breathe past the pain.  “Part.”  Sweat beaded on his forehead.  He
made a small, pained noise.  “Of you.”  He released him, and Fenris crumpled to
the carpet.  His master turned from him, and let him writhe in pain, before
looking back at him.  “Get up.  Go fetch your little Perya.  Bring her to me.”
                Fenris had no idea what he meant to do, but he scrambled to his
feet, and rushed to obey, but would rather be writhing in a ball of agony on
the floor—he stumbled and couldn’t stand fully erect at first.  He found Perya
in the slave compound, already bedded down for the night, and he was loathe to
make her dress and come with him.  He told her what he had been bidden to do,
and expressed a bit of his puzzlement.  Perya, though, seemed to know, and she
went deathly silent, and remained that way all the way there.  She wouldn’t
even tell him of her enlightenment.
                Danarius was waiting.  The magister barely said a word.  He
inspected Perya, and told her to take off her clothes, and only then did Fenris
understand.  His mouth had run dry.  His heart slowed.  The world seemed dim.
 He felt a fool for not having put it together. 
                Perya removed her clothes, and Fenris couldn’t help but look at
her, and want her, and that, more than anything, felt wicked just then. 
Danarius inspected her the way a butcher inspected a choice cut of meat, before
he nodded in seeming approval.
                “You don’t have bad taste, pet,” he commented, a butcher
complimenting the farmer on how well he breeds cows for the slaughter.  “Girl,
undress me.”  Wordless and deadened, Perya obeyed, removing his garments,
folding everything neatly, never looking directly at him.  Fenris watched in
mute horror.  Perya stepped away when it was done, hands clasped tightly in
front of her, staring downwards at her feet.  “Fenris, come here.”  The elf had
flinched, but obeyed, and was not surprised when his master forced him to his
knees, and gave him his instructions.  The humiliation was bad enough, knowing
that Perya was watching him take the mage in his mouth.  He felt him harden in
his mouth.  Danarius’ hand caressed the side of his face as he did it, touching
his hair, his throat.  His thumb ran lightly over his eyelashes, and he spoke
gently when he rubbed the back of his throat.
                “Enough, pet,” he said.  Fenris stopped, pulling away, and too
ashamed to glance back at Perya.  He wondered to himself if it made it that
much worse that he had… assisted in this.  “You.”  His master was addressing
the girl.  “Get on the bed.”  She made a squeaking sound, but obeyed.  Danarius
ordered Fenris to the other side of the room, back to the wall, and he closed
his eyes against the sight of his master raping Perya.  The girl was brave, not
to cry, or scream, or beg.
                He heard it.  All of it.  The sound of the bed creaking, skin
slapping against skin, the wet sound of him pumping into her.  Her occasional
yelp or gasp of pain, his master’s heavy breathing.  And then the mage started
hitting her, biting her—it sounded like, and she began to sob.  Fenris’ fingers
clenched into angry fists, and still he stood vigilant, and obedient.  Even
through his closed eyes, he could see the evidence of his rage in the way the
lyrium had begun to glow.  If he had wanted to kill his master, there had never
been a more perfect or just moment.  But he had stood idly by, the thought
never even occurring to him.  And it still didn’t occur to him, a year later.
                After it was done, Danarius all but tossed Perya out, and
commanded Fenris to walk with her back to the compound, but he did not give her
back her dress.  He had said, snidely, “If you still want her, take her.  With
my blessing.”
                Fenris had peeled off his tunic, and put it around her
shoulders.  She was beaten, bloody, and bruised, and his seed was running down
her legs.  He took her to the well, and tried to help clean her up when she
stumbled and fell, shaking to the ground.  Perya glared at him when he came
near, fixing him with a cold, hateful stare until he backed away.  He stayed a
short distance away from her from then on, but walked her back to the compound
all the same.
                “Perya,” he said, and she turned to him, her face a blank
mask.  He closed the short distance between them.  His eyes were full of
sorrow, his heart heavy in his breast.  “I’m so sorry.  I…”  Her fist flew. 
She may have forgiven him, in time, but for that he caught her fist in his
hand, automatic and without thinking about it.  She had glared at him with such
hatred that he stepped away from her, taken aback, letting go of her wrist. 
She had turned and fled.  He found the tunic outside his door the next evening,
neatly folded.
                Perya had disappeared within the week.  Little over a month
later, he had learned that his master had simply moved her to one of his whore
houses, insisting that she belonged there now.  The magister had laughed at
this, and Fenris had only thought, It’s my fault.
                Thinking about Perya still made him feel sick somehow.  He had
never even looked at another woman after that.  And, when he started to think
of those things again, he only remembered the sounds of his master raping the
girl, and he lost all taste for it.  The rape might as well have happened to
him.  I wish it had, he thought.  I wish I had begged him to do what he did to
her to me instead.  At least then…
                He almost laughed.  Even if he had stayed with Hadriana that
night, he doubted he’d be able to perform.  Perya was all he could think about,
when it came down to it.  It was better not to think about it at all.
 
                Hadriana decided to treat the entire incident as if it had
never occurred.  She barely remembered any of it anyway, so pretending she
didn’t remember was not a far cry.  It felt like some kind of horrible dream
where some puppeteer had seized control of her body and made her say things she
did not want or intend.
                Agasius was entirely too gracious to mention it, and Fenris
entirely too subservient to mention it.  Unless she asked him, and she wasn’t
about to ask either of them.
                The incident threatened to utterly consume Hadriana’s thoughts,
but the threat was kept at bay by her own work; finding the rest of the
conspirators.  Or had she been going about this the wrong way from the start? 
She smiled to herself.  No, she knew now what Danarius had really intended for
her to do.  The question, of course was, was she ready?  And, did she know
enough?
                But she held her head high, lips pressed together in something
akin to a smile as she locked the shackles around Fenris’ wrists herself.  She
didn’t trust him to stay still on his own while she did this.  So he knelt on
his knees, head down, naked to the waist, his wrists above his head hanging in
the iron shackles.  The air was cold down here, but would be heated comfortably
soon with the warmth from the brazier.  His breath fogged the air.
                She lifted one of the thin, razor-sharp knives from the table,
bringing it into a comfortable grip in her hand.  Fenris did not look up.
                They were alone down here, and if he screamed, no one would
hear him but Hadriana.
                She wanted to say something like “you should have stayed with
me last night” or something.  She wanted to, but couldn’t quite bring herself
to.  Her face burned just to think about it.  The light blade flipped upwards,
her heart hammering.  This was the first time she had done this without
Danarius there to guide her, but she knew, without doubt, this was the reason
that he had sent Fenris, and this was the reason he had sent her instead of
just having an ordinary servant handle the matter.  When Fenris was used as a
blood sacrifice, his blood and the lyrium both made blood magic so much
stronger that she was quite confident in her ability.  The elf was useful, she
would give him that.
                The first mind she had plunged into had actually been Fenris’,
and she knew the elf did not thank her for it.  It had been before she had
learned to conceal her presence, and he had felt her rifling through his mind
like another consciousness beside his own, seeing whatever she saw and
powerless to make her stop.  Not that he had much to hide, but that wasn’t
really the point.  Rather, she had seen his thoughts on the matter—and it had
been worse than rape, akin to a violation of a holy place.  You always thought
you were safe inside your own mind, she supposed, and discovering that you were
not…  Well…  But it hadn’t been the first time Fenris’ mind had been violated
by a mage, Danarius had told her with a small smirk.  Fenris had only stared
blankly ahead, like a man who had lost everything.  But he had never had
anything to lose, had he?
                The magisters controlled their subjects by policing their
thoughts, and while the house slept, she worked.
                She sliced along his bicep, a thin, shallow cut that would
bleed a lot but was otherwise superficial.  He flinched, but did not move
otherwise.  Her other hand touched the blood, her eyelids fluttering.
               
                She had found them.  Every last conspirator, every last servant
harboring ill will.  Some were simply fired, but one more needed proper
punishment.  Fenris stood nearby, and she could smell the medicines on him, see
his bandaged arms.  One cut for every mind she had sorted through; his arms
were covered in cuts, and she had eventually cut his shoulders, his chest, and
would have cut into his back too, except that she was finished by then.  He had
been shaking, from fear, the cold or a simple loss of blood, she couldn’t tell,
and didn’t care.
                “For not coming forward yourself, you will lose one hand, and
one eye,” she said pleasantly to the conspirator.  “I will allow you to choose
which.”
                The woman was pale.  “I…  You said we would but lose a finger…”
                Hadriana kept her smile pleasant.  “If you came forward of your
own volition.  Now, please choose which one, and do so quickly.  To the block,”
she ordered, and led the march to the yard.  The woman begged and pleaded the
entire way there.
                Ah, the benefit of acting with her master’s authority.
                A hand was chopped—Fenris did that again—and someone nailed it
to another post beside the other rotting hand.  The eye was another story,
though.  The woman did not even make her selection, so Hadriana had Fenris hold
her still—and she seemed more terrified of the elf coming so near to her than
almost anything else.  Hadriana stepped close, fire dancing around her palm. 
With her other hand, she forced the woman’s left eye open, and poured the fire
into it.
                When it was done, it was only a few hours until the last
conspirator came forward.  He was rewarded for coming forward, and lost but
four fingers of his choosing.  When all was set to rights again, Hadriana began
preparations to head back to Minrathous.
Chapter End Notes
     The title of this chapter seemed really obvious to me when I was
     editing it; there are so many points where something goes sour and
     dark, something beautiful turning quickly into something ugly.
     Also, Perya: If I were Fenris, I don't think I'd want to have sex
     either after that. Ever.
     And, I listen to Muse and Nightwish a lot while I'm writing this.
     Does it show?
***** Dreams Without Desire *****
Chapter Summary
     The cancerous illness infecting Mieta spreads and she takes a turn
     for the worse. In Minrathous, Fenris is badly injured protecting
     Danarius.
                Varania looked at Lura, tears welling in her eyes.  “I can’t
keep doing this,” she confided in the older woman.  Lura looked toward the
door.  Beyond it, Mieta lay abed.  Shaislyn was sitting with her.  Neither of
them were sure if that was a good idea or not, for the boy’s sake.  Was it
worse or better that he saw his grandmother dying, that he spent some time with
her in her last moments? 
                Lura knew little enough about magic; she was no mage.  She
didn’t understand exactly why Varania could not cure this, but she wasn’t
ignorant enough to accuse her of giving up on her mother, or of being selfish
about her magical abilities.  She had seen how hard Varania had tried to keep
her alive.  “She needs a real healer.  I’m not a good healer,” she insisted.
                Lura’s gaze shifted back to the redhead.  “I know.  You’ve done
your best.”  She sat down, thinking hard.  They had spent most of their savings
on medicines for Mieta.  The medicines had helped for a while, but she had
relapsed, and neither the medicines nor Varania’s magical talents were
working.  Varania said that Mieta needed a healer—a mage who specialized in
such magic.  But they couldn’t afford one.  Even before they had bought the
medicine, they could not have afforded one.  But they could go to the healer,
and get something for the pain at least.  It was all they could do now.  Lura
knew that, deep down, but she was reluctant to say so aloud.  She stood up. 
“I’ll be back.”
                The mage woman stared at her, incredulous.  “You’re leaving? 
Now?”
                The other looked back at her.  “I won’t be gone long.”
                Varania’s jaw set, angry, but said nothing as Lura took her
leave.  The woman hurried through the alienage, past the gates.  She was
grateful that they were open.  Sometimes, they were closed, and then what could
she have done?  Climb it, she thought determinedly.  She had done it before.
                She headed to the market district.  It was possible to get what
she needed in the alienage, but she couldn’t guarantee its quality.  An elven
woman outside the alienage was often the victim of abuse, but she wrapped her
head and hair in a scarf, and prayed no one looked too closely at her face. 
The trick had worked on numerous occasions before, after all.  She avoided
large crowds, and kept her head down.  Someone bumped into her, and she skirted
quickly around them, apologizing as if it had been her fault—something she had
learned since coming here.  As a slave or Liberati, she was to treat everyone
else as her superior.  But they were human—of course they were superior.
                Taller, stronger of body, more populous.  Stronger of stomach,
too; elves had sensitive stomachs.  Humans bred more quickly.  Why, a couple of
humans could breed a dozen children.  Elves were fortunate to have three in
their lifetime—and they had to work at it.
                Lura found herself thinking of Mieta—how could she not?  The
woman lay dying in her bed in that sewer called the alienage.  Lura wouldn’t
want to die there.  Perhaps they should carry her somewhere—just outside the
city walls perhaps, but let her die somewhere else.  Anywhere else.
                She wished that Mieta had dated again.  She wished that the
woman had at least been with another man, but Lura didn’t think she had since
her husband had died, and that had been almost twenty years ago.  That seemed
so sad to her.  Who am I to talk?
                She just hadn’t met anyone else yet, she decided.  But she was
young, and she didn’t care anyway.  And besides, she was in no rush to start
kissing and fucking again.  She had had enough of that in her life.
                But Mieta…  She hadn’t had a man hold her in twenty years.  Had
she loved her husband so much?  Lura thought that she should cry if she
continued to think on it.  Or, perhaps…  She didn’t want to think on it, but
the thoughts came against her will, as thoughts are wont to do:  Perhaps Mieta
had been forced to undergo the “breeding process” so many of their kind were
put through.  True, she had borne no more children past Varania, but that meant
little.  She pushed the dark thought from her mind with an effort.  It wasn’t
necessarily true, and she hated to think that kind-hearted Mieta would ever
have to endure something like that.
                Varania had been trying to have a Soporati family sponsor her
in her magical pursuits, but so far, nothing was to show for it, owed not as
much to her being an elf as to her being Liberati.  It was also difficult for
her to apprentice under another mage for very long if at all, because
everything in the Tevinter Circles was about politics, and it didn’t matter how
skilled she was, she had used to be a slave and that social stigma followed the
girl everywhere.
                Lura made her business in the market brisk.  She got the best
thing she could afford for the pain, and clutched the little package close to
herself as she hurried back to the sanctity of the alienage.
                Back in the hovel they called a home—nothing compared to her
half-remembered childhood in Schavalis—Varania sat beside her mother, holding
her hand.  Shaislyn sat beside her, looking solemn, which was a facial
expression that made him look more elven than human—his mother and Lura both
agreed to themselves.
                Mieta recognized Lura this time.  Sometimes, she didn’t.  She
had even called Lura by her mother’s name once.  Perhaps Lura looked like her;
she could not remember her mother’s face any longer.  Sometimes the woman was
delirious.  She would ask about Leto frequently, and no one could tell her
anything, except to remind her of why they could not, of why she could not see
her firstborn son.  And she would always go quiet for a moment, and say, “Oh. 
I remember now.”  And she would pause before she apologized, only to forget
again in the future.
                Varania helped Lura mix the tea, and helped Mieta to drink it. 
The woman made a face at the bitter taste, but drank all of it, and drifted
into a fitful sleep.  Lura excused herself from the room, and washed the
dishes.  She tidied the house and when that was done, she left for work early. 
She did all she could to avoid that room of death.
 
                Hadriana had expected a highborn young girl like Annalkylie to
ride in the carriage.  She had expected the girl to be more feminine and
dignified.  But she was wearing riding leathers, and had a high-spirited
gelding that she could barely reign in to keep him from running.
                The girl trotted the gelding to the back of their little band,
and moved to the side of the road, and found herself annoyed to see the girl
racing by in the field next to them.  The gelding held its head high, and the
girl barely urged the horse on at all.  She rode well, and took the fence at a
flying leap.  To such a fine horse, it was no more than a hop, and the gelding
was off again, down the road, but not out of sight.
                The horse pranced and tossed its head as she waited for them,
and then apparently grew tired of waiting.  She charged back into the field,
and raced along the fence toward them, and turned the gelding round again.  She
had a grin on her face.
                Hadriana regarded her coolly.  “You’re like to wear your horse
out like that,” she called to her.  A part of her wanted to communicate that
she was probably destroying some poor farmer’s crop too, but Annalkylie was a
highborn girl, and the concept would probably only baffle her.
                The Altus girl laughed and shook her head.  “Oh, not Wind. 
He’d have it no other way.”  She patted the black horse’s neck affectionately. 
The animal was barely sweating, and pranced as she walked him.  The horse
lifted its head again, and the girl laughed, reigning the horse in before he
bolted once more.
                It seemed to be true, even days later.  The horse only relished
the ride, and eagerly raced back and forth along the line, almost all day.  It
wore Annalkylie out before the gelding.  A few days out, the child drove her
horse up beside Fenris, so close their legs almost brushed together, and the
girl was whispering to him.  Hadriana thought snidely, one doesn’t have to
whisper too loudly for an elf to hear; they were all ears.
                Fenris whispered something back to her, and he had a
disapproving scowl on his face, but she only grinned back at him, and said
something else.  Hadriana scowled, wondering what was going on.  “Fenris is
coming with me—we’re going to go ahead up to the lake, and go hawking for a
bit,” she said, swinging off of her gelding, and hopping into the back of the
moving wagon.
                Hadriana’s fingers clenched.  The child didn’t ask, she had
informed her what she was going to do.  “Take a couple of the guards too,”
Hadriana told her.
                Annalkylie reemerged with her falcon on her arm.  She looked
stricken at the thought of more guards.  “Fenris is like three guards,” she
complained.  But Hadriana gave the order, and the guards went with them
anyway.  The carriage and the wagon made for slow going, so the small party was
quickly ahead of them.
                Hadriana actually didn’t mind getting rid of Annalkylie and her
rambunctious habits for a while, and not having Fenris around was nice too come
to think of it.
                They should go ahead like this more often.
 
                Kylie’s falcon had caught a duck, and one of the guards brought
it back for her.  Maybe they weren’t so useless after all.
                “Roast duck would be nice tonight,” Kylie implied.  The
guardsmen had no complaints, and she waited for a while before sending the bird
out again.  Nothing for a while, then she found a rabbit.  She had raised
Willow from a chick, and had lots of help from the household in training her. 
It was one of the few real pleasures she had in life.  She wished she could fly
like Willow could.  It looked so divine, so free, so powerful.  She stepped her
horse away from the guards, as if she were simply trotting about to get a new
view, but Fenris wasn’t so easily fooled.  He wouldn’t be; there was a
difference between a guard and a bodyguard, after all.
                She smirked, and kicked her horse into a running start, because
it would drive her guards batty.  The animal had been itching for a good run
all day, and it flew along the lake’s edge, leaping high over the driftwood,
splashing in the water.  If Kylie closed her eyes, it would feel like she was
flying, Wind’s gait was so smooth.
                Her guards chased after her dutifully, and she just giggled
when she let them catch up.  She brought her gloved arm out, and her falcon
screamed, and dropped down, landing nimbly.  She hooded her again, setting her
on her perch.  Kylie had a healthy respect for those talons and that fierce
beak; the scars on her arms weren’t from kitchen knives, after all.
                The guardsmen guilted and shamed her into going back to the
main party.  She did so, sullenly and with great sulking.
 
                Shaislyn was surprisingly sneaky for a blind—that was what his
grandmother had always said, when she had been well.  He didn’t really know
what it meant to be “blind” exactly.  His mother had tried to describe “seeing”
to him, and he didn’t understand that at all.  It had taken him a long time to
come to terms with the fact that other people were not like he was.  Other
people “saw” things, with their eyes.  Whatever any of that meant.  The most
Shaislyn could tell, as far as “seeing” something went, was if it were dark or
light, and neither mattered much to him.
                He had escaped the house that smelled so strongly of death to
him.  His grandmother lay dying, his mother in mourning and doing all she could
to ease her pain.  All his grandmother spoke of was some unknown son of hers,
and Lura held her hand, and talked to her, even when she didn’t seem to hear
her.
                Shaislyn couldn’t bear it, and had fled, and no one had stopped
him, and the women were all so busy, they scarcely seemed to notice his
absence.
                He had stolen out of the alienage, and went down to the docks. 
He liked the docks, but people often mistook him for a begging boy.  Pity made
some people shove coins into his hands, and when he tried to explain that he
didn’t want it, they just made soft, pitying noises and moved on.  Something
pitiful about a half-elven child with a cane, he supposed.
                He liked the sound of the waves, and the smells of the city,
the spices in the crates, the cries of the gulls, the foreign accents.  He
sidestepped a cart, and a pile of dung with the sort of accuracy that only
baffled his mother and he thought nothing of at all.
                She was always asking Shaislyn how he could know to step out of
the way if he didn’t “see” something coming.  He had always frowned
quizzically, and wondered how others couldn’t hear it, smell it, or sense that
something was near.  He wasn’t perfect at it—he still occasionally put his foot
somewhere he didn’t want to, or bumped into something, but people gave him a
lot of leeway when they saw his eyes.
                Lura had confided in him, privately, that he needed to turn his
head toward people when they spoke to him, because it made it seem like he
wasn’t listening.  He had pouted and raved about it, but eventually conceded
the point.  She told him more than his mother ever did.  Varania always tried
to hide the world from him, but Lura was the one to introduce him to it.  She
was the one who told him to never be ashamed of who he was, because being
ashamed of it meant others could shame him for it.  She told him that his eyes
frightened others, so he may wish to keep his head down when speaking to people
he didn’t know, but still turn toward them or run the risk of offending
others.  It was a delicate balance he had to keep.
                “Shaislyn!” a human girl with a cart of scallops called to
him.  He raised his head, turning toward the direction of the cry.
                “Nora!” he answered, and strode up to her.  She was only a
little older than he was.
                “How do you do that?” she wondered, and made a sound like a
chuckle.  “You can’t go down this way right now.”
                He pouted.  “Why not?”
                She giggled.  “An old fishing ship docked at port.  They’re
cleaning it out.  Trust me, you don’t wanna go down there—the smell is awful.”
                “Thanks for the warning,” he laughed.
                “Sure thing.  Hey, if you’re still here by sunset, I’ll walk
you back to the alienage, all right?” she said with all the ignorance of the
young—she didn’t yet understand why she should regard Shaislyn as being
“different” from herself.
                He nodded agreeably.  “Sure.”  And Nora continued pulling her
cart.  He turned, and went down an alley instead.  Some would say that the
alleys at the docks were dangerous, but Shaislyn had never encountered anything
dangerous at the docks, more than a stray dog.  Some of the whores down here
knew him, and many of the sailors too, and they looked out for him a bit.  A
woman who owned a brothel—one of the nicer ones--had met him when she was
buying spices, and he had told her that she was being cheated on the saffron,
and once she told him that if he wanted to get out of the alienage, she would
take him.  “You’d sleep on silk pillows, and have more jewels than you could
wear,” she told him.  “Men and women alike would pay gold to be with you when
you’re older.”
                He had been gracious, and smiled, and made sure to talk to her
when she came down to the docks.  She smelled like cinnamon, expensive cigars,
and foreign spices, and he always knew her when he passed by her, much to her
continued delight.
                The thing about saffron, he had overheard sailors saying, was
that few people could distinguish its taste, because it was so precious.  So,
it was quite easy to get similarly coloured herbs, and maybe even mix it with
saffron—just for authenticity.  Shaislyn didn’t like the idea of cheating
anyone for their hard-earned money, and saffron was a spice more precious than
gold.
                The maze of alleyways twisted round.  A cat complained of his
trespass, and a washerwoman worked; he could smell the soap and hear the
distinctive sound of wet clothes on a washboard.  He came to the end of the
alley.  He frowned; this hadn’t been there before.  He touched the wood, and
found that it was new.
                “Gated that up yesterday—to keep the riffraff out,” an old man
wheezed.  Shaislyn turned toward him.  “Not that it does much good.  The
riffraff always finds a way in.”
                He cocked his head to the side.  The man had a rasp, probably
from pipe tobacco.  He sucked on his gums as he spoke, so Shaislyn assumed he
was missing more than a few teeth.  “Are you new here, serrah?”
                The man laughed again.  “New enough, lad.”  The man shifted. 
“Now, pray tell what a mage is doing skulking about at the docks.”
                Shaislyn’s eyebrows rose in surprise.  “I…  How did you know?” 
Shaislyn never talked about his magic, or anything of the sort.  He had enough
problems with teasing being half-elven, his mother Liberati, and blind; he
didn’t need to further complicate matters!
                He chuckled.  He had an easy laugh.  “A poor mage I’d be if I
didn’t see the same gift in others.”
                The half-elf was even more interested now.  “You’re a mage? 
What are you doing in such rubbish then?”
                “Living,” he replied, and that was good enough for Shaislyn,
and then offered to teach him about his gift.
                “I’m blind,” Shaislyn reminded him.
                The old man laughed.  “As am I.  What a pair we’ll be.”
                The child replied, “I’m Shaislyn.  My mother calls me ‘Shai.’”
                “You’re a fool then,” the old man told him.
                Shaislyn grew cross.  He didn’t like being called a fool. 
“Why?” he demanded.
                And the old man laughed again.  “Only a fool gives his name so
freely, and allows another to take his name from him so.”
                Shaislyn’s instinct was to argue, then he considered the wisdom
of this information.  “Why?”
                The old man seemed pleased.  “A name is oft all we have,
child.  Why would you give it to others as if it were nothing, when it is
everything you are?”
                Shaislyn did not reply immediately, but thought about the man’s
words.  “We must call one another something, serrah.  It might as well be my
name.”
                “Then let it be so.  I’m Jameson.”
                Jameson insisted that he begin his training tomorrow, but
today, he would know more of his new “apprentice”.  Shaislyn found himself
sitting beside the old man, on a board in the gutter, telling him
everything—about his dying grandmother, his grieving young mother, and Lura. 
He said that he had an uncle he’d never know, a sibling no one would talk about
except to say that she was dead, and a father no one would tell him about,
though he had asked a thousand times.  Jameson listened, and said nothing until
he was finished.
                “So many mysteries in one so young,” he commented.
                Shaislyn’s face contorted in puzzlement.  “What?”
                And the blind old man laughed.  “Nothing, child.”
                The young boy was silent for a moment as he considered.  “Do
you know any healing arts?”
                Jameson studied him for a moment.  “You speak of your
grandmother, do you not?”
                “I do.”
                “Alas, my skills do not lie in that path,” he lamented.
                “I see,” Shaislyn said, disappointed.  They could not afford a
healer.  By the grace of the Maker, his mother was a mage, and did all she
could for his poor grandmother, but they worried that it was not enough.  The
worst part was that Mieta could not work in her condition, and the adults all
seemed worried about money.
                Shaislyn went home that night with Nora hungry, and his mother
scolded him for being out most of the day, but Lura bade her to calm down.  He
began his study the next day with the old mage.  It was easier than with his
mother, who barely knew how to teach him without “showing” him things.  The old
man seemed to know what to do though, and how best to describe to him spells.
                He learned, and grew, and even felt happy for a while, before
his grandmother finally passed away.  For Shaislyn, it was almost a relief. 
The dying had hung over everyone’s heads like angry dark clouds, and now the
grief could finally pour from them—and rain may be cold and dismal but it was
life-giving and renewing too.
                They had a small funeral, and buried her ashes.  Shaislyn
slipped away during the wake to walk alone at the docks.  He hated the
grieving, and the death.  He’d sooner be away from it.
                But late at night, not a week later, he woke to Lura and
Varania talking.  They were worried about money.
                “Madame Aurane offered me a good price,” Lura said, voice
quiet.
                Varania was silent for a moment.  “No.”  The floorboards
creaked as she paced.  “You know Leto would hate that.”  She stopped pacing. 
“You can’t.”
                Lura sighed.  “I will if I must,” she said, sounding resolute. 
“It’s more important that we have somewhere to live, you know.  And I’m barren,
and you are getting better at healing, just in case of… disease.  I think it
would be all right.”
                Varania seemed sad to hear this, and Shaislyn decided he would
rather not hear any more of this talk that he barely understood.
 
                An early summer storm had driven the travelers off the road and
into the sheltering canopy of the oak trees, pitching tents in the pouring
rain, and attending to the horses.  The wagons were placed strategically to
help block out the wind, and the mages went into their heavy tents, warmed by
braziers.  The guards slept in shifts, in their warm tents.  The slaves—five in
all—slept together in a cramped, cold tent, but it was better than the rain—in
theory anyway.  All the floors of the tents were covered first in pine boughs,
to keep them out of the rain.  The slave tent was only that, but the mages both
had carpets too.
                It was a rough night for everyone, the slaves especially, who
rose before the others to attend to the morning chores, as ever.  Fenris was
included in that, and they all silently went about their tasks.  He first went
to check the horses, but someone had gotten there before him.  The elf stood
stock-still, and clearly nervous, and Fenris didn’t have to wonder as to why.
                There should have been sixteen horses and eight mules.  The
mules were steady enough creatures that they had not bolted, but Fenris only
counted twelve horses, and saw a broken line where the four had been fenced
together.  The other lines had held, and for that perhaps they should count
themselves fortunate, but the missing horses still stood.
                “I’ll… find them,” Fenris whispered.  The elf glanced back at
him, and said nothing.  But that was expected:  Vairin never said anything, not
a single whisper or a word.  For the longest time, Fenris had only thought he
was mute, but he heard him gasp once—when a guest of his master’s had finally
taken offense to the silent elf, and shoved him over a railing.  It had
actually been a short fall, but it had broken the elf’s wrist.  For most
slaves, that might have been a point where they would be sold or disposed of,
but Vairin had a… way with horses that could only be called uncanny, and
Danarius had him healed and sent back to the stables instead, saying that the
elf didn’t need to speak to do his job.
                Fenris picked his way after the trail the horses had made.  In
their panic, they had left a path of broken foliage a blind man could
follow—for a time at least.  He still didn’t know as much about tracking as he
would like.  He heard someone behind him, and turned to see Vairin.
                “Vairin” probably wasn’t his real name either, come to think of
it.  He had simply never supplied a name when asked, so the other slaves had
named him—they had drawn lots for it, he had heard.  But it wasn’t that he was
silent that made Fenris shun the elf’s company.  There was something in his
eyes that spoke of crimes, sins, and hatred—something fundamental in his soul
that had broken a long time ago.  He had heard Danarius once whisper to
Hadriana, “That elf, one day, will snap.  Take care not to be too near to him
when he does.”
                Hadriana had been quiet for a moment before she asked, “Is he
mad?”
                “Does it matter?”
                “Where did you find him?”  That one with suspicion.
                “I used him in my experiments,” Danarius said, eyes flicking
toward Fenris.  Fenris didn’t think too much of it; his master had mentioned
other projects and experiments besides himself in the past.  Hadriana had
fallen silent at that.  “Usually, I killed them, but…”  The magister shrugged.
                “But I thought you said…  The spell… the memory would…”
                “Never saw him,” he said with surety.  “He worked at the
stables in Ath Velanis.  When he went mad a couple of years ago, it seemed only
fitting that I take him.”
                “So he was… fine before then?”
                “I wouldn’t say ‘fine’, no.”  He frowned.  “More like, he
reached a breaking point when another mage used him in an experiment.”
                They found the first horse, shivering and alone, between two
pines.  The horse shied from Fenris, but when it saw Vairin, its ears pricked
up, and walked right up to him, nuzzling against his chest.  It was the only
time the elf didn’t look half-insane.  Fenris found himself wondering what made
Vairin go mad.
                Vairin had a set of holsters, and he eased the horse into it,
and led it after him.  The creature seemed all too happy to doggedly trail
after its handler.  If Hadriana wanted to blame anyone of manipulating horses
to throw riders, she would do well to point her accusing finger at Vairin.
 Fenris had also noticed that any time Danarius rode, Vairin was nowhere to be
seen.  There might be some sense in that.
                The second one came to them when the other elf whistled, the
third was harder to find, and even harder to get back up the sandy slope she
had skidded down, but they managed.  The fourth, they might not have found at
all, except that Fenris heard the wolves quarreling.  Vairin made a gesture,
and the horses stood together.  The elf ran past Fenris heedlessly.  Fenris had
to grab him to keep him from doing such an obviously stupid thing.  Fenris
angrily shoved him back.
                “I’ll deal with it,” he said with a sigh, and went to check. 
Vairin paced anxiously with the horses.  Fenris stalked up to the grassy rise
they had heard the wolves.  One of them looked down at him, carelessly.  It was
appraising him, nothing more.  Its mouth opened, tongue lolling out of its
blood-stained mouth.  It seemed to be laughing as he approached, then
disappeared into the trees.  The other wolves were bigger, and less inclined to
give up their prey.
                Fighting animals was different than fighting a person.  They
didn’t act the same way, and he had to adjust his swings, but the lyrium worked
just the same.  Two wolves lay dead, a third wounded but not gravely.  The
other three scattered, abandoning their prey.  The wounded one gave him a
murderous look, then bounded off, leaving Fenris to the carcass of the horse. 
Hadriana would be furious.  It was a guardsman’s horse, but she would be
furious all the same.
                Fenris put away his sword, and looked at the two wolf
carcasses, and considered.
                He went back down to Vairin, who looked as solemn as he had
ever seen him, quietly mourning the loss of the animal.  “Can you skin a wolf?”
                And Vairin smiled, and looked at Fenris in a way that made him
feel distinctly uncomfortable and like perhaps he should not stand too close to
him.  But the mute walked past him, and Fenris waited with the horses.  Vairin
came back down some time after with two wolf hides, which he shoved into
Fenris’ arms and took the lead ropes back.
                “Can’t we put these on the horses?” Fenris demanded, looking
down at the stinking hides.  Vairin looked back at him, raising one eyebrow
questioningly, lips turned into a disgusted frown.  The other fell silent. 
Maybe the blood made the animals nervous.  The hides were kind of bloody, and
smelled abominable, but he tolerated it until they got back, when he draped the
hides over a branch until something better could be done with them.
                The rain began to wash away the blood that stained his arms and
hands, draining into the soil.  He frowned, a memory of a story edging at the
back of his mind.  Bloody soil, fertile land…  But nothing more came to him. 
Back at camp, the others were rising, and eating.
                Fenris knew better than to remain silent until someone noticed
the missing horse.  Rather, he went to Hadriana and admitted, “Four of the
horses broke loose last night, Mesere.  We recovered three, but the fourth is
dead.”
                She stared at him, rage boiling in her eyes.  “Did you see its
corpse yourself, elf?”
                He blinked, and nodded once.  “Yes,” he said quietly.  “It was
being devoured by wolves.”
                She struck him, and he wasn’t at all surprised.  But her wrath
quickly turned on Vairin.  She approached the other elf, and hit him
immediately.  “Guard!” she snapped, pointing at one of the men.  He came at her
call.  “Beat him.”
                “No!” he heard a girl’s voice cry.  He looked at Annalkylie,
and the guard had stopped too.  The young girl looked stricken at the thought. 
“You can’t expect one man to be responsible for the actions of animals—wild
ones included.  It’s not anyone’s fault.  It’s an accident.”
                Hadriana frowned, pursing her lips.  “Very well.”  She turned
the guard down, and he resumed eating.  Annalkylie breathed in relief. 
“Someone needs to watch the horses at night from now on.”  She glanced at the
slaves, an angry scowl still adorning her face.  “Your master will be most
displeased with all of you.”  The slaves shrank at the thought.
                Fenris said gently, “Mesere, I killed two of the wolves that
killed the horse.  Vairin skinned them.”
                Hadriana frowned.  “Why would we want to carry those filthy
hides all the way back to Minrathous?” she demanded.
                But Annalkylie had brightened, for she had been quick to catch
on, as had a few of the guards.  “A howling wolf is my family crest,” she said,
with some delight.  “We clean and salt them, and tan them when we get back.  My
uncle will be most distraught over the dead horse, but perhaps sated when we
give him a cloak or a rug of some sort of the beasts that slew the horse?”
                A fine suggestion.  So fine, in fact, that Hadriana ordered the
slaves to clean and salt the hides at once, and so it was done.
                Come nightfall, the rain had let up to a light drizzle.  They
pitched tents again, and the slaves cooked, then cleaned and cared for the
horses, and when it was finally time for them to sleep, Hadriana stopped one of
them.
                “Vairin.  The horses are your charge.  Stay with them—all
night,” she commanded.  The elf stared downward, and nodded, turning back from
the tent.  Fenris paused.  “And for your transgressions this morning, I want
you to stand in place.  Do not sit.  Do not lie down.”  The elf’s head lifted,
an objection written across his face.  He had walked all day, been up since the
crack of dawn, and would walk all day tomorrow too.  But Hadriana seemed
pleased with herself.
                Fenris stepped forward.  “Mesere, I was the one who tied the
line for those four—I should be punished instead,” he said quickly.  It was a
half-truth at least, but Vairin was too silent to deny it.  He wasn’t sure
which slave had tied it; no one was going to admit to that.
                Hadriana raised one eyebrow.  “Fine.  You’ll stand in his
punishment instead.”  Vairin glanced at the elf, then back down.  “And you,
slave, will watch him, and make certain that he doesn’t sit.  I trust the two
of you won’t speak.”  With that, she turned, and went to her own tent.  The two
elven slaves looked at one another, neither saying a single word.  Vairin sat
on a fallen, half-rotted log, and Fenris stood, watching the horses.  The first
droplets of rain ran down his hair.
 
                They had been anticipated in the city, news traveling faster
than they did.  Danarius welcomed his niece himself.  Dinner was a small
affair, which Kylie found to be relaxing after so much traveling.  She was
surprised how tired she was, and how much she missed a real bed.  There were
inns along the way, but they still had to camp on occasion.  And even so, she
had trouble sleeping in inns.
                As expected, her uncle was most displeased to hear about the
horse, but Hadriana and Kylie both promised him a gift at the end of the month,
and his curiosity sated his anger, for the time being at least.
                Danarius insisted that Hadriana show her around Minrathous
tomorrow, and Hadriana commented on what a good idea that was.  Kylie would
rather go by herself, to be frank, but she tolerated this idea.
                She had only come to the city, after all, for a better teacher.
                Hadriana showed her many delightful things—statues and
fountains, the Chantry, and a lot of different places to shop.  But everywhere
she looked, she saw many things she didn’t like:  Oppression, slavery.  She
knew there was nothing a little girl, even a mage, could do about it, but still
she didn’t like it.  She didn’t like someone else dictating how she should live
or what she should do, and she didn’t want anyone else to suffer the same or
worse.
                She had long since outgrown voicing her opinions, though—her
sisters had always chided her, and Agasius teased her.  It made her fall silent
on the matter.  She had had friends too—other highborn girls—and she had tried
to mention her problem to them, but they either didn’t understand it, or just
laughed at her.
                It was easier not to say anything at all, so she didn’t.
                Hadriana tutored her for a time, before her uncle shipped her
off to another mage willing to tutor her.  They were within the same city, but
in different districts, so even so she couldn’t visit as often as she would
have liked.
                She wrote to her family at least once a week, and her older
sister Cristabelle visited her once.  She had been with child at the time, and
seemed perfectly content.  Kylie didn’t understand that.  Why would anyone want
to just be someone’s wife and pop out children for them?  How could anyone be
content to do something like that with their lives?
                She looked at the world and saw a place full of possibilities
and adventure.  Why waste it?
                But it was not her life; it was Cristabelle’s, and she smiled
and nodded and made polite sounds as appropriate when her sister spoke of her
eagerness for her child, and the children surely to come.
 
                Danarius sat at his desk, feeling like he had been sitting
there since the dawn of time, and if not that, certainly chained to it, in a
manner of speaking.  He felt like he would never catch up on all the paperwork
that came flooding in day by day.  A servant had just brought another stack in,
along with his mail.  The collective pile of papers were soon neatly divided
into stacks as he sorted it meticulously:  Stuff that’s urgent, stuff that can
be put off for as long as possible, and stuff he has no interest whatsoever in
looking at.  Two of these stacks were nice, neat piles on the desk after some
time sorting them.  The latter, however, was tossed carelessly over his
shoulder after glancing at the headlines.  As a result, there were papers and
letters strewn haphazardly about the floor around his chair, which really did
the opposite of what he had intended, as now he had to be reminded of their
existence if he ever tried to leave.
                It was an oversight, and he was half-tempted to set fire to
them all.  Sometimes, he wanted to set fire to his estates, his businesses, and
possibly even the Circle itself, and be done with the entire thing—all while
laughing madly.  Those were times when he had been drinking and was sleep
deprived, but he had never acted upon these desires—aside from stating once or
twice that he would enjoy doing them.
                The door opened, and the magister did not look up from his
work.  He finished reading, put his seal on it, and signed it, dumping it into
the tray of accepted work.  The rejected went into a different bin—where he
would like to set fire to them, but they needed to be more formally rejected. 
Often with letters and soothing words.
                Whoever was walking in had a particular spring to their step
that he recognized immediately as his young apprentice.  Hadriana chimed, “I
have more of your favourite thing.”  Danarius looked up, glowering at her.  She
smiled winningly and set the new stack down neatly on his desk.  “I already
organized them—the most important ones are at the top, and then it trickles
down.”
                “Thanks,” he said with the tone of one who was not thankful at
all.
                She did not mind this.  She glanced at the floor.  “I like your
sorting method, though—very efficient.”
                “Indeed,” he scoffed.  He pointed at the bin of rejected
petitions.  “Take that pile of horse shit, and write them rejection letters.”
                “You should just buy a slave that can write—they could write
the rejection letters all day,” she grumbled, somehow still with some cheer. 
She scooped up the stack and marched out of his office, shutting the door
quietly behind her.
                The magister sighed to himself, and went back to reading.  He
grumbled about stupidity for a while, made a few more marks, thought about a
long speech he should pose to the Archon about the particular absurdity of
certain laws.  He really didn’t care if someone were building a second floor to
their business that was perhaps a finger’s width too high for their permit.  If
it meant less paperwork, he would let them have ten feet higher than their
permit, if it pleased them.
                He dropped another finished petition into the appropriate
stack, and glanced at Fenris, standing almost perfectly still for hours—a
learned skill.  Danarius, truth be told, frequently forgot he was even there. 
“Elf,” he said testily and with some misdirected animosity.  The elf in
question blinked.  “Pick up all this.”  He gestured vaguely at the papers on
the floor, then the magister looked back down at what he was doing.  Fenris
suppressed a sigh and bent to the task.  He picked up the most obvious first,
and then had to crawl about on the floor for a little while, as some of them
had somehow managed to get under the furniture.  He stood up after picking up
the last one, only to watch his master dump somewhere around ten more pages on
the floor.  Not on purpose—he didn’t turn and look at him and smirk as he did
it—he just made an angry noise and threw it all on the floor.
                Fenris picked it up anyway, barely making a face at it.  He
straightened the papers, and neatly placed them on the desk, as far from his
master as space would allow.  By this time, there was a growing stack of
finished papers, and Danarius sent Fenris off to deliver them to his steward.
                Danarius leaned back in the chair, stretched.  He got up, and
walked around the room, looked out the window, and was back in the chair as if
he had never moved by the time the elf returned from his most mundane of
chores.  Fenris stood at attention, and the day wore on.  The magister finished
the most urgent stack, looked at the sun’s placement in the sky, and sighed as
he started in on the second.
                He sent Fenris to the steward with one finished stack, and to
Hadriana with the second.  By the time the elf returned again, Danarius was
glaring venomously at the third stack, as if debating on whether or not he
would work on it today—or set it on fire.
                He pushed the chair out and told Fenris to go tell the cooks to
prepare something light.  Fenris went about this chore as well, and the
magister ate in his quarters, deciding to leave that third stack for tomorrow.
                Danarius ate slowly the next morning, took as long in the bath
as could be considered useful, spent a long time going over his businesses and
Hadriana’s bookkeeping.  He stared at Fenris for a moment.  “Go down to
Hadriana, and tell her I want my slave record book—I can’t remember how old you
are.”
Fenris blinked, stared ahead for a moment in shock, nodded, bowed low, and left
quickly.  Fenris returned a short while later with the book, and was staring at
it with a pained expression in his eyes.
It was amusing, vaguely, to Danarius.  If you could read, you’d know everything
you ever needed to know to find your family.  Danarius flipped to the
appropriate page.  “Ah,” he said, and flipped it shut again, shoving it across
the table toward the elf.  “Put this back.”
Fenris looked troubled as he lifted the large book from the table.  “Master?”
The magister’s gaze trailed to his slave.  “What?” he said, a little more
testily than he had intended.  It was the paperwork, more than Fenris.
The elf kind of flinched at his tone of voice, and seemed reluctant to go on. 
He hesitated, and this annoyed the magister more.  “How old…  When… was I
born?”
“Twenty-two years ago, in spring,” he said bluntly and with surety.  He had
even gotten the exact date from his mother, when she was questioned, but he
wasn’t about to tell Fenris that.  Maybe he would one day, if his little pet
were very, very well-behaved.  “You’ve been my slave since you were a child,
Fenris.”
The elf looked down.  “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Master.”  His slave
looked at the book, as if deeply pained, as he bowed, and left to put it back.
When he could put it off no longer, the pile of hated paperwork still remained
at his desk.
                Afternoon found the magister digging his fingernails into his
scalp as if to relieve the pressure on his brain he felt building there.  He
stared down at a particular form in front of him as if in mortal pain.
                Fenris observed this, and said nothing, as he should.  The door
opened, and Hadriana entered unannounced, as was her custom.  “There was some
trouble with one of the shipments—are you all right?” she cut herself off.
                The magister did not seem to have quite heard her other than
that he acknowledged that perhaps there was someone else there.  “I regret
every decision I have ever made,” he muttered.
                His apprentice only seemed vaguely amused by this.  “What’s
wrong?”
                “Lucilius never should have been made a magister.”  He made a
face.  “Was I drunk when I recommended him?” he said with the tone of one who
might wish to bang his head against a wall.
                “I suppose it’s possible,” Hadriana said amiably.  “But as I
recall he and his entire family pestered you and the rest of the Circle—every
Circle for that matter--quite tirelessly until he was appointed.  I seem to
recall multiple letters, gifts, some invitations to a few dinner parties—and
things like that.”
                “Right.”  He sighed.  “I think I might have just wanted them to
leave me alone.”  He rolled his eyes.  “Anyway, we should have just made him
Tranquil, because he is an idiot.”
                “What did he do this time?” Hadriana inquired.
                He glared at the papers for a moment longer before he replied. 
“He raises taxes, and then wonders why the peasantry is displeased with him.” 
He sighed.  “Another damned slave rebellion—just what we need.  All of it his
fault.”
                Hadriana pursed her lips for a moment, as if in thought.  “Just
lower the taxes again.  The slaves don’t care, but the peasants will stop
aiding them.”
                “Obviously.  The pig-headed oaf thinks otherwise.”
                Hadriana shrugged.  “Sounds like an ass,” she said.  He almost
laughed.  “Anyway, this one is my fault, and I will own up to it:  So we
ordered six slaves—one for blacksmithing, one for restoring those old texts,
one for the orchard since that one died—oh, and three for the kitchen staff
after the fever passed…”  Danarius raised an eyebrow.  There had been a summer
fever among the slaves.  Two of them had died before either mage was even aware
of it, and only then did they send in the healers.  “Well, when I was copying
the order, I accidentally wrote ’13.’”
                “How does one… accidentally… write ‘13’ instead of ‘3’?”
                “Well, I started to write a one, realized we had talked about
it and decided on three, and…  I guess the man didn’t understand when I tried
to write over it.  I even told him that it’s three, we went over it twice
before I gave him the order.”  A pause.  “I already cut into him about it, but
he won’t budge, and he won’t take them back—also the contract demands payment,
so he had that, but not before I gave him a piece of my mind.  Anyway, so it’s
13.”
                Danarius sighed.  “There isn’t room for an extra ten of them…” 
And never mind the cost!
                “Not particularly.”
                He sighed.  “Pick the best three of them.  The rest I want you
to…”  He thought for a moment, and waved his hand dismissively. “… send half of
them to the stables, and the other half to the docks.”
                Fenris’ eyes flicked to the floor.  He supposed… it was better
than some of the things he could do to them.  The elf flinched at that,
remembering being lashed to a post, eyes closed, the scent of blood and the way
the sharp, thin blades sliced into his skin as Hadriana learned the art of
dream walking.  But when Danarius had a child brought in for the same purpose,
Fenris had not been able to stop himself from begging Danarius to use him
instead.  He was terrified of the post, of the knives, scared of being used for
the blood magic, but…  It had been a child.  Of course, his master had struck
him for stepping out of line, but he had begged and pleaded, and was willingly
lashed to the post in the child’s place.  But he had made the child watch all
the same.
                Hadriana shrugged and smiled.  “Certainly.”
                “Well, you don’t have to be so proud of yourself.”
                She shrugged.  “The alternative is that I’m ashamed that I did
my best,” she said matter-of-factly.
                Danarius almost wanted to reprimand her more thoroughly, until
she said that.  There was more truth to it than she knew, and anyway, they were
always a bit short-handed at the docks, and the stablemaster had been
complaining of needing extra help.  No matter—Hadriana would have to do
something to try to make up for it.  Maybe some more of this paperwork.
                He stood up.  “I need to get out of here,” he said.  Maybe he
should go look after his ships a bit—it had been a while since he was down at
the docks.
 
                This is the best chance I’m going to get, Aramael thought as he
shimmied up the fence, balancing precariously on the slender beam.  He jumped
to reach the gutter, and held his breath, but it held.  He pulled himself onto
the roof, staying low.  He moved from rooftop to rooftop, disturbing the
seabirds and the pigeons.  The crows scolded him too, and he wished the damned
birds would shut up, or they would ruin everything.
                He crouched low, and crawled when he was at the roof he
wanted.  He peered over the edge, looking at the crowd at the docks below.
                He cradled the crossbow in his arms, winding it silently, eyes
locked on his quarry.  This wasn’t personal.  It was just business, good
business at that.  He hadn’t taken a contract this big yet, and usually he
didn’t deal in murder.  Theft, smuggling, framing other people—sure.  But not
assassination.  Though, obviously, he was not above it.  The magister was
willing to pay a fair amount for this magister’s death.   And it had to be
somewhere public, he had said, or Aramael forfeited a bonus.
                The magister had handed him a small skin with an inky substance
on it.  “Don’t touch it,” he told him.  “It’s a poison, from the Wilds.  I want
him dead.”  Untraceable, and very rare, and very deadly.  Aramael was given
only enough to coat one bolt’s head in it.
                He didn’t know the why of the reason for the assassination, but
it could be any number of things, really, even simply wanting to appoint a
different magister to the Minrathous Circle in this man’s place.  The
Magisterium wasn’t exactly… friendly towards one another, he had been quick to
learn—and take advantage of.
                Hit the elf, though, and Aramael wouldn’t get paid anything,
the magister dies or no.  Well, he didn’t really want to kill a fellow elf,
particularly a slave.  Weren’t their lives hard enough already?  The Dalish’s
mouth drew into a thin line, his breathing slowed.  His heart rate slowed.  He
waited, and aimed, finger against the trigger.
 
                Everything seemed to have happened at once.  At one moment,
Danarius was discussing prices with a man whose ship he had invested in, and
the next…
                The crossbowman had been on a rooftop.  Fenris had been
watching the crowd and all seemed well.  A child was crying in the
corner—something about a dropped candy, a mother trying in vain to remove the
obstinate child.  Slavers calling out their wares, more honest merchants
haggling nearby. 
                The only reason he had looked up at all was because a crow had
screamed out in protest to having his roosting spot invaded, its shrill cry
piercing the cacophony of noise around him, drawing the elf’s attention for
only a moment.
                Fenris had seen the glint of metal, and there hadn’t been any
time.  He had shoved his master down as the shaft was released.  He felt
pressure, more than pain, which was strange, and then he was laying on the
ground, and couldn’t for a moment imagine why.  When had he fallen?  He
couldn’t remember having fallen.  He almost laughed.  He only remembered a few
years of his life.  Maybe falling was part of that other bit of his life.  Of
course he didn’t remember it.  Why would he remember it?
                He stared upwards as his vision began to blur.  Something warm
was spreading across his chest.  Breathing was painful, and it was easier not
to try, so he didn’t.  He heard voices, but couldn’t quite distinguish what
they were saying.
                Faces around him, and voices.  Colours and shapes.  Blue was a
pretty colour.  The sky was the deepest shade of blue…
 
                “You must rest,” Hadriana insisted to her master, but her voice
was gentle.  “You can’t save him.”
                Danarius stared down at the unconscious elf.  It had been two
days, and he hadn’t woken once.  He had stirred, but his lovely sage eyes had
never once opened.  Nor were they likely to.  The elf had lost so much blood
that they could not see into it enough to survey the full extent of the damage
before the bolt had to be removed.  The bolt had pierced one of his lungs,
Danarius had been quick to discover.
                To his horror, it hadn’t gone out the other side, and he could
not tell if it were barbed.  Should he risk plunging it through the rest of the
way to remove it?  Should he risk pulling it out the other way?  He couldn’t
know.  And there had been such little time to act…
                Blood magic was the only thing that worked, the only thing that
kept the elf alive throughout it.
                If Danarius hadn’t acted so quickly, the elf would be dead.
 Hadriana would not have lamented his passing, she had to say.  But she was
impressed with how quickly her master had reacted to his favourite pet dying.
                And disturbed by it.
                He had used Fenris’ own blood in his blood magic, and that had
helped fuel his healing spells, but not enough.  The bolt had to come out, and
the wound had to knit.  He had killed one of the slaves in the cages, and all
but threw coins at the merchant.
                Hadriana hadn’t been there, but she had heard stories. 
Danarius was feverish in his attempt to keep his pet alive.
                “He lost too much blood,” she said again.  Fenris had a fever
now.  Perhaps it was a complication from the wound, or something else, but she
knew in her heart that the elf lay dying.  “He died days ago.”
                Danarius slapped her.  Her eyes widened in disbelief, her hand
raising to cradle her cheek.  She couldn’t believe that he had struck her. 
“Get out,” he hissed.
                She bowed, and left her apparently mad master with his dying
elven slave.  If he wanted to waste days of his life trying to save what could
not be saved, that was his business.  Hadriana had tried her best to make him
see the light, and he had steadily refused.  The most she could do now was
continuously send servants with food and drink, and trying to convince him to
rest whenever she dared.
                This quest of his was mad.  He should just let the elf die.  He
should have just let him die years ago.  This was madness, and he was only
going to hurt himself if he continued.  She had tried to help him—she really
had.  But… it was just no good if he wouldn’t listen!
                Was he going mad?
 
                I worked too hard for this to lose him, the magister thought
despairingly.  It had cost too much to replace him, too much time, too much
effort.  He had been grooming him for this since he was a child, hadn’t he?  He
remembered that little boy in the cage, and looked at the young man lying
unconscious in the clean linen sheets.
                He had been training him since he was a child to be the way he
was.  He had been so patient about it, and, somewhere in his mind he had known
it would be Leto that won the competition.  He had known he would have liked
that, but he knew the entire thing was subconsciously designed for that boy.
                I had you trained.  I set everything up.  Not all of it on
purpose, but that was how it turned out.  … I don’t think anyone else could
have survived the Ritual.
                The worst part was that he really believed that.  He had
analyzed it again and again.  He would need a blood connection with another
slave—that link had been Shaislyn.  He needed sacrifices that had known him for
the blood in the Ritual.  He had needed a slave conditioned for it, to have
their mind prepared.  If it had been a knight, only greed would have motivated
them; they would have died because it wasn’t enough to will their heart to beat
when they were in agony.  Leto had been motivated by a love and devotion to his
family, and he lived and even thrived when he woke as Fenris.
                Leto had been the perfect subject for it all along, and there
was simply no replacing him.  He didn’t have the time any more to spend years
with an adolescent child, to test their devotion to their family, to train
them, to create another child with one of his sisters or mother or something. 
He couldn’t do that again—it had all been up to chance.  Other magisters had
tried to reproduce what he had done, following only the instructions he had
left in his book.  He spoke very little at all about Shaislyn, for obvious
reasons, but so much had been dependent on that blood tie, and the
relationships Leto had had with the other slaves.  Because it had broken the
boy’s heart, piece by piece, to know that they were all going to die.
                Leto had been bitter, but still loving and caring enough to
sacrifice everything for his mother and sister, even when he didn’t know that
Danarius was going to kill them if he didn’t win.  Even if he managed to wait
for another child to grow and it was half as good as Leto had been, he could
not guarantee those emotional and familial ties.
                I need you to live.  I need you to live or it was all for
nothing. If he died…  He would just be another experiment.  He wouldn’t get to
observe his lifespan, his reproduction capabilities, the full extent of what he
could do, his interactions…  He had so many questions and observations left to
make, things to study.  He needed Fenris to live or he would never know.  He
had so many questions left—he needed to know.
                …  There was one thing left to try.
 
                The lights at either end of the void were shining—one calling
out to the other.  One was just out of reach, but the other was insistent.  It
blazed, and screamed, and finally the other light began to brighten, to respond
to its master’s call.
                Shaislyn’s eyes shot open, breathing hard, but the image
wouldn’t fade.  In fact, he only “saw” it in his mind more vividly, and he felt
hot.  He felt like his body was burning and freezing at the same time.  His
arms hugged tight to his chest, and he shook, lips trembling.  His eyes
squeezed shut, trying to make it stop, fighting it.  He wanted to lash out, to
fight to keep the lights away, back at each end of the void.  But the brighter
light pressed on regardless, fighting back, beating him back.  He didn’t know
what it was.  He had never seen anything, even light, before, and it was all
the more confusing for it.
                He screamed internally, stop!  His teeth gritted together
against it.  Please stop…
                But it pushed on, one light urging the other to wakefulness. 
Still the other only barely responded.  Please, if it will make it stop, just
respond…
                Shaislyn fell back into his bed, curling into a ball.  He let
the cold and the heat rack over him mercilessly, berating him near-senseless. 
He couldn’t fight any more, and he was terrified that it meant it was going to
wash over him, that the cold was going to leave him frozen or that the heat was
going to leave him burned.  But it was easier when he stopped fighting it.  The
light flowed more freely when he stopped fighting, when he opened himself to
his gift and embraced it, the struggle ceased, and the hot and the cold
coalesced comfortably.  One light found the other, and blazed.  They circled
one another, then settled, each back at the other end of the void.  The little
light that had been fading seemed brighter now.  It wasn’t flickering, as it
had before.  Rather, it was steady.
                He shivered again, even as the images faded away.  He swallowed
hard.  What was that?
 
                Fenris slipped in and out of a fevered sleep.  He was dimly
aware of waking from time to time, dying of thirst and drinking water someone
raised to his lips, only to slip back into sleep.
                He had extremely vivid, lucid dreams.  Most of it consisted of
the usual nonsense found in dreams—being lost in an unsolvable maze, falling,
running from something unknown but terrible, being trapped in a giant pool of
melted cheese, those sorts of things.  He dreamt of a young girl with stringy
red hair and freckles.  He saw her lips moving, and heard her voice, but could
not recall any of her words even though he knew he wanted to.  He saw a child
laughing to turn into a somber young woman—an elf with long brown hair.  In the
fever-dream, she had reached out to him with both hands, and he had been
somehow unable to reach back, though he knew he desperately wanted to, but it
felt like he was being weighted down, chained or something worse.  No, he was
sinking—drowning—and she kept reaching and calling for him, but the name she
called wasn’t the one he knew and…
                Fenris thought he had woken once to the sound of a woman
singing.  He thought he opened his eyes, and the room was dark enough not to
see anything around him, but the woman sat at his side on the bed, and she had
the sweetest voice he had ever heard.  He felt like he had heard the song
before, and in the dream, he had.  The woman was so familiar to him in the
dream that he knew he had nothing to fear from her.  She took his hand in one
of hers, and smiled, and stroked his hair so tenderly that he felt like he knew
her.
                The dream opened to him with an understanding, and just as
quickly as he understood, the woman began to fade.  She did not rise and leave
him, rather she held on to him more tightly, but her features began to fade and
blur, even from his memory.
                “Mother?” he finally had the voice to ask in something barely
over a whisper.  She made no answer other than her song, and though her body
seemed to fade, her voice was left behind, until there was nothing but the dark
and the sound of her voice, and the feeling that she had loved him.
                But then even that was gone, and when it was gone, he wasn’t at
all certain of any of it.
                He woke then, and found himself in the infirmary.  He felt
sick, and too warm, and leaned back into the pillows, trying to remember why he
was here.
                The crossbow!  He found himself shoving the sheet down to his
hips, to look.  There wasn’t even a scar.  He leaned back again, and closed his
eyes.  The jolt of waking had banished all thought and memory of his dreams,
even the song.
                He dreamt that he was running through a forest made of stone,
not running from something, but chasing after it, chasing after a sound, and
then he heard it, carried on the wind.  A voice, and he recognized it, and when
he turned toward it, gentle hands took his.  He was greeted with a warm smile,
and a loving embrace, as if she had been waiting.  Even in the dream, her
features left him quickly.  He could not remember her face unless he was
looking at it, and she led him onward, and he looked at her stringy ginger hair
and tried to remember it but could not.
                She led him into a clearing filled with light, and he got the
idea that she had led him places before with the same steadfast determination
and confidence.  Sometimes, when she moved, he thought he heard the clink of
chains, though he could see she wore no such thing.
                The sand was bits of ground glass, tossed by the sea and
sparkled in the sun underfoot.  The water in the stream looked like wine, but
when he looked up the stream, it flowed from the tears and blood of slaves, and
the fish glowed like lyrium.  When he chanced a glance at the sky, despite the
dappled sunlight, a storm was brewing, and the ginger-haired girl seemed
excited for it.
                As he turned, the girl leading him was dancing away into the
clearing, and she got farther and farther away. The farther she went the more
she seemed to age, and she seemed to be growing older until she was a young
woman, and when she looked back at him, she had the marks of the Dalish, and
she reached out to him as if to take him with her, and the scene dissolved
around him.
                He woke again, and tried to recall every detail of the dream
and couldn’t.  He could not even say what colour the elven girl’s hair was, or
if she had truly been Dalish or only a trick of the light, so little could he
truly recall.
                The healer found him awake, and had him drink some broth, and a
potion to make him rest, saying that his fever had only just broken.
                He rested, spiraling back into his dreams, though he found that
he did not want them.
                He was falling through space—falling and falling, but was
unworried.  Strong arms caught him, and set him on his feet.  When he looked up
at the one who had caught him, it was a man with auburn hair and bright green
eyes, another elf, and all he knew in the world was that he wanted this man’s
approval, and he knew he had his love.
                But he turned from him, and passed into another room.  Fenris
went after him, but there were so many rooms, and he only seemed to glimpse
him, until he was so lost that he didn’t know where to go, and the man had
disappeared, leaving him alone and uncertain.
                He looked around himself and felt the beginning of despair,
until a door opened.  A young woman—scarcely old enough to be called
such—hailed him from the door.  The other elf had red hair, and green eyes and
he wanted to trust her immediately.  She seemed excited to see him, and when he
entered the room after her, a child careened toward his leg, quickly followed
by another one.  Twins, he thought.  They were talking excitedly, but the words
he could not make out, and he knew he was fading.
                He was horrified to be fading from this place, when he realized
that the man he had been following was here, and smiling fondly at him.  The
man was holding the hand of a woman he felt like he should know.  Another young
woman was there—two young women, one freckled and of ginger hair, and the other
a soft brown, both elven.
                No, no I don’t want to leave!
                “You have to wake up,” the woman told him, and he
remembered—she was the one who had sang to him through the depths of his fever.
                “I don’t want to,” he responded.
                “You must,” the elf with the mismatched eyes said.
                He shook his head.  “No.  I want to stay.”
                “You can’t stay,” the man told him.
                Fenris wanted to cry.  Why not?  Why couldn’t he stay?  Why
didn’t they want him?  He felt… community.  He felt wanted here—loved.  He
didn’t want to leave…  He didn’t want to go back to a world where he was alone,
and someone’s property.  He wanted to stay here, with the people who had been
waiting for him.  The prettier redhead faded first, followed, curiously, by the
male twin, but not the female, and the woman with the long brown hair.  The
others lingered, and while their colours blurred, seemed the most real to him.
                His eyes opened.  It was daylight now, and he felt weak but
enormously better.  The dreams had been strange, but he attributed the faces he
“knew” to the fever.  He had seen dozens of elves.  He imagined that,
somewhere, he must have a family of sorts, logically speaking, but they were
nothing to him if he didn’t even know if they were alive, or even their names. 
If the faces he had seen in his dream were his family, it still meant little to
a slave.
                In the meantime, he was feeling starved, and his lips were
cracking.  That seemed more important than a few fevered dreams.
 
                Varania worked.  She worked until her fingers were stiff, and
her back was aching, and still she continued to work, to try to pick up her
mother’s slack.  The owner of the dress shop had been gracious, but she saw her
dissatisfied frowns at her work.  She would get better at it—she had to.
                But as the weeks and months passed, the work continued to pile.
Varania just couldn’t finish it all on the proper deadlines, and the woman
continued to be dissatisfied, and began to tell her that she could only be paid
when something was finished, else she could not afford to keep her.  She would
frown at her work, and tell her what was wrong, or what could be better.  “I
told you twice before how to do this,” she would say.  Or, “We’ve gone over
this.”  And Varania could only lower her head, and want to crawl under the
table.  She would apologize and apologize but she kept messing up.  The mage
slowly began to resent all of it.  She resented freedom the same way a slave
might resent their shackles.
                As a slave, she never would have had to do this.  She would be
fed, clothed, sheltered.  The accommodations would be sensible.  If there was
vermin, it would be taken care of when she was a slave, and free, well, she
knew there were mice in her home.  The food was better here, but that was a
small thing; at least she hadn’t lived in an open sewer.  The stink was
unreasonable in the heat of summer.  The water was brackish and brown.  She
boiled it before she used it, but still it was foul, and lately the only foods
they could afford were turning anyway.
                It would only be a matter of time before they were in rags,
before they lost the house.  And then she would have been better off as
Danarius’ slave.  At least as a slave, her future had been certain.  Bleak,
mayhap, but certain nevertheless.  Guaranteed food, shelter, clothing—and
learning.  He had been training her in magic.  That would have continued,
certainly.  And Shaislyn too.  She had no time to for Shaislyn now.
                She had no time for Vellus any more either.  In fact, she
rarely saw him.  It had been weeks since he had come over.  He had walked home
with her for a while, but lately she had only been turning him away, because
she stayed so late.
                Freedom… had not been a release.
***** A Golden Cage *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris finds and quickly loses another key to his past and Kylie
     tries to free a captive from their cage. Meanwhile in Seheron,
     Shaislyn is learning about his magic. Varania is not coping well with
     her mother's death.
                Shaislyn was confident enough in his gift for a five-year old
with Jameson’s tutorage over the past year.  He had never asked why the man
preferred to live in squalor when he could aspire to more.  The one time he had
mentioned it, Jameson had only said that he used to have everything he could
have desired, and it did not make him happy.
                The young mage had liked that answer immediately.  Jameson sort
of became a father figure to him, and it was good to have one.  He had no idea
what it was like to have a father, or any male authoritative figure, for that
matter.
                But, finally, Shaislyn was frustrated—something had been
bothering him.  “You speak of the sunset and the ocean as if you could see
them,” he complained as they walked along the shore.  Jameson had been going
over the finer points of ice spells and basic earth magic—but Jameson had spent
a fair amount of time letting the boy play too.
                And the old man laughed.  “Who says I cannot?”
                Shaislyn felt perplexed.  “You said you were blind.  But you
have no staff or cane, except your mage’s staff.  I don’t understand.”  It had
been puzzling him for months—that and Jameson’s accent, anyway.  Jameson only
spoke the most rudimentary of Tevene, and so most of their conversations took
place in the Trade tongue.
                “Oh, I’m blind, child, believe me,” he said gently.  “I
remember the sunset and the ocean well enough…”  But his voice lowered, though
there was no one around.  “But there is magic in this world, and some of it can
be used to see for those with the ability.”
                Shaislyn’s heart hammered.  Sight?  He could see?  “Teach me,”
he pleaded, and Jameson did.  It was hard work—harder still because he didn’t
know what sight was like.  Jameson said that it had been easier for him, as he
had not been born blind.  But Shaislyn had, and learning the spell was
difficult.  The first time he managed to cast it—accurately, he had been so
assaulted by the colors, the shapes, the dazzling… everything… that he had
closed his eyes instinctively.  That did nothing; it was a spell, not his
vision.  He shut it off, breathing hard like he had been running.
                Jameson chuckled.  “How did you like it?”
                Shaislyn turned to him.  “I… have to do it again,” he
whispered.  And he had.  The hardest part was expanding the mana constantly,
but he practiced, and learned, and excelled.  The child’s world expanded from
the dark world he had known, to the bright, coloured world he was learning.
  Finally, one day, Jameson took his cane and snapped it in two, proclaiming
that the boy needed it no longer.  Shaislyn had never been prouder of himself. 
He could see.
                But, as he went through life with his newfound vision, he
became bitter, over time, that he had been born blind.  Somehow, it was worse
knowing what he had been missing all these years.  Colours were beautiful, and
he wept the first time he saw the ocean… and his mother’s face, and thinking
about all he had been denied.
                He hadn’t told his mother about the spell—it never seemed a
good time.  She was always so busy, so preoccupied—desperately trying to keep
up with the workload her mother had left behind.  She might have noticed he
didn’t have the cane any more, and probably noticed that he didn’t reach out as
often.  He still did sometimes, out of habit, but it was wholly unnecessary. 
The first thing he did when he woke up in the morning was to activate the
spell, and he was infinitely pleased when he could make it last all day.  It
took a constant, steady supply of mana.  The benefit to that, though, was that
there were no accidents.  Young mages frequently broke things, set things on
fire, and caused other kinds of destruction with their magic when they were
learning.  Shaislyn’s though, was rerouted toward seeing things, so he never
had that problem; he had no mana left for mischief.
                The spell he managed to focus through his eyes, so he saw like
a normal person would, rather than the full spectrum view that had confused him
at first.  It wasn’t so bad sitting still, but walking proved neigh impossible
before he had narrowed his field of vision down.  Perhaps there was a reason
they had their eyes where they did.  Blinking, though, did not interfere with
his vision.  He could close his eyes, and still “see” perfectly fine.
                The best part, though, aside from the beautiful colours the
world was, was Jameson teaching him to read from the books he had.  The books
were so old and rare that the hermit may have sold them and lived in a nice
apartment, but somehow he preferred his ramshackle hut in the docks and to keep
his books.  He promised Shaislyn that one day, he would give them to him.
                                                                                                   
 
                Minrathous always had lovely weather, Kylie reflected.  Lovely
and grueling, that is.  Always with the hot, humid air.  Squatting on an island
as the city was, at least there was almost always an ocean-kissed breeze in the
air, even if she couldn’t always smell the sea in it.
                Apparently, today was her name day, and her parents had sent
her a few things.  They couldn’t be bothered to come themselves—far too busy
ordering slaves about no doubt—but they certainly sent things—a nice pen case,
a new dress all the way from Val Royeoux.  But it was the bird that was of the
most interest to her, the little yellow canary that sang that interested her
the most.
                And infuriated her the most.
                She had watched it at first, and thought the animal charming. 
It wasn’t her hunting hawk, no, but it was a delightful creature with such a
sweet song.
                But the more she listened to it, the sadder she became.  Why
would it sing… if it were trapped in that pretty gilded cage?  She wouldn’t
sing if she were trapped in a cage.
                Finally, she could bear it no longer, and she took it into the
courtyard, carrying the cage awkwardly in both hands.  She set it down, and the
poor thing fluttered about with fright.  She knelt in front of it, and opened
the cage.  It wasn’t the sort of cage that opened all the way—just a small door
for her hand, when it was feeding time, so she held it open.
                “What are you waiting for?” she muttered to the bird.  “Freedom
is here—now fly!”
                But the bird twittered, and fritted about, and avoided the
door.  The longer she waited, the more her despair seemed to climb.  Why… why
would something choose captivity over freedom?  Why?  “Freedom is better,” she
whispered to the bird, as if it could understand her.  She felt silly for doing
it, as if she were a little girl again instead of a child of ten.
                “It’s scared of your hand,” a voice said helpfully.
                She blinked in alarm, and snatched her hand back.  The cage
door banged shut.  She peered upwards, and was relieved to see Fenris—sweaty
and dirty from practicing in the yard.  But at least it was him and not someone
else.  Hadriana would have made that face she did when she thought Kylie was
being immature.  Danarius would have had the cage brought back inside—bird and
all.  And any servant would have reported her nonsense to Danarius or his
apprentice.  But none of the slaves would care enough about what the niece of
their master was up to, so long as it was of no harm to herself or others.
                “Do you think so?” she asked him, frowning.  “Then I need to
prop the door up.”  She cast about for something she could use.  Fenris looked
about the courtyard, and picked up a small stick.  He broke it into the proper
shape, and handed it to her.  It was “Y”-shaped, and uneven at the bottom.  She
frowned at it for a moment.  “Oh!”  Delighted, she propped the door up, and
retreated to what she hoped was an acceptable distance.
                The bird, though, did not fly away at once.  It did not even
explore the door immediately.  It frittered about its cage, and chirped
prettily instead.  Fenris must have seen Kylie’s mounting distress.  “It will
see it,” he promised her.
                She looked up at him, biting her lip, and realized her eyes
were filling with tears.  “Why would something choose captivity when the door
is open?  I don’t understand.”
                Fenris was silent on the matter, and looked at the bird.  “Lady
Annalkylie,” he said, nodding to the cage.
                That’s a mouthful, she thought to herself as she glanced back
at it.  Her despair turned to hope.  It was near the open door.  No, now it was
standing in the open door, looking at the twig.  It peered around at the wide
outside world beyond the bars.  Kylie was gleeful.  Free, it will befree!
               But the bird turned back around, hopping back around, no longer
facing the outside world, but not entirely in the cage either.
                “No!” Kylie cried in despair.  “No—get out!  Be free!”  She
picked up a rock, and hurled it angrily at the cage.  At the stupid bird that
could not grasp its own freedom.  The rock bounced off the side of the cage,
and the sound frightened the bird—but it frightened it out of the cage.  It
fluttered about hopelessly for a moment, before it truly took wing, and was
airborne.  Kylie was laughing as it flew above the trees, and chased after it
for as long as she could still see it—a few yards in to the courtyard.
                A sad truth, however, unbeknownst to Kylie, was that the canary
was a creature born and bred for life in a cage.  It knew nothing of foraging
or surviving on its own.  The poor creature had always been fed and watered and
taken care of by another.  It did not know how to find food or shelter, though
some things might be instinctive, and there was still much that it did not know
and could not have ever learned.  Just freeing a captured creature was not
enough; without guidance the freed one would never prosper and grow.  Fact of
the matter, it was most likely to simply die, cold and hungry, and alone.
                It would not be so different for a slave either.
                But Kylie was ignorant of this knowledge, and so she came back
in high spirits, and smiling.  Fenris was gone, but that was fine.  She picked
up her empty cage.  It was a pretty cage.  Perhaps something could still be
done with it.
 
                A handful of months later, Fenris stood, back to the wall,
disliking completely how only the two mages were behind the door.  He could
hear them talking in Ancient Tevene, though he understood not one word of it. 
The second he heard anything suspicious, he was ready to throw the door open. 
Danarius hadn’t liked it either, but there hadn’t been much choice; it was the
Archon, after all.
                The Archon, in a show of good grace, had left his own guard
outside—human slaves, twins, so alike that Fenris could not hope to tell them
apart except by the scars going down the left one’s arm.  They were also
utterly silent, owed to their tongues being cut out.
                A young slave raced down the hall on some errand, his face
ghost-white, and Fenris wondered what the matter could be.  Hearing nothing
more of the incident, he assumed it must be of a more personal nature.  Another
slave passed, this one a woman a dozen or so years older than he, in the
opposite direction.  She paused as she walked by him, frowning, and continued
about her errand.
                He dismissed that as well, because a lot of people stared at
him quite openly.
                Inside the room, the mages continued to talk.  He listened more
to their tone of voice than the words.  Even if he understood the dead
language, the door was thick enough to barely hear it.  Their words were
smooth, and he detected no venom in their words, nor the subtle notes of anger
or anything else he would be alerted to.
                To pass time, he thought about the different ways he could kill
the twin bodyguards.  As quickly as possible, of course, which would mean one
hand through each of their chests, if he could manage it.  He imagined that he
could take down one of them quickly, but the other one would not make the same
mistake the other had, and they had both been witness to his abilities, so they
might keep their distance anyway.  If it came to that, he imagined he would
draw his sword, which of course would send the household guards running, but he
had to keep his master safe.
                After the bodyguards were dead, he would have a handful of
seconds to act, in which case he would throw open the door and hope it was not
sealed.  If it was, he would hold off the guard.  If his master lay dead, he
would abandon the task and surrender to his execution.  After all, what else
was there?
                The thirty-something woman passed by again sometime later, and
stopped that time, arms crossed, brow furrowed.  “I know you,” she said,
pointing at him accusingly.
                He blinked, eyebrows raising, just a little as his interest
piqued.  “You do?” he inquired.  He had never seen her before, he was certain. 
An elf, brown hair, blueberry-coloured eyes, and other than that unremarkable. 
Still…  Or did she know him from… before?
                “Yeees,” she said slowly, as if she had never pronounced the
word before.  “But where?”  She bit her lip, taking a step back, staring at his
face.  Then she brightened.  “Oh, I know now!  Your name was…  What was your
name?  I don’t remember…”  He opened his mouth to say something, and she held
up a finger to stop him.  “Don’t tell me; I’ll get it.”  She pinched the bridge
of her nose.  “What was it?”
                Fenris’ heart pounded in his chest.  Did she know him?  Did she
really know who he was?  Even just a little bit, anything at all, he wanted to
know.  “Please…”  Try to remember, he was going to say.
                She brightened suddenly.  “Oh, I know—You’re…  Geez, I lived
next to your parents…”  Her lips pressed into a thin line again, as she lost
whatever she had been about to say.  “I can’t remember their names…”  But she
scowled at him, her tone becoming admonishing.  “You put worms in my dresser
once—you and my brother.  You were kids—I think you were two or something. 
Hell, do you ever look just like your father!”  She gave a friendly kind of
smirk.  “I used to watch him tend the garden—he wouldn’t wear a shirt.”
                He stared at her as if she had sprouted a second head.  She had
known him from when he was a child?  She knew his family?  He had so many
questions, even if she didn’t remember very much, it was still more than he
knew.  And he desperately had to know.  “What’s your name?” he asked.
                “Rhinesse,” she answered, cocking her head to the side a
little, still lost in trying to remember.  “Your mother--“
                The door’s handle turned, and her mouth snapped shut.  “The
kitchens,” she mouthed, pointing, then dashed off.  Fenris had never questioned
his ability to read lips, the same way he had never questioned his ability to
speak or walk, or how quickly he had taken up the sword.
                The twins’ eyes tracked her passage, then they looked back at
the door, staring at it intently.  Whoever had touched the handle had paused,
and they were speaking again.  There was some gentle laughter, then it opened. 
Danarius was the first one out, and looked visibly more comfortable to be out
of the room, at least to Fenris.  Someone who did not spend most of their day
watching him might not see any difference.
                The Archon and his master shook hands, and departed, each their
separate ways.  Danarius treated Fenris as if he were not there, which was far
from abnormal.  Danarius’ younger brother, Iden, was waiting in the grand
library, and the magister almost had to go looking for him; it was a very large
place, but one of the attendants directed him to a private reading area.
                “Where is Agasius and Annalkylie?” Danarius inquired, taking
the seat opposite Iden.  Fenris stood near the doorway.
                Iden closed the book, setting it down on the table.  “In the
garden.  My daughter grew restless, and when I tired of hearing her whining,
Agasius was so kind as to take her outside.”
                “Is she a dog or a young woman?” the magister laughed.
                Iden smiled crookedly.  “I’m not sure sometimes,” he admitted. 
“So, how did it go?”
                The magister looked pleased.  “Well, I must say.”
                Iden looked equally pleased.  “And when will it be officially
announced?”
                A slight shake of his head.  “Not for a while yet, but we still
have a few loose ends to tie up, and the dowry to consider.”
                “I don’t even want to know.”
                “No, you really don’t,” Danarius agreed.  “Still, we could not
ask for a better match.”
                “She’ll hate it,” Iden sighed, shaking his head slightly.
                Annalkylie—marry?  Yes, she would hate it.  Still, she was
becoming a woman soon enough, and it was time she, as a highborn maid, was
married.  The two continued to talk, and it was plain from just their words
that they were brothers, and quite comfortable insulting and generally abusing
one another while still not really taking offense.
                The heavy curtain that served as a door was pulled back, and
Annalkylie dashed in.  Agasius admonished her for not ringing the bell that
served as knocking, and she asked when the Archon’s ball was.  Iden sent her
off to change, and Agasius excused himself to do likewise.  Iden sighed, said
he must make appearances.  Danarius had to agree, and the two brothers left,
Fenris following from an acceptable distance.
 
                Fenris was made to stand a pace behind his master’s chair, a
tooled leather collar around his neck, a thin silver chain that trailed partway
down his chest, beginning at the little silver ring in the collar, and ending
at his master’s belt.  The chain was thin enough that it would break if he had
to, for whatever reason, move to protect his master, but it would hold
otherwise.  The collar was something that Danarius would tell him to put on
himself, tell him to attach the chain to, and seemed to derive a particular
pleasure from doing so.
                Fenris, on the other hand, didn’t care one way or another.  He
thought it was annoying, and it got in the way.  A part of him, a small part,
felt it was demeaning in every sense of the term, but he did his best not to
think about that.  Some combination of the oils on his skin, the collar and the
leash, and the near lack of clothing was enough to make him loathe social
occasions.
                Sometime in the night, Danarius unhooked the silver chain, and
told him to go fetch a particular bottle of red wine from the cellar.  He bowed
low, and excused himself.  To get to the cellar, he had to pass through the
kitchens, which he did quickly and without incident.  Once to the cellar, he
asked the cellar master about the vintage, received a particular tirade about
it, and reminded the man that it was for his master.  The bottle was handed
over grudgingly, and Fenris headed back up the steps.  He passed through the
kitchen, walking carefully with the bottle cradled in his arms.
                The woman, Rhinesse, careened around a corner.  “I remember
now!” she exclaimed, pointing toward him.  He blinked.  He had nearly forgotten
her.  “You and your mum--“
                “Rhinesse!” the headmistress yelled.  “Get back to work!”
                She glanced at Fenris, and slunk back around the corner.  He
looked longingly back in the direction she had gone, then hurried out.  He
served the wine to his master and a few of the people at the table with him,
and went back to his post, but the silver chain was forgotten.  Not an hour
later, someone tapped his shoulder, and moved back.  He glanced back at
Rhinesse, half-obscured behind a large pillar.  She beckoned him back.  He
hesitated, and took a step backward, staring at his master, who he judged to be
moderately drunk, and another step, close enough to hear her.
                “I used to live next door to your mother,” she began again. 
“You and my brother—“
                The magister signaled for more wine, and Fenris had to move
away again.  He didn’t get another chance for the rest of the night, though the
woman did try.  She tried to speak to him when he threw out the empty bottle,
tried again when the magisters were occupied, and another time as his master
was preparing to leave.  Each time failed, for one reason or another, and soon
he had to follow his master out.
                He never saw her again, though on the trips back—there were few
of those—he looked for her.  Another key to his past, gone.
 
                The blue of the sky was the deep, dark blue of the sea after a
storm, and today horizon touched the sea in an almost perfect blend of
colours.  A ship sailed out into the rich blues, its white sail, rather than
clashing with the shades in stark opposition, only made the blues darker and
deeper around it.
                Shaislyn could, and often did, spend hours looking out at the
ocean.  He had to learn all his colours after he learned the spell of seeing. 
He wanted to learn more.  There was a colour for everything, he had found. 
What before had only been shapes and textures to him were forms, silhouettes,
and colour.  Colour was what interested him the most—what was the most novel to
him.  That, and shadows.  Shadows were a fascinating concept.  To think, if a
place were dark enough, it was so enclosed in shadow that one could not see…! 
And, fascinating to think that half of a room can be in darkness and the other
half in light.  Candles were a source of fascination to him for a long time
too.  He had only known fire as a source of warmth before, never realizing all
the brilliant colours in it, and the light and shadows it cast.
                When he watched the sun set, sitting perfectly still for hours
in rich fascination at the brilliant cascade of colours—the sun boiling into
the ocean, the oranges and reds streaking across the sky like… like… like
nothing else in the entire world—he often wondered to himself, why does no one
else stop and stare?  How can anyone not stop and look, and see the world and
think…  It’s so beautiful.
                The answer, naturally, was that people who could see often took
it for granted.  He witnessed many individuals only glance at things, never
study them.  They never saw the beauty in anything, he felt.  But there was so
much beauty in the world—how was no one simply blinded by it?
                The sunset was just one thing, the sunrise another.  The sea
was beautiful at any time of the day or even night.  But he saw a sort of sad
beauty in the simple begging boy with the gimp leg, who tried to smile despite
his own troubles, and that no one ever seemed to notice him.  There was a sad
beauty to a broken doll in the gutter, a toy that someone had loved once and
either threw away or lost—and now it was forever lost and worthless to even the
one who had loved it.
                He came home late, and feeling wistful.  Lura wouldn’t be
home.  Neither would his mother.  Neither would notice that he had climbed out
the window, and snuck out of the alienage.  There was a loose board in the wall
around the place, and Shaislyn pushed it aside and squeezed through it.  He
moved the board back into place, and continued on.
                He had propped the window open, and he was alarmed to find it
firmly closed.  He tried to open it anyway, but it was no good.  He bit his lip
in worry.  Had it fallen somehow?  That had never happened before.  He didn’t
have a key to the door—they only had two and the adults needed them more, hence
the window.
                He hesitated, and tried the door, knowing it would do no good. 
He wasn’t so sure if it were good or bad that the door opened.  It creaked as
he stepped through, and though he tried to close it quietly, it still made some
amount of noise.  Something stirred in the dark, and he expanded his magic
sight, and his stomach tightened.  Oh, no…
                A small flame in an upturned palm illuminated his mother’s very
disapproving face.  “Shaislyn,” she said, with that angry tone in her voice
that meant he was in trouble.  “Do you have any idea how late it is?”
                The boy’s lips pursed, not at all enjoying being talked down to
so.  “How could I?” he countered, referencing his blindness.  “I just noticed
that it wasn’t as noisy.”
                The look on her face said, plainly, that she was unimpressed. 
Learning facial expressions had been the most difficult thing for him, and he
was still learning what all of them meant.  And why did people make one facial
expression, while their tone of voice meant something else?  He walked past
her, and sat down on the beaten sofa.  If he had to listen to this, he’d at
least prefer to be sitting.  “Shai, you know perfectly well it’s too late for
you to be out—it’s dangerous.”
                He had never encountered anything more dangerous than a feral
dog.  “It is not,” he countered, decidedly turning off his spell, uninterested
in watching her facial expressions.  This had certainly ruined his mood.
                “You’re four years old—you can’t do this, Shai--”
                “I’m five,” he interjected with feeling, all his belief that
she never paid attention to him reaffirmed.
                A very brief pause.  “Shai, it’s dangerous for you to be out
after dark.  Where did you go anyway?”
                He suddenly didn’t want to tell her, even if it were a place
she had first taken him.  He remembered, when he was two years old.  His first
memory was of his mother holding a seashell to his ear, and telling him that
the entire ocean’s sounds were captured inside the shell.  He had asked her
why, and she had said that it had been in the sea for a long time, and it
captured the sound inside it.  “No where,” he insisted.
                “Shaislyn!”
                “What?” he snapped.
                He heard her walk over to him.  “You know perfectly well you
aren’t allowed outside after sunset—“
                “I don’t even know what that is!” Shaislyn snapped.  It was a
lie, but it was what his mother deserved.  He didn’t want to tell her about the
magical sight.  He didn’t want to share it with her.
                Another short pause.  “Yes you do.  You know when it gets dark,
because it gets colder out, and people start leaving. You used to always know. 
How dare you pretend to be ignorant now!”
                His fingers curled into angry fists.  “I’m not ignorant.”
                She frowned.  “Do you even know what ‘ignorant’ means?” Varania
demanded.  Shaislyn remained silent.  He had heard the word before, he was
certain of it.  In the end, he said nothing.  “It means you didn’t know.”
                He was silent, and felt like he had walked in a place he didn’t
want to stray.
                His mother only continued on.  “I told you not to go out after
dark.  You know when that happens, Shaislyn.  And you went out of the alienage,
didn’t you?  I distinctly forbid you to leave—it’s dangerous for you to be out
alone.  Don’t you understand that?  Something horrible could happen to you.”
                “It doesn’t!” he argued, even though he had been determined not
to say anything no matter what she said.  If he just stayed quiet while she
yelled at him, it would be over sooner.  Oh, why did he go and argue?
                “It could,” she countered.  “Someone could hurt you, or you
could get lost—do you know how many people die every day in this city?  You
could be one of them.  Do you know how scared I was when you weren’t home?”
                “I don’t care,” he muttered.
                “What?”  He could feel her glowering at him.
                “I don’t care,” he repeated, a little louder, crossing his
arms.
                “You should care.  That’s what being responsible means, Shai. 
You’re irresponsible.  What happened to your cane?”
                Shaislyn was silent for a moment.  “It broke.”
                “What were you doing to break it?”  Her tone changed a
bit—slightly less accusatory and more concerned, more motherly.  Those moments
were too rare for Shaislyn’s taste.
                The boy’s lips pressed together into a thin line as he mentally
debated on his lie.  He didn’t want to tell her about Jameson, because then she
might find out about his sight—and even so, if he told her, she might forbid
him to go see him, and then he would have to lie even more in the future, and
sneak around a lot.  Better to lie once, and now.  “I tripped,” he said,
shrugging.  “It snapped in two.”
                She made an exasperated sound.  “We’ll have to find you a new
one.”
                He made a face.  “That’s stupid.  We can’t afford a new one. 
I’ll be fine,” he insisted.
                She sighed.  “I can’t believe you’d be so… so irresponsible as
to breakit.  And not tell me!  And—Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
                At that, Shaislyn scoffed.  “Why?” he demanded, grinding his
teeth.
                “It’s polite, and shows you’re listening,” she said with
strained tolerance.
                The child huffed.  “I am listening,” he argued.  “I can’t look
at you anyway!”
                “Turn your head towards me then.  You know that’s something you
should do, Shai.  What is wrong with you?”
                I’m half-elven with a mother who doesn’t care about me. 
“Nothing,” he lied.
                At that, she launched in a tirade to end all tirades.  Shaislyn
could barely keep up with her lecture.  She called him ungrateful,
irresponsible, and a few other things.  She lectured him on the need to obey
his parent and his elders and care for his things, and Shaislyn shifted
uncomfortably, he had been sitting for so long.  He just wanted it to be over. 
When she took a breath, and continued on as if she would never stop, the boy
felt like he had had it.
                “Fine!”  Shaislyn jumped to his feet, whirling to face her. 
“I’m evil and ungratefuland irresponsible.  Can I go to bed now?” he demanded
angrily.
                He couldn’t have seen it coming; she slapped him.  He froze. 
His face stung, and when he touched it; it was tender.  His eyes watered from
the pain of the strike.  He took a step away from her, and rather than rebuke
this, he walked away.
***** Gold and Silver Sins *****
Chapter Summary
     Kylie is told of her impending marriage, Shai witnesses his mother
     and Lura struggling with debt, and Fenris... Oh, Fenris...
     This has not been a good year for anyone.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Another turn of the seasons came and went, and Kylie began to
blossom into a young woman, and her parents began to write to her of marriage. 
Even her uncle mentioned a match for her—after she had at least passed her
Harrowing, of course.  She had cried herself to sleep at the thought.  She had
always accepted that her family would choose her husband for her, but… it had
always seemed so distant, so far away, that she didn’t bother thinking about
it.
                Now, everything was changing so quickly.  Nothing would ever be
up to her, she realized.  Her destiny was pre-determined once she was born. 
She was born a mage, and into a wealthy family.  Good luck trying to forge her
own path.  It wasn’t what she wanted.  She hadn’t thought that being a mage
would cage her like this, but she was doomed to live her life the same way as
her sisters before her.
                Hadriana had seen her crying alone in the garden, and the older
woman had sat down beside her.  Kylie had sniffed, and wiped her eyes. 
Hadriana said nothing, but sat next to her for a time, offering some small
amount of comfort only in that Kylie was not alone.  Kylie blurted out, “I
don’t want to get married.”
                Hadriana gave a small smile.  “I didn’t want to either.  So I
ran away from home.  I don’t recommend it.”
                Kylie looked at her.  “Everything worked out for you though,”
she said, her eyes watery.  She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes.  The gesture made
her look very much her age—which was almost eleven.
                Hadriana looked on her with pity.  “But my family was poor and
couldn’t force me to come home if I didn’t want to.”
                Kylie sighed, and looked down.  She wished she had been born
poor, like Hadriana had.  Everything would be so much simpler if they could
just… reverse.  As she spoke to the woman, she came to realize that each of
them very much wanted what the other had.  Kylie wanted the freedom to choose
and be free of her responsibilities.  Hadriana wanted wealth and power and,
from Kylie’s perspective, more responsibility.
                Well, she could have it.  Kylie didn’t want it, that was for
sure.
 
                Six years to the day, Danarius thought.  Since Fenris had woken
up, that is.  And he rarely had to so much as reprimand him.  There was just
that one incident with that girl, and that had been it.  The other magisters
were still afraid of him—every time the story of how Fenris had killed that
Qunari was retold, the truth was more and more stretched until it barely
resembled the original story at all.  That was all to the good though. 
Danarius hadn’t so much as been challenged in over two years.
                And, when he had been, he had told Fenris to kill him.  The
mage had demanded a duel—and when Danarius called for his pet instead of doing
it himself, the man had complained.  Danarius had countered with the fact that
Fenris was a creation of his magic, right before his little wolf ripped out his
heart—dramatic, but he liked it.
                The other mages had been very cautious around him since Senior
Enchanter Erisane’s death, but he heard the rumors all the same.  The original
dispute had been over slavery laws.  Erisane—who had originally fled to
Tevinter from Orlais--begged to abolish it—said it would help with foreign
policy.  He wanted to pay the wretches.  Not much, granted, but pay them all
the same.  Well, Tevinter ran on the blood and sweat of slaves, and that
obviously wasn’t going to work.  The debate had become so heated that Erisane
demanded blood.  When he was dead, his assets had been seized, to cover a…
gambling debt.  The man did gamble, sometimes obscenely, and whored as often as
not—quite unbecoming.  Danarius, of course, claimed the debt.  The man had
three children, and when the oldest had thought to try to stand up to him,
demanding what could be done to provide for himself and the two little ones,
Danarius had suggested, oh-so politely, to sell them.  It had been a kindness
to let the boy keep his father’s sword.  He had been told the boy had been
training to be a knight, so he may yet find work.  It was none of the mage’s
concern anyway—half-Orlesian brats, not a one of them a mage, was worth his
notice.
                After Danarius saw his guests out or to their rooms, he retired
privately to his chambers.  Fenris poured him another half glass of red wine,
and he sipped it, and smiled.  “Nothing like a bit of fear with your wine,” he
commented, looking at the door, then his gaze slid back to his slave. 
“Somehow, they think you’re quite frightening.”
                Fenris, as usual, had no reply.  Sometimes, he half-wondered if
he simply lacked the wit for it, or thought he was being subservient by not
replying.  He wasn’t; the comment begged a reply.  Nothing forthcoming,
Danarius sipped the wine.  He hadn’t drank very much during the party—he tried
to resist getting drunk since killing that whelp.  That had been in poor
taste.  Amusing enough at the time, but in very poor taste.  And there were so
many more interesting things he could have done at the time too.
                I’m getting quite cynical in my old age, he thought to
himself.  He scratched the stubble on his jaw.  Last night, he had shaved off
all of his beard on a whim, and wasn’t quite so certain he liked it.  Now it
was just itchy, and not having the beard meant constantly shaving and
trimming.  Having it was much easier.  It was a shame magic couldn’t just stop
it from growing, or just be used to shave…  The mundane folk—the non-
mages—seemed to have the craziest ideas of how magic worked, and all of it was
wrong.  He wished they were right actually—what would it be like to subsist off
of nothing but pure well water and air anyway?
                He sighed to himself.  He needed to find another mistress.  It
had been nearly a year since the last one got too clingy for him.  She wanted
him to marry her.  Why did it always come to that?  Couldn’t they just be happy
with the silks and jewels?  Whores were… all right, but it was so incredibly
disingenuous that he only tolerated it for so long.
                He could name a few suitable candidates, but they were really
just noting his station, his Altus bloodline, his money, and that he wasn’t
married.  “Widower” would have been the proper term.  He supposed there was
nothing wrong with the women who saw that in him and nothing more—he was only
too happy to shower them with gifts if he could get between their legs, it was
their social climbing he disliked.  He wasn’t interested in… replacing
Roschelle.
                Still… some things needed tending.  He supposed that was what
whores were for.  And slaves.
                “Fenris,” he said, taking another sip of the wine.  The elf
looked up.  “On your knees, in front of me.”  His slave bowed his head, and
seemed to drag his feet, but obeyed.  He scowled.  So dramatic.  It’s not like
I tell you to do this even every fortnight—even everyyear, you little wretch. 
I don’t expect you to be eager, but stop acting like you’re dying.
                A thought occurred to him.  He looked at his glass of wine, and
moved to hand it to his slave.  “Drink this,” he told him.  Fenris took the
glass and downed the contents all in one long swallow.  The elf gingerly put
the glass down on the table, and turned back to his master.  It wasn’t enough;
Danarius knew that.  His eyes flicked to the half-empty bottle.  “Drink that
too.  All of it.”
                Concern etched across the elf’s features momentarily, but he
rose, and took the bottle.  He raised it to his lips, and drank it.  He drank
in gulping swallows.  A trickle of red wine rolled over the elf’s lips, down
his chin, his neck.  He only set it down again when it was empty, and, dizzy,
he reeled back a pace, shaking his head as if to clear it.  He blinked several
times, and Danarius smiled pleasantly.  “As you were, pet.”
                He was short in response, but knelt back on the floor, in front
of him, facing him.  It would be a few more minutes before the drink took its
full effect, but he could see that his pet’s head was swimming already.
                It was potent, that was true.  The elf had developed a bit of a
resistance to cheap alcohols, but this was quite different.
                Fenris rubbed at the rivulet of wine that had gone down his
throat, wiping off his face with his arm.  Danarius watched him.  “Begin, pet,”
he said, voice soft.  He had his drunken slave lift the robes back, and use his
hand to steady himself, the other hand he grasped him with, and drew him into
his mouth.  So obedient.  The magister leaned back in the chair, sighing, his
fingers sinking into Fenris’ thick, pale hair.
                He relaxed, his slave’s mouth doing all the work.  He was
getting much better at it.  His teeth barely touched him, except to lightly
nibble and tease the foreskin.  He used his tongue in just the right way, and
even his hands, with the right amount of saliva.
                Leto had never had much of a gag reflex.  Neither did Fenris. 
Oh, they had both still gagged on occasion, but nothing Danarius had done to
them had ever made them vomit… from this.
                His fingers curled into his hair, and he rose, keeping his pet
in place as he did so, his other hand lifting his robes off of him.  He let
them fall onto the floor.  He gasped when his pet took the initiative for once,
and pushed him to the back of his throat, and swallowed.
                He had to have him.  “Stop,” he told him.  Confused, Fenris
moved away.  His cock was still hard, and glistening with his slave’s saliva. 
Danarius put his hands on Fenris’ shoulders, and pushed him down, until Fenris
was laying on his back, staring up at him, just as confused as ever.  And
drunk.  Very, very drunk.
                He touched him, his fingers running over the contours of his
chest, tweaking his nipples, and he remembered all the places Leto had squirmed
when he had touched him, and he touched those places.  Fenris squirmed the same
way, and eventually caved to his touch by the time he got down to his ankles,
and he heard his pet moan, and cover his mouth, as if shocked to hear himself
moaning.  Danarius laughed, amused, running his hands back up his legs.
                He tore the fine fabric in his haste to get his pet out of it. 
And when he did, Fenris was as naked as he had been when the lyrium had been
carved into his flesh, but this time his eyes were open, and watching him,
almost timidly.
                Danarius reached toward him, touching a vein of lyrium.  It
flared to life at his touch, the entire branch catching fire.  The blue light
illuminated the two of them, alone in the shadowed room.  Fenris said not one
word, but he looked at him, and that look seemed to say everything.  Danarius
saw all of Fenris’ insecurities in that look, all of his compulsion to obey and
be needed—a simple desire for attention that he would accept from anywhere and
anyone.  All of the problems that he had driven there:  All the rage under the
surface, the anger, the anxiety, the desperate need for validation and
acceptance… the faint touch of madness.  He looked… incredibly young just
then.  Even innocent.  Danarius thought of all the people Fenris had killed,
all the blood on the young man’s hands, yet he still looked oddly innocent. 
He’s a virgin, Danarius realized, a sick feeling beginning to rise in his
throat.  Leto hadn’t been by the time he had taken him, but Fenris was.
                He began to lose his resolve, and his will to continue.  He
tried to summon up the same desire  again, but it was no good.
                He swore, and shoved his pet away.  He rose, his back to
Fenris.  “Go,” he snapped.
                “Master…”
                “Before I change my mind,” he growled.  But Fenris hadn’t moved
from the floor.  He turned back toward him, and had half a mind to fuck him
then, out of anger more than lust.  “Do you want me to rape you?”
                Fenris looked up at him.  Not into his eyes, but at his face. 
Incredibly bold.  Too bold, and Danarius would have punished him for his
impertinence, except for what he said next.  “You have but to command me,
Master.”  His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and the compulsion for approval
from his master; the same thing that had made Fenris feel abandoned when he had
left him for a few weeks years ago.  You left me.  “It wouldn’t be rape.”
                Danarius’ mouth felt dry, and he took a step back.  His little
wolf was obedient to a fault, he reflected.  He’d even participate in his own
rape and insist it wasn’t, if his master so commanded it.  Unthinking,
unfeeling—and perfect to the point where it was almost disgusting.  “Get out,”
he told him.
                “Master—“
                “Out!” he roared.  By the time he looked back, wanting to tell
him not to go, Fenris had already gone.  The door swung shut.  He wondered what
Fenris had intended to say.
                He was drunk.  That’s all.  Drunk, and young, and desperate to
fuck—just like you were at his age.  He could ask him.  When he was sober the
next day…  Oh, bloody hell—the elf likely wouldn’t even remember it.
 
                He didn’t remember it.  Not really.  Oh, Fenris remembered a
few things.  He remembered his master’s organ in his mouth.  He remembered the
serving outfit tearing, but couldn’t remember why or the details leading up to
it, or after it.  He had just woken up in his room, sick.
                Dutiful as ever, he had still gotten up, dressed, and reported
for a miserable day standing vigilant about his master—who took one look at him
and ordered him back to bed.  Fenris wasn’t about to complain—his head was
pounding, he had thrown up twice already, and his stomach was still churning.
                He was in the privy, vomiting, when a servant came by his
room.  The man was still inside when he came in.  The man did not turn to look
at him when he spoke, “Magister Danarius ordered you to drink this.”  He
gestured to a thick brown, sludge-like liquid sitting in a stone cup.  “Drink
all of it.  And don’t ask what’s in it—if you knew, you wouldn’t drink it.” 
The servant laughed at his own joke.
                Fenris regarded the cup with suspicion as the servant left.  He
sniffed at it.  It smelled like…  He’d rather not consider what it smelled
like.  There was a flagon of wine sitting beside it—to wash down what he had no
doubt was an awful taste.  He did not relish this task his master had set
before him.
                It had the consistency of the muck found in a pigsty with a
similar attractiveness in odor.  It tasted like tar primarily, with an
aftertaste of something like charcoal and some kind of ghastly flower.
                He drank it all in one long swallow, grimacing when it was
done.  He downed the wine immediately, wondering why he still had a taste for
wine at all, all things considered.  But this flagon of wine wasn’t
particularly potent—just something to wash the taste out of his mouth.  He
curled back into bed, and tried to sleep.
 
                Shaislyn had lain awake for nights, listening to Lura and
Varania talk.  Lura had gone to the brothel—had been going most nights now for
the past couple of months.  But it wasn’t enough.  Varania was nearly in tears,
but she was on the verge of joining Lura in the brothel.
                The child was only that—a child—but he still felt like he
needed to help.  He knew people at the docks, and did odd jobs there.  They
didn’t pay him much, and Lura and Varania both hated to take the copper pennies
he gave them, but there came a point when there was little choice but to do so.
                But his mother was falling behind at her job.  Her customers
were getting angry, or leaving, or sometimes even threatening her.  She came
home frequently in tears, and sometimes not at all.
                Shaislyn remained quiet throughout all of it, and found himself
staying at home less and less as time passed.  He stayed with Jameson, and read
his books, and talked about their contents.  He asked about shapeshifting, if
it were a real magic.  The old man had laughed.  “Of course it’s real, boy,” he
told him.  “But not everyone can do it.  You must first study an animal, and
learn about it, before you can become it.  And once you do, will you even want
to go back?”
                It had given Shaislyn a lot to think about, but he found
himself watching the animals in the city like he hadn’t before.  Stray cats,
half-feral dogs, pigeons, crows, gulls, and rats.  No matter how much he
studied though, he wasn’t sure that he was really learning anything useful.
                One day, Shaislyn told Jameson about his mother’s problems. 
The old man had looked at the boy, for a long time, and the half-elf had
wondered if his tutor would respond, or had even heard him.  Then he replied,
“I see.”  The next day, he gave Shaislyn a whole gold coin, and told him to run
home to his mother and give it to her.  The gold was nice—it helped a lot.  But
not for long, and Shaislyn refused to ask the man for any more.  He didn’t want
to be beggar, or, worse, a leech.  So he kept working at the docks, helping
people and running errands, and all the while tutoring, though there was less
and less of that as time passed and he became too busy trying to make money.
                Shaislyn would wait until the two women were asleep, and he
would take his copper pennies and sneak them into their purses, hide them in
places around their little apartment—just things to be found.  They would never
take the money if they knew it was money he had earned; he had tried that
before.  But they would take it if he left it lying about, pretending that it
was money that had been lost and forgotten.
                They just seemed to get more and more behind.  The money-
lenders had come, and Shaislyn had listened at his door as his mother begged
them to give her more time.  They threatened her, and left her.  Varania had
gone back to work rather than stay and try to rest.
                Lura came home before the sun rose, and Varania still had not
returned.  But Shaislyn was awake.
                “What are you doing?” Lura asked him, sitting down beside him
on the old sofa.
                He looked up.  “Sell me into slavery,” he said with all the
seriousness of a child.
                Lura paused.  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she told him
gently.
                He shook his head.  “I’m a mage.  The army would pay a lot for
me—I heard them talking at the docks.  It would be more than enough to pay off
the moneylenders,” he said.  He glanced away, and did not add the rest.  It
would be one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe.  He looked back at
Lura.  “Please, Lura.”
                Her honey-colored eyes welled with tears.  “Oh, Shai…” she
gasped, and hugged him.  “No—No.  I couldn’t…  I’d sell myself before…  No, you
can’t.”
                He struggled free of her grasp, and rose to his feet to look
down at her.  “You wouldn’t fetch as high a price,” he countered reasonably. 
He swallowed.  “I’ve been thinking about it—a lot.  We can’t afford the rent.” 
He left out that they had lost the house that Mieta had.  They were in an
apartment now—it was infested with rats, and had but one bedroom that Lura gave
to mother and child, quite graciously.  In the past, the two women had shared
the bed, as Lura worked at night and Varania was away in the day, but lately,
Varania slept little enough, and when she did stumble home, Lura did not wish
to interfere with her rest by making her sleep on the cot in the main room.  He
left out their threadbare clothing and the thin porridge, the cabbage soup, the
millet soup with mold in it.  He left out that he knew Lura and Varania often
went hungry in an effort to feed him.
                “Shai…  No.  It will work out; I promise.”
                He looked at her, and knew she was only saying that.  Empty
words, to try to calm a child, nothing more.  “No it won’t,” he said softly. 
“It hasn’t worked out at all.  It just keeps getting worse.”
                She touched his arm comfortingly.  “I know it looks bad right
now—“
                “Stop treating me like a baby!” he complained, jerking away
from her.  “I know we can’t pay the rent.  I know that the moneylenders are
threatening Mother.  I know that we can’t afford to feed ourselves.”  He paused
in his rant, to get his thoughts together.
                In the pause, Lura tried to calm him.  “Shaislyn, it looks
desperate at the moment, but it will get better—“
                “Stop saying that!” he cried, as if in pain.  This was hard
enough as it was.  Didn’t she see that he was scared?  That he didn’t want to
be a slave?  He didn’t want to leave his family and everything he knew, and be
enslaved the rest of his life.  He didn’t want that—but what choice was there? 
He didn’t see any other options that would work.  “If you don’t sell me, the
moneylenders will take me.”  He crossed his arms.  “I heard them say that to
Mother.”  By Lura’s silence, he knew it was true, and he hadn’t misunderstood. 
“If you sell me directly, you’ll get more money.”  Either way, the end was the
same.  He’d rather that Lura and Varania have the extra money.  And maybe then,
Mother will finally care about me, if only for the sacrifice I made for her. He
had known his mother was less than genuine with her love and care for years. 
He knew she tried, tried very hard often as not, but that she didn’t love him. 
He did not resent her for it; he was the product of rape, and understood. 
Varania never would have told him that, but he had cornered Lura, and Lura had
finally confided in him, just a little, under the promise that he would say
nothing about it to anyone.
                Lura looked down.  “We have to tell your mother.”
                He shook his head firmly.  “Mother would sell herself before
she sold me.  And she’s a trained mage—she’d sell for more, most likely,” he
said quietly.  But he looked up.  “But she’s a woman, and…”  He didn’t have to
say it aloud; Lura knew what he meant.  He was afraid that his mother would be
raped again.  Another thing that scared him—if he was here when the money-
lenders came, what if they took Lura instead?  What if they took his mother
too?  Where would that leave him?  Alone, on the streets—that’s where.  When it
came down to it…  It just made sense for Lura to sell him.  It was logical, but
it was not an easy decision.
                Lura looked back at him.  “Give me three days, Shai.  I’ll try
to get the money by then.”
                He wanted to scream.  “The moneylenders will be back in four. 
We need the money to pay them, or they’ll take me.  What if they come back
early?”
                “Two days,” she told him.
                He grudgingly agreed.
 
                The match had been made.  Annalkylie’s uncle had told her of it
this morning, and she had run from the room.  She had ran from everything,
hating the world and everything in it.  She wanted the entire world to burn for
her hatred.
                It wouldn’t be for another two years, until she came of age,
but she hated it all the same.  Everyone said it was a good match.  Everyone
said that she should be pleased.  “Everyone” could take it and shove it up
their ass; she didn’t care.
                She wanted to wear riding leathers instead of gowns and robes. 
She wanted adventure.  She wanted to find a place where she could be alone and
feel like she was the only person in all existence.  She wanted to find a land
where she could travel for miles in any direction and not see a single soul.
 She wanted to feel freedom like she had never felt it—strong, clear,
beautiful.  She wanted to let her hair down and feel the wind rushing through
it.  She wanted to see the world and all its splendor with her own eyes.
                She did not want a squirming pink babe sucking at her teat. 
She did not want a highborn, Altus husband.  She did not want gold and jewels
and titles.  She did not want any of that.
                And so she began to think, and plot, and plan.  Most of her
plans were preposterous and silly—even she could see that, but she still
planned and schemed all the same.  There had to be some way—something she could
do—that would free her.  Something…
                She didn’t know.  She just didn’t know.
                She flatly refused to have anything to do with her wedding
plans, and made up that it was bad luck for a bride to plan her own wedding. 
When that was met with frowns of disapproval from her family, she had only said
that she wanted it to be a surprise.
                Kylie planned surprises of her own.
 
                Lura was intimidated by the military men as they scrutinized
Shaislyn.  She had asked around, and the military would give the best price for
mage-flesh.  She had serviced many a man in uniform, but this was different for
her.
                “He’s blind—what good is a blind mage?  He can’t see where he’s
casting,” one of the men said, and turned from them, dismissing them.
                Lura’s hopes were dashed.  She had finally admitted to herself
that it was the only way, and then…  “Buy him,” another suggested.  “We’ll give
him the brand, and he can work with lyrium.  Don’t need eyes for that.”
                Lura did not miss the way that Shaislyn bristled.  “Giving the
brand” was just another way of saying “Tranquil,” after all.  A life of
contented servitude, without emotion, will, or desire.  It severed a mage’s
link to the Fade, forever, and made the person they were an empty husk of a
thing.  If it were that… they would go elsewhere, or, better still, not sell
the boy at all.
                “I can see,” Shaislyn countered.
                Lura looked at him.  She had noticed long ago that he seemed to
look at her when she was talking, that he made mention of things he couldn’t
know otherwise, and his cane had disappeared.  She had suspected something, but
never said anything about it because the truth was just too preposterous. 
Varania had just been too busy to really notice.  “How is that?” a man asked,
bemused.  “What colour are your sister’s eyes?”
                “She’s not my sister, but they’re brownish gold,” he said.
                “He’s just repeating what he’s heard,” another man said.
                Shaislyn looked positively offended.  “It’s a spell,” he
blurted out.  That piqued their interest.  “I can see with it.”  He paused. 
“In some ways, I see more.”
                The woman in the room folded her arms beneath her breasts. 
“Even if you can see, you’re a child.  We would have to train you.  It’s
cheaper to buy older apostates.”
                Shaislyn’s lips pressed together.  Lura wanted to tell him that
they had best leave, but he would not back down.  “Exactly,” he said, and
smiled like a card player with a card tucked up their sleeve.
                One of the two men looked back at him.  “Care to enlighten us,
child?”
                He smirked.  Lura wanted to hit him—Don’t be insolent; they
don’t want that in a slave!  “Teach me the Qunari tongue.  Send me out as a
refugee… and a spy.  Why would anyone suspect a half-starved, blind, half-elven
child?”
                They all fell quiet, and looked at one another.  The woman
smiled wryly.  “Well, wouldn’t that be the epitome of the word ‘pathetic’?” she
laughed.  “He’s right.”
                “It would take some time before he learned enough to be
useful,” the second man reminded them.
                “But he’s right,” the woman insisted, if grudgingly.  “Even
when he gets older, no one will ever suspect the blind.”  She frowned in
thought.  “People often treat the blind as if they are deaf too, more so if
they never suspect he knows their tongue.”  She looked Shaislyn in the
eyes—something few people ever did, eyes as pale as his were unnerving.  “Can
you read, child, with this ability?”
                Lura froze.  She had never thought to mention to him that the
Imperium liked their slaves illiterate most of the time; a blind child could
never learn to read, she had thought.  “Yes,” he answered, and Lura felt like
they might as well leave immediately.
                And the woman smiled.  “I like someone who can tell the truth.”
                “I’m not sure how I feel about a slave who reads and sees with
magic,” the first man said, making a face.
                The woman looked at him.  “He’d be more useful than you are,”
she countered.  “Your spies always get sent back in pieces, if at all.”
                He conceded the point.  “Fine—we’ll take him.  Five
sovereigns.”
                Lura only raised an eyebrow.  “Shai—let’s go.  They plan to
cheat us.”
                The men bristled, but the woman laughed.  “Oh, you I like,” she
purred, and began the haggling.  They settled on a fair sum.  If Shai had been
a teenager and more learned, it would have been twice the settled amount, the
woman said with some regret, but they had to teach him until then.
                Lura hugged him fiercely, and looked back at him as they
parted.  Her heart felt heavy as the purse, and when she got home, she cried
until the tears wouldn’t flow again.  Shai was just like Leto, she realized. 
Always putting his family first, to a dangerous fault, always at his expense. 
And they had ended up exactly the same, she realized with great sadness.  A
life of slavery, for herself and Varania.
                Varania slapped her when Lura had to tell her, and she had
screamed, and cried like someone dying in turns, but a week later, apologized
to Lura, and embraced the other woman, and they both wept for the lost child.
                “I understand,” Varania told her.  “I’m sorry—I just…  He’s my
child.”
               Lura swallowed.  “I know.  He was very brave.  He did it for
you, Varania.”
                She stared at the other woman with watery green eyes.  “Leto
did too,” she whispered.  “I’ll never see him again either.”
 
                Another year, and more pieces were falling into place.  Kylie’s
allies and hired informers slowly grew.  Her plan was foolproof, and she was
going to win this game.  She would have everything of her heart’s desire in one
fell swoop.  It heartened her to think on it, at least.
                The most difficult part by far was the planning, and the
messages were the most deadly.  Those were the ones that made her blood run
cold when she penned them, and made her stomach tie in knots when she handed
them to someone else.
                There were so many plans to make, so many ends to tie.  She had
one more year still.  One more year until the wedding.  It was time enough, and
now that she knew what she did, it was easier still to plan.  In fact,
everything was working out in her favor.
                No one knew.  No one even suspected her beneath her charming
smile.  People looked at her blonde curls and blue eyes, her highborn station,
and her magic, and thought her nothing more than any of that—a pretty strumpet
with a bit of power, but mostly she let them see the pretty strumpet.  She
pretended to be silly as any highborn girl.  She feigned interest in dancing,
and became quite good at it.  She feigned interest in learning the harp, and
spent many an hour playing it.  In time, her wild ways were widely thought to
be put to rest, and she did her best to make sure that all anyone ever saw was
her being precisely what everyone else expected of her.
                It pleased her parents, and dulled the suspicion of those
around her, exactly as she desired.  She disliked it when others spoke about
her as being something she was not, but she told herself that she would only
have to tolerate this for another year.  Nothing more.
                And so Kylie smiled, and when someone asked for her hand in a
dance, she let herself be led to the floor, as graceful as any lady.  She wore
flowing silks and jewels, the sort of which she never would have worn just two
years ago.  Her hair was pinned up in a silver net of pearls, a sapphire on her
throat the same shade as her eyes.
                She went from partner to partner, and was as gracious as could
be.  She blushed prettily at the jests and friendly teasing.  She smiled at the
words of congratulations.  It was her engagement party, just announced.
                Her betrothed stepped into the dance, and she found herself
partnered with him.  The Archon’s son.  As she moved she looked at him, and he
was as courtly as one would expect.  He was not ugly, at least, and they were
of an age together.  He was a mage, she had heard, as was only fitting a
match.  The Archon of Minrathous was not a rank passed on by blood all the
time, but rather through skill.  There was no guarantee the boy would ascend to
the title if he had a more able relative, but it was still a prestigious house,
and still considered a very good match.  Her dowry had been enormous, she had
heard, all the same.  They danced, and she heard people talking about them, and
she tried to ignore the whispered words.
                “You seem in high spirits,” he said conversationally, taking
her quite out of her frame of mind.
                And she made herself blush as if his words came from the Maker
himself, remembering that she was a proper lady now, and had best act the
part.  “Oh, yes, mesere,” she agreed.  “And why ever not?”
                He seemed as if he were far away for a moment.  “You don’t
want—“ he started to say, but the song changed, and it was time for new
partners.  She wondered what he had intended to say, but decided that, in the
end, it didn’t really matter at all, did it?  They were both nothing but their
parent’s pawns.  Pieces to be moved on a board, nothing more.  They were their
family’s alliances in flesh.  Once their marriage was consummated, that
alliance would be secure, at least for a generation or so.  Sometimes less, but
it was cause to celebrate all the same.
 
                At least I don’t have to pour the wine, Fenris thought.  But he
disliked parties all the same.  The Circle mages were all blood mages, he was
certain.  Danarius mentioned it often enough to his fellows—sometimes jests,
hints, or anything of that nature.  They had inside jokes and Fenris wasn’t
deaf to them—fact of the matter, he was often the subject of them.  At first
confusing, but he understood enough in time to realize what they all meant.
                Over time, he had also learned the weakest mages were the ones
who refused blood magic, and the ones who were most often to die and least
likely to ascend through their ranks.
                He looked around at the engagement party, the dancers, the
musicians, the revelers, but only really saw the slaves in attendance.  Since
that child had died, he had seen countless other atrocities committed in the
name of amusement.  He had seen two children told to try to kill the other, or
they would both be killed.  He had seen captives who would not be cowed and
subservient as slaves thrown into the Provings, and set upon by wolves as the
crowd cheered.
                Little wolf.
                His master’s sigil was a wolf.  Maybe that was all there was to
it.
                And he had learned to school his expressions, to stand with a
blank face while these things happened, and a small part of him died for it. 
Those children deserved more than a stoic gaze, but what else could he do
except to learn to accept it?  Besides, he felt he owed it to them to watch, to
remember their faces, even if he didn’t know their names.  I can’t help you,
but I can remember you.  I can remember your terror and your pain. It was all
he could ever hope to do.
                In the corner, out of the way but well-lit and looking
ornamental, was an eternally sad-looking elven slave.  Fenris had seen her
multiple times, each time just as miserable-looking as the next.  Her master
was another one of the magisters—some southern one--who boasted of her musical
abilities.  He had said, “She can sing in six languages, and play nearly ever
instrument.”
                Right now, she didn’t sing, but strummed the big gilded harp
with shapely hands.  She had an accent, when she sang, that the magisters
described as “Dalish” but she lacked the tattoos.  She was in her early
twenties at latest, and though he had seen her many times, she never spoke a
word, not for anything, something her master—at least publicly—didn’t seem to
care about; it wasn’t what she said that he cared about but rather what she
could sing. He would come across her in the hall when she assisted in the
cleaning after a party or banquet, not trusting anyone else to care for the
instruments, and even when someone else would carry out the heavy cases, even
try to speak to her, she would never respond.  Strange, considering that
everyone knew she wasn’t mute, not unlike Vairin, except she didn’t strike him
as being utterly mad.  As a result, no one knew her true name.  The magister
called her “Wren” and after over half her life a slave, that might as well be
her name.  Like me? Fenris wondered fleetingly.
                As the night wore on and Annalkylie retired, it gave leave to
many of the other ladies to do so as well, and so they did, and their men with
them, but the wine still flowed, and the others still drank.
                A magister—he guessed from somewhere south and east by his
accent when Danarius had spoken to him earlier--across the table was drunk, and
had a slave girl by the arm.  He was saying something rude, Fenris could tell
by the look on her stricken face, but he couldn’t hear what exactly.
                The man seemed to be hurting her—his grip on her arm made her
knees buckle, and the human threw her onto the table, sending dishes
scattering.
                The others hardly gave it any notice other than an amused
glance, maybe some laughter.  All except the slaves, who stood by mutely, and
pale.  Fenris felt himself become curiously blank, down to his stance.  He
simply felt numb to it.  It was just one more atrocity to add to the ever-
growing, towering pile of them.
                The man raped her.  There at the table, drunk on too much
brandy.  The girl cried, but was good not to resist; she would have been beaten
for resisting.
                “How crude,” Fenris heard his master comment.
                “It’s just a bit of fun,” another mage interjected.
                “He could at least take his ‘fun’ elsewhere,” Danarius said,
sounding most displeased.  The girl continued to cry.  Fenris, for once, agreed
with his master.  It was bad enough to be raped, he imagined.  Worse still, to
be raped with an audience to the deed.
                A female magister, this one from some southern city but well-
traveled, laughed.  “You’re becoming quite prudish in your old age, Danarius,”
she teased.  She was middle-aged and graying herself.  “Still—I think he broke
a dish or two.  Perhaps the bedroom would be better.”
                “Slaves aren’t good enough for a bed,” the other magister
commented.  Fenris recalled his master making mention before that half the
man’s current slaves were very probably his bastard-born children… who it was
entirely possible that he only continued to fuck with a flagrant disregard to
incest.  He kept human slaves, and said that elves made him feel like he was
“fucking a child” because they had little body hair.  But he wasn’t above it.
                Danarius laughed.  “But you’re the one who has to fuck them on
the floor.”
                “I’ll fuck your elf on the floor,” he said, gesturing with his
glass to Fenris, to the laughter of the others.  Fenris shifted in the shadow,
uncomfortable.
                “Do you want him, Jairus?” Danarius asked, bemused.  Please… 
Please not that…
                The man looked at Fenris again, studying him with hazel eyes. 
“I’d fuck him.”
                “You’d fuck a stuck pig,” the woman informed him.  “And likely
have.”
                Danarius glanced at him.  “Speaking of which, where’s your
wife?”
                “I left her in her pen this time—at home,” he laughed.  “She
doesn’t like it when I fuck the slaves.”
                The woman’s painted lips pursed into a smirk.  “But the pigs
are all right, then?”
                He laughed, and drank to her jest.  “Why, fair lady, I’d sooner
fuck you.”
                “On the floor, I imagine.  I hear you’re fond of that,” she
sniggered.
                “Only when the one I’m fucking isn’t bred for a bed.”
                “Hard to breed them for a bed when they’ve been bred on the
floor,” she went on, and the talk shifted comfortably away from Fenris.  He was
grateful, and looked back at the poor slave girl being raped, his eyes full of
pity.  The magister had just finished, and straightened his robes, and strutted
away to continue drinking.  The girl slipped to the floor, in tears.  A
servant, the one minding the slaves apparently, reprimanded her, and from their
expressions, seemed to be threatening her.  She climbed to her feet on shaking
legs, and left the room.  Fenris was dismayed to see her changed, cleaned, and
serving again in a quarter of an hour.  She was shaking enough, though, that
they kept her away from anything too breakable and expensive.
                He kept his master in sight as the mage milled around, talking,
and drinking.
                The general talk and the music became too loud to quite hear
them, and the elf didn’t care enough to try to.  He just made sure that his
master was in sight at all times, and he watched out for anything suspicious. 
The last party they had been at, someone had tried to stab him.  Fenris had
seen the flash of steel, though, and said man was missing an arm before his
master was in harm’s way.  Danarius had seen fit to reward his little wolf with
a new sword, which was still being forged.
                His master glanced at him twice, and Fenris frowned
quizzically.  Talking about me?  That wasn’t so uncommon.  It had been years,
but he was still a bit of a sensation.  They were afraid of him, and some of
the fear he didn’t even understand.  It seemed so much deeper than his
abilities.  It was hinted that it had something to do with the Ritual itself,
but he just didn’t know…
                The serving girl who had been raped stumbled as she came near
him.  He caught her automatically, but her tray dropped with a clatter.  It had
been empty, or she may have been whipped.  Fenris picked it up hurriedly,
giving it back to her.  Her eyes were red and puffy, and she trembled as she
walked, but she tried to smile when he gave it back to her, because she was too
distraught to speak.  She moved away.
                Raped, in front of an audience who didn’t care.  Had she been a
maiden?
                The hour grew still later, and Danarius went to retire.  Fenris
would escort him to his rooms, at a respectable distance, before he would slip
away to the servant’s quarters he would be confined in for the duration of
their stay.
                Danarius stopped at the door, as if just remembering
something.  Fenris doubted it though.  The man smiled at him, not in a way his
slave liked.  “Do you recall where Magister Elden is residing?”
                Fenris blinked.  This had not been what he was expecting. 
“Yes, Master.”
                The mage’s smile turned into a smirk.  “Good.”  And he gave him
his instructions.  Fenris paled, but bowed all the same, and walked slowly, oh
so very slowly, to Magister Elden’s room.  The room was empty when he arrived,
so he resigned himself to wait.
                When the man came, he was drunk, and laughed aloud when he saw
him.  He pissed in the privy with the door open.  Fenris took the opportunity
to peel out of his clothes, lest they get ruined.  He was resigned to the
rape.  It was only rape.  Thousands of people had been raped before.  He had no
doubt that many of them were male.  He also had no doubt that thousands more
would be raped.  He wasn’t special or unique in that regard.  At least I don’t
have an audience, he thought.  That poor girl.
                It couldn’t last that long either.  The man was drunk, for one
thing—very drunk.  He imagined that it would be over quickly, and then the
drunkard would shove him out the door—likely naked with semen running down his
legs, just like Perya.  He was beginning to associate mages and drinking with
atrocity.  But… no.  He was a slave, in every sense of the term.  If his master
desired him to let another man mount him, then… that was all there was to it.
                Furthermore, he would get over it.  If he hated it, if it was
the worst thing he could ever hope to experience, then he could be comforted in
that he knew he could overcome it.  The worst of it would pass—it couldn’t last
forever.  His memories could, but they were only memories.  He could live
without memories—he knew that—which meant he could live with the painful ones
too.  If it hurt, the pain was fleeting.  The only pain that was constant was
the lyrium, he reminded himself.  The only thing in his life that mattered was
Danarius and his master’s orders.  If his orders were to do this, then he must
obey.
                The magister came out of the privy stumbling and peeling off
his clothes.  He left a trail of them to Fenris.  “Your master tells me you can
swallow,” he commented.
                Fenris flinched.  How much had his master said?  How much is he
whoring me for? “Is that what you desire, mesere?”
                “Don’t talk until I tell you to, slave,” he hissed, and seemed
like he was going to hit him, but was apparently too drunk to see straight
enough to deliver it.  That was all to the good then.  “Start swallowing.” 
Fenris almost sighed aloud, and lifted himself to his knees, and brought the
man into his mouth.  Even fully erect, he really didn’t have enough for him to
swallow, so much as let rub repeatedly against the back of his throat.  But the
man didn’t seem to care too much about that.
                He spilled his seed suddenly and unexpectedly.  Fenris
flinched, and forced it down his throat, leaving a salty taste behind in his
mouth.  He began to daydream of something to get the taste out.  Danarius
always gave him something afterward—wine, water, something.  Magister Elden,
however, with his lascivious appetite for rape, thought nothing of it.
                He complained about his sudden orgasm, and hit Fenris as if the
elf could control it.  He fell upon the elf, and was about to hit him again,
but the slave cried quickly, “My master forbade you to hit me.”
                He had.  He had told Fenris as much before he sent him away. 
Elden growled his displeasure, but his hand fell away.  He grumbled, and made
Fenris suck on him again.  It took a long time, and his jaw was aching by the
time he was hard enough for the deed again.
                And he was no less drunk.  He pushed Fenris down, on his back,
and his lips found his neck.  Fenris cringed.  “My master forbade you to mark
me,” he practically yelped.
                He felt teeth against his skin, and sensed a strong desire for
violence from the other man.  He pulled away, and fumbled with his erect
member.  The elf flinched before contact, and stopped breathing when he
penetrated him.  His fingers curled into fists, suddenly angry that this was
happening.  For one moment, the lyrium flared to life, before Fenris controlled
it, and it faded again.  The mage had gone still, some part of his drunken mind
realizing how dangerous the elf really was.
                In the end though, lust won out over common sense, and he held
on to the slave when he pounded into him.
                Fenris’ eyes closed, no longer desiring to see the man.  He
knew somehow that he was not the first man Magister Elden had bedded—or raped
for that matter.  That was almost comforting.
                He tried to think about something else—anything else.  Nothing
came to mind.  Nothing but the sickening sensation of his throbbing member
inside of him.  The magister stopped for a moment, and when Fenris opened his
eyes, he saw the man drinking again—straight out of the bottle.
                As if he needed more wine.  The drunken pig.  Fenris found
himself hoping he choked and died on it.
                But then he set the bottle down, and resumed where he had left
off, as violent as ever.  He felt himself torn, and knew he was bleeding.
                It can’t last.  It can’t last.
               It felt like an eternity.
                He heard all the same sounds he had heard when Perya had been
raped.  Even the whimpering, and realized that that was himself.  He hadn’t
thought he would whimper.  He had thought…  He didn’t know what he had
thought.  The hardest part, he reflected, was keeping his legs apart.
                “Fuck!” the man cried out in anger, suddenly.  Fenris’ eyes
opened in time to see the man slap him, regardless of what Danarius had told
him.  His flaccid penis slid out of him.  He had drank too much, Fenris saw
with no small amount of relief.
                The man lifted the bottle, and drank some more, and made as if
to throw the empty bottle in his anger, then glanced at the elf lying naked
beneath him.  And he chuckled, and Fenris suddenly felt very, very cold, and
very, very small.
                The empty bottle was placed where his member had been a moment
ago, and the elf gasped upon its rough entry, and the magister just laughed. 
The bottle didn’t go deep enough to suit the magister, so after a short time,
he pulled it out.  He used his fingers for a while, and still he was too
flaccid to finish it.  Two fingers Fenris almost didn’t feel after everything
else.  Three he felt, but when it came up to four, he was whimpering again, and
the man’s movements and the rings on his fingers were violent enough to tear
him, and keep tearing.
                His hand clamped over his mouth to stifle his cries.  He hated
it more than he had thought, more than he knew he could hate it.  Then the man
left him, and he sagged in relief.  Was he going to go pass out somewhere? 
Please say he was…
                He was going to take a piss.  Fenris was thankful for the
reprieve anyway.  He shivered, and found himself shaking and sick like he
hadn’t thought he could be.  How could something so simple hurt so much?  How
could it make him feel so sick?
                When the magister came back, he used the bottle again.  At
least it was smooth for the most part.  At least it couldn’t stretch and bend
the way his fingers could.
                The movement slowly stopped, and Fenris looked up.  The
magister was slumped against the bed, unconscious more than asleep.  Fenris
wriggled away, kicking the bottle away.  He had half a mind to smash it—against
the magister’s face preferably.  He found himself holding his breath when
Elden’s brown eyes flickered open, then relaxed when they closed again, sliding
down onto the carpet.
                But when the slave tried to stand, he fell.  Even that didn’t
wake up the man, though.  He was shaking, and felt like he was going to vomit. 
He was bleeding, too, and covered in sweat, he found.
                He was shaking too badly to dress himself, but his tunic was
long today, he could put that on.  The rest, he carried.  He had walked around
in less often enough to not care very much about other people seeing him
naked.  It was the blood on his legs that was worse.  At least it’s not semen.
                He stumbled out of the room, and closed the door.  He slid
against the wall, falling to his knees.  He’d never make it to the servant’s
quarters.  He felt sick, and shaky, and had a dizzying hatred for drunken
mages.
                No, he thought.  If he had wanted to rape him, he would have
raped him, drunk or no.  Maybe it was better that he had been drunk; he hadn’t
been able to perform.
                He sensed someone behind him—heard footsteps, and was too sick
to care.  A hand rested on his back, and someone knelt beside him.  “Oh,
Andraste’s tits,” the man swore.  “Can you walk?”
                Fenris paused, and considered that question.  “No, mesere,” he
answered, cringing inwardly.  His head swam, and the sickness took him.  He
retched, and when he was done, was shaking too badly to move.  The man put the
elf’s arm around his neck, and helped him stand up, his own arm around Fenris’
waist.  At least he had missed the carpet, he noticed.
                They walked down a few doors, and the man turned, and opened
another.  He’s going to rape me too, isn’t he.
                All Fenris’ suspicions seemed confirmed when he settled him
onto the big canopied bed, and pulled the bundle of clothing out of the slave’s
hands, and set it on the floor.  The man gave him a cup of watered wine from a
crystal cup.  Danarius gave him wine frequently when he took him in his mouth. 
At least that was all his master had ever asked of him.
                This magister, though, had not even asked his master’s
permission.  Typical.
                “Are you finished?” the man asked him.
                “Yes, mesere.”
                He took the cup, and set it down, and gave Fenris a damp
cloth.  “I trust you’d like to clean the blood off,” he offered.  The elf
nodded, and did so.  It took a while.  He was shaking and couldn’t seem to move
how he wanted to, and it hurt when he cleaned the area between his legs.  But
the bleeding seemed to have stopped.  He wanted him clean before he raped him,
that was all.
                The magister studied the elf with judgmental hazel eyes.  “You
look weary.  Go to sleep,” he commanded.  The order made Fenris blink in
surprise, but the magister immediately snuffed out the lamp, casting the room
in the dim glow of the coals in the fireplace.
                “I… it’s your bed, mesere,” Fenris protested.
                “Go to sleep—in it,” he repeated.  “I have a bad back, and I
need to sleep on the floor anyway.”
                Feeling awkward, he slid into the bed, but resolved to sleep on
top of the blankets.  They were already pulled down, as if the man had been
abed earlier.  He pulled himself out of the tunic, and set it down near him. 
He was tired, he realized as his eyes slid closed.  So tired.  His stomach
ached, and his ass hurt, and he felt like hell.
                Someone pulled the blankets up to his shoulders before he fell
asleep.
                When he woke, it was late in the morning, and the magister was
sitting at the table, reading a book.  Fenris panicked when he saw what time of
day it was.  His master would be furious.  He flew from the bed—too quickly. 
His stomached churned.
                “I’ve taken the liberty of informing your master that I saw you
in the hall last night, and couldn’t resist bringing you to bed,” he said
without looking up.  “He understands that you will have slept a long time, and
gives me his blessing—after I gave him a few coins.”  His hazel eyes shifted to
the elf.  Fenris just felt confused.  He had thought…  Why was he being kind to
him?  The magister was a renown rapist, hated elves, and had been very
outspoken about the benefits of slavery and the need to subdue slaves… 
                “I… Yes, mesere.”
                “Jairus,” he answered.  “Is my name, Fenris.”  And he looked
back at his book.  “If you’re tired, you can go back to sleep.  If you’re
feeling well enough to eat, I have a tray of food.”  He gestured vaguely to a
tray on a table, laden with fruit, cheese, and bread, and something else that
was covered.  “If your master asks, I suggest making sufficient noises about
how I fucked you so hard you could feel my cock coming out of your mouth or
something.”  He turned a page in his book, clearly more interested in that.  “A
bit of whining about the way semen feels running down your legs would help
matters.  But it is only a suggestion.”  He kind of smirked.
                A suggestion.  Not an order.  He was as confused as ever.  This
was Magister Jairus, the man who refused to own an elven slave because he hated
looking at elves.  The man that had no doubt sired most of his current slaves,
and only continued to sire more off of his own bastards.  He was corrupt and
disturbed.  He…  Helped me, Fenris thought.  Why?
               Jairus looked up briefly.  “Sorry about my language, if it
offended you; I used to work as a healer, treating whores.  They used to talk
like that.”
                The elf blinked.  “Why did you help me?” Fenris said, picking
up his tunic.
                The man was silent for a moment.  “I despise rape,” he
responded, still utterly engrossed in his book.
                “Your reputation says otherwise.”  He cringed as the words left
his mouth; Danarius would have slapped him for it.  It was terribly out of
line, not at all something a slave should say to a magister.
                “My reputation may say whatever keeps the other magisters from
asking too many questions about what I do with my free time,” he said, and
seemed to have no inclination to say anything more.  He didn’t care about his
discourteous comment.
                The elf paused.  “And what do you do with your free time,
mesere?”  Even as he said it, he knew it was terribly rude, and quite out of
line.  Danarius would have given him that withering stare that meant he would
soon be lashed to the whipping post.  Sometimes, he couldn’t help himself.
                He smiled to himself.  “Come to me if you ever free yourself of
your master, and I’ll tell you.  Have some cheese.  I don’t trust anyone who
doesn’t like cheese.”
                After some time, Fenris finally felt a bit more comfortable
with the man, and started picking at the food and drink on the table.  “You
didn’t really sleep on the floor, mesere, did you?”
                Jairus nodded.  “I slept on a stone floor until I was… I think
I was fifteen.”  A pause.  “Twelve years, sleeping on the floor.”  He
shrugged.  “I can’t sleep on a bed.”
                Fenris wondered what he had done to have slept on a cold stone
floor until then.  His question must have shown on his face, because the
magister answered, “I’m from Kirkwall.”
                “Kirkwall…”
                “Um.  South and west of the Imperium.”  He gestured vaguely,
and frowned when he realized it was in the wrong direction.  He pointed in the
correct direction.  “I… escaped the Circle there when I was fifteen.  The
Templars didn’t catch up to me until I had already begged one of the Tevinter
Circles to take me.  I spent weeks studying maps before I even made the
attempt.”  A brief pause.  “The Templars in Kirkwall treat their mages like
criminals—their crime being their birth.”
                Danarius asked about Jairus, but Fenris, for the first time,
lied to him.  He did not have to say a word to do it either.  He only looked
down, and thought about the way the bottle had felt, and his expressions had
done the rest.  Danarius had been amused, nothing more.  He complained about
the bruise on his face, and confronted Elden about it.  Fenris wasn’t sure how
that had resolved itself, but Danarius seemed well contented by the end of it.
                He eventually found out how much Elden had paid for that
night.  He sold my virginity for a magister’s favor, and a bag of gold and
silver.
                What Fenris didn’t know was that Elden had also given Danarius
time:  A temporary alliance between the two magisters would mean a temporary
cease in the political backstabbing the two of them normally did to one to the
other.  Elden had never quite forgiven Danarius for combating him becoming a
magister, and held a small grudge against him for being so offended when he had
hit one of his whores.  Danarius, similarly, had never forgiven him for
drunkenly abusing his property.  The alliance, however, was more valuable than
the gold, though no less repulsive.
Chapter End Notes
     Hmm--And what could Kylie be planning, I wonder? And how will that
     tie into Shaislyn's future? And how will their lives effect Fenris?
     No character is mentioned whose life does not directly effect his,
     after all--for better or worse. Though most often, it just makes
     everything worse. Even those with good intentions just make
     everything worse--sort of like real life.
     Oh, and fun: Did you remember who the two magisters are? They were
     mentioned back when Leto was still around...
***** A Tangled Web *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris contemplates suicide and Kylie's plans begin to take action.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Kylie pulled her dark cloak tight about herself, the hood up to
conceal her hair and face.  She had requested a room that opened into the
private garden.  Frequently, she went to the garden to study, but there was one
more reason…
                She clutched the heavy brass key in her hand.  She had taken it
herself earlier in the day from its hook.  It would not be missed until
morning, and she would be back well before then, she told herself.  Her heart
pounded in her chest, for her actions were the very thing of treason.  I can
always go back, she told herself.  I can always turn around and go back to bed.
                The letter in the satchel at her belt felt heavier than mere
parchment could be.  It felt like everyone around her knew what she was doing,
even though she had written the letter just a few hours ago.  Every footstep in
the hall had made her jump and stare in terror at her door.  Her rooms would be
dark, and she had sufficiently padded her blankets, just in case someone should
come inside.  She had long ago forbidden the servants and slaves from doing
that, but just in case…
                The garden key made a clanking noise as the lock turned, and
her heart thudded in her chest, terror peaking her senses, but no one came. 
She opened the gate just enough to slip through.  It creaked, and sounded like
a banshee’s wail to her ears.  As she passed through the gate, the hem of her
cloak caught on a stile.  She tugged on it nervously, freeing it.  She locked
the gate, and stuffed the key back into her pocket.  The young mage walked
quickly, lest she lose her nerve, away from the big manor house.  She kept her
head down—just an ordinary servant out on the streets.
                She had stolen men’s servant garb from the store room a few
days ago.  It was ill-fitting and simply wearing it made her afraid. 
Everything about this made her afraid.
                But the alternative was worse.  She shivered more at the
thought of the alternative than from the cool evening wind.
                The streets in this neighborhood were well-perfumed and
brightly lit, yet still she kept to the shadows where possible, and walked
briskly past strolling guards.  She checked her satchel frequently, feeling the
rolled parchment in its leather case to assure herself that it was still there.
                If she wanted to turn back, it still wasn’t too late.  She
paused in the market square, head down, the dark Chantry looming behind her. 
She swallowed hard.  If she were caught, she would be beheaded.  Her family
would be publicly shamed, and quite possibly also accused of treason.  Her
mouth felt dry at the thought.
                It was nearly enough to make her turn back, to abandon her mad
quest and burn the letter and the evidence.  Plenty of apprentices snuck out at
night—to visit whores, or bars, or both, to gamble and bet—and who was to say
that wasn’t what she was up to?
                And she nearly turned around then, but when she looked up, she
saw the tarnished iron of the slave cages, saw the auction block and a pile of
heavy chain and rope.  The blood spilt during the whippings stained the wood of
the auction blocks, coloured the iron bars, and until a rain washed it away,
marked the stone under her feet.  Minrathous—all of the Imperium—was built upon
the blood and bones of slaves.  Every day, she trod upon their corpses and
their pain, her every luxury and comfort at their expense.  Her clothes were
made by slaves:  Every silk worm harvested, every thread spun, every flax seed
planted, every tuft of cotton picked, every yarn woven, every stitch.  Her food
was prepared by slaves, grown by slaves, butchered and picked by slaves. 
Nothing in her life was not built upon the overburdened back of a slave.
She looked to the shadows, and saw poor beggars come to look for scraps that
might have been dropped when the merchants packed up for the night.  She looked
farther, back to the warehouses she knew the slaves to be, and her heart ached.
                If she turned back…
                She looked over her shoulder, at the Chantry in its grandeur,
and in the distance, the manors she had left behind.  She looked back at the
cages, and couldn’t bear the thought.  She would marry the Archon’s son if she
went back.  She would have slaves attending to her every want and
desire—handpicked creatures for their looks and their manner and their talents,
none of which were truly their own.  She would try, oh so very hard, to change
the Imperium.  She would try, and be laughed at and scorned, as she had been in
childhood too.  She would do everything she could, and knew in her heart that
no one would listen.  She had learned that at a miserably young age, where even
her peers and playfellows had not understood what she had seen.  Slavery was so
much a natural part of Tevinter that the wealthy scarcely noticed their
suffering, but she had.  She always had.  Her friends had looked at the
vineyard and saw the fruit, and called them beautiful when they were in
flower.  Kylie’s eyes had strayed to the poor slaves tending it, always.  She
didn’t want to see so much misery in the world.
                She couldn’t…
                She kept going on.  There was no other alternative.  If all her
actions did was end in her death, at least she could say that she tried, and
her conscience, if nothing else, would be clear.
                But could she trust her courier?  She saw no reason why not. 
If the rumors were true, the elf was originally Dalish, and held no high regard
for Tevinter law, or Tevinters for that matter.  How he had ended up in
Minrathous was anyone’s guess, but the word was…
                Well, the rumors were exactly why she could trust him.  He
seemed like a good candidate for her errand.
                Still, it paid to be cautious, so she had done some asking
about him, under the pretense of trying to find him to imprison him—which had
been done and again multiple times, actually.  The Dalish always found a way to
“escape” from the prison, and she suspected the magisters had uses for him, as
the elf could accomplish illegally and in secret what they could not.  Yet, for
all her digging, no one seemed to know his name exactly, and that he was Dalish
at all was only a rumor, because he didn’t have the tattoos and the people who
had heard the elf speak never mentioned an accent, or speaking the queer
elven—elvhen—tongue for that matter.  In fact, they said his Tevene was as
fluent as if he were a native speaker.  She wondered if he didn’t just say he
was Dalish to sound more mysterious—more likely.
                She waited at the drop point, fidgeting anxiously, pacing,
wondering if she was late and he had already been by.  She stared anxiously at
the moons, and at every alley and dark corner.
                A barefoot man in a heavy mantle walked down the street on the
opposite side.  She assumed he must be a beggar of some sort, and glanced
sidelong at the guard as he rounded the corner, and walked down an alley.
                The barefoot man unhurriedly crossed the street, and she
cringed inwardly.  She was usually one to give to beggars, but she rarely gave
them coin except in the saddest of cases.  She had nothing on her person,
though, and she hated to have to say no and shoo him away, lest the Dalish pass
her by.
                She tried to look past the beggar, and continued peering into
the shadows, looking and waiting for something—anything.  What did the elf look
like anyway?  What made people refer to him as “the Dalish”?  These and a
million other questions buzzed around her head, amidst her doubts and her fears
until the beggar, standing only a few paces away, cleared his throat noisily. 
Instinctively, she glanced toward him, and meant to move away, thinking that
mayhap she was standing where he normally laid down to sleep, except that the
man stepped into the light, and it illuminated his face in the hooded cloak. 
Her eyebrows arched in surprise, and she suddenly felt foolish.  The elf
stepped back into the shadow, and she stepped after him.  He was shorter than
she, which was normal enough in elves, but she could not guess his stature, for
the heavy mantle.
                He had some of the prettiest eyes she had ever seen, though,
when she had glimpsed them in the light—the colour of gleaming steel.  Humans
almost never had purely gray eyes—they always had other tones in them—but the
elf’s were as blue-grey as folded steel and just as sharp.  “I am the one you
seek,” he said, confirming her thoughts as if reading her mind.  He smiled
charmingly, which was meant to put her more at ease, but given the
circumstances, just made her stomach all in knots.
                She clutched the satchel close to her person, reluctant to part
with it until she was more certain.  “How do I know that?”
                He pushed the hood of his cloak back with one hand.  He had a
face that was androgynous enough to be called either a pretty man or a handsome
woman, his hair a shaggy dark brown.  She was almost annoyed when she found him
to be less than a decade her senior.  He had done quite well for an elf,
though—more so an elf as young as he was.  “How do we know anything?” he
countered.
                She hesitated, and answered, “The words of others.”  He had
been testing her himself.  Those were the words she had been told to use when
he asked “a question”.  That was what the thief had told her, anyway.  She
prayed it was accurate, that she had remembered correctly.
                There was a long moment that seemed to stretch and go on
forever before he opened his palm to reveal a small, carved wooden ring.  It
was what she had been told to wait for, and what she had been told to inspect
upon receiving it.  She lifted it, and looked for the mark.  Carved with the
utmost of care was the smallest figure of a halla she had ever seen.  She had
only seen drawings of the creatures, to tell the truth, but she recognized it
all the same.  Maybe that was why they called him “the Dalish”.  Satisfied she
handed him the satchel.  He did not even open it; it simply disappeared under
his mantle, and she glimpsed a pair of daggers at his belt when it did.
                “It’s lovely,” she told him, still looking at the carved ring.
                A pause, as if in regret.  “Destroy it,” he told her, his voice
devoid of any emotion, especially regret.
                She stared at him, aghast.  “But… it’s beautiful, and it must
have taken so long to make…”
                He looked at her, silvery eyes judging her as if he did not
like what he saw.  She could not say, at first, why she found the look to be so
offensive—and then realized that it was simply, all her life, no elf had ever
dared look at her like that.  Yet this one did, and instinctively, she had
found it to be offensive and rude immediately.  Just how deep did her
upbringing go?  She made a mental note to examine this idea more thoroughly—she
had not realized she was so biased before that moment.  Kylie found that she
learned more and more about how wrong her world was with every passing day. 
Just more reasons that it had to change.
His voice was but a whisper, and she could hear his very Dalish accent clearly:
  “Cherishing beauty will blind you to the peril around you.”  And her eyes
widened as she felt the small blade against her throat, and she wondered how
quickly she could cast a spell to protect herself—just for an instant before he
withdrew, the blade disappearing in his sleeve.  With that, he turned and left.
                In her palm, the ring burned to cinders with her magic, and she
let the ashes fall to the ground.  He had a good point, and she had best
remember it.  But was his message to never be fooled by beauty, or something
more?  There were beautiful plants that were poisonous, beautiful animals that
were deadly, and the snow and the sea were beautiful but could be lethal as
well.
                She thought about what it really meant to “cherish”.  Was the
effort of preserving that which was beautiful dangerous?  Freedom is a
beautiful concept, she thought as she passed back amongst the slave cages. 
There were so many things the Dalish’s words could mean, and each meaning was
deeper and darker than the next.
 
                It had been a few weeks.  He wasn’t a virgin anymore.  Some
rape victims still considered themselves virginal after rape, but Danarius
considered it suitable enough.
                His pet knelt on the floor beside him while he settled
disputes.  Not paperwork this time, but a proper hearing.  These he did once a
week—things that could not be resolved with paper, or needed tending
immediately.  They were dull.
                As a man explained to the magister about how another man had
cheated him at dice, he twisted the long silver chain between his
fingers—apparently pulling too much on the slack.  Fenris jerked, and Danarius
let go of it enough for his slave to straighten again.  He had him dressed not
so much like a bodyguard, but as if he belonged in a harem, and the leash
amused him.  The Imperials in Seheron were losing ground to the blasted
Qunari.  Well, if the Qunari deemed it appropriate to leash their mages, he
deemed it appropriate to leash the warrior.  Born in Seheron, he may have been
born under the Qun, and that amused him as well.  His power was unique and
amazing.  Fenris was a skilled warrior and resembled a Dalish goddess.  And he
had him on the end of a leash, in an outfit befitting a harem.  It was all as
if to say:  Look; look at what I have reduced him to, despite anything he may
have accomplished otherwise.
                Fenris also continually drew the eye of all of those come to
bitch about their lives to the magister, sometimes distracting them completely.
                When the last of them had gone, he had the room cleared, for a
moment of silence if nothing else, but he found himself looking at Fenris.
                He wasn’t a virgin.  He wanted him.  Why didn’t he just take
him?  He was his slave—it was his right as his master if he wanted something of
him.  Strange that he had to convince himself to do so.  In the past, he had
always just acted first and thought about it later—usually only briefly at
that.  Maybe it was just a mark of his age.
                The magister gazed at his pet, and reached down, and touched
his long white hair.  Once it got down to his hips again, he’d cut it.  The wig
makers were only too pleased with it.  Danarius was feeling irritable after the
delegations—anyone would be really.  Did he really have to be the one to
dispute whether or not a man was cheating at dice?  A horrible waste of time.
                “I once read about an ancient elven goddess with white hair… 
If you were female, you’d be the damned goddess incarnate,” he mused aloud. 
Fenris made no reply, or even any inclination that he had heard him.  “It’s why
I keep your hair long.”  He laughed aloud.  “I keep you on this leash, my
little wolf, as a mockery to the Qunari customs, and you know I hate those. 
But your hair, the clothes I usually have you wear…  That’s a mockery of what
your people used to be, and of what they are now, my slave.”
                Fenris still made no reply.  He barely blinked, but still made
no inclination of hearing him.  He had to have heard him though.
                Danarius frowned, displeased.  Sometimes, he’d like Fenris to
be a little angry.  He’d like beating him back down right now.  Leto would have
been quietly enraged, and, furthermore would have rose to the bait.  “Say
something,” he ordered him.
                Fenris turned toward him, but kept his head down.  “Master… 
What do you want from me?”
                What do you want from me?  Leto had say that too, in the same
broken tone of voice.  His tone implying that something precious and
fundamental about him had been broken.  Maybe it had been.  Maybe when Danarius
had accepted gold and favors for his pet’s rape, or maybe it went back farther
than that; he wasn’t sure, but the brokenness was there all the same.  The mage
paused, staring down at the slave.  A good question, and completely valid. 
What did he want?
                The room was empty, but there were too many doors, too many
windows.  A shame.  He’d change his mind by the time he got to his quarters. 
But he would like to have him strip down to nothing but that leather collar
around his neck.  He’d like to push him over the desk, just like he had with
Leto, and fuck him until he crumpled to the floor.
                Maybe, if he still wanted to by the end of the day, he would. 
In the meantime, there were other things to do.  He went to his study, and sent
Fenris to change and go to the practice yard.
                A few hours later, Fenris came back, his hair still wet, but no
longer dripping, from a bath.  He was wearing more practical garments this
time, which was fine; he had no more appearances to make.       Danarius looked
at him for what felt like a long time, and his staring made Fenris
uncomfortable, he could tell.  He cleaned off the quill pen, and replaced the
lid on the inkwell, lest it dry.  He reviewed the last form, and set it aside. 
He looked back at his slave.
                “I have a mind to take you to bed,” Danarius informed him. 
“Fenris.”
                The elf stared down at the floorboards.  “If that is your wish,
Master,” he replied.  His tone of voice was as blank as the elf could manage
it, but the magister had known him too long.  He heard the faint tremble in his
voice, the slight edge of fear.
                He was quiet for a long time, debating.  He rose.  “It is. 
Come.”  Fenris followed him back to his quarters.  He kept the appropriate
distance, and did not drag his feet, yet still produced the air of one who did
not wish to be there—a learned skill, one that only served to remind the
magister of how much younger Fenris was than he.
                Danarius should get him drunk first.  Fenris was much more
compliant when he was drunk.  Most people were.That gave him an idea for the
next slave uprising.  On his way to his room, he ordered a servant bring him a
bottle, and sat in a chair until it came.  The servant left, and closed the
door on the way out.
                Danarius’ gaze flicked to Fenris, and back to the bottle.  The
elf stepped forward, opened it systematically, and poured.  A white wine this
time—something different, though he was more fond of red.  The glass filled,
and the elf set the bottle down gingerly, and stepped away.  He wondered what
he must be thinking, or even if the elf thought at all.  What does one think
before they are raped?  What do they think as they watch it happening?  What do
they think when they know it is inevitable?
                He sipped at the wine, and set the glass down.  “Fenris.”  The
elf almost jumped at the sound of his name.  He stared downward, but his hands
came up to the buttons on his tunic.  “No.  Not yet.”  The elf’s hands fell
away.  “Before I take you…  Do you want the wine?”
                Fenris glanced at the bottle, and his eyes seemed to linger for
a moment as he considered it.  “No,” he said, and seemed to shiver.  “Master.”
                That confirmed Danarius’ suspicions.  He had… seen the bottle
lying on the floor in Elden’s room.  “I see.”  He paused.  “Elden was too drunk
to really rape you, wasn’t he?”
                Fenris’ head snapped upwards.  His eyes were wide.  His head
lowered again as colour rose to his cheeks.  “Not… entirely, Master.”
                Danarius actually laughed.  Fenris seemed to shrink at the
sound.  “So the bastard used the bottle, is that it?” he asked him.  He saw the
elf’s lips part to reply, but no sound came out, and they closed again.  He
didn’t need him to reply; he knew it was true now.  He had done the same to
Leto, but that was really only to better prepare him.  He liked humiliating
him, certainly, but the preparation was important and he wasn’t willing to use
his fingers.  Without preparation, it would have hurt him even more.  True, he
had no doubt that Jairus had not been so inhibited, but, he thought
condescendingly, Fenris would be well-prepared by then.  His immediate desire
was to keep laughing, but Fenris chanced a glance upwards, and the laughter
died on his tongue.  His pet looked miserable, his sage eyes wet—rain on
foliage.
                Danarius sighed, and rose.  He strode up to his pet, and cupped
both sides of his face, forcing him to look at him.  Most elves would stare up
at him, as they were nearly a foot shorter.  Fenris was tall enough to almost
look him in the eyes if he stood up straight, but he never stood up straight
and even so, something about his demeanor made him look as though he were
looking up at him from a vast distance.  “My poor pet,” he said, as if speaking
to a hurt animal.  The elf’s large eyes flicked downwards.  “I won’t do that to
you.”  Just to Leto, and he’s gone.  “He must have hurt you.  Did he?”
                Fenris only nodded once, his eyes downcast.
                The mage studied his slave, his hands falling away.  “You were
too good for his like anyway,” he decided.  “No one will ever appreciate you
the way that I do.”  No one else had sacrificed so much for him either.  The
magister turned from him, lifting the glass of wine to his lips.
                He told him to strip.  His back to his pet, he listened to the
garments falling to the floor.  He took a sip of the wine.  “Put this on.”  He
set the leather collar on the table, next to the wine.  He watched, out of the
corner of his eye, as the elf lifted it off the table.  “A few months from now,
I’m going to start looking for a gift for you, I think,” he told him.  “Have
you looked at women, Fenris?”
                The subject obviously made the elf uncomfortable.  “I…”
                The magister smirked, turning to look at his little wolf, his
hands just falling away after buckling the collar.  “Of course you have.  What
was that slave girl’s name?  The one I sold to a brothel?”
                Fenris looked nothing short of pained.  “Perya, Master,” he
offered.
                The mage only continued to smirk.  “Perya.”  He considered for
a moment.  “She was a little pixie of a thing, wasn’t she.”  His lips pressed
into a thin line as he thought.  “I may be able to find a girl short enough, if
that’s what you like, but she needs better hips.”  He sighed, taking another
sip.  “When I give you this girl, I’ll expect certain… things… from you.”
                Fenris looked at him briefly, then back down at the floor.  He
said nothing.
                Danarius set the glass down.  “I will expect you to beget the
bitch with child.  But it’s a few years off, I suspect.  For the moment…  Get
on the bed, pet.”
 
                Fenris lay on the rug, and found his mind going to places he
had never allowed himself to think of before.
                This had been happening… with more and more frequency.  Even he
could see that.  In the past, but rarely he was expected to pleasure his master
with his mouth.  But it had been so infrequent that each time might have been
the last.  But the past few months…  No.  No, this couldn’t be how it was going
to be.  It just…
                But all the evidence seemed to suggest otherwise.
                He’s going to rape me again.  And I can’t say no, and I cannot
fight him.  I have to submit.  His body was his master’s.  He knew that.  Of
course he knew that.  But…  He wished he had a say in what was done with it.
                His eyes squeezed shut, and he willed sleep and thus oblivion
to come.  It didn’t.  He lay awake, listening to his master’s steady breathing,
and the soft hiss of the dying embers in the fireplace.  The balcony door had
been open to let in the breeze, and it was getting colder.
                Danarius had thrown him to the floor and told him to stay
there.  Just in case.
                He knew what that “just in case” was.  The elf felt sick at the
thought.  Elden had been smaller—to the point where he could have penetrated
deeper with his fingers.  But Danarius wasn’t.
                He should have had that wine.  Gotten so drunk that he wouldn’t
remember the way his sweat had dripped onto him, the way he panted from the
exertion of pounding into him.  The… sounds it made.  The way he had felt
inside him.  The worst part was probably when he had finally released in him. 
It meant it was over and done with, but it meant, also, that it ran down his
thighs, and even soaked his own unresponsive package.
                No.  It was wrong to think of it as rape, or so he tried to
insist to himself.  His master could not rape him; he was his possession.  And
he had commanded him, so it wasn’t, couldn’t be… rape.
                But he hadn’t wanted it.  He hadn’t enjoyed it.  What did that
make it?
                He didn’t know.  He didn’t even care, not really.
                The wind billowed the curtains.  He shivered, and sat up.  His
legs trembled a little bit when he rose, but he was at least satisfied to find
that he wasn’t as shaky as he had been that time with Elden; Danarius had not
hurt him.  He would have preferred it if he had.  He would have preferred it if
he had hit him, beat him bloody.  At least it would remind him that he was not
as breakable as he felt.  And he felt so breakable, and his master had held him
like a porcelain doll, touched him as if he were the finest glass.  Elden had
beaten him and he had known he would survive; Danarius had caressed him and
made him feel fragile.
                He went to the balcony door, and paused at the handle, then he
slipped outside.
                The wind and the dark felt good.  He liked looking at the moons
and the stars, and the glittering city laid out below, the sea in the
distance.  He wouldn’t really mind dying on a night like this.
                If his master were to… bring him back to bed…  If that were to
happen again, he wasn’t sure that his mind wouldn’t break from it, and that
frightened him.  I can’t bear it.
                Nothing was stable.  Nothing was the same.  He was always in
pain, always hurting—that was always the same anyway.  He had witnessed so many
horrors and atrocities.  The only island in this sea of instability and pain
had been his master.  And now…
                The semen on his legs had dried, but Fenris could feel it
cracking as he moved.  If this is what it had come to, then…
                I’d rather die.
                His fingers wrapped around the edge of the balcony, and he
found himself staring downwards.  It was such a long way to fall.  A body would
fall, and hit the stone walkway below.  His other hand rose, his fingertips
touching the leather collar at his throat.
                He glanced upwards.  The urge to let himself topple over the
edge was too strong.  But he looked up instead, and found himself looking at
the tower.
                A few years ago, he had found Annalkylie carrying a basket of
apples from the orchard up to the tower.  He had observed her carry them to the
top of the tower, and run back down to fetch a second basket, this one of
oranges.  He had relieved her of it and demanded to know about her mischief. 
She had grinned, and taken the basket back, and had him carry the third one—the
heavy one with the lead balls.  “No one else who is strong enough to lift that
will,” she explained.  “My uncle is at closed court, so he won’t miss you.”
                So he had somehow become indoctrinated in her mischief.  She
began by tossing the apples, oranges, and balls of lead out the window and
timing their descent, saying that she had read about it in a book somewhere and
wanted to do a similar experiment on her own.
                But later, she ignored the basket of lead entirely, and simply
pelted her fruit missiles at the unfortunate servants down below.  He had had
no part in that, other than scolding her, and she had likewise gotten in
trouble.  Though, he had been satisfied to note, she did not mention Fenris at
all during her scolding.
                He thought about the splattered oranges and apples.  She had
stolen a melon from the kitchens that day too, and had tossed that out of the
tower with the rest of her supplies.  It had split.  Would his skull split the
same way?
                He looked down.  It wasn’t quite as high up, but…
 
                Danarius’ grey-blue eyes opened, annoyed to wake for seemingly
no reason.  He closed his eyes again, and looked inwardly for Fenris—the small
light in his inner eye.  It was blazing right now.  Why…?  It had never done
anything like that before.  And why wasn’t it at the foot of the bed?
                The wrongness of it made him rise, and look at the foot of the
bed to be certain.  He looked to the balcony, and felt a tightness in his
throat and chest.  No…
                And he was running.
                He found Fenris perched on the balcony, one hand against the
side of the building for balance, lithe as any elf, and beautiful in the
moonlight.  The lyrium was especially lovely in the starlight—the way it seemed
to glitter.
                “Fenris,” he breathed.
                The elf turned and looked at him, alarmed.  “I…  I wasn’t…”
                You are mine.  He wanted to drag him off of that balcony and
backhand him.  He wanted to beat him for what he had almost done.  Fenris was
his, to do with as he wished.  He lived and died at his command, and at his
say-so.  How dare he presume to throw his life away because he wanted to.  His
wants were nothing.  He had thought he had better trained his pet than this. 
But his anger died as soon as he saw the hurt look on his slave’s face. 
“Fenris,” he sighed, all the anger leaving him.  “Climb down, and get back
inside.  You’ll catch a cold.”
                The elf glanced back downwards, and the magister saw the moment
of indecision—torn between the jump and the compulsion to obey.
                Danarius stayed away from him—tactfully.  “It’s a long way
down, isn’t it,” he tried instead.  He glanced at his pet.  “What do you think
will happen to you, when you die?  Wouldn’t you rather live?”  The magister
paused, and let the elf consider.  “It’s the only life you’ll ever have,
Fenris.  Do you want to throw it away?”
                And the elf listened, and slowly, so slowly climbed onto the
balcony floor, and slipped inside.  Danarius sighed inwardly in relief,
following his slave back inside.  What had brought that on?  This had never
happened before.
                He shut the balcony door behind him, and locked it.
                Could it really just be because he had brought him to bed?  He
found that difficult to believe.  Suicide?  Really—over so small a thing?  No,
what if that were only the latest of things?
                He looked at his pet, and sighed.  He wanted him again, but not
at the expense of driving his prized possession to suicide.
                He threw on a robe, belting it at the waist.  “Fenris,” he
said.  “Clean yourself off.  There’s water in the basin, so use that.”  The elf
hesitated, but obeyed.  Danarius didn’t watch him do it.  Rather, he went to a
book he had been reading, and sat in his favourite chair.  When he sensed that
his pet was finished, he looked up.  “Rouse the servants—I’ll have a bath and a
light breakfast, in that order.”  It was almost dawn.  He might as well get up.
                His pet, though, looked haggard at best.  He had been awake all
night, he didn’t doubt.
                Fenris hesitated, a question dancing about his lips, wearing
nothing but that leather collar.
                “Yes—you may dress,” Danarius told him, scarcely glancing up
from his book.  Fenris did so, and fled to go rouse the servants to his
master’s desires.  The servants returned before Fenris did, carrying water to
fill his bath.  It mattered little to him if it were cold or not, because he
could heat it with a thought.  His servants had learned that long ago—that it
was more important to deliver him the water than to waste time heating it.
                He watched them scurry to and fro into his bath chamber, and
Fenris returned—hair braided down his back and his clothes changed--and
dutifully stood near him.  Once the servants had gone, and shut the door,
signaling that they were finished, the magister set aside his book, and looked
at Fenris.
                “A bodyguard that isn’t near me is useless as such.  But an
exhausted one less useful still.  Go to sleep,” he told him.  Fenris apparently
took that to mean to go to his room, for he started for the door.  “No.” 
Danarius set his book aside.  “You may sleep in my bed.  I want you near.”  His
eyes lingered on him for a moment.  Climb back on top of him, thrust into him. 
The breaking point for him was the release—if I spill my seed on his back
instead, he won’t break.
                But he doubted that, and so he only turned from him, and took
his bath.
                When he came back out, Fenris was asleep in his bed, lying
partway curled on top of the blankets.  He wanted him again, but he could wait
until what was broken had been repaired.  He didn’t mind the waiting.  It made
the moment even better.  He had waited six years to fuck that elf again.  Six
years.  Why had he put it off so long, anyway?  Fear, he decided.  Fear that he
would remember.
                Taking him had been sweet.  And it had lasted so much longer
than the last time too.  Preparation had been difficult, and Fenris had been so
shy about it.  In the end, he had used a lot of oil, on both of them.  After he
had coaxed his pet into relaxing, entry had been almost easy.  Coaxing him had
been the difficult part, trying to convince him that it didn’t have to hurt. 
He didn’t mind hurting Leto until the little brat had been in tears.  He didn’t
feel the same way about Fenris.  Fenris deserved the coaxing, the same way he
had deserved the gentle treatment and the oil.  The same way he had fucked Leto
until he bled, but was gentle enough with Fenris that he didn’t bleed.
                He remembered that Leto had liked it even then.  That, when
drunk, he had gotten an erection.  Would Fenris be the same way?
                He made a note—the next time… the very next time, he would make
certain that Fenris was drunk.  And there would definitely be a next time.
                The magister’s fingers gently trailed along a vein of lyrium,
from his bare back, up to his shoulder.  He touched the elf’s cheek with his
hand, and still he was dead asleep.  He ran his fingertips over his slave’s
hair, traced the curve of his arm.  Fenris sighed, and shifted, but still did
not wake—or if he had woken, he was pretending to be asleep.
                He decided to leave him there.  He looked pretty, and he liked
the idea of him exhausted in his bed anyway.  Didn’t dogs sleep on their
master’s bed?  That was all it was.
                Who am I kidding?  I’m fond of the lad.  The realization made
him uneasy.  But he liked Fenris.  He liked having a slave that was as dutiful,
as devoted, as unquestioning as his pet was.  He was pleasing to the eye, and
he had a pleasant voice.  And it grated on his nerves to think that when he
died, Fenris would just go up for auction and be sold to the highest bidder.
                Something must be done about that.
                But what?  He refused to give Fenris to Hadriana; she would
toss him into the coliseum to die.  Many another magister would do the same,
many just for spite.  Now the thought only bothered him.  He didn’t want to see
his work destroyed for sport or spite—the end result was the same.  No, he
wanted Fenris to live to the end of his natural lifespan, if possible.
                But… how could he ensure that that was what happened?
 
                Danarius had sent Fenris out to watch over his niece when she
went hawking—a deal he had worked out with her when she protested all the
retainers.
                Fenris had the idea that it wasn’t as much for Kylie as for
himself somehow.  If he thinks this makes up for it, he’s wrong.
                But it was a beautiful day.  His favourite days in Minrathous
were actually when it was cloudy, the skies grey but without rain—exactly like
today.  The two were still well within the grounds of the city.  They could
even still smell it—though that meant little; cities had a horrid stink to
them, even with all the incense constantly burning.
                Annalkylie had her hawk, and her favourite black gelding.  It
was sort of nice to see her like this.  All the other mages he knew wore
expensive robes and jewelry, strutted about like peacocks, and thought
murdering children was a source of amusement.  But Annalkylie would run
barefoot in the surf, pick up her hawk’s kills herself, and seemed happiest in
her dirty riding leathers.
                “I was born in the saddle,” she had explained with a jaunty
wink.  “Much to the discomfort of my lady mother.”
                As they rode back, her kills dangling on wire from her saddle,
her hawk on its perch, she said to him, “Do you ever wish you could be someone
else?  Just for a little while?”
                He paused.  “Why would I wish that?”
                She frowned at him.  “Just to see what it’s like.”  She paused,
and seemed to wait for him to speak, but he did not.  Rather, she filled in the
gap in conversation instead.  “I’d like to be a boy.  Maybe a highborn boy, but
not a mage.”  She smiled to herself.  “I could go hunting, and riding…  I could
learn to be a knight.”  She paused in thought.  “I should think I’d like to a
be a second son though.  I don’t really want to inherit family business or
anything.  Like my father,” she added.
                He offered no reply.  Whatever she was looking for in him, she
wasn’t likely to find it.  The wind picked up, carrying the scent of the ocean
with it.  It tousled his hair, and he moved to push some of it back behind his
ear, as was his custom, but it was a bit too short and just fell away. 
Danarius had had it cut again recently, to sell to a wig maker.  Apparently, it
sold well and at a high price.  White was a rare hair colour, even among
elves.  Someone had once told him that his hair meant he was special somehow. 
The thought gave him pause.  Who had told him that?  He couldn’t remember…
                Annalkylie said, “And I could piss standing up.  That’s
important.”  Fenris wondered if he had heard her correctly, and by the smug
look on her face, he had.
                “I’m certain I shouldn’t be hearing this,” he commented dryly.
                The girl sighed, disappointed that he wasn’t as amused as she
was, and was silent for a bit, then she reigned in her horse, looking at
Minrathous.  “It’s not even that late,” she told him conversationally.  “We
could go ride down by the shore a while longer.”
                He raised an eyebrow.  “As you wish.”
                She turned her horse back, and as they did, she said, “If I
could destroy my phylactery, would you come with me if I ran away?”
                The question made him blink in surprise.  “What?”
                She looked at him, her face the picture of all seriousness. 
“Did I stutter?  Would you come with me?” she repeated herself.  He only looked
at her, unable to answer.  What she spoke of was… illegal.  “I hate the way my
uncle treats you.  He beats you, and parades you around on a leash like an
animal.  It’s disgusting.  Run away with me.”  She pointed, off down the
shore.  “My phylactery is less than a day’s ride from here.  We could be there
by sunset.  You have a sword, and I have magic.  We could break in, and destroy
it.  And then we could run away.”
                “My lady…” he said.  It was illegal.  Every word of it was
breaking a different law.  Every word in contradiction to everything he knew
and had been trained.
                And then she laughed suddenly.  “A jest,” she insisted,
laughing, but the laughter did not touch her eyes.
 
                Of course it couldn’t have been that easy, Kylie reflected. 
No, it would have been too simple.  She may have been able to pay off guards,
if she offered a high enough price, but her uncle had chosen well in Fenris. 
Money didn’t tempt him, for he did not have real knowledge of the value of
money, save perhaps from what he had heard when his master spoke.  A slave had
no need of money, after all.
                She had offered him freedom instead:  The greatest gift she
could think of.  And he had refused her, just like that damned canary.
                She rode back sullen, and near to tears at the thought. 
Danarius put that man on a leash.  He ordered him to kill and maim people.  He
had sold him to other magisters to slake their lust upon him.  All of that, and
more, and he had refused freedom?  How?
                How could he?
                But she remembered the canary in the cage, and how it had been
afraid of her hand.  Was that it?  Did he not trust her?  He had known her
since she was a child.  How could he not trust her?  Surely, he had seen enough
of her character.  Surely, he had known her to be true in her ambitions?
                It made her want to cry, thinking about it.  She had opened the
door of his cage, and he had barely looked at it.
                She needed to find the stick to prop the door open.  She needed
to find the rock to force him from the cage.
                To force a lot of slaves from their cages, if possible.
                As they went back into the city, passing between the golems,
she changed direction, into the poorer districts of the city.  Fenris stuck
close to her then, and she understood why.  But she had done this before, after
all.  She dismounted her horse, and took a rabbit from her hawk’s kills, and
gave it to a poor woman with two children.  The woman blessed her, and
Annalkylie kept walking.  She searched for the saddest, the most decrepit.  She
saw a begging boy in an alley, dimwitted and ugly, covered in filth.  He was
too weak to go to a better district to beg, but he still tried to smile.  No
one noticed him in this place—no one but her.  To him, she gave a fish, and she
only kept going.
                She gave away each of her hawk’s kills in turn, until there was
nothing left.  To the last, a family of elves.  Slaves, she assumed, by their
manner.  Either escaped and could not get far, or else their master had died
somehow and they fled when the estate was being fought over.  It happened, and
the mother wept when she gave them the pheasant.
                Annalkylie smiled back at Fenris, who was watching her as if he
had never seen her before.
                It was interesting how many allies and friends could be bought
for a dead bird.  How many informants, how many letter-carriers who were
stalwart in her defense.  Who loved her for her kindness, and would not betray
her for it.  Coin did not do that to a person.  But food to the starving, and a
kind heart to those downtrodden—that could go far.
                It was only something she had learned, not something she had
gone looking for.  That it coincided with her ultimate goals was something else
entirely.
                Deep down in her heart of hearts, she wanted to do away with
slavery, with alienages too.  She wanted to do away with the different ways
people treated one another—be they from race or class.  She wanted everyone to
be free, for everyone to have the same opportunities as everyone else.
                And things were starting to fall into line.
                She was to be fit for her wedding gown a few months from now.
 
                Shaislyn observed Vanessa, and listened patiently to her
lecture.  She had been the woman who had convinced her superiors to buy him. 
Of course she was a mage, and had been eager to learn his ability from him, but
he hadn’t been able to teach it to her.  He had tried, and she had tried as
well.  It wasn’t for lack of trying, or even a lack of him explaining it well
enough.  He explained it to the best of his ability, and more so.
                The two had eventually concluded that Vanessa relied too much
on her eyes, and she did not trust what her magic saw, but rather what her eyes
told her.  As a consequence, she would never be able to see with her magic for
the very reason that she saw with her eyes.
                “This is a collar that the Qunari put on their mages,” she said
with distaste, dropping the item into Shaislyn’s hands.  He looked at it,
running his hands over it the same way he might have if he were truly blind. 
It was lightweight, and bendable, and did not seem wholly remarkable, in fact. 
His lack of astonishment must have shown, for she raised an eyebrow.  “Put it
on.”
                Shaislyn only shrugged, and snapped it around his neck.  To his
horror, his world suddenly went dark again.  His magic was not cut off exactly,
but out of his reach.  He was blind again, well and truly blind, as if he had
never learned how to see.  His hands went to the collar, and he fought with it
in an effort to get it off.  It wouldn’t come off the same way.  Panic seeped
into him.  No—No!  He couldn’t bear to see the world in all its brilliance,
only to have that ripped away from him.  It would have been better to never
have seen it at all.  “Vanessa—you have to get it off!”he screamed, but that
wasn’t what came out of his mouth.  The words he said were garbled and unclear,
as if he were gagged.  His hand covered his mouth in horror.  He trembled, and
he heard a clicking sound.  The collar fell into his lap, and he breathed in
relief, and reactivated his vision spell.  He had begun to rely on it an awful
lot since then.  But he honestly didn’t know how a person functioned without
the ability to turn it on and off as it pleased them.  He didn’t think he would
ever relax enough to fall asleep if he didn’t have that ability.
                Vanessa was looking at him, a sad smile on her face. 
“Horrible, isn’t it?” she said quietly.  “It turns the best of us into helpless
children.  And you…”
                “Would be blind again,” he finished, still shaken.  He held the
device in his lap with a newfound respect, and fear.  Worse,  this would plague
his nightmares, he knew.  This is what real people were going through right
now.  This is what the Qunari did to their mages, and they thought nothing of
it.  Worse, they thought it necessary.  “How could they…?”
                The woman plucked the cruel thing from his hands, and set it on
the desk behind her.  She was holding a short rod.  “Why do you think we are
waging this war?” she said gently, and took a deep breath.  “So don’t let them
get one of those near you, child.”  She showed him the short rod.  “This is a
control rod—the Saarebas—have a sort of handler who carries this.”
                She went through the rest of the items on the desk.  More
mundane things, nothing compared to the frightening collar that had made him
feel so helpless.  A few Qunari weapons he should familiarize himself with, but
the painted symbols she showed him were more important to remember.
                She dismissed him for the day after the lesson, with a small
errand.  He finished his errand, and went down to the yard, watching the other
slaves spar.  He strode up to the instructor, and looked up at him.  “Teach me
the sword,” he said to him.
                The man looked down at him.  “Why do you want to know the
sword, boy?  You’re a mage.”
                They had put him in robes since he came here, and everyone saw
him practicing magic with Vanessa.  He only looked at the big swordsman.  “I’ve
experienced what it’s like to be helpless and without magic.”  He paused,
swallowing.  “I never want to be helpless again.”
                The man nodded.  “Good enough for me.  Talk to your mistress,”
he told him.
                Shaislyn nodded, and shivered again, his hand going to his
throat.  He found Vanessa in the study they usually had lessons in.  She was
reviewing a document.  She smiled when she saw him; she always did. 
“Shaislyn?  Didn’t I give you the rest of the day off?”
                He smiled back at her.  “You did,” he answered.  “I’m
requesting more lessons.”
                She laughed.  “You know I spoil you, don’t you?” she asked him,
tousling his hair affectionately.
                She was the mother he had never had, in truth.  Vanessa was
human, but she was kind and affectionate, and not at all like the stories Lura
and Varania told of the magisters.  But they said Vanessa was a magister
herself.  He wasn’t so sure.  The magisters they spoke of were evil and greedy
and cruel.  Vanessa had never been anything but kind.  “I want to take up sword
lessons,” he told her, getting right to the point.
                She was amused by this.  “Really now?”
                He nodded seriously.  “Yes.”
                “A mage with a sword,” she said with mild delight.  “Oh my.”
                “I think I’d look quite dashing,” he bantered.
                She laughed again.  “Dashing,” she agreed.  “Oh, all right. 
Maker knows I don’t have enough time for you anyway.  So go pester old Ser
Taggart.  But only when you’re not doing something else.  And you be careful.”
                “Yes, Mistress,” he said.
                Her reed thin lips curved into a warm smile.  “’Vanessa’ is my
name, little one.”
                He frowned at her.  “Mistress, why are you always so kind to
me?” he had to ask.  She had never once struck him, never once said a harsh
word to him, or treated him like how Lura had warned him about in her attempt
to talk him out of this.  Had she been making it all up this entire time? 
Vanessa was just nothing like the stories.
                She glanced at the door, and sat down in her chair.  She looked
down, then back at him.  “I had a baby once,” she told him.  She smiled
softly.  “A beautiful baby boy, and a husband.  My husband went to war and
never came back.  And then my baby took a chill.”  She looked away.  “He’d be
about your age now.”
                Shaislyn’s face contorted into an expression of sorrow and
sympathy.  Everyone he knew had lost something in the war.  “I’m sorry,
Mistress.”
                She leaned forward, and ruffled his hair again.  “Nonsense.  If
I had a husband and a child, I’d be on the mainland right now.  And Maker knows
I hate court.”  She rose.  “Off you go—I want to see you covered in bruises
tomorrow morning from the wooden sword.”
                He smiled, for her more than anything, and took his leave.  He
told old Master Taggart that Vanessa had allowed him the lessons, and the
master of swords wasted no time in getting him in padded leathers with a wooden
sword.  There were other boys too, and he was put to train with the youngest of
them—being little younger than himself.
                It was hard for the first few days.  The others mocked
him—nothing he hadn’t heard before really, but it hurt all the same.  They
mocked him for his half-elven blood, and for his blind eyes.  They told him
that he was a mage, and mages didn’t use swords, and they sought to drive him
from the practice grounds, if not by force, then by cruelty.  He ended up
covered in bruises, but he was getting better at delivering his own bruises. 
He studied.  His magic lessons came first, but the sword lessons came easier to
him.  Vanessa told him that it was because of his vision.  If he could learn to
move without limiting his vision, nothing would ever hit him.
                But magic came to him at a snail’s pace compared to the
physical training.  Vanessa was never disheartened by this.  She assured him
that his real strength was in the ability he already had, and they both knew
why he had trouble casting.  The spell of his vision required a constant flow
of mana, draining nearly all he had at his disposal.  Other spells were
secondary to him, and came only with more effort.
                But the sword lessons gave him something to do with his dull
afternoons, even if he hated the way the others mocked him.  Their mocking
laughter and the ridicule drove him to try harder, and he made it his goal to
give each of them a bruise by the end of the lesson.  He didn’t always
succeed.  He didn’t always win.  But he always improved.
                He never wanted to be helpless.  He knew, deep down, he would
never be half the mage Vanessa was.  Nor half the mage his mother was, or his
unknown father.  No, he struggled to light a candle.  He was a mage, but all of
his mana went towards sustaining his vision, so he had to have something else. 
The only thing left he could think of would be the sword.
                The books Jameson had were only theories—brilliant theories,
but theories.  He had mentioned them to Vanessa, and also that he thought
Jameson might be Chasind.  She had told him that the Chasind were known for
harboring “witches” and “shapeshifters”.  Though she didn’t know if any of it
were true.  She encouraged him to experiment, as ever she did, but he watched
tons of birds and other animals, and never learned enough to take their form. 
But maybe that was for the same reason that he had trouble casting magic—he
just didn’t have the mana after the spell for his sight.
                So, to compensate, he studied the sword.
 
                The magister leaned against the window frame, looking down at
his garden.  His gaze wandered farther, to the training yard.  He watched the
boys practice with interest, like he always had.  And why not?  He would sink
substantial amounts of money in the games, so why shouldn’t he be interested in
his own investments?
                “Fenris,” he said, barely turning his head.  He took another
sip from the cup.  The wine was a vintage from Orlais—it had just come in off
the docks early this morning, and of course he had to try it.  “Look in the
yard.”  The elf stepped forward, and looked, but the magister wondered if he
were looking at the same thing.  “Do you see the boys down there?”  He gestured
with his cup, and took another sip.
                Fenris looked at them, and was silent for a moment as he tried
to decipher what his master wished of him.  “Yes,” he answered.
                Danarius stared down at them, and was silent for a long moment
as he thought about a dark-haired child wielding a wooden sword that was almost
too heavy for him.  “When you were a child, I’d watch you from this window,” he
commented.
                He noticed that Fenris suddenly looked up, his eyes getting a
little wider.  Ah, so desperate for information about your past, aren’t you, my
pet?
                The mage’s eyes flicked back to the yard.  “You were easy to
spot, because of your hair.”  He took another sip from the cup, but carefully
never mentioned that Leto’s hair had been black as ebony, black as the Black
Divine’s obsidian.  “When I bought you…”  He frowned to himself.  “Bought”
wasn’t the right term, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway.  “—I was
never sure if I wanted you in the house, the yard, or a brothel.”  He glanced
at him.  “You could have fit into any of them.”  He smirked, but Fenris seemed
so starved for information about his past that he completely missed the
slight.  “I was still on the fence about the issue, but I saw you beat two
other boys with a stick, and I made my decision.  Seems it was the right one,
wouldn’t you say?”
                Fenris looked at him—past him was more accurate—his eyes had
the look of a starving man.  “If you say so, Master,” he said hollowly, though
his eyes betrayed him.  They always had.
                Danarius looked back at the yard, and was silent for a moment. 
Did he dare to go on?  Did he dare test the limits of the memory loss?  It had
been years.  It was well grounded.  There was no going back from it, not after
this long.  He was willing to bet that he could tell Fenris his real name, and
he still wouldn’t regain his memories.  He might have a few years ago, but no
longer.  The time had passed.  “I once asked your mother why an elf would want
to wield a great sword, when your kind are so much more suited to other
weapons.”
                He saw Fenris’ pretty green eyes moisten, just a little, his
lips parted the smallest bit.  His poor pet.  The magister paused.  “Is this
too much for you, my pet?” Danarius asked him.
                Fenris seemed unable to speak for a moment, then shook his
head.  “No, Master, I…  I just…”
                Danarius finished the wine, and turned from the window. 
“Perhaps I should stop.  Another time, perhaps,” he said.  His back to Fenris,
he smiled and set the cup down, and counted the seconds.
                “Please…” the elf began.  Three, the magister thought.  “Would
you tell me what she said, Master?”
                His fingers trailed idly around the rim of the cup, and he sat
down in the chair.  “Perhaps,” he answered.  He debated briefly on another cup
of wine, and decided against it.  He leaned back in the chair.  “Do you want to
know?”
                The elf didn’t even hesitate.  “Yes,” he answered.
                Oh, what could he make the elf do for this bit of information? 
Suddenly, he knew.  “Draw the shades.”  Fenris did so.  “Before me, on your
knees.  When you’re done, I’ll tell you.”
                The elf hesitated, and realized he had a choice.  Danarius
watched him take a step backwards, away from him, watched the indecision on his
face.  He looked away, and shook his head.  “I don’t need to know, Master,” he
decided.
                “Fine.  Get on your knees anyway,” he ordered him.  Fenris
obeyed, but looked somewhere on the verge of tears.  It’s not fair, is it?
                But Fenris had become a talented whore, and an obedient slave. 
He could have gone to the pleasure house—him and his almost nonexistent gag
reflex.  When he finished, the magister adjusted his robes, and watched Fenris
wipe his mouth and stare at the floor.  “When’s the last time you’ve been to
the yard?” Danarius asked him.  When Fenris had to think about it, he knew he
needed to send him.  “Go.  Get someone—maybe a couple people—to train with
you.  I don’t want you gaining weight or getting lazy.  Dismissed.”
                Fenris rose, and walked to the door.  Something nagged at the
magister.  “Fenris,” he called suddenly.  The elf turned back toward him. 
“Your mother.  She said—with some reluctance, I recall—that your grandfather
wielded a two-handed sword.  Like you.”
                Danarius watched the elf’s alien eyes fill with unshed tears. 
He bowed low.  “Thank you, Master,” he said.  His voice did not waver.  He
left, but a little too quickly.
 
                The garden was strictly off-limits, and the servants wouldn’t
let anyone through it—except maybe the magister.  Some large project of
theirs.  Unfortunately, it meant that Fenris had to go all the way around,
behind the slave compound, through the second orchard, and be let through the
wicker gate, down the alley, to the front of the manor when he was finished
with practice.
                It was a bit irritating, truth be told.  He had only rarely
been in the slave compound.  His master had no business there, and he had
seemed to take special efforts to see that Fenris never interacted with any of
them, or went there.
                But the path always felt oddly familiar when he walked up it. 
He didn’t walk inside it, but he walked around it, his fingertips trailing
along the uneven stone as he considered why it all felt so familiar.  Maybe he
really had been his master’s slave all his life.  Maybe that was all it was. 
Danarius had said…  He had said that he had bought him when he was a child.  He
wondered if he had been a slave all his life?  He owned his mother as well.  He
wondered if there were anyone else.  And was his grandfather a gladiator?  A
slave soldier?  He wished he knew…
                He turned at the corner, and kept along the wall.  One of the
stones was loose, and he paused.  For some reason, he picked at it, and when he
knelt, he discovered that it would pull free.  A child’s hiding place?
                He looked inside, simple curiosity and boredom driving his
actions—and a sense of nostalgia that he could never place.  Inside, he found
two tiny figures.  His hand enclosed around them, and he pulled them out to
look.  He opened his palm, and lifted the first one.  At first, it looked like
a goat of some sort, and then he saw the tiny nubs where the horns had been—and
when he looked at it, it seemed… off.  A halla, he thought.  He had seen
drawings of the creatures before—Danarius had a few in various different
books.  Sometimes, he would leave them out, and open, and Fenris would have to
put them away.  After all, he was his slave before he was his bodyguard.
                The other carving was some kind of dog, or…  It’s a wolf, he
realized.  The carvings were small, and crude.  They were worn smooth from
years of handling, but the hole in the wall had nicely preserved them.  He
guessed that the wood was walnut.  There was a walnut tree in the garden, so if
these carvings had belonged to a slave child, maybe that was where the wood had
come from—just a fallen branch, maybe scraped from the rubbish heap.  The pair
had obviously been there for a very long time—they were covered in dust.
                He replaced the stone in the wall, but kept the carvings.  Why,
he couldn’t say, except that a part of him liked them, even though they were
small enough to be fully eclipsed by his hand and the work was crude at best. 
There was just something about it that he liked.
                Forgotten, worn, broken toys—once relevant but now forgotten. 
He felt that way sometimes.  He decided to keep the carvings.  Danarius had
never forbidden him such things—he had simply never had them.  All the same, he
resolved to keep them hidden.  That wasn’t to say that a servant wouldn’t find
them eventually—maybe even report them to his master.  But for the moment, the
little carvings were his own.  Really his own.  The only thing that was truly
his and no one else’s.
                The small weight of them in his hand suddenly felt good.
 
Chapter End Notes
     There was a lot of symbolism in this chapter: The wooden ring, some
     of the things people say, broken things, the two carvings Fenris
     finds that Leto left for him...
     And, yes, I did, in fact, compare Fenris to a canary.
***** Lost Family *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris continues a downward spiral into depression and Danarius
     delights in dangling his past in front of him without revealing any
     of it. Meanwhile, Shaislyn finds some acceptance from an unlikely
     source.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The solution, of course, was obvious.  In fact, staring him
right in the face day by day.  Annalkylie.  Danarius’ niece was the perfect
solution to his dilemma of what to do with Fenris.  The girl would not throw
him into the coliseum, nor would she be likely to sell him off.  She seemed
interested in him, so it was always a possibility that she might perform
experiments on him, but that was acceptable enough in its own way.
                It would be socially acceptable for him to bequeath his prized
possession to his mageborn niece, as well as suiting his own ends.  It was
perfect in its simplicity.
                Satisfied, he stopped worrying about it, and made a mental note
to make an adjustment to his will.
                The wedding would be the event of the century—two powerful
mages wedding, two powerful Altus houses uniting.  The silks for Annalkylie’s
dress were being woven right now, and a year from now she would wear it—in
Seheron.  The two families agreed that with the recent defeats in Seheron, and
the populace feeling poorly about the war, what with the defeat and the death,
the perfect thing to bolster their spirits was a wedding of epic proportion.
                No expense would be spared:  Gifts, clothing, the scenery, the
feast, music, performances—all of it and more.  And Seheron would host it. 
Seheron, right on the war front.  Not only was it an affront to the Qunari—a
celebration, something they did not even recognize—but it would hearten their
fine soldiers.
                Of course every precaution would be taken.  Ships would be in
the harbor, the guard on the wall doubled. The gates would be closed for days
to travel, just in case.
                All would be well, and it was precisely what was needed.
 
                Fenris stood perfectly still while the woman used a string to
measure him.  All of him, apparently.  She measured every part of his torso,
making notes in a book, next to a sketch his master approved of.  She measured
his arms, even his neck, and then moved down to his legs—that required even
more measurements.  She spent a good half hour just measuring everything that
could possibly be useful, and then it was off to the armory.  Danarius was
having him fitted for armor—something lightweight but useful, and visibly
appealing he imagined.
                His master did nothing by halves.
                Before the measurements, she and his master had spent nearly an
hour going over a large book of fabrics, discussing textiles as well as shades
and dyes.  He could think of few things that were less interesting.  Danarius
seemed to take more interest in what Fenris was wearing than what he himself
was wearing—to the wedding, that is.
                He hadn’t been told about it specifically, but it was difficult
to not hear about it when everyone around him was talking about it.
                At least Fenris wasn’t going to be in one of those serving
outfits—he was quite satisfied with that knowledge.  No—each slave who would be
there was handpicked for beauty, grace, and poise.  And, since the groom’s
house colour was blue and gold, each slave would have to have blue eyes and
blonde hair.  Fenris was automatically disqualified.  He wondered how this
could not be an affront to the bride, however—considering that Kylie herself
was a blonde, blue-eyed woman.  But that was none of his business.
                However, he would be present in the attendance of his master,
as a bodyguard.  At least I won’t have the leash.  He would have to stand too
far back to make that justified.
                But ever since that night, suicide had continuously crept into
his thoughts.  It came unbidden and at a moment’s notice.  Maybe at the sight
of the leash and collar, maybe when his master laughed at a cruel jape, or
spoke of the maleficarum that dominated the Circle and thus Tevinter. 
Sometimes, he poured wine, and thought about the slaves that had made it and
their suffering, and his thoughts again drifted to suicide.
                He thought about all the ways he could kill himself.  He could
throw himself over a balcony.  Maybe if he fell just right off of a
horse—people died from that all the time.  Sometimes, he thought about it when
he cared for his sword.  The blade was so sharp, and his flesh only so deep. 
If he cut himself badly enough, it would be a matter of minutes.  Sometimes, he
thought about hoarding all the alcohol his master gave to him, and drinking all
of it before a bath, and just letting himself drown.
                But he never did any of those things.  He never even tried. 
That night that Danarius had talked him down from the ledge had been the last
time he had the courage to try, and even then, he had been uncertain enough to
come down.  Suicide was just… so permanent.  And he didn’t really want to die,
not when it came down to it.  He wanted to live.  He just didn’t want…
                He didn’t want the leash and collar.  He didn’t want those
horrible serving outfits.  He was terrified of being ordered to his master’s
bed again.  Danarius had wanted him, and he had him, fully and in every meaning
of the word.  Somewhere in Fenris’ mind, he knew that if he tried, he could
have stopped him.  He could have rebelled and fought, and maybe stopped it from
happening at the very least.  Did that mean, somewhere, deep down, he had
wanted it?  Perhaps not interpreted as a perverse sexual desire, no, but
perhaps he felt he deserved something like that to happen to him.  He had had a
hand in the murder of a child, helped Hadriana torture and punish people,
witnessed Perya’s rape and did nothing.  Didn’t he deserve punishment?
                I didn’t want it! Fenris wanted to scream.  Then why didn’t I
do anything?  Why didn’t I try to make it stop?  He already knew the answer: 
Because Danarius was his master and no matter how much he wanted it to stop, he
could not disobey him.  It would be like… like refusing to breathe, or sleep. 
It was so much a part of him that there could be no other way.  Yet he still
wanted it to stop.
                But how could any of that stop except to die?
                Those thoughts bothered him, more than he cared to think
about.  It was distracting, and he knew he needed to put an end to those
ideas.  He needed to concentrate more on what he was doing now, not on his
thoughts and feelings about it; that was secondary.  What was important was his
master’s desires.  His own were a distant second, if at all.
                That thought gave him pause.  My own desires…
                He shook the thought off.  It was useless to think about
himself at all, when he didn’t matter.  It was worthless to think about what he
hated or didn’t want, because that didn’t matter.  He knew nothing else.  He
couldn’t for a moment imagine it any other way.
                He looked at people who were not slaves—even the poor—and
couldn’t understand how they lived.  How could they… do anything with their
lives, without someone else making their decisions?  How could they make their
own choices?
                Danarius had begun to frequent the slave markets.  He usually
brought Fenris, and for some reason, they made him uncomfortable.  He reasoned
that he just disliked the starved looks on their faces, the air of desperation
and overwhelming despair.  Danarius had so far rejected all the wares, though,
and after the fourth trip in as many months, he finally told Fenris what he was
doing.
                “I’ve decided that I want you bred,” he told him, though
reminded him was more accurate.  Fenris supposed that he had willingly pushed
the memory from his mind.  Inwardly, the elf was in turmoil.  Bred?  He wanted
him to get a woman with child?  For reasons he could only begin to fathom, the
thought filled him with dread—and images of Perya being raped.  Outwardly, he
barely blinked.  “You’ve been very good, pet.”  His master smiled, as if
pleased.  Yes.  I’ve never disobeyed you—not once.  I’ve never done anything to
deliberately displease you.  All my life that I can remember, I’ve only tried
to please you—even when you ask things of me that I hate.  And this is how you
treat me?  “So I’ve a mind to reward you, after all.”
                Fenris felt ill.  A reward?  He thought of this as a reward?  A
reward would be allowing him to get to know another person.  He was… incredibly
lonely.  He didn’t want a mate.  He wanted… just someone to talk to sometimes,
someone who would listen.  But he said nothing, and tried to keep his face
blank, and knew he failed.
                “You seem displeased, my pet,” Danarius commented.  “Why?”
                The slave stared down at his feet for a moment and chose his
words with care.  “I am… surprised is all, Master.”  He thought of how Perya
had slapped him, how she had stumbled when she walked.
                The magister had an expression on his face that said, plainly,
that he did not believe him.  “Ideally, I am looking for a perfect physical
match for you.  It is proving… more difficult than I would like, so it could be
some time still, my pet.”
                Fenris was inwardly relieved to hear it.  Outwardly, he only
nodded.
 
                Shaislyn led Vanessa down to the docks.  The sailors he knew
waved, but were silent—likely from the magister’s presence.  He waved back, and
said hello to Nora.  He continued on, and he went down the alley.
                The day was muggy out, and threatened to rain.  It had been
raining off and on for the past few days, and puddles had formed along the
streets.  Since he had been sold, Vanessa had decided that he would wear
shoes.  When he wondered why, she had smiled and told him that the fort was a
big place with a lot of shrapnel, and it was unbecoming for him to limp about
bleeding all over the stone if he cut himself on something sharp.
                It was better for swordplay, too—because the other boys were
not above stepping on one’s toes given the chance.  Taggart sometimes looked at
him oddly, as if he were trying to piece something to together.  Shaislyn
thought very little of that, because people so often looked at him strangely,
but perhaps one day, he would ask about it.
                In the meantime, though, Vanessa wanted to meet old Jameson,
and Shaislyn saw no harm in introducing them.  Jameson was a Circle mage, after
all—just the sort with no ambition and proud of it.  “Jameson!” Shaislyn
called, realizing that he was excited to see the old mage.  He hadn’t seen him
in months.  It would be good to get to see him again.
                He went up to the ramshackle hut that leaned against a wall. 
He knocked loudly, and peered inside.  He wasn’t there.  He started to frown,
but realized that he may be buying food or something.  He turned back to
Vanessa.  “Maybe he’s buying food,” Shaislyn offered.
                “Yes, perhaps,” the magister agreed.  For all her rich dyes and
fabrics, she looked not at all uncomfortable at the docks.  “Come—I want to go
down to the market.  We’ll visit here again on our way back.”
                Shaislyn hurriedly agreed to that idea.  The magister led the
way to the market square, and she found a book seller’s stall, where she
contentedly browsed the wares.  When she saw him watching her, occasionally
sighing, and shifting about impatiently, she reached into her purse.
                “I’ve a bit of a sweet tooth today, so why don’t you go to the
candy maker?  I think I’d like some rock candy,” she told him, a small smile
about her thin lips.  She handed him a whole silver piece.  “Maybe some of
those little honey cakes too—I like those with tea.”
                Shaislyn’s eyes got as big as a gold sovereign.  “I…  Yes,
ma’am.”
                “Run along, and take your time.  No need for you to hurry and
drop everything,” she pretended to scold him.
                “Yes, ma’am,” he called as he dashed away from the stall.  It
had begun to rain, but it was light, and the air was warm.  He actually liked
it.  The rain was rejuvenating and fresh, and made him think of purity, like it
was washing the world of its sins and stains.  But maybe he felt that way
because he was a bastard.  No amount of water would cleanse that stain.
                But maybe he could redeem his birth one day, if he worked hard
enough.  Maybe one day, he could be something more than a blind bastard child.
                Shaislyn had grown up with everyone around him telling him
“no”.  Not to be cruel.  They meant it out of love, really—but always “no”. 
Always saying that he could not do such things, because it wasn’t possible,
because it was dangerous, because they were afraid he would hurt himself.  All
of it was because he was blind or half elven.  He had heard that most half-
blood children tended to look more human than elven, but not Shaislyn.  Rather,
he looked like an odd combination of the two—entirely too obvious what his
breeding was, to everyone.  He had once heard his grandmother comment to Lura
that it had been his sister that was born human, as if she had taken all the
most human traits from both of them, and left him with the remnants of the
elven traits.  Not that it was much, granted.  He could still pass for human
most of the time, and it would be easier on him if he completely denied elven
heritage, but he refused; he identified more with being elven than human.
                Other children did not have to be watched constantly by adults,
and he had resented it.  He hadn’t understood that he was different than they
for such a long time, after all.  He couldn’t have understood it.  They could
not explain what sight was to the blind.  He had not been able to truly
comprehend that other people could see.
                He could see now, but still he encountered things he was told
that he could not do.  He wanted to prove them all wrong.  He would learn the
sword—two swords.  He wanted to duel-wield swords.  He had seen an older elf
doing that, and they had looked so beautiful and graceful.  He wanted to be
useful.  He would like to fill someone else with the same inspiration and awe
that he had felt when he saw Vanessa cast a spell, or when he saw the
experienced soldiers sparring.
                On his way to the candy maker, he got distracted by a trinket
shop, and milled about in the crowd, clutching the silver coin in one hand
tightly.
                “Shai!” a voice called.  He turned in the direction of the
voice, and grinned, waving.  Lura came up to him, and despite that he was
almost eight now, she swept him off his feet, holding him tightly.  His mother
was close at Lura’s heels, and her eyes were wet when she saw him.
                He looked up at them both when Lura set him down.  “Did… Did it
help?” he had to ask.  “You paid off the debt, right?”
                Varania blinked, and the tears dripped down her face.  She
knelt, and threw her arms around him.  He felt that it was terribly
embarrassing.  “Shai…  Oh, Shai…”
                He sighed, and wished that she would let go of him.  Mothers… 
“Mama—let go!  You’re squeezing me in half!” he complained.
                She hugged him tighter in response.  “No,” she insisted.
                Lura laughed, and he stared up at her, scowling.  “Are you on
an errand?” Lura asked him gently.
                Shaislyn nodded, though could not move with how tightly his
mother was hugging him.  “Yes—and I need to finish it!” he whined.
                Varania reluctantly let go of him.  “Can we walk with you,
then?” she asked him, and he felt like they intended to no matter what he said,
so he nodded.  He led the way.  “Where are you going?”
                “The candy shop,” he answered, and flashed the silver coin. 
“Magister Vanessa said she’d like some cakes—and rock candy.”
                Varania frowned.  “You’re a mage, and they have you running
errands like that?”
                Shaislyn made a face.  “We were running errands.  She’s looking
at books, and gave me a coin to go to the candy store.”
                Lura laughed.  “Oh, I see,” she said.
                “Shai… are you doing well?” Varania asked him.
                He glanced back at her.  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he responded.  “They
make me bathe more often than I like.”
                “More than once a week?” Lura gasped, hiding a smile behind her
hand.  “Your skin must surely fall off in clumps!”
                Shaislyn felt like he was being made fun of.  “I don’t need a
bath every day,” he protested.
                Varania stroked his dark curls.  “Your hair feels nice,
though.”
                He jerked his head to the side.  “Hey!” he said, regretting
hailing Lura when he had.
                “You look well,” his mother told him.
                He supposed he must.  Bathing frequently, wearing the wool and
linen that the military used.  His clothes were mostly just things that the
others had outgrown, but they were clean and in well enough repair.  He was
used to hand-me-downs.  And the boots—those too.  “Yeah.”  But they hadn’t
answered his question.  “Why are you in the market?”
                Lura lifted her basket, partway filled with potatoes. 
“Shopping,” she responded.
                Why did adults always dodge his questions?  Or give him such
stupid answers?  They asked him questions, and expected detailed responses, but
didn’t answer his own the same way.  It was hardly fair.  He pushed open the
door to the candy maker’s shop.  A dwarven woman and her husband manned the
counter.  She was mixing something in a bowl, and he had the look of a man who
was his own best customer.  There was no one else in the shop, so Shaislyn
strode up to the counter, and put the coin down.  “I’d like some rock candy,
and some honey cakes, please.”
                “Equal amounts of each?” the man said, not unkindly.
                Shaislyn frowned, and considered that.  The rock candy was
nice, but the honey cakes were nicer.  “I bet your mistress would prefer more
honey cakes,” Lura offered, and smiled warmly at the proprietor.
                The child nodded in affirmation.  “Yeah.”  So they worked out
portions, and the packages were weighed, and he took his silver, leaving
Shaislyn with a big bundle of cakes and rock candy, and a few coppers left
over.  Varania gently lifted one of the packages from his hands, so he could
better balance the other.
                “I’m sure your… mistress… will be wondering where you are,”
Varania said uncertainly.
                Shaislyn shrugged.  “She was looking at books.  She spends
hours looking at books,” he told her.
                Lura said, “Are you learning a lot there?”
                The child nodded enthusiastically.  “Yeah.  The magister
teaches me about magic, and…”  He realized that he should say nothing about the
Qunari.  “And I’m learning the sword too.”
                Varania stumbled, but dropped nothing.  “Oh,” she said.
                The child looked at her for a moment.  Had he said something
wrong?  “I really like it.”
                The two women exchanged looks that the boy did not understand. 
“Your uncle learned to wield a sword when he was a little younger than
yourself,” Varania told him.
                He was excited to hear that.  Varania almost never spoke about
her brother, except in hushed whispers to Lura, and she always seemed sad to
speak of it.  “Really?  I’m learning with two swords.”
                “He favors two-handed weapons,” the mage continued, but as if
she weren’t really listening.
                That impressed the child—something like that had to be
enormous, especially for an elf.  “What’s his name?” Shaislyn asked.  But at
that, the two fell silent again.
                Lura said instead, “Where’s your mistress?”
                The half-elven child knew when his questions were being
avoided.  He let it go, and nodded toward the bookseller.  Sure enough, she was
still there, and seemed to be haggling about the price of a particular volume. 
He had best leave her alone for a few minutes at least.  “Over there.”
                “Vanessa?” Varania said aloud.
                Shaislyn blinked.  “You know each other?”
                Varania sort of shrugged.  “I know her from when I have to go
to the Circle.  But not well.  We never… talk.”
                Shaislyn did not inquire.  Rather, he started walking up to the
magister, and stood just outside the stall, in the light drizzle, thoroughly
relishing it.  The other two women were simply used to it by now.  He heard
them whisper to each other.  Either they did not realize his hearing was sharp,
or for whatever reason, they spoke of him.
                “He seems happy enough,” Lura said gently.
                Varania looked troubled.  “He doesn’t know any better.  That’s
all.”
                “Is Vanessa cruel?”
                “I don’t… really know,” his mother admitted.  “She keeps to
herself.”
                And Vanessa finished her haggling, and paid.  She turned to
Shaislyn, and was surprised to see Varania and Lura.
                “Oh, who’s this?” she said, then looked closer.  “Varania—I
know you.”  She looked at Lura.  “And you’re…?”
                Lura smiled, but it looked forced.  “Lura.  I’m a… family
friend.”
                “The one that sold Shai,” Vanessa said, suddenly recalling. 
Lura flinched.  Varania looked away.  The magister continued on as if it were
nothing.  “Yes, I remember you now.”
                “Ah… we should be going,” Lura said, clearly uncomfortable.
                Varania suddenly nodded.  “Yes—I’ve got so much to do.  We had
best be quick.”
                Vanessa blinked.  “Well, as you wish.  Varania, I’ll see you at
the Circle next week.”
                The elven mage nodded.  “Yes.”  She looked at Shaislyn. 
“Goodbye.”  She looked like she would say more, but was reluctant to do so for
some reason.  She gave the packages back to him.  “Bye,” she said again.
                “Bye, mother,” he said.  She did not hug him again, or anything
of the sort.  She glanced back once as the pair moved away.
                Vanessa had since acquired a sackcloth bag, and she reasoned
that the candy and cakes would fit inside it with the books.  They fit, but it
was a little snug, and Shaislyn was careful with it when he held it to keep
from crushing any of the contents.  “I think we’ll have tea when we get back,”
Vanessa said.  “You should learn to brew tea.  What use is a slave who can’t
brew a good cup of tea?  And of course you’ll have to learn about tea before
you can brew it properly—so you’ll have to drink as much as possible.  We’ll
start today.”
                Shaislyn sighed deeply.  Another thing he’d have to learn. 
There was so much he had to learn.  Magic, and language, sword fighting, and
now tea.  That seemed the most useless of all of it.  He made a face.  “What’s
there to learn about tea?  It’s hot water with leaves in it.”
                Vanessa laughed.  “That just tells me that you’ve a lot more to
learn about tea, but now I know where to start.  Now, let’s see if this Jameson
of yours is home.  Shall we?”  They went back down to the docks, and along the
pier.  They went back up the alley, and Shaislyn struggled to balance the
package and knock at the same time.  Vanessa lifted the package from his hands
graciously, and he knocked.  There was no reply, so he knocked louder after a
moment.
                He called, “Jameson?”  There was no answer.  “Jameson!”  Where
could he have gone to?  Surely he would be back by now…  He was never too far
away, and never gone for very long.
                A washerwoman stopped when she heard him calling. “Boy,” the
woman called.  Shaislyn turned to her.  “That old man passed away days ago. 
Never would’a known, but for the smell.”
                The half-elf grew pale.  His throat felt tight, his mouth
suddenly dry.  “Thank you,” Vanessa told her.  The woman nodded, and went back
to her washing.  Shaislyn was staring back at the decrepit little hut.  How
could that be?  How…?  He stepped inside, still too small yet to have to duck. 
Shaislyn fell to his knees.  Why…?  His grandmother had died, his twin, and now
Jameson too.  Who was next?
                He wondered if the books were still here.  They had been hidden
under a loose cobblestone.  He pried at it, the dirt and grime getting under
his nails, but the stone lifted free.  Under it, in a beaten and decaying
leather sack, were the books.  He lifted the sack out.  There were no coins—the
old man had kept those on his person, so they were undoubtedly looted.  But the
books—most precious of his possessions—were still here.  Shaislyn hugged the
bag close to himself, but knew that he was a slave, and had no possessions.  He
could have no possessions, save for what his mistress gave him.  So he would
give her these books, and maybe he would be allowed to read them again one day.
                He gazed around the small shack with its low ceiling, his heart
heavy.  It was vacant, but it didn’t feel like a place someone had died.  But
he had died—alone and in poverty.  It made Shaislyn very sad at first, before
he realized that it was precisely how Jameson had lived, and how he had been
happiest.
                He died as he lived, he thought, and somehow the thought made
him feel better.  If one had to die, it was best to die as they had lived if
they were happy alive.
                He emerged from the hut, still sad, but feeling better than he
had when he had entered.  He proffered the books to the magister.  “Mistress. 
These were Jameson’s.”
                She looked at them.  “Why don’t you carry them; my hands are
full.”  She turned.  “Come on.  I’d like that tea.”
                He nodded numbly, and followed her back to the barracks.  They
put the bundles in the little room they studied in, and she lifted out a small
brazier from a shelf.  She had some charcoal, and sent him to fill up her tea
kettle.  When he got back, she had selected a tea from a tin, and had two
teacups sitting out, the honey cakes on plates.
                “Now, I’ll begin your education on teas,” she said, smiling
wickedly.  He groaned, setting the kettle over the brazier to heat.  He stood,
and listened to her lecture on the fine art of brewing tea, answering questions
when she quizzed him to make certain that he was listening.  They were having a
jasmine tea, and he was bored to death by the time she had finally brewed and
poured it.  She offered disks of honey for sweetening, and sugar respectively. 
She suggested the honey, though, so he put in a disk of honey and added a
couple more after taking several sips.  He decided that he didn’t hate tea, but
wasn’t particularly fond of it either.
                Lura had drank a lot of tea, he recalled, but she liked cool
teas.  Varania had no taste for teas, but would drink it in preference to plain
water when it came from the alienage wells.  Shaislyn had always preferred
lemon water or juice when he had the option.
                The water here was much better though, even for slaves.  And he
had regular meals, too.  He felt he had little to complain about, in truth. 
The way that Lura and Varania had talked about slavery, he had thought he would
be clapped in chains and fed gruel.
                “Have some honey cakes,” Vanessa said.  “There’s too many for
just me, and it goes well with the tea.  You’ll have to learn what to serve
with the teas, you know, so you’ll need to know from experience.”
                More work.  But work he enjoyed this time—he liked honey cakes.
                They finished their tea and cakes, and Vanessa rose.  “Put the
books on the shelf, and take the dishes down to the kitchen to be washed,” she
directed him.
                “Yes, Mistress,” he said, and cleaned up the dishes first.  He
took the books—including Jameson’s—and put them on the shelves, scarcely
glancing at the titles as he did so.  But as he went to grab the last book, he
noticed that the newest addition to the bookcase did not belong.  He touched
the cover, and pulled it back off the shelf.  He skimmed through it, and looked
up.  “Mistress?”
                “Vanessa—I’m Vanessa,” she insisted, but walked over to him. 
“Yes?”
                He held up the copy of Orsweld’s Tales and Fables:  A
Collection of Fantasy.  “This one isn’t a book of magic or instruction,” he
said.  “What shall I do with it?”
                Vanessa knelt, and looked at the title.  “Oh.”  She blinked,
unconcerned.  “That silly bookseller must have put this one in by mistake.”
                Shaislyn frowned.  “I’ll go return it to him,” he offered.
                She laughed, and shook her head.  “Ah, no.  I paid more than
some of these were worth—so I think we’ll keep it.  Tell you what—you take that
one.  Keep it in your room.”
                He stared at the slender volume, and back at the magister. 
“But…  I…”
                “And I’ll be quite offended if you don’t read it,” she told
him, standing up, and striding back to her desk.  He looked back at the book,
and set it aside, and put the last book on the shelf.  He picked up the empty
sack, and the other book—his book, he realized.
                He saw Vanessa take the rock candy, still in its packages, and
simply place it in a drawer in the desk.  She gestured at the empty packages. 
“Go throw this out, and put your book away.  We’ll be studying ice spells when
you get back.”
                He nodded, holding his book close.  She moved away from her
desk, and he picked up the trash, shoving it into the rotting leather bag.  He
found the receipt for the books—something scrawled onto a piece of scrap paper
in a flowing script that meant the man may also be a scribe.  He would have
simply thrown it away, but for some reason, he skimmed it.  And, sure enough,
Orsweld’s Tales and Fables was written in the same script, right in between two
other titles, with its price listed next to it.
 
                Fenris watched, out of the corner of his eye, his master making
marks in the ledger he used to keep track of his slaves.  Every time he looked
at the tome, he felt his knees get a little weak.  Everything he needed to know
was in that ledger.  His real name, maybe his family…
                He just wanted to know who he had been.  That wasn’t such a
large thing, was it?  The hole in his memory was painful.  How much of his life
was he just… missing?  And the idea that, maybe, he had a family… someone who
had cared about him…
                It was a bit much sometimes.
                His master finally finished, and called him to put the book
back.  Fenris lifted it, and paused, staring down at the cover.  “Master?” he
heard himself say, and regretted getting the man’s attention almost
immediately.
                “Is there something you need, pet?” he said, not even looking
up.
                “No…”  He hesitated, wondering if he should try to back out of
it now.  He was afraid that Danarius would become angry, but…  He just needed
to know so badly.
                The man looked up, more wrinkles in his face in the past few
years, his dark brown hair tinged with gray.  “Fenris, what were you going to
say?” he said, his voice dangerous.  If he wanted to, he could pluck the words
right from his mind.
                Fenris glanced back at the book.  “Is my name in this book?” he
asked, his voice barely above a whisper.  He knew the answer already; Danarius
had looked up his age before in that book, and he wasn’t likely to forget that
any time soon.  But which name?
                Danarius paused.  “Yes.”
                He looked at it, his eyes flicking back up to his master.  “Is
my… the name I had before…”
                The magister’s face suddenly became unreadable.  He pushed the
chair back, and stood up, as if stretching.  “Yes.”
                Fenris looked back at it.  His real name was somewhere in this
book.  “Master, please, I…”
                The magister was walking around the desk, strolling really. 
The magister looked at him, then backhanded him—hard.  His ring sliced into his
cheek, cutting along the bone.  Fenris flinched, and stared downwards, ignoring
the blood running down his face.
                “Never ask anything about your past again, is that clear?” he
hissed.
                Fenris cringed inwardly, wanting to back away.  He had never
really done very much to earn his master’s wrath, but he had seen Danarius
angry before.  It was something else to have that anger directed at him.  He
wanted to shrink, to take back his questions, even the desire to ask.  He was
angry with him.  I’m supposed to be his slave.  He called me perfect.  I’m not
being perfect now, am I?  He’s so angry with me…
                Fear made his heart race—fear of angering his master, of
failing his master.  “I’m sorry, Master,” Fenris said, and meant it.  “I won’t
ask again.”
                “Don’t even think it,” Danarius said crossly.
                The magister glanced at the blood on his ring, and back at his
slave.  “I’m sorry,” the elf said again.  What right do I have to know,
anyway?  My master doesn’t think I need to know, so I don’t.  It wouldn’t
matter anyway.
                “I’ll let you choose your punishment,” the magister said,
turning away from him.  “No less than five—lashes, I mean.  But take however
many you think you deserve.”
                Fenris bowed once, and left.
 
                Hadriana looked up as the door opened.  She looked back down
when she saw that it was Danarius.  She had all the windows in the library open
to let in the breeze, and was going over the accounts on a big oak table with
an abacus.  Normally, she would be doing accounts in the file room, but the
library was her favourite room in the manor, and she really needed a change of
scenery.
                Danarius strode out onto the balcony, and stood there.  She
looked up, wondering what he was looking at.
                She went out, standing beside him.  “What are you…  Is that
Fenris?”
                The magister smirked.  “Yes.”
                Hadriana watched in fascination as the whip cracked over his
back—again and again.  The elf was tied to a post, more to keep him upright
than anything else.  He was naked to the waist, head down.  The overseer had
paused, stalking around him for a moment, maybe taunting him, maybe trying to
guess if the elf were going to faint or not.  “What did he do?”
                “Asked about his real name,” Danarius said.
                “What is his real name?” Hadriana inquired.  There was another
crack of the whip.
                The man blinked.  “Fenris,” he said bluntly.  “But… the man he
was before the Ritual—his name was ‘Leto’.”
                Hadriana frowned.  “And you had him beaten for it.”
                He nodded.  “Yes.  It was out of line and extremely rude of him
to ask.”  He paused.  “And I don’t want him knowing anyway.”
                She watched dispassionately as he was eventually unlashed from
the post, and the elf just collapsed to the ground.  She smirked, secretly
delighting in the entire episode.  “I’m surprised.  He’s usually so well-
behaved, isn’t he.”
                Danarius frowned.  “Yes.  It’s… strange.”
 
                Danarius looked up when the door opened, then back down.  He
listened to the elf limp, and resume his position, trying to keep his breathing
steady.  His hair was damp, his skin drying—perhaps he had washed off the blood
and perspiration.
                The magister looked up, observing his posture.  “You didn’t go
to the infirmary.”  It was an observation, nothing more.
                Fenris blinked, mildly alarmed.  “I… you didn’t instruct me to,
Master,” he said, his voice sounding a little hoarse.
                Danarius frowned.  No, he supposed he had not.  Fine.  “Come
here.”  The elf limped over to him, back hunched.  He gestured with his finger
for him to remove his tunic.  His slave did so, and the magister had him turn
his back toward him.  “How many lashes, my pet?” he inquired, running a
fingertip lightly over his back, down his spine.  The blood had been washed
off, in the sense that Fenris had dunked himself in water afterwards, but he
was bloody all the same.  His back was simply a network of lashes.
                “Twenty-five,” Fenris answered quietly.
                At least he understood the severity of his actions.  He
couldn’t really ask for more, could he?  He did learn quickly.  The magister
smiled to himself.  And he had been so concerned for a moment…  He drug a
fingernail across one particularly nasty-looking lash, scraping along the torn
flesh and muscle.  Fenris bit his lip hard to keep from crying out, but the
magister saw his fingers curl, and he began to shake, his breathing
shuddering.  He twisted a piece of hanging flesh on his back, looking at the
lyrium that was more than skin-deep under it.  He twisted hard, and yanked the
clump of flesh off of his back.  Fenris made a tiny sound of pain but did not
otherwise move.
                The gob of flesh and blood in his palm began to smoke and
crack, the blood on his back doing likewise. The magister reached out with his
free hand, touching a vein of lyrium on his back.  The lyrium flared to life,
brightening the room, and mingled with his blood magic, the way he had designed
it to.
                He poured his healing talent into it, and watched the flesh
knit back together as if it had never been rent.  He ran a hand down his
perfectly unmarred back, the lyrium as perfectly done as the first day.  “The
lyrium is all still there, in case you were curious, Fenris,” he told him.  He
moved his hand to his hip, idly stroking his bare skin in the same manner one
would stroke a dog or a cat.  “So long as you live, you won’t be able to get
rid of it by trying to cut it off.  It might scar, but you will never be able
to remove it while you live.”  He rose to his feet, his other hand moving up
the elf’s back, over his shoulder.  “Do you want to know why?”
                Fenris looked down.  “Only if you want to tell me, Master.”
                Danarius smiled, the hand on his shoulder running down the
lad’s arm.  Good boy.  “Pet, do you have vivid dreams at night?”
                He swallowed.  “Yes, Master.  Often.”  Though he did not
usually remember them.
                “This beautiful substance is why.”  He traced his fingers up to
his shoulder blades, enjoying how smooth his skin was in comparison to the
poured metal, and the hard muscle underneath.  “Lyrium exists in the Fade, and
that is where your soul wanders when you sleep.”  His fingers touched the elf’s
bare neck.  Fenris tilted his head, leaning almost pitifully into the barest
touch—half-desperate for any kind of affection, or perhaps just trained well
enough to know what his master wanted of him.  “During the ritual that made you
this way, I wove the lyrium into your soul from the Fade as well.  So you see,
pet…”  He pushed his palms flat against the elf’s back, the lyrium igniting,
engulfing his slave completely.  “You can’t escape from it.”
 
                Varania had apparently fallen asleep at the table, over her
work, for she woke to the sound of the door opening, and sunlight pouring in
through the windows.
                The owner was a bit surprised to see her, but not overmuch.
                Varania straightened.  “I’m sorry—I’ll just… finish this up,
Miss Johnis,” she said hurriedly.
                “Varania, wait,” she said, and sat down across from her. 
Something about her demeanor made the mage still, and made her worry.  “You
haven’t… been able to keep up with the work.”
                Her heart skipped a beat.  No…  “I—I’ve been working so long,
I…”
                She put a comforting hand on the girl’s arm.  “I know.  But I
just… can’t afford to keep you if you can’t keep up,” she told her
apologetically.  “I’m going to have to let you go.”  Varania was struck dumb,
and found that she could not speak.  The woman rose, and went to her
strongbox.  She unlocked it, and spoke as she did.  “I’ll pay you for your
work, but you’ll give me your key, and I’ll have to see you out.”
                Varania finally found her voice.  “B-but, Myriel…”
                She looked nothing but apologetic.  “I’m sorry.  And I’m sorry
about your mother, Varania.  I truly am.  But this is a business.”  She gave
her a bit of silver, and a few coppers.  Varania found herself handing over her
key, her heart caught in her throat.  What was she to do now?  The gold from
selling Shaislyn was gone—gone to pay off their debtors, and on other
expenses.  The two women’s clothing had been in tatters.  They had only bought
more used clothing, but it had been necessary.  They hadn’t spent it
frivolously, and that was what hurt the most.  But the rent had been raised,
and the two did all they could to survive.
                The mage walked numbly back to her apartment, the coins pressed
tightly in her palm.  It wasn’t enough.  She would need to find another job—and
quickly.
                She sat in the old chair, and stared at the coins, and finally
cried.  She had lost everyone dear to her.  All of her family was gone.  Leto
was a slave, her mother was dead, her father she had never known, and her son
she had sold for a few sovereigns.  She had thanked the Maker, though she
scarcely believed in him, for being able to see Shai, and it was heartening to
see him well-fed and cared for, but she worried about him all the time.  Leto
had saved him, and wanted him to live.  Shai was all that was left of her
family, when it came down to it.
                Had she been a good mother to him?  She wasn’t certain.  She
knew there were things she could have done to be better for him, but she had
been so young when he was born, so immature and naïve.  She had done as best
she knew how, but knew in her heart that it had never been good enough.  That
something was wrong with it.  Like perhaps she could have done more for him.
                She stared down at her hands and found herself thinking of
Vellus.  She had thought…  Never mind what she had thought.  But she was
lonely, and wanted someone to hold her and tell her that it would be all right,
like when she was a child.
                He had kissed her, and told her that he loved her.  He had
wanted to lie with her like a man and woman, but she had gently refused.  He
had waited, and waited, and still thoughts of the rape drove her from a bed
with him.  It had been inevitable when she saw him kissing another girl.  She
did not confront him; she had known that it was over between the two of them
for a long time.  But she had cried herself to sleep that night all the same. 
It hadn’t hurt any less, even for the knowledge.
                A mage really couldn’t find love and happiness, could they?
                Sex scared her.  That had been all that it was.  She was afraid
of being with a man.  She still remembered, all too vividly, the room.  The way
she had cried as he thrust into her.  She felt like she had begged him to stop,
but the words just tumbled from her mouth without conscious thought.  And the
thought of a man—any other man—thrusting into her and caressing her made her
shiver with dread.  Vellus had not been able to tolerate it, and she doubted
any other man would either.
                She didn’t know why she was worried about falling in love and
having someone love her in return when she had other worries.  The rent, for
one.  Feeding themselves, for another.  She still could get a few coppers for
healings, but she wasn’t good enough at healing to make a real living off of
it.  And, sure, she could make ice, and people would pay for that, but less
than for a healing.
                She didn’t know what she could do, and at the same time, was
afraid of what she would have to do to get by.
 
                Wind likes the surf, Kylie thought to herself as she raced
along the edge of the sea, the waves crashing against her horse’s ankles.  Wind
was enjoying himself, and seemed half inclined to take her swimming, so she had
to keep a good hold on the reins, lest the spirited animal get away from her. 
She could control Wind with her feet and legs, if it came to it—the animal was
responsive and well-trained and she considered herself to be a skilled
rider—but she hoped it would not come to that.
                It was so good to be away from Minrathous, with its stink of
the city—the sewage and the filth, rotting food, the fish that came in from the
sea, and the incense burning constantly throughout the city at an attempt to
mask its stench the same way women caked on paint to mask their age, just as
effective.  She could tell which district she was in by the smell.  Did it
smell like sage and fish?  She was by the pier.  Did it smell like frankincense
and fear?  She was in the slave market, the one just near the Chantry.  And the
list went on.  Most of the magisters had their own particular incense.  Her
uncle had a special blend, in fact—something subtle that he called Roschelle. 
She had inquired as to the name—once—and he had given her such a look that she
was sorry that she had asked.
                She kicked her heels into Wind’s side, and the horse gaily
burst into a run, and deeper into the surf, then shied away at the larger
waves, then darted back out again, chasing after the surf.  It was a fine game,
and Kylie enjoyed it for what it was.
                From the corner of her eye, she spied a large bird soaring over
the waves, and turned to look, trying to make out what sort of bird it was,
then she stilled.  It wasn’t a bird.
                It was a dragon.
                She wheeled her horse to a halt, torn between petrified fear
and fascination.  She had never seen a real dragon this close before. 
Minrathous was littered with statues and mosaics them—carved with magic no
less—but this was altogether different.  It soared high in the air—so high she
had mistaken it for a large bird.  Now she just felt foolish for doing so.  It
hardly had to flap its wings as it soared.  She wondered what it would be like
to fly in the sky like that, to look down at the world and its petty problems,
so far below her.
                Sometimes, if Wind ran fast enough, and she closed her eyes,
she could pretend that she was flying, but being able to see what that dragon
saw… that would be amazing.
                Some magisters had dragons as something like pets.  None of
those magisters were in Minrathous, though.  No, keeping something so large
inside the city would be… frowned upon.  But she had heard tales of them being
kept in the countryside.  Orlesians kept wyverns sometimes too—and she imagined
there was a magister or two that had those creatures as well.
                She imagined the way it would feel to have such a powerful
creature beneath her, its mighty wings beating in the air.  She almost
shuddered at the speculation.
                “My lady!” a voice cried, so faint she barely heard it; she was
watching the dragon, who was slowly disappearing from view.  On a boat, it
would be hours—days—before she traveled that far.  To the dragon, it was mere
minutes.
                The wave knocked her out of the saddle, and she narrowly
avoided being stepped on by Wind as the animal dashed away.  She tried to
regain her footing but a second wave crashed against her, knocking her down
again.  Then she was under the waves.  All around her, she felt like she was
slipping, being pulled away.  She couldn’t touch the bottom.  A dim part of her
mind realized that this was a drop off point.  How had she come so far
already?  The rest of her only panicked at the thought of drowning.
                Her head broke the surface once, and she gulped in air, and
fought down panic.  Panicking would get her drowned.  She had to calm, and
think, and swim. Swimming had been something her mother had frowned at and
disliked completely—primarily because Kylie had ruined many a piece of clothing
in her watery adventures.  Still, she had felt determined to learn, and though
she could have been better at it, she was no novice to the matter.
                So she found the surface, and wished she could easily pull off
her boots; swimming in them was proving more difficult than she imagined it
could be.  She struggled to break the surface again, before another wave pulled
her down, and then the current had her.
                She felt like she was lost.  She would drown, tragic and too
young, and there was nothing she could do about it.  It seemed so silly—so
completely mundane.  Any normal person could die from drowning, but she was a
mage.
                The water didn’t care.  It pressed around her, chilling her to
the bone, and constricting around her.  She struggled for the surface, but
could no longer tell which way was up.  She inhaled a lungful of saltwater, and
choked and coughed on more of it.  Something grabbed onto her arm, and suddenly
every tale she had heard as a child surfaced in her mind.
                Sea monsters—things that would grab her, eat her, drown her. 
All kinds of creatures—things that dwelled in the deep, things with tentacles,
claws, razor sharp teeth, and cold, cruel eyes.  She tried to scream, but her
mouth only filled with more saltwater.  She lashed out, and kicked, and tried
to summon a spell, but she was underwater.  The fire fizzled out.  The ice was
misdirected at best, and the lightning didn’t even work.  And then she was so
lightheaded that she could scarcely make the right gestures for the spells, and
the thing drug her further.
                She imagined it was pulling her out to sea, farther away.  No
one would even find her body.  It was going to eat her.
                Something lifted her from the water, and in her confused state,
she couldn’t imagine why.  It hurt to open her eyes, but then she realized
someone was holding her.
                She looked up timidly, suddenly ashamed for believing—even for
a moment—in sea monsters.  “Fenris,” she breathed in relief.  “I thought…”  She
broke off coughing up water.  He set her down in the damp sand, and held her
hair back as she spit up violently.  When she had stopped, she tried to make
her way up the beach, but fell against the elf instead, too dizzy and weak to
make it.  She heard him say something, but it sounded so far away…
 
                Fenris carried the mage, unconscious, up to the shore.  He laid
her down gently on the trampled grass, checked to make sure that she would be
all right, and went to go find her damned horse.
                Wind, fortunately, liked Siren and had circled back to the
destrier.  He led them both back to where he had left Annalkylie, and was
pleasantly surprised to see her awake, though unhappy and shivering from the
cold.
                Neither had thought to bring a blanket either, and he was just
as soaked.
                She shivered, her hair dripping.  “Well, that was pleasant,”
she said conversationally.  “Let’s do that again sometime.”
                “My lady, we should return to the city,” he suggested, ignoring
her comments.
                She looked at him guardedly.  “So you can tell my uncle what an
idiot I am, and affirm for him why I should have a dozen guards staring at me
every waking moment?” 
                He said nothing.  What was there to say?  When they both
arrived back at the manor, dripping wet, questions would be asked, and Fenris
would never dream of lying about it, and Annalkylie knew that.
                Her lips curved into a pout, her arms crossing stubbornly. 
“Well, I’m staying right here until we’re both dry.”
                He glanced down at the stubborn mage, unimpressed and far from
amused.  “You will catch a cold,” he reminded her, keeping his tone gentle.
                “Great thing about magic—it can cure that,” she said with a
snort, then a thought seemed to occur to her.  She rose to her feet, and made a
series of gestures with both hands, and held them close to the top of her head,
slowly lowering her hands along her body.  It did not dry her so much as drain
most of the moisture from her clothing and hair.  When she was done, a globe of
water hovered in front of her.  She frowned at it, and seemed to shove it away,
where it drained into the grass.  “I’d love a glass of wine right now.”
                He had gotten some of the saltwater in his mouth too, so that
he could understand.
                She looked at him then.  “I never thought that spell would be
particularly useful,” she commented.  “It just drains the moisture from
something—it’s supposed to be used when books get wet or something.”  She
paused.  “You remember when the vaults flooded in the manor a couple years
ago?”  She smiled in memory.  “My uncle, Hadriana, and I spent ­three hours
draining the water from all the books and scrolls down there—and half of them
were still ruined.”  She laughed, but it faded quickly.  She shrugged.  “Your
turn.”
                Fenris automatically stepped away, but could only go so far
with both the horses just behind him.  “That’s… unnecessary,” he insisted.
                “What about catching a cold?” she huffed.  “Come on—just hold
still!”
                He was extremely reluctant to allow such a thing to happen, and
she seemed equally determined that it did.  In the end, Annalkylie won out, but
only because she agreed not to play in the surf again.  “Your hair is a mess,”
she said after it was done, running her fingers through her own self-
consciously.  But his was twice the length of her own, and had come out of its
braid somewhere in the surf.
                “I don’t have a comb,” he retorted, and started to turn to the
horses.
                She darted ahead of him.  “I do,” she said, and fished about
through a saddlebag, bringing out a mother-of-pearl comb with a triumphant
smirk.  “We can’t have you return to your master looking as if I can’t take
care of you.”
                He frowned, knowing full well that this was just because she
didn’t want questions to be raised.  If no one asked, he would not tell the
truth, after all.  Regardless, he took the comb and took his time brushing out
his long hair, before she got bored, and took if from him, offering to brush it
for him.
                “My sister has hair as long as yours,” Annalkylie said
conversationally.  “Caleigh, I mean.”  Fenris offered nothing in terms of
conversation, but the young mage seemed perfectly content to blather on
anyway.  It was strange, actually.  She spoke to him as if he were just another
citizen, not a slave.  As if he were truly… a person.  “My uncle sells your
hair—doesn’t he?  To a wig maker, I mean.”
                “He does,” Fenris said without feeling.
                A pause.  “Do you like it long?”
                “I’m used to it.”
                By the way she sighed, she seemed dissatisfied with his answer,
but moved on anyway.  “I don’t know why I bother to ask—I’ve heard the wig
maker griping about when he’ll cut your hair again, so he can finish that
wig.”  She was silent for a moment as she worked at a knot.  “You have such
beautiful hair.”  She held out a lock of it.  “It’s not really white at all in
the sun.  If I hold it just right, I can see all the colours in it.”  She
sighed.  “Nothing like premature aging, not really.  But it’s why my uncle
makes so much money off of your hair.”  She was silent for a long time then. 
“The end result will be priceless… enough, I imagine, to compensate your
master.”
                The sentence seemed unfinished.  Compensate him for what?
                She changed the subject slightly.  “Will my uncle be having
your hair hacked off before my wedding, Fenris?”
                He kind of flinched as she struggled at another tangle.  “No.”
                “Shame.  It’d be nice to finish that wig, wouldn’t it?” she
went on, leaving voids in this conversation that she was pretending to have
with him. 
 
                Fenris had been sulking for weeks now.  It did not escape
Danarius’ notice, and his solution to it was simply to keep the elf busy. 
Standing about for hours and being ornamental was doing nothing to improve this
sulky behaviour, but keeping him too busy to think about anything seemed to be
improving it.  He had him drilled all day until he dropped at night, and after
a couple of weeks of that, his attitude had more or less gone back to the blank
but contented state it had been before.
                Danarius was a touch suspicious that Leto might actually be a
better swordsman than Fenris, but that was sword only, not special abilities. 
But that made sense.  Leto had trained since childhood.  Fenris may have
learned things entirely too quickly, but it was wholly different.
                He had decided to stop frequenting the slave market; it was so
much simpler to tell the merchants what he was looking for, and if they came
across anything appropriate, to tell him.  So far, they had said nothing.  He
was tempted to offer to pay more than he had said, but was concerned that they
would only present him with fakes.  They would lighten their hair, or if he
offered a high enough price, find glass eyes for their wares.  He was offering
a higher price for a slave that was more… pedigreed, but that was to be
expected that he wanted a slave that was tame.  It would make it easier on
Fenris in the bedroom if she were tame and subservient.
                He doubted Fenris would have it in him to just pin her to the
bed and take her, and even if Danarius had her tied to it, and commanded him,
that was no guarantee he would be capable.  They needed more than a command to
elicit desire.  He could command many of his slaves to breed, but Fenris had
not been conditioned for that.  He reflected that forbidding him from being
with a woman or even a man certainly had not helped the matter.
                Mayhap he should revise that clause.  He considered it.  But
that would mean relinquishing some of his hold on the elf.  No, he didn’t like
that idea either.  He thought about it—momentarily—before he thought of a
solution.
                Danarius looked up at the sword, mounted in the hall. 
“Fenris—take the sword,” he told him, frowning in thought.  The elf barely
blinked, and reached up on his toes to take it down, steadying himself with his
fingers lightly pressed against the wall.  He lifted the large sword down with
one hand, and then used his second to steady the blade, thinking to present it
to his master.  Danarius shook his head.  “Hold it in your hand—as if you were
to wield it.”  His slave obeyed, but had a questioning, confused look about
him.  “Activate the lyrium in your skin.” 
                That had become very easy for Fenris, similar to when a mage
touched their mana.  When the lyrium ignited, the sword lit up too. 
Interesting.  Danarius looked at them both.  “It’s a Sword of Mercy,” the mage
told him.  “They’re awarded to those in the Imperium who have served the
greater good of the empire.”  He left unsaid that he had been awarded the sword
for his work on Fenris.  “Put it back.”  I’ve learned what I wanted to.  The
light dissipated, and Fenris eased the sword back into its resting place.  The
Silver Swords of Mercy were costly, and for what they meant, he coveted them. 
The lyrium etched into them made them all the more valuable.
                But this was only the most recent of his collection.  He had
acquired three more in previous years, but all through coin or cunning.  This
one was special, because it was truly his.  Each one was the slightest bit
different, when he compared the four swords.  One of them was well over two
centuries old, and its make was different as such.  Two of them bore the same
mark—made by the same smith, or at least from the same smith’s forge, which was
interesting because he had managed to find one at an auction house, and another
one he had won in a bet—both in different parts of the country.  He had wagered
the first Sword against the other—in a gladiatorial fight, in fact.  Leto had
won him that Sword.
                He considered that.  For some absurd reason, he had an urge to
give it to Fenris—a mockery of what he used to be.  And why not?  Fenris was
already a mockery to the Qunari customs, to Dalish customs, so why not a
mockery of what he used to be as well?  And the poor thing would never even
know nor realize it.  But, oh, he couldn’t just give it to him.  No.
                That was it though.  Once he picked out a suitable mate for
Fenris, when the bitch was carrying his bastard offspring, if that were even
possible, then he would give him the Sword.  Appropriate, all things
considered—and why they were awarded.  Speaking of which, he turned back toward
his slave.  “Fenris.”
                The elf stopped, and looked up but not at him.  “Yes, Master?”
                Danarius looked at him.  “Perhaps I’ve been… harsh with you,”
he said.  “And I’d like to revise something I’ve said before.”  Fenris
blinked.  “Do you recall, my pet, that I expressly forbid you… company?”  He
raised his eyebrow at the last word.
                The elf was momentarily confused, then blinked as he understood
what his master meant.  “Oh.  Ah, yes, Master.”  He seemed uncomfortable to be
mentioning it.
                “Indeed.”  He frowned for a moment, as if displeased with what
he saw when he looked at Fenris.  The elf picked up on it almost immediately,
and it made him uncertain and even anxious.  He was good at picking up
nonverbal cues, the mage reflected, but didn’t understand wordplay at all. 
But, then again, he rarely spoke or was truly spoken to at all.  He had no
verbal finesse because he had no practice with it nor use for it. 
                Fenris’ expression changed to something between hurt and
puzzlement.  “… Master?” he said, voice soft and uncertain.
                All this time, and his anxiety had never really gone away.  He
desperately sought approval, and Danarius was the only one who would give him
any.  Taggart had—perhaps too much approval.  It was why Danarius had to get
rid of him; he was too kind to the elf.  It had only left Danarius.  It pleased
him; it made the elf incredibly dependent.  “I will… no longer forbid you to
take a woman—or a man—to bed.  Provided they are willing.  They need not be
slaves either.  Let it never interfere with your duties, however.”  He paused,
frowning in thought.  “And one more thing:  Before anything else, you must come
to me and ask permission.”  And any woman will swallow potions to keep to their
moon cycle.  And, it meant that the magister still had the final say, and it
meant his slave would have to ask.
                Fenris looked down.  “This isn’t… necessary, Master.  I don’t
want…”
                “How old are you, Fenris?” Danarius said flatly.
                The elf paused.  “I think… I’m about 26,” he admitted meekly,
but uncertainly.
                Danarius blinked.  He was really that old already?  He had
thought he was 25 or something…  He might be 26.  The magister hadn’t been
counting, and, frankly, didn’t particularly care.  “Don’t tell me it’s
unnecessary.”  If Fenris were any of his other slaves, he would have no doubts
that he was sleeping with someone—be it a man or a woman.  But he kept such a
close eye on him that he seriously doubted that.  
                All of this business only reminded him of how long it had
been.  Maintaining a relationship was tiring, and a waste of his time really. 
He was tired of trying to keep someone else happy.  All the women ultimately
only wanted one thing—the same thing—from him when he saw them for too long. 
Legitimacy. To take Roschelle’s place.
                To hell with that idea.  Whores existed for a good reason, and
he was finished with his river of paperwork for the day.  They would surely
drum up more by the morning, but for the time being…
 
                Fenris stood at the door, and tried not to hear any of it.  It
was easier said than done, though; elves had good hearing.  The walls of the
whorehouse were thick, the doors thicker, but the window was open to let in the
breeze, and another window in the hall, and he heard things all around that he
would be happier never having heard.
                But, this would be a prime time to try to murder his master, so
stand vigilante he did.  He was distrustful by nature, so it was only natural
to suspect everyone that came by.  A girl with a tea tray, a boy running on an
errand—he even suspected them.  Children were naturally charming, but could be
told to do the most vile of acts.  He again recalled the two children told to
murder one another, or they would both be tortured and killed.  One had
refused, but the other had bashed the other’s head in with a rock.  It had made
a sickening sound when he hit him—over and over again.
                A woman—one of the whores in a long flowing gown—opened a
door.  Her gown was askew, and she wore a circlet of gold fashioned into rose
buds, tiny pearls clasped in the thorns, atop her dark ringlet curls.  A sweaty
man with an egg-shaped head took her hand, and kissed it, and gave her a mock
bow.  “My black queen,” he said in farewell.
                The woman’s cherry-red lips curved into a smile.  “Farewell,
mesere.  May you come back to my arms soon,” she said, batting her lace of dark
eyelashes at him.
                He groped her clumsily, and she giggled, acted as if she were
shy, and he turned to go, almost whistling as he left.  The “black queen” stood
and watched him go, and the farther away he got, the more she adjusted her
dress and changed her posture, until she stood with her dress straightened, her
shoulders slouched, and her arms crossed.
                “He should just buy me.  He’d save more money that way,” she
grumbled to herself, before she went back into her room with a huff.  The door
clicked shut, and the hall was empty again.
                Some more time passed, and a slave came by the dark-haired
woman’s room to change the sheets, and left.  Down the hall, he heard two of
the male prostitutes talking.  They had been walking down the hall, and one of
them stopped and perched on the window seat.
                “… No, if done right, it doesn’t hurt,” the older one assured
the younger one.
                The brown-haired youth seemed unconvinced.  “How can that not
hurt?”  He frowned.  “And if you do it a lot, don’t you lose…”  He seemed
uncomfortable for a moment.  The older one raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t you lose
muscle control?  Jess says you can shit your pants from it.”
                The other made a face.  “You’d have to do it a lot.”
                “But…”  The younger whore looked around, and seemed at a loss
for words, but it seemed clear enough, even to Fenris from across the room. 
But I’m a whore, seemed to be the rest of the sentence.  It was also quite
clear what they were talking about.  Fenris’ eyes flicked downwards.  He wished
he didn’t know what it was like, or what it felt like.  He’d like to be as
innocent as that boy.  But he did know, much to his chagrin, and he knew he
never wanted to experience anything like it again.
                “Just because you’re a whore doesn’t mean your clients willall
be male.  Nor does it mean they’ll always want to be on top.”  The man kind of
smiled.  “I get more men that want to be on the bottom, to tell you the
truth.”  He snorted a laugh.  “But I have to promise not to tell.”
                The boy frowned, but looked hopeful.  “Really?”
                “Really.  Why would they go see a male whore to mount him when
they could go to a female for the same thing?  Think about it.”  The older
whore left the younger one, and headed down the stairs.  The younger one
sighed, and looked out the window for a bit, then paced back and forth
restlessly.
                He walked to the end of the hall, and leaned partway out the
window—it happened to be nearer to Fenris.  The boy looked back at him.  “Were
you scared your first time?” the boy asked suddenly.  He didn’t know how to
reply to that.  Yes.  No.  It was rape.  It wasn’t rape.  He’s my master, so it
wasn’t rape and I couldn’t be scared for the same reason.  When Fenris’ reply
was not forthcoming, the boy rattled on regardless.  “I’m scared.  I’m supposed
to be with a man—tomorrow night.”  He kind of shivered.  “He bought my
virginity.”
                Fenris almost shuddered.  He prayed it wasn’t as awful for the
boy as it had been for him.  How old was he?  Fourteen?  “You’ll be all right,”
he told him.  They weren’t allowed to cause any kind of damage to the whores or
they risked being banned from the house.
                The boy seemed uncertain.  “How would you know?  Have you ever
been with a man?”
                Yes, and I hope never again.  “That’s none of your business.”
                He looked up at him, and frowned.  He was kind of pretty for a
boy.  “You have,” he said, his tone teasing.  “Does it hurt?  Truly?”
                Not as much as you’d think in some ways.  In others…  “At
first.  But it gets better,” he lied.  I got used to it, and wide enough for
it, and I didn’t bleed with Danarius.  But that didn’t make it better.
                He seemed relieved to hear him say that.  “I don’t think the
other whores remember what it was like the first time anymore,” he told him.
                “He won’t hurt you,” Fenris found himself telling the boy. 
Some part of him felt sorry for him.  He should have a choice…  His first time,
he should have a choice… but he had never known choice.  Neither have I.
                “I hope you’re right,” he said, and walked away, down the
stairs with a mumbled goodbye.  Tomorrow night, that boy would lose his
virginity to the first man who wanted it and had the coin to buy it.  The worst
part was that the child would receive no amount of that money.  Some part of it
sickened him.
                That boy was a child.  How could…?  Why would…?  They killed
and slept with children and thought nothing of it, these magisters and their
lackeys…
                With a plaintive creak, the door opened, and scattered Fenris’
train of thought.  When he looked up, he saw inside the room briefly.  Dim,
with a wide, canopied bed.  Two women lay in each other’s arms—a picture of
perfection, one a tanned brunette and human, the other a porcelain-skinned
elf.  The elf was asleep, and the human fast fading.  And small wonder—Fenris
had been at the door for hours, listening and trying not to.
                He was anxious to be gone from this place.  Though, he reminded
himself, if his master would slake his sexual appetite on whores, it wouldn’t
be him.  Danarius was sweaty and weary but not exactly tired.  Rather, he
seemed refreshed in a way Fenris couldn’t quite understand, and likely wouldn’t
for some time.
                His master had lifted the edict on him but after what had
happened before, he really had no desire to try.  Besides, he had no doubt that
those encounters would be nothing but brief flits in the dark, during the time
he should be resting.  He had to train in the evenings most nights—he had no
energy for that.  And it wouldn’t mean anything—first and foremost, it wouldn’t
mean anything.  He wanted it to mean something—he wasn’t sure what, but
something.
                Besides…  Why would anyone want him?  He was a slave, and
covered in lyrium besides.  He could kill them so easily, and in the past,
without trying.  In the past, it would flare up seemingly randomly and he had
killed a woman by accident.  Funny, it had been so long, he couldn’t really
remember what Larissa looked like any more.  Why would anyone want to get that
close to him of their own free will?
                Danarius would say things, like that he was “perfect” or other
such things.  And he wasn’t deaf; he heard what people said about him.  The
magisters had a tendency to talk right over slaves as if they were not there,
and he had heard many a thing that clearly were not for his ears.  Some spoke
of him like breeding stock, and that made him the most uncomfortable.  He could
tolerate the looks, the fear in their eyes, the whispers about his abilities. 
But when the conversation shifted to himself rather than the lyrium, he only
wished to be elsewhere.
                So, in a rudimentary sense, he “knew” he was pleasing to look
at, beyond the lyrium.  Most elves were—really only tragic accident or very
rare misfortune made an elf truly unattractive—at least from what he had seen. 
Though, he had to remind himself, nearly every elf in the Imperium had close
blood ties to slaves or were themselves and they had been… selectively bred;
for their looks, for their skill set, for strength.  Logically speaking, he
knew that his bloodlines must be much the same and he was confident enough in
his skills and strength, but he never felt attractive.  He felt hideous.
                Danarius only took him because he was nearby.  That was all;
his master had a need, and he was nearby.
                If it weren’t for the lyrium, I’d be just as disposable as any
of his other slaves.  He had to wonder, for the millionth time in his life,
about who he had been before.  Had he known how to fight?  Had he worked a
field?  Served wine and food?  Had he been one of the whores at the House of
Jade?  He had no idea.  When his master went to the coliseum, he wondered if he
had fought down there before in the sands.  When he had been fighting the
Qunari years ago, something about it had felt right, but maybe that was just
because he felt the most at peace with a sword in his hand.
                If he had fought in the coliseums, had he been one of the slave
gladiators?  Danarius had told him that he had had him trained with a sword,
but sometimes he wondered if the man weren’t lying to him.  He didn’t know how
much he could trust what his master said to him, and that frightened him.  If
he couldn’t trust Danarius… what could he do?
                His hands had been callused when he woke the first time.  Had
that been from a sword?  There was no real way to know.  It could just as
easily be from the field.  Danarius had said that he used to watch him from the
window, when he had been a child.  Was it true?  He wanted so badly for it to
be true, to know that his master was telling him the truth.
                His past was such a mystery to him, and thus a constant source
of misery.  If he could just know…  But that was worthless.
 
                Danarius laughed to himself as he read over the report.  This
one was of a more… personal nature.  He reread it, just to be certain he had
not skipped anything in his amusement.  The script was in a hurried hand, as if
written in the utmost of haste before it had been sealed and sent, but no less
pleasant for all of that.
                Mesere, as of 9:23 Dragon, your former slave by the given name
of “Mieta --” has been deceased and buried for four years, as you knew.  Her
daughter and your former slave, Varania --,  is a Circle mage, as in the last
report.  She struggles financially.  Since Mieta’s passing, they have lost
their house, and are now in an apartment.  They are struggling with debt.  The
former slave Lura -- has sought service as a prostitute at a certain Madame
Aurane’s house.  Most recently, they have sold the half-elven boy Shaislyn -
- to the military, seemingly to pay off their debts.  Once paid, however,
Varania lost her job as a tailor, and they fall steadily back into debt.  –M.J.
                He was delighted.  So, all that, and they are right back where
they started.  They may as well have never left.  And desperate people were
easier to manage.  If he ever should need another tether about Fenris’ neck, he
knew three places to look.  The lad was near-desperate for knowledge of his
past.  If he knew he had a sister, a nephew, a former lover, what would his pet
do?
                Hadriana looked up from her own stack of papers.  “Magister?”
she inquired.
                He considered, and lifted the piece of parchment.  “Fenris,
take this to Hadriana.”  His slave obeyed, never having a clue that all the
keys to his past were right there in his hand.  And it was exactly why his
slaves were preferred illiterate.  He handed off the slip of parchment. 
Hadriana scanned it.
                “What’s this about?” she started to say, then fell silent as
Danarius’ eyes flicked toward Fenris, and back to her.  Her eyes went wide. 
“Is this about… the family?”
                The talk amused Danarius, and he made a point not to look at
Fenris again.  “Indeed.”  He inspected his nails.  “The prostitute used to be a
slave at the House of Jade.  In freedom, she still whores herself.  And the
sister sold her son into slavery after her mother died, it seems.  They were
better off in slavery.”
                Hadriana laughed.  “Most elves are.”  She kind of smirked. 
“Mages best serve man by ruling him, after all.”  But she did not look at
Fenris.  She set the letter down, and went back to her work, as did Danarius.
                They had barely resumed work when the door burst open. 
Danarius began to glare, and considered having Fenris teach the servant a
lesson, but it wasn’t one of his servants.  It was a runner, and breathless. 
“Come quickly,” he said, panting.  “It’s your niece—Lady Annalkylie—there’s
been an accident.  Hurry.”
                The magister nearly knocked his chair over in his haste. 
Hadriana was quick at his heels.
Chapter End Notes
     You don't need to take the year of Mieta's death literally-it was
     just my best guess from the timeline.
     Pieces slowly fall into place... I'm sure you can guess, at this
     point, what Kylie is planning and what this is ultimately leading up
     to...
***** Conspiracy *****
Chapter Summary
     In Minrathous, Kylie is the victim of a conspiracy to overthrow the
     Magisterium. Hadriana assists with the investigation.
                Vanessa Aurelius sat through the Circle meeting, occasionally
chiming in when it was necessary.  The city had only a couple higher-ranking
mages—herself being one of them—so she had to pay more attention than she
liked.  Most Senior Enchanters were none too eager to be on the war front, as
it were, and when she volunteered, after she had served for a year in Seheron,
the Archon had appointed her a magister, and she had not known how she could
possibly refuse.  She had gone to Seheron to be away from everyone she knew,
however, to try to do something more important with her life.
                She hated politics, and petty squabbles.  She really just
wanted to protect her country, and its children.  All of its children.  She
didn’t want this war.  She didn’t want anyone else to die for this, but the war
was inevitable.  The Qunari were relentless in their assault, and it sickened
her, what they did with their mages.  They took them when they were children
and stitched their mouths shut, castrated them, shackled them.  It was
unbearable to think of.
                Now that she knew who to look for, she noticed Varania more.  
She was quiet throughout all the gatherings, and sat apart from the others, she
noticed.  It was unsurprising, as she was an elf from the alienage.  The only
time elves ever got out of the alienage was when they were slaves, after all—or
a magister.
                The issue at hand was the same as ever:  A need for more
troops.  Mages made all the difference, but the only ones who had gone into the
army willingly had already.  Others had already begun to look toward Varania;
Vanessa had noticed.  It was entirely too likely that the young woman would end
up abducted in the night and forced into the march against the Qunari.
                As the meeting disbanded, and everyone started to leave,
Vanessa took a back alley and trotted to catch up to Varania.  The elf always
was quick to bolt after these meetings, like a frightened doe.
                “Varania,” Vanessa called to her.
                The elf turned, startled.  She had the look of one about to
flee.  “Mesere,” she answered nervously.  “What can I do for you?”
                Vanessa approached her.  “I… would speak with you,” she
admitted.  For Shaislyn, if for no one else.  Vanessa knew that she disliked
Varania.  Not because Varania was an elf, nor because she was Liberati, or
cruel, or annoying, or any other thing.  Rather, she disliked her because of
what she saw in Shaislyn.  Shai was a charming, sweet-natured boy that lived to
please, but there were some things about him that she knew was from a broken
childhood.  He always expected Vanessa to tell him “no”.  He always expected
that he would not be allowed to do a thing.  That was saddening enough to the
magister, but it only got worse from there.  Shai worked hard to please others,
because he undoubtedly rarely had his own mother’s approval.  He had come to
Vanessa starved for attention of any sort, and had been shocked when Vanessa
praised the things he did, and later hungered for it.
                Vanessa knew it was unfair to judge the elven woman for her
child.  She knew that Shai’s father was absent, to say the least, and suspected
that it had not been a willing coupling to boot.  She also knew that Varania
had been unreasonably young at the time.  Yet even so, it was unfair.
                “You’ve lost weight,” Vanessa told her frankly.
                Varania glanced away.  “I… find I’ve no appetite as of late.”
                She paused, but said nothing.  She knew better.  Since Shai had
introduced them, Vanessa had become curious.  No mother would sell her child if
she had a choice in the matter.  They were in poverty, like most elves.  Maybe
even worse off than others.  “You could be abducted.  Forced into slavery, and
sent north with the army.”
                Varania kept her expression blank, but Vanessa did not miss the
way she twitched.  “I haven’t missed the looks the others give me,” she said
curtly.  “They look at me like a hungry man eyes a steak.”
                To put it bluntly. “Your skills lie in entropy, yes?” Vanessa
asked her, seemingly changing the subject yet again.  The elf gave a brusque
nod.  “I think I can solve a few of your problems at once.”  A couple of months
ago, Varania had earned the rank of Enchanter, and was well on her way to a
Senior Enchanter position if she kept up the work, but there was little coin in
it unless she found a way to enter politics.
                Varania glanced at her sidelong as the two started to walk. 
“How’s that?”
                The magister kept an eye out for anything amiss on the
streets.  Even here, there were assassins, after all.  The Qunari did so enjoy
killing any magisters they could get a hold of.  “Volunteer.”
                Varania was taken aback.  “I’ll be killed.  I can’t fight.  I
never have.  I—“
                Vanessa shook her head.  “We would teach you.  But I would
station you at the fort.  I would keep you there, to defend it.  You could
practice healing too.”
                Varania was silent for a long moment as she considered that. 
“You already have mages at the fort.”
                “Slaves,” she answered.  “And myself.  I would send one of them
into the field is all—to make room for you.”
                “So I should just volunteer myself into slavery?” Varania
demanded, her fingers curling into angry fists.
                Vanessa shook her head.  “I’d pay you,” she said gently.  For
Shai’s sake.  He misses his family.  “You would get to see your son sometimes—I
promise you that.  You would get some combat training, more training at healing
as well.  Guaranteed pay.”
                Varania was silent for a long moment.  “I will… consider it.”
                Vanessa nodded once.  “Good.”  She paused, thinking of the
half-elven child.  He was such a lonely boy, and sometimes she would catch him
looking out at the city, at the alienage, and knew he was homesick.  “Shaislyn
misses you.”
                The elf missed a step.  “I miss him too.”
                You don’t deserve that child.  “Think on it,” the human said. 
“Come to me at the fort if you decide you would like the position.”  She gave
her farewell, and went on her way.
 
                This was no accident, Fenris thought with a numb realization. 
This was an assassination attempt, botched only because Annalkylie’s horse was
high-spirited and she must constantly reign the animal in.
                The horse had been put out of its misery before they had
arrived, but hadn’t been drug away yet.  Its corpse was already attracting
flies.  Annalkylie herself could not as yet be moved.
                There was a crowd of people—onlookers, kept back by the city
guard.  People knelt beside her, healers and two mages.  Danarius pushed his
way through the crowd, and Fenris had to shove one person back who wasn’t quick
enough to get out of the way.
                “Where were her guards?” his master hissed coldly at the first
city guard to try to stop him. 
                The man quickly realized who he was speaking to, and bowed. 
“They… they were slain, or injured, magister.”
                “Injured?” Danarius roared, outraged that they should merely be
injured when his niece lay in such peril.  “Where are they?”
                The guard was clearly nervous.  “Th-they were not as badly
injured as the Lady Annalkylie.  They were moved to a nearby clinic for
treatme-“
                “Have they been questioned?”
                “Yes, of course—we have a detailed report of the incident—“
                “Good.  Fenris,” his master called with a cold calm.  The elf
raised his head.  “There’s a clinic two streets down—that way.  Find her
guards.  And kill them.”
                Fenris bowed low, and left in the direction his master had
indicated, which meant he had to go by Annalkylie.  He risked a glance toward
her.  A temporary break in the crowd let him glimpse her.  She was clearly
still alive, and in a horrible sort of pain.  The horse had fallen in the
melee, he had heard on the way there.  She had escaped being crushed by it, but
the fall had shattered her right arm, and a sword through her stomach had
nearly killed her.  She had also taken a crossbow bolt to the thigh.  If she
weren’t a mage, she would have bled to death.  It was all she could do to keep
herself alive long enough for help to arrive.
                It made him angry.  If any of the mages had any kindness to
them, it was Annalkylie.  She had been nothing but courteous to him, to any
slave.  Nothing but kind to the people around her.  She gave food to the poor. 
Why would anyone want to kill her?  She was still just a child.
                He found the clinic, and though the nurse there tried to keep
him away, he only shouldered past the small woman, and into the clinic.  Her
guards were easy to tell by the livery.  “Why were you attacked?” he asked one
of them, knowing they had already been questioned, but a part of him had to
know.
                The man was not badly wounded, and seemed more than willing to
talk about it, because he was clearly upset about it.  “’Death to the
Magisterium,’” he echoed.  “That was what they said when they attacked.”  He
shook his head.  “But m’lady is no magister—just a magister’s niece.”
                “She is the Archon’s son’s betrothed,” Fenris said simply.  And
if they could not get to the Archon or those closest to him, his son’s bride to
be was a close substitute and got the message across well enough.
                The man had tears in his eyes.  “Will Lady Annalkylie be all
right?  Why would anyone want to kill her?”
                The first man died quickly and unexpectedly.  The second was
suspicious by then, though a curtain separated them.  The third, though, was
out of his bed by the time Fenris approached him, and tried to run.  Fenris
killed him before he made it to the door.  He stepped nimbly over the body, and
left to the sound of the shrieking nurses.
                By the time he returned, Annalkylie had passed the critical
stage, and it seemed like the girl would live.  Fenris was relieved to hear it
when they carried her away in a litter, unconscious but breathing.
                On the way back to the manor, Danarius looked to his slave. 
“Fenris.  Do you know why I had you kill her guards?”
                Fenris paused, considering the answer.  “A proper bodyguard
should die before harm comes to the one they are protecting,” he answered.
                Danarius stared at him for a long moment.  “If this group is
bold enough to attack her, they could always attack me.  You remember that.”
                The elf nodded.
                Annalkylie had been brought to Danarius’ manor rather than to
the home of the First Enchanter who she had been apprenticing under.  The
magister assigned two guards to her door at all times, and a healer was always
with her.
                The Circle mages, for a few days at least, all seemed quite
content to stay within their homes all of a sudden, though all the same,
another was attacked across the city.  The Senior Enchanter had lived, but had
lost one of his hands in the process—which was no trifling matter for a mage. 
However, despite the loss, one of the attackers were apprehended to be
questioned.
 
                Danarius looked with a bland expression at the gathered men and
women around him—magisters, all of them.  No one else was allowed in the
council room while they debated.  Both the Archon and the Black Divine were
present for this meeting, but they only rarely put in their input.
                “It is folly,” one of the magisters insisted.  “If they had any
other conspirators, they would know about it, and if nothing else, magic would
have proven what they know.”
                “Not necessarily,” another argued, with a quick glance toward
Danarius.  “Memories can be plucked and erased.”
                “But not given.  If they acted, they acted alone.”
                “No.  The attackers weren’t even all from the same area. 
Someone gathered them, and someone planted the idea in their mind.  A mage,
most likely,” Jairus suggested.
                That idea was scoffed at.  “What mage would want to overthrow
the magisters?  The cry was clearly ‘death to the Magisterium’.  Not a
particular one—but all of us,” Danarius interjected.  No one liked hearing it
out loud.  Trying to kill off a particular magister—that was nothing new to any
of them.  Duels and backstabbing were key to the inner workings of the Circle
of Magi in the Imperium.  The cry the attackers had made was against the entire
Circle.  It seemed obvious that the mage behind the uprising was not one of the
magisters.  Or was he?
                “An escaped slave, perhaps?” someone said.  “Or a foreigner?”
                “The Qunari, most likely,” Elden said suddenly.  The man was
putting on more weight in recent years, Danarius noticed, though he had always
been a rather large man.  “They employ humans and elves too—converts.”
                That was met with, while not exactly approval, it seemed to
calm the room a bit.  Qunari threat was something they were familiar with.  An
uprising in Minrathous against the magisters was nearly unheard of.  It was a
mage city—designed for the Circle.  Yet the whispers in the streets, and the
most outspoken of the refuse spoke loudly to the public to take up arms against
the magisters.  That was another topic of debate amidst the Circle though.
                “They’re called Viddathari,” Jairus offered, and shook his
head.  “It makes sense, but this act hardly sounds like the Qunari.”
                “War tactics aren’t working, so they tried something different
and failed,” a woman insisted.
                The subject went round and round for nearly an hour, perhaps
more.  In the end, no one was really certain as to who was behind the
conspiracy.  Nothing had been reached, and the Black Divine insisted that they
move on to the next topic, as nothing was being broached that was new.  They
only concluded that more research would be delved into the matter, and the
Black Divine offered to dispatch a contingent of undercover guards in the city
to find them, as well as employ the “usual means” which was something they were
all familiar with.  They voted, and it was approved.
                The next topic was raised by the Archon.  “I trust you are all
familiar with the commons on the streets trying to incite riots?” he questioned
the magisters.  They grumbled their agreement, some complaints.
                “We should have them arrested, and beheaded,” Elden said.  This
had happened already in certain quarters.  Most notably, in Qarinus, which is
where Elden was from.  Frightened men…
                One of the rare elves on the Magisterium shot him a nasty
glare.  He wasn’t the first elf to hold a seat amidst the magisters, and he
would not be the last either.  “Because that always helps put down riots,”
Vyeth snapped.  “Do you want to make them all martyrs?”
                “Do you have a better idea?” he demanded.
                The Laetan elf blinked.  “I could come up with something that
didn’t inspire more people to the cause,” he said testily.  When the elf had
reached Senior Enchanter, he had transferred to another Circle when the
opportunity to be appointed a magister arose, and had fought tooth and nail for
the position.  To someone like Danarius, who was bred, born, and raised Altus
and simply grown into his father’s post, it Vyeth’s path seemed almost foreign.
                “I happened to notice that not a single one of the attackers
had pointy ears,” Elden said snidely.
                The other rose from his seat in an angry rush.  There was no
quicker way to anger an elf than racial slurs, and using them while they held
court was simply… immature, in Danarius’ opinion at least.  “If you dare think
to accuse me—“
                Elden pointed at him.  “Listen here, elf—“
                The Archon slammed his fist down on the table, and the two fell
silent.  “Anyone with eyes to see can see that humans outnumber elves.  The
specie of the attacker is a simple game of numbers, nothing more.  Anyway, it
means nothing.”  He paused, waiting to see if either would argue that.  The elf
sat back down in his seat.  Elden, too, hesitated, and slunk back into his
chair.  “But, no.  We can’t afford to kill all of them—that will make them
martyrs for their cause, and do nothing to put down the riots.  However, we
can’t leave them as is either.”
                Danarius considered.  “Offer a reward for information about the
conspiracy—the two are clearly linked.  Ban the talk—that should at least
decrease the angry crowds, but it will not stop it completely.  Those caught
preaching their delegation will be imprisoned, but fined instead of hung.”
                “Ten sovereigns will be enough, I should think,” the woman
offered.  It was reasonable—not so outrageous a price that the commons would
insist there was something more to it, but not so light as to risk it.  Slaves
cost more, and anyway, the Imperium’s coffers had need of some swelling.
                The Archon nodded in agreement.  “And another reward for those
inciting the rumors—that should make them stop.”  Rewards often led to
neighbors turning on one another for little reason.  It would keep them from
talking to one another, and keep them frightened.  Frightened men were easy to
manipulate.  “I call the vote.”
                It was passed.
 
                Kylie had been upset to hear that all of her guards were dead. 
They were good men, and it had taken her so long to find good men she wanted to
guard her, the sort that would smuggle out her coded letters.  At least their
secrets died with them, before anyone could truly begin to question them.
                It would take her just as long to replace those men.
                She had cried, certainly, over the loss of the men, but did it
mean she was less than human if she wept more for her poor horse?  Wind had
been her favourite riding horse for years, and replacing him would be nigh
impossible, she felt.  The animal had also been her only true friend and
companion since she had come to Minrathous.
                She was also scarred, though she would prefer more scars as to
the men having died.  Many fatal wounds left scars even to the best healers. 
The crossbow bolt had left a small circular, pale scar, and there were a few
scars on her right arm where she had fallen and the bone had broken through the
skin, but the worst of it was on her stomach.  The wound had been clean on the
way in, but in the fighting, the man holding the sword had been wrested to the
side and the blade had twisted while inside her—that had nearly been her
undoing.  It was amazing that he had not severed her spine or ruptured anything
more vital, but it had been a rapier, something more meant for stabbing than
slicing.  If Kylie had woken paralyzed, she would not have wanted to wake.
                There was talk of postponing the wedding.  She needed to go
subdue that talk, lest they actually did postpone it and ruin all of her
plans—which was why she was in the litter, the silk curtains pulled to let in
the sea breeze.
                The Archon’s palace was a grandiose building with sweeping
gardens and a mosaic just outside.  She knew what the entire pattern was, but
one had to stand on top of a high tower to see it, and at night when there were
no people in place:  It was a dragon, one of the ancient Tevinter gods.  This
particular dragon was Dumat, the Dragon of Silence.
                The litter brought her nearly to the doorsteps, and she was
helped down from the litter.  Her wounds still ached, and would for a few more
days still, but this needed to be done.  Her fiancé himself was there to greet
her, having been informed of her arrival from the day before.  He took her arm,
very gallantly, and they exchanged a few pleasantries while they walked,
flanked by guards, to stand before his father.  It was an informal setting,
very intimate, in a parlor room.  Tea was even served, along with little cakes.
                Kylie sipped her tea, and they spoke of the weather and a few
other mundane things, before the young mage straightened, and set her cup
down.  “As you well know, my future father-in-law, the court is presently very
opposed to the wedding.  There has been talk of having the wedding in a more
secure location, or simply postponing it, at least until my attackers are all
caught and tried.”  She lifted her chin.  “But I say that if we are to
officially postpone it, that is like saying that we will not find them in a
year’s time.  True, it may take some time to root out all of the players in
this conspiracy—for what else could it be?—but I have faith in our courts and
in our guardsmen.”  She paused for breath.  “What sort of message does it send
if we do take these so-called ‘precautions’?  That the Circle is frightened?” 
She scoffed.  “No.  We are not frightened; we are magi.  And we will not be
cowed, least of all by mundane commoners.  I say we progress as planned, in the
location as planned.”  Finished, she picked up her teacup again.
                The Archon nodded in approval.  “Well said, my lady.  But what
if we do not get to the root of this conspiracy?”
                She smiled winningly.  “Anyone who doubts we are capable of
doing that before the wedding is not truly your supporter, are they?  Perhaps
they, too, are part of the conspiracy?”
                The mage across from her gave a cunning smile.  “I will welcome
you into my family, and into the rank of magister when you are ready.”  He
looked to his son.  “Take notes from this one, and be grateful I’ve found you
such a beautiful, intelligent wife.”
                He muttered some form of thanks, and the talk shifted over tea,
until Kylie gently reminded her future family that she was not entirely
recovered from her ordeal, and would like to retire.  Her fiancé again escorted
her back to her litter, and helped her into it.  She gave him a dutiful kiss on
the cheek, which he returned, just as dutifully.
                Good.  All of her plans would proceed as intended.
 
                Shaislyn finished the last of the labels on the bottles. 
Vanessa had been teaching him about the art of brewing potions, which was one
he particularly disliked.  There was so much that could go wrong, and the
ingredients could be expensive.  He didn’t like doing it was the point, but a
bit excited to be done with it for the day.
                “Mistress?  I’ve a question, if I may?” he inquired politely.
                She gave a sigh of strained tolerance.  “How am I to tell you
mean me when you just call me ‘Mistress’?” she demanded, but he smiled.
                “You’re the only one here,” he pointed out helpfully.
                She made a face.  “Fine.  What’s your question, Shaislyn?”
                His lips pressed into a thin line of thought.  He placed the
last bottle on the shelf, and began cleaning up the table as he spoke.  He
frowned.  “Have you looked at Jameson’s books?  The unlabeled one.”
                She considered, but only briefly.  “Yes—it was fascinating,”
she commented.
                He nodded, a little absently.  “Yes, but what do you think
about…  Do you think it’s possible?”  He tried to keep his voice neutral, but
it sounded hopeful even to him.  He hoped it wasn’t too childish.
                But Vanessa, being Vanessa, only laughed gently.  “Wouldn’t it
be amazing if it were?” she mused, and looked out the window, leaning against
the frame.  “Wouldn’t it be amazing to shapeshift into a bird and fly away?” 
She sighed wistfully and shook her head, stepping away from the window.  “But
magic doesn’t work that way.”
                It had sounded plausible enough to Shaislyn.  He could see with
magic, after all.  If magic could change that, why couldn’t it change his
shape?  “Why not?”
                Vanessa frowned as she considered her answer.  “Magic…  Magic
is like mathematics,” she said, running a finger down the spine of a large
book.  “There are exact answers, a logical path to come to a logical
conclusion, of which there is a definite right answer.  A gesture for ice will
not summon fire, no matter your intentions.”  She shook her head.  “No—it’s all
just fantasy.”
                Shaislyn glanced away, considering her words for a moment
before he retorted, “But if your intentions were to turn into a bird…”
                She smiled back at him.  “But if my intentions were to
transform a goat into a duck, do you suppose that would happen either?”  He
started to argue, then frowned.  No, that wasn’t possible.  It didn’t work that
way.  “Or if my intentions were to magic my clothes clean?”
                Shaislyn laughed that time.  “If only it were that easy!” he
exclaimed.
                She nodded, and seemed to take on a more whimsical mood.  “Or
magic a man’s face smooth, or hair to grow on his head.”  She seemed satisfied
with the daydream. 
                The boy considered, frowning in thought.  “But someone had to
come up with the spells and forms for fire and entropy and everything.”
                Vanessa frowned, clearly never having thought of this.  “What
do you mean?”
                He struggled for a moment, uncertain of the best way to word
his thoughts.  “Well…  Someone had to write them down.  Someone had to
discovered what they meant, and what they did.  Like mathematics—people find
new theories and formulas all the time.  Just because they’re new doesn’t mean
they’re wrong.”  He frowned, wondering if what he had said was truly what he
had meant to say.  “I mean, people didn’t just wake up one day and discover
mathematics:  We had to develop a language first, and writing, and culture…  I
mean, we didn’t just know all there was about magic either.  Someone taught me,
and someone taught you.  But what about before then?  Before Tevinter, and
before… anything?  We didn’t just always know spells; someone had to invent
them.”
                “Dumat,” she answered plainly.  Shaislyn’s shoulders sagged in
defeat.  He didn’t really believe in Dumat, or any of the Old Gods; they were
just animals--fantastic and amazing animals—but animals nonetheless.  How could
a dragon teach a human anything, let alone magic?  One doesn’t really learn
magic anyway—one is born with it and must learn to focus and control it, but it
doesn’t sprout from nothing.  “It’s a fine tale, but that’s all it is.  Have
you noticed the style of the writing?  It could be a work of fiction.”
                The half-elf sighed, knowing that he had been on to something
important, but that Vanessa had not understood him properly.  Shaislyn relented
to the truth of her statement anyway.  All the unlabeled volume was, was theory
and notes.  There was no formula or specific thing about the art of
shapeshifting.  It was all very metaphysical and spiritual, more than
anything.  Maybe Vanessa was right, and it was impossible.  Maybe it was
childish of Shaislyn, but he wanted it to be true and not just fiction.
 
                Hadriana was in a position where she was part of the goings-on,
but not of them.  It was a strange limbo of places to be.
                And, as her master had warned her, there were plenty of
treacherous poor quite happy to turn in their neighbor for a bit of silver. 
She was interested to note that Danarius turned out over half of them without
either seizing their neighbor or giving them the money.  He had explained that
many of them were poor and eager to collect the silver, so would give him names
of innocents.
                Every claim had to be followed-up however, regardless.  Any of
them could actually be true, no matter how innocent sounding.  Of course they
could not simply report people because they suspected.  They had to have
sufficient evidence of suspicious behaviour.
                Danarius had uncovered more affairs, though, than anything
else.  It amused Hadriana that even the common folk, worked to the bone and
living in filth, could waste their time on affairs or money on whores, but they
did.  Or maybe that was one of the reasons they were poor.
                But sometimes, they dredged up something else, something like
this.  She rapped on the dirty door, and heard someone scramble to get to it. 
It opened, but the person on the other side was so frightened that they nearly
closed it.
                “I’m here to investigate the premises,” she declared.  She had
been tempted to say “hovel”.  The door opened a bit wider, to allow her
entrance, and the young girl—or maybe boy, the child was so filthy it could be
either and she wouldn’t know—retreated a safe distance, bowing low and clumsily
to her.  She scarcely noticed.  “There have been reports of many visitors at
night to this house.”  Among other things.  The neighbors said they heard
noises while the people who lived there were away.  So it could be they were
hiding someone.
                A man inside, also filthy, bowed.  “Serrah, there are visitors,
and names I could give you…  But they are only card players.  I do like cards
and dice.”
                She regarded him with some disgust, and hoped he did not intend
to come closer; she could smell him from where she stood.  “It is a wonder
others can tolerate your presence for that long,” she scoffed.  “Guard, inspect
the hovel, but don’t break anything.  Let’s not be rude.”
                Her guards filed past her and began opening and closing
cabinets, hunting and searching.  The man’s equally filthy wife clutched his
arm as if it were her lifeline.  She walked, and watched, and listened.  She
recalled the little hollow in Jameson’s floor, and stomped her boot down on the
boards.  With all the noise from the guards, her little stomp was unnoticed by
everyone else, but she noticed the way the filthy child’s eyes flicked to the
floor, even briefly.
                “Guard,” she said when they had finished.  “It is time we were
leaving.”  The little filthy family seemed quite relieved.  She relished doing
this.  “Pry apart this floor, first, and see what we will.”
                The family had gone utterly still, and she felt confident.  She
had guessed right; she was certain of it.
                Her guards went to work immediately, prying and cutting a man-
sized hole in the floor.  Two men went down, and Hadriana listened to a
struggle and some yelling, and three came back up.  The third was bruised, and
trembling.  The entire family stared in horror.  They were arrested promptly by
Hadriana’s command.
                They complained, wept, and begged, but she paid them no mind. 
The Magisterium would decide what was to be done with them once the true level
of their crimes had been exposed.  Hadriana’s work, though, was complete.
                They were imprisoned only a few days before Hadriana was
informed of the goings-on.  They had been harboring the man—the only attacker
who had escaped.  Blood magic revealed little, though, which worried the
Circle; evidence of memory tampering was plain, thus.  An investigation was
being carried out presently, and she discovered the depth of the suspicion when
both she and Danarius were questioned.  The conclusion was that it must be a
mage behind the attack or at least of high rank in the conspirators, and that
mage should have knowledge of memory tampering.
                It was a tense few days before the verdict was passed that both
were innocent of these assumptions, an apology issued, and the suspicion fell
to the others.
 
***** False Justice *****
Chapter Summary
     The conspiracy to overthrow the magisters is found out, to its
     anticlimax. Fenris contemplates how few good people there are in the
     world. In Seheron, Shaislyn comes to a Qunari encampment and Vanessa
     prepares for the wedding.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Fenris watched from his master’s pavilion, the autumn sun
beating down on the silk canvas overhead.  The day was sweltering for early
fall:  Not a single cloud in the sky, and even the birds didn’t want to be out
in it, or perhaps that was just because of the grave nature of the day.  The
elf heard the cawing of a crow and amended that thought—the carrion birds were
out, and waiting.  Yet even so, there was a crowd of people who had come to
watch the goings-on.  It was not every day a magister was to be executed for
treason, leaving only the one magister besides the Archon in the Minrathous
Circle.
                The bodies of his fellow conspirators swayed in the gallows. 
The wood creaked, and all was so silent that the elf could hear it even from a
distance over the gathered people.  There was something about watching someone
die that called for silence.  The crowd moved, but tried not to in the heat. 
They shaded their eyes from the sun, and the youngest complained about being
out in it, only to be hushed by their elders.  The wealthy had large shades
held up by their slaves to keep out the sun, and it was much cooler under it. 
                A man read the magister’s crimes before the crowd in a droning
voice from a long sheet of parchment.  Flies were already being attracted to
the corpses.  One—barely out of childhood, twisted in a warm breeze.  The mouth
was open and gasping in death, eyes bulging, tongue lolling.  It was a terribly
indecent way to die.  Most of them had died instantly when the rope went
taught—the sound of their necks breaking wasn’t something Fenris was like to
forget any time soon—but the boy had managed to kick and flail for four minutes
before he had stopped.  He had ejaculated, and feces had crept down his legs in
death.  If Fenris had to choose his own method of execution, it would not be
hanging.
                The elf’s eyes watched the headsman sharpening his axe.  At
least it was being sharpened; maybe it would be a clean strike, and he would
not have to hack at it.
                He scanned the crowd again, checking distance mostly, and for
anyone who might be carrying a weapon.  Everything seemed to be in order, so he
glanced back at the headsman’s block.  The punishment was being read out. 
Estate and finances would go to his next of kin, as he would have no heirs
capable of inheriting.  He had a son and daughter, both too young to have
participated in the scheme, it was all agreed.  However, they could not have
been entirely oblivious to them, and so punishment must be exacted; the pair
had already been carted off, and would serve as serfs of a sort, in the
military.  It had been deemed fitting that they serve their country for a dozen
years each, and then would be redeemed.
                However, the magister had a wife too.  She was being held while
he was marched to the block.  Jairus looked out over the crowd, and was given a
few last words.  “I tried to help you—all of you,” he cried out loudly, using
his final words to try to accomplish something.  It was a futile effort.  “Your
sons and daughters are dying, your cousins slaves—and for what?  This doesn’t
serve man.  No one benefits from this but the Circle!”
                He was quickly silenced with a kick in the back, forcing him to
his knees.  His hands had been cut off, and he could not catch himself.  The
dirty bandages were soaked with blood.  There were but two ways to truly cage a
mage without the Rite of Tranquility—the first was the Qunari collars, and the
second to cut off their hands.  Jairus’ hands had been cut off.
                As his neck was bared before the great axe, Fenris felt a
horrible sense of nostalgia, and couldn’t place why.  Danarius had never taken
him to a beheading before.  He had never seen anyone beheaded, had he? 
                The axe fell, and he thought of Jairus’ kindness to him, his
promise to tell him what he “did in his free time”.  Picking him up off the
floor, and putting him in his own bed.  He remembered Jairus’ sexual japes.  It
was all lies, he thought.  His jokes and the cruelty he emitted.  That wasn’t
him at all.  The axe cleaved neatly into the wood, and the sound raised the
hair on the back of Fenris’ neck, though he could not say why.  The head fell
into the basket with a dull thud.
                The body was carted away, and his weeping wife was bent over
the block.  “We just tried to do good,” she wept--over and over again.  The axe
fell again, and the stroke was clean.  The heads would be tarred and put in the
square for all to see.
                Somehow, seeing the heads filled him with a sense of sadness. 
Had Jairus been the only magister that was uncorrupt?  There had to be others. 
If there is only one good man in a thousand, there were still many thousands in
the world.
                Yet the world seemed a little darker for it.
 
                Shaislyn walked purposefully but footsore.  All he really had
to do was walk, pretend to be truly blind again, and make a great deal of
noise.  He had been at it for days.
                A month ago, Vanessa had hugged him goodbye and sent him off
with the fresh troops.  Only one officer had known why he was there.  All
others had thought him an errand boy of sorts, and while with them, he did not
pretend to be blind, only as if he had strange eyes.  He spent some time with
the army—a couple of weeks—before the officer brought him out of range of the
army, after a raid on a village that was aiding the Fog Warriors—Seheron rebels
who opposed the war in general, and would attack Qunari and Imperials alike.
                Slaves had been captured, the villages put to the torch, and
Shaislyn walked away with his walking staff, in torn, old clothing he had
brought for this purpose.  Just another refugee.
                In the confusion, getting away had been easy enough.  He had
been told in a hushed whisper, to travel north and east, so he did.  He hadn’t
expected it to take so long though.
                He was tired.  He had thought it had been exhausting traveling
with the army, but that had been nothing compared to this.  He was hungry, and
frequently cold, and even with his magic sight, he could see only so far ahead
of him with the thick, low-hanging and ever-present fogs of Seheron.  It was
winter, but Seheron had mild enough winters, though he still feared the cold
when he was out in the elements.
                What if he got sick or a bear ate him, and left his task
unfinished?  Well, Vanessa would find another.  That made him kind of sad,
though.  Would she really find him that easy to replace?
                He remembered all the times she had smiled, told him she was
proud of him.  The way she had hugged him goodbye, and all the treats she had
given him, the books.  She had promised him a real mage’s staff when he got
back.  A fine yew wood, she had said, and real robes.  “So you better come back
in one piece,” she had told him, her tone a false scolding.  He had smiled
confidently and said that he would, and he would be fine.  She had also told
him that he better not grow too much, or the robes wouldn’t fit—so he had best
be back soon.
                She was supposed to be his master of sorts, but she had always
said, “You can’t go calling me that.  The entire military owns you, and if you
insist on calling me ‘Mistress,’ it will only be confusing for everyone else. 
So call me ‘Vanessa’.”
                She pretended to be harsh sometimes, but she was nothing of the
sort.  She was warm and kind, and if he had been able to choose his parent, it
would have been her.
                Which is why I cannot fail, he reminded himself.
                So he plodded on, and when a voice hailed him, he stopped and
remembered to act blind.  He turned his head toward the sound, but more his ear
than his eyes, which was more habitual to him anyway—just a matter of not
completing the learned movement of turning his whole head.  “Hail, child,” a
voice said.  He turned toward it, and some of his fright was not feigned,
though his heart pounded for a different reason.  The fear struck his heart
instantly.  He was afraid of the giant Qunari, with their fierce eyes, their
metallic skin, and their horns, for he had never seen such things.  He was
afraid that they would know by looking at him that he was a mage, despite
Vanessa’s assurance.
                “But Jameson knew,” he had protested.  But she had taken him to
the Templars there, to other mages, and when he had his spell to give him sight
activated, none could tell.  It just used up that much of his mana.
                He was afraid that the Qunari, with their stoic expressions and
deep voices, would inherently know that he was there to spy on them.  He feared
that the three scouts were simply escorting him back to the camp for
questioning.  But he went with them, and tried to be brave about it.  He used
the stick to poke at the ground like he had before.  Old habits were easy to
fall into again, after all.
                The three Qunari all looked very much alike to Shaislyn, though
their horns seemed to vary in size.  Two of them were the more common bronze-
skinned with dark eyes and so alike they might have been brothers, but the
third’s skin was more of a silvery shade and his eyes were a vivid violet. 
Elves could have purplish eyes—shades of blue that looked purple, but his were
violet,like a flower.
                The going was slow, as he had to test his steps.  Eventually,
the Qunari, with their long legs, spoke amongst themselves in their queer
tongue.  He understood it all, he was almost surprised to hear, but feigned
ignorance the way he feigned his inability to see, which was simple enough if
he kept his silence.
                They discussed how slowly he moved.  One was in favor of
leaving him and bringing back a beast of burden to carry him.  The second hit
him in the shoulder for such a suggestion, and called him a beast of burden. 
The meaning of the partial insult did not leave the first, however, and while
he did protest, the third informed Shaislyn that the first would carry him.
                Shaislyn replied, “That’s… not necessary.  Don’t trouble
yourselves—“  He stopped talking when the Qunari bent and seemed to mean for
him to climb onto his back.  Shaislyn, again feigning blindness and knowing all
too well how to, reached a tentative hand forward.  Would their skin be scaly
to the touch?  Rough?  Would it be as cold as the metal it seemed to be?
                His hand settled on the Qunari’s broad shoulder, and the third
explained what Shaislyn had to do.  The second took his staff, and the boy
climbed onto the Qunari’s back, with some difficulty.
                His skin wasn’t scaly at all, or slimy, nor was it cold.  It
felt normal, in fact—maybe a bit rough and weathered, even scarred in places,
but normal overall.  It made Shaislyn feel relieved.
                He came to the easy conclusion that only the third Qunari spoke
the common tongue when nearly everything they said was in the Qun.  They called
Shaislyn a refugee, and he looked the part, he knew.  They spoke of nothing
that Shaislyn was interested in, however, and he found himself sagging against
the big Qunari’s back, his eyelids drooping.
                He must have fallen asleep, because when he woke, the three had
brought him back to their camp.  He did not have to pretend to not notice the
camp.  Even a Qunari encampment was not silent.  The horned-headed giants
talked, and spoke, and he was astonished to hear some of them even laughing as
the three scouts went among them.  He hadn’t thought they laughed.  But they
practiced their crafts, and read their texts, and spoke amongst themselves. 
They barely looked at him.  With the Imperial military, it had been orderly,
but not always clean.  The one thing he noticed about this encampment was that
it was pristine.  Each warrior was an example of perfect discipline.  There
were regular streets, the privy pits were deep enough, and waste was disposed
of in an orderly fashion.  He had grown accustomed to a certain amount of chaos
in camp.  An organized chaos, but chaos nonetheless.  The change was strange to
him, but not exactly unwelcome.
                The Qunari brought Shaislyn to the refugee camp—a more
haphazard place behind the main force.  The Imperials had had camp
followers—whores and vultures mostly.  The Qunari had no such thing, but they
did have a certain amount of refugees.
                He looked out at the encampment.  It was a mass of teeming
malevolence, a threat that loomed above all.  A religion that would tear every
joy out of life and seek to make all its willing slaves. 
                Shaislyn stilled.  He wanted to go home more than anything—all
the more reason to do what he had came for as soon as possible.  He was to
listen and learn mostly, and find the recipe for the black powder if feasible. 
Anything at all would be useful, but he knew the sorts of things he should be
listening for.
                He would listen, and wait, and practice looking confused—he
imagined he would be doing that quite often when he stole into the Qunari
encampment to listen and learn, and spy.
 
                With the wedding coming up soon, Vanessa was indescribably
busy.  There were only a few senior mages in Seheron right now, and the others
were near-useless at event planning; it was up to her, which was frustrating
because her real place was with the army.  She had thought to only dabble in
the preparations, but it soon proved that she had to do far more than just
oversee it.
                The damned thing consumed nearly all of her time.  Of course
there was a particular budget she had, granted to her from both houses.  They
would be sending particular things ahead of time, and she had to have new
serving outfits made for the slaves—something attractive but not too so.  None
should outshine the bride, which meant she had to be quite selective when she
picked the slaves.  Only servants would wait on the Archon’s family and
extended family, as they would be feasted on the dais.  So only servants were
allowed onto the dais, and she had to make certain that that was clear.
                The servants all had to have outfits too, naturally not as
revealing as the slaves, but attractive all the same.  All of it required
money—moneynotnecessarily in the budget.  The budget of course covered food and
entertainment, decorations, and the like, but it did not cover proper costumes.
                Her dress was already finished, naturally—so at least she did
not have to worry about something as trivial as that.
                The wedding was in six months.  Shaislyn was due back in little
over that, so the lucky brat would miss the wedding.  It had been agreed upon
that he would sneak away during a battle, rejoin the Imperials, and make his
way back to report—hopefully with the recipe, though she held little hope for
that.  Still, it was worth a try.
                In spite of herself, she had grown fond of him.  She would like
to think that her son would have grown up with half his courage and wit.  She
had never met a boy so brave, or strong enough to do what he knew he needed to
do.  In a manner, she admired that.
                It twisted in her gut to think that he was a slave, and that
brave little boy had to risk his life for the army.  And when he got older,
they would only send him into the field.  He wouldn’t come back, she knew.  The
Qunari targeted mages in battle—everyone did.  If he came back, it would be in
pieces.
                I’ll buy him, she thought to herself.  I have to.  Buying
Shaislyn from the army would be expensive—more than the army had paid for him. 
She was a good negotiator, and may be able to talk the price down, but not a
lot.  Vanessa knew that she should just let it go.  She should not get attached
to the half-elven mage-child, but she couldn’t help it.  He was sweet, and
charming, and the age her son would have been.
                Slaves had never bothered her, exactly.  She was as accustomed
to their existence and presence as air.  Shaislyn had not opened her eyes to
the “evils” of slavery, as it were; Tevinter ran on slavery.  The entire
economy and government infrastructure would collapse without it, like a flan in
a cupboard.  That was the trouble—and she wished she could make the people who
opposed it see that.  If slavery were to be abolished, it had to be done slowly
and over a long period of time, and certainly not at once.  Perhaps, if they
simply stopped abducting people first…  Stop selling freeborn slaves—that would
be a start, if it were to happen at all.
                No, rather than being in opposition to slavery, she just had a
soft spot in her heart for the boy.  She could adopt him.  He was a mage.  It
had been done before, and all she need find were the proper papers.  First, she
would free him once she bought him—he’d be Liberati at that point, but not for
long after she began the adoption process.  She had no intention of sending him
back to that ghetto with a mother who would sell him into slavery; she would
certainly only do it again.
                But this wasn’t the time for daydreaming.
                Vanessa was in a shop, picking out cloth for the tablecloths
and drapes, trying to decide if she wanted a matching carpet or if she should
leave the floor bare.  She ultimately decided to leave it bare, but made a note
to have it waxed and polished before the event.  Her reasoning, of course, was
that the dancers might trip on a carpet.
                The colours she chose had to be fitting for both houses.  It
was tricky business, and she could not leave it to her servants.
                “This one—how much do you have?” she said to the proprietor.
                “I can get enough to suit your needs,” he replied.
                Typical.  Her reed-thin lips pressed into an even thinner
line.  She gave him her best disapproving scowl.  “My needs are a dozen
windows—each over six and a half yards high.  The tables each just as long,
though there is but one of them that I need this fabric for.  I need similar
but lesser fabric for the others—and there are three dozen of those of lesser
size.”
                The proprietor thought for only a moment.  “Consider it done. 
I have a few seamstresses that can even get the job done for you—and they’ll do
it well,” he offered.
                She shook her head.  “Measure and cut, and see that it is
delivered to the keep.  How much is it?”
                He named a ridiculously high price, and she scoffed and talked
him down to a more agreeable one.  Satisfied, she went to the next place of
business on her list—the florist.  This one was more tricky, as the colours
were more difficult to find and each flower of course had some ridiculous
meaning that she had to abide by. 
                Irises, after all, were very pretty but they did represent
death.  Carnations were long-lasting and she wouldn’t have to worry about them
wilting in the heat, but then she ran into the same problem of course.  Roses
were traditional and lovely, but altogether too common unless she could find a
rare colour, and then, of course, each colour of rose had a different
meaning—it was all so infuriating.
                She stopped by a lovely purplish blossom.  “What flower is
this?” she asked.
                “Viscaria,” the proprietor said with scarcely a glance.  “It
means ‘come dance with me.’”
Chapter End Notes
     So, Fenris stood on he verge of remembering his father's death and
     lost it. Sad. Actually, no. Not sad. I think he's better off not
     remembering that.
***** Deceit *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania is struggling with a flowering resentment for her brother
     while Fenris kindles a growing hatred. Hadriana finds her place in
     the world and makes something of herself. Shaislyn overhears
     something terrible is going to happen and feels he must stop it.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Lura found Varania alone, sitting on a discarded box, looking
out at the sea.  The gentle crash of the waves against the ships was soothing,
the cry of the gulls a dull drone.  The sea seemed so eternal and unchanging. 
She sat beside her on an equally shabby box, but did not speak.  The pair sat
in silence for a while before Lura reached her hand toward the mage.
                “It gets better,” she promised her.
                How could she say that?  Varania pulled away angrily.  Fresh,
hot tears tracked down her face.  She wanted to speak.  She wanted to say a
thousand things, a thousand different scathing remarks and hurtful comments,
but she could not find her voice, and maybe that was for the best.  She wanted
to lash out at someone—anyone.  Especially to anyone offering her any kind of
kindness.
                Lura’s hand fell away, and she said nothing for an even longer
period of time.  “I brought the potion—just in case.”
                Varania finally looked at her, and felt more tears threaten to
spill.  Her eyes were puffy, raw, and swollen.  Her lips quivered from time to
time, and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.  She didn’t think she would ever be
clean again.  She could not bring herself to speak, even so.  She did not trust
her shaking hands to take the bottle, so she simply looked back at the sea.
                They had been about to lose their latest apartment—a tiny
little rat shack, a single room they rented in what once had been a large
house.  Their kitchen and privy pit were shared with the other renters, and the
ceiling leaked when it rained.  Even so, it was the only home they had now, and
with Varania’s work being unreliable, and Lura’s not being enough to support
them, they were struggling as ever, and so late on their rent that the landlord
had finally threatened to evict them.  Though he had been willing to wave their
payment, for a different sort of price.
                “I’ll see to your needs if you see to mine,” he had said,
looking at Varania.  Of course Lura had offered herself—of course she had. 
Varania had even seen it.  But he had looked at her with disgust and called her
a filthy whore, and let it be at that.
                There was nothing else they could have done.  They couldn’t
come up with the money, after all.  It had been necessary, like selling
Shaislyn had been necessary.  Maybe she should have taken the job at the fort,
like Vanessa had offered to her.  Yet somehow, it terrified her.  The
possibility of facing a battle scared her.  She was no warrior.  How could she
do such a thing?  She wasn’t good enough at healing to be a healer either.  So
what did that leave her with?  She had ultimately come to the uneasy conclusion
that Vanessa had never been genuine with the offer.  She didn’t know that for
certain; she had never spoken to her about it, but she didn’t trust the
magister and she felt it just had to be a cruel trick somehow.  If life had
taught her anything, it was that magisters could not be trusted.
                Varania felt another tear roll down her cheek.  How were there
so many tears in the world?  An entire ocean of tears, she felt like she had
cried in her life.  The waves rocked the ships, the wood creaked, and the ropes
stretched.  Flags snapped in the wind.
                Lura looked out at the sea.  “The first time I laid with a man,
I was twelve,” she confessed.  “Some pig of a man.  I thought he was vile, but
I guess he wasn’t that ugly.”  She shrugged a shoulder, as if it were nothing. 
“I cried the entire time.  I tried to say that I was just in pain, and it hurt…
but that wasn’t nearly all of it.”
                Varania wanted to hit her.  She was being comforted by a
whore.  That was all Lura was—a whore.  That was all she knew, was whoring. 
Her only skill was sex, her only asset her beauty.  Leto cared about her.  But
she didn’t care about that, not at the moment.  Right now, Lura made her
angry.  She was a whore.  How could she understand?  Even if she had understood
once, when she was twelve and had lost her maidenhead, she had still been
conditioned for it.  She had understood at a very young age what she would have
to do, had been trained for it.  It wasn’t the same for Varania.
                She was a mage.  It wasn’t fair.
                Lura must have sensed her hurt, for she rose to her feet, and
set the little blue vial beside her.  “If you ever need to talk, I’m here for
you, Varania,” she said gently.
                The mage watched her go, glaring daggers at her.  How dare
she?  How dare she act like this were nothing?  How dare she try to pretend
that she understood?
                Varania crossed her arms over her upset stomach, and stared at
the sea of tears.
                She had lost everything in her life.  Everything.  There was
nothing left to her.  Didn’t she see that?  Everything was gone.  Everything
she had ever cherished or held dear, everything that had been important to her
was gone—forever.
                Whatever life she may have had with her family before her
mother and brother were captured was gone.  When Leto sealed his own fate in
blood and magic, she had lost him.  Her only brother was gone forever.  She
would never see him again, never talk to him again.  And a part of her hated
him for it.  She was so lonely, so horribly lonely.  And all of this had
happened because of him.
                Good intentions they may have been, but they weren’t enough. 
It had never been enough.  Mother died, and Varania, though grown, had felt
orphaned at her passing.  It was worse that Leto had not been there.  He didn’t
even know.  He should have been there at her passing.  He should have known. 
It wasn’t fair.  And if he hadn’t sent them away—if he had just lost or had the
decency not to compete—they would be together.  He would have been able to take
turns with her caring for their dying mother, holding her hand and talking to
her as she passed on.  But he hadn’t been there.  Mieta’s last words had been
for Leto.  Not to Varania, who had taken care of her, talked to her, held her
hand; but for Leto, her firstborn, her precious damned son.  And not one
whisper of a word to her mageborn daughter.
                Leto had instead sent them away.  To a “better place”.  This
wasn’t better.
                Shaislyn was gone, and if she ever saw him again, it could only
be chance encounters.  In time, she wouldn’t even recognize him, save for his
eyes and his half-elven blood.  But he was gone too.  Leto had missed that
boy’s life.  He had missed everything.  If they were still all slaves and
together, she wouldn’t be so alone.  Shaislyn wouldn’t have been sold off. 
That never would have been an issue.  Danarius rarely sold his household
slaves, and Shai was a mage anyway.
                The more she thought about it, the more upset and hurt she
became.  She slept on a damp floor, and spread her legs for a greasy man with
clammy hands, and what of Leto?  She was eating the same sorts of thing she had
eaten in slavery—bad, cheaply gained foods, and her clothes were more
threadbare than the things she had worn as a slave.  Her life had been better
as a slave.
                Shai would be a slave either way, and at least then they would
be together.  Maybe her mother wouldn’t have gotten sick like she had.  Maybe
it was the foul conditions of the alienage with its mold and its open sewer,
and the voyage took its toll to be certain.  Maybe everything would have been
better.  Lura would still be a whore, after all.  And that was all she was now.
                Varania’s fingers clutched her arms, her nails biting into the
flesh.  Thinking of Lura made her angry.  Lura claimed to love Leto.  She
claimed, quietly and confidingly, that she would always love Leto.  But if she
did, why did she whore herself out like that?  True, she may not be able to be
with him—even “one day”—but that didn’t mean she should spread her legs for any
man with coin enough to get to it.  Varania’s only conclusion from that was
that Lura didn’t really love him, and that she had to be lying.  If it were
true, how could she do such things?  How could you love one person and give
yourself to someone else?
                Lura disgusted her.
                She swallowed the concoction in the bottle, and threw the empty
bottle into the sea, symbolically bottling her tears.  She could not cry
forever.  She was a mage, and stronger than this.  She would have to go on. 
She had been raped before, after all.  It was nothing more than that again, and
this at least was to a purpose.  She wasn’t a whore, not like Lura.
                Her mouth twitched when she thought about all the times Lura
had become sick with disease.  Varania was getting quite skilled at curing her
of it.  Next time, she should let her stay sick for a long period of time; she
would deserve it for what she did to her brother.
                Varania desperately missed her brother.  And desperately hated
him too.
                She lived in poverty, sleeping with her landlord to keep from
being thrown onto the street, having sold her son in to slavery, and lived with
a whore.  Leto at least had guaranteed meals, clothes, a bed.  He even had
sheets, if Danarius was still keeping him in the manor.  Varania and Lura had
narrow, thin pallets.
                No matter how she looked at it, this bargain he had made for
their freedom… had not been worth it.  If she had known, she would have begged
her master to keep her instead.
 
                Shaislyn had been with the Qunari for weeks.  He was quick and
nimble, and due to the language barrier, he could more easily feign
ignorance—that and that he was a child.  Even so, he soon learned how to best
go unnoticed.
                He had counted three moons waxing and waning since he had
joined the Qunari.  Antaam moved but slowly, and so far, it was still
considered unsafe for them to be carted off to another place away from the
fighting, so there the refugees stayed, as a sort of camp follower.  The Qunari
preached to them, and many accepted the Qun as Viddathari.  Shaislyn listened
with the rest of the young children on the ways of the Qun, and the roles of
their lives, and he could recite it with the best of them, but he did not
believe in it.
                He couldn’t believe in it.  How could he believe that the will
of the Qun was for him to live his life blind, mute, and leashed like an
animal, for that was what they would do to him.  He had seen the Saarebas, to
his terror.  The Qunari had only assumed, improperly, that he held a proper
fear of mages and they had assured him that the Saarebas was collared and
leashed for his protection and could not harm him.  He had ran away, and cried,
and no one understood his real reasons.  That Qunari mage was collared,
couldn’t even speak, his lips were sewn shut—what kind of life was that?
                There were some beliefs he liked however—waste nothing, all are
equal.  There were many good aspects of the Qun, but most of it left him
feeling cold somehow.  The religion—no, the way of life—felt bloodless to him.
                That is to say, he believed in the Fade, in spirits and demons,
but he had no evidence of the Maker.  He refused to believe in something he
could not see, touch, and experience for himself.  He knew little of the gods
of the Dalish elves, but he felt determined to learn more.  He felt no desire
for religion really, but everyone else seemed pretty enthused about it, so
perhaps there was something important about it.
                The camp was dark, and he tiptoed around the fires.  He had
left his walking stick, and stole into the night in a patched cloak.  Tonight,
it was raining softly, and it masked the sounds he made and he hid in the
shifting mists.  The Qunari still frightened him a bit, but he was confident
enough to believe he could evade them.  Who would ever suspect a child?
                He found the officer’s tents, and listened to them speak
amongst themselves, in their queer, harsh tongue.  They were bold when they
spoke, as if none would ever betray them, and though they often spoke softly
and the tents were heavy, Shaislyn was half-elven, and his hearing had always
been sharp.  They spoke of moving armies, and ships, but the words meant little
to him without a glimpse of their maps, so he waited, and listened.  He held
his breath, crouching between two crates as a big horned Qunari passed him by,
seemingly without taking notice of him.  He breathed a little easier when the
Qunari had gone.  The subject had also changed while he had been distracted.
                “Shall we trust this bas?”quarreled one of the officers.  There
was no truly proper equivalent to the term “bas” in the King’s Speech—“bad
person”, basically.  Inflection meant everything, though, and that soldier
spoke it with enough venom to translate to “bitch”.  “It is a trap.”
               “To what end?”another argued right back.  “The woman will open
the gate, and the light of their lighthouse will be put out for a quarter of an
hour.  What would they gain from this?”
                They argued back and forth, and Shaislyn listened, but without
knowing precisely what they spoke of, he was only confused.  Open the gate to
what?  What lighthouse?
                “Enough.  I have made my decision.  We attack the night of this
joining of Saarebas,” a voice that could only be the Qunari leader said.
                Joining?  A… wedding?  Shaislyn’s blood ran cold.  A wedding of
“Saarebas”?  A wedding of mages?  Two mage families.  He felt the blood drain
from his face with his fear.  Someone had betrayed them—some woman.  And she
was going to let them in to the city the night of the wedding.
                “This fruit is too sweet not to pluck,”he continued on. 
“TheArchonwill be there, and his family.  Othermagisterswill be there too, and
even theirBlack Divine.  The woman has given us the key to the gate.” Some
words were in Shaislyn’s native tongue and so heavily accented that he didn’t
understand it at first—no proper equivalent to those terms either, Shaislyn
supposed.
                His heart hammered in his chest.  He couldn’t…  He couldn’t let
that happen.  He had to warn the Imperial army.  He had to warn the city of the
betrayer, and the attack.  He had to.
                He wasn’t supposed to leave until the Imperial army attacked
the Qunari forces, but he didn’t know when that could be.  There were minor
skirmishes all the time between the two forces and pitched battles where they
tried to retake towns, but nothing had attacked the main body thus far—nothing
of the extent he had been told was his signal.  It could be weeks off.  This
news couldn’t wait that long—they had to be warned immediately.  He only knew
to go south, and hoped he could find it.  It could take him days—weeks—but he
had to try.  He was the only one who could warn them.
                If Shaislyn didn’t try, hundreds of people were going to die.
 
                The testing was grueling.  Hadriana hated it, but she suspected
that anyone who enjoyed such things was mad.  So far, she had been doing quite
well, but ascending to the rank of magister would be the work of years yet. 
She had to make it to Senior Enchanter first, after all!
                How Jairus had done it, with his treacherous ways, she would
never know.  And to think—the Imperium had accepted him with open arms when he
ran from Kirkwall!  Honestly—what had he been thinking?  Killing off a few
magisters would do very little in truth.  There were many more wanting to take
their place, and many more waiting to take theirs.
                The man had had several objectives in life—freeing slaves being
one of them.  That was foolhardy at best, though—killing the magisters would
not end it.  No, most of the slaves would turn around and be slave owners
themselves given the opportunity.  In fact, it had happened in the past. 
Slavery was a part of Tevinter’s, well, heritage and culture.  And changing
that was not something easily done, and certainly not by killing a few men.
                She wondered if they had even broached the full depth of the
conspiracy, or if it were something much more than any of that.  None of it
really made too much sense to her.  Even if the scheme had succeeded, and a few
magisters were dead, and the rest were frightened, what would that accomplish? 
Hadriana had the feeling that she was missing pieces of the puzzle that were
very likely simply not available to the public, and thus herself.
                A chilling thought struck her—or what if Magister Jairus had
only been a scapegoat, something to settle the commons?  He had certainly
played the part, but she was well accustomed to the fact that a man can be made
to say anything if the proper means are used.  Namely, his children.
                The thought that the ringleader of this group of radicals was
still alive disturbed her more than it ought to.  The group had obviously died
down, after all, and maybe it really had been routed out completely.
                Too many things about it didn’t quite add up to her.
                She should just let the thought go, but she didn’t.  She had
acquired her own spies of sorts, and let it be known that she desired such
information.  It wasn’t long before she heard the whisperings amongst the
Circle, and her thoughts were confirmed.  Jairus had been high-ranking in the
conspiracy, but he was more than likely not the ringleader of the operation.
                But then… who was?
 
                Shaislyn was bone-weary, wet, and exhausted.  It had been
drizzling steadily since that night, and while it obscured his tracks, it made
the going miserable as ever.  He was hungry, and tired, and had slept little or
not at all since he had gone three days ago.  But he could not stop.  He had to
keep going.  He had to make it to the city.
                He hoped he was going in the right direction.  He knew he had
to go south, but he wasn’t certain of how far west or east he should go, if at
all.  He was afraid of missing the city entirely with one stupid error.  But
even if he made it to the sea, how could he make it to the city?
                He hoped he came to the Imperial army first—that would make
things easy.  He wanted a warm bed, hot food, a long bath.
                He found that he missed his mother, and Lura.  He even missed
the alienage—it had been his home of sorts, after all.  He had known nothing
else before he had come to the fort.  He’d like to go home—wherever that
was—very much.
                He missed his little family greatly, actually.  Maybe Vanessa
would let him see them again, just once, if he asked.  He even found himself
missing Vanessa too, now that he thought about it.  And his bed of itchy straw
at the fort, the way the wind groaned through the old stone.
                Shaislyn would like so much to lie down in a bed and rest.  He
felt like his legs were made of lead, and barely knew how he could keep going,
except that when he did, he thought of everyone he knew, and all the people
that would die if he didn’t warn them in time.  He had to warn them.
                Master Taggart, Nora, Vellus, all the elves in the alienage,
all the people at the fort, the mages at the Circle.  They were all going to
die if he didn’t do something.  So he must do something.
                He knew that, and believed it fervently, but…  He stumbled, and
fell, landing hard on his hands and knees, skinning his palm.  He was so
tired.  It was so hard to maintain the spell.  So… very hard.
                His world went black suddenly, and he couldn’t turn it back
on.  He was too tired to maintain it any longer.  Too tired…
                But he knew the way to go.  He pushed himself to his feet.  He
had acquired a walking stick out of necessity a while back, and used it to find
his way.  He had always been blind.  Losing his sight suddenly was not so
detrimental to him as it would be to another, so he pressed onward despite
that, though he may move only slowly.  He wasn’t moving too quickly before
either though.
 
                Varania had finally managed to get another job—a real one, not
all the side work she would do and the occasional healing.  Lura had helped
her; one of her regular customers—one of the ones at the pub, not the
brothel—was looking for another tailor.  Lura managed to put in a good word for
her, and there it was.
                Varania had, of course, continued to sew, so her skills had not
gone dull while she did her odd jobs, and went to work immediately.  She had
ultimately decided that Vanessa had only been mocking her somehow with her
offer.  No magister would really be so helpful to an elf.
                The work did not pay as much as her mother’s job had.  It was
another small shop with a few other girls, and each did a particular job on
each garment.  One woman measured, did fittings, and patterned, another did
most of the cutting of fabrics and some sewing, another balanced the books but
also assisted with any odd jobs, and Varania and two other girls did the
sewing.  The owner bought most of the fabric selection and any other thing.
                She worked hard, but she still felt like this was no fitting
place for a mage all the same.  Surely she could do better?  But she knew she
couldn’t, not really.  She had been trying to do better, and it was all the
same.  She was stuck in a gutter and there seemed to be no clear way out. 
                At least in slavery, she would have been useful for her gift,
not for her sewing skills.
 
                Hadriana shouldn’t have, but over the past few weeks, she had
been digging, and searching.  She had looked, and listened, and spoke only
little, and she had learned things she had been better off not knowing.
                She knew who the lead conspirator was.  But it frightened her
to think about it.  It terrified her, in fact.  She could barely sleep at
night, for how terrifying a prospect it was.  She felt like the man had to know
that she knew.  Her life was in danger the longer she went on without saying a
word, but now she didn’t know who to trust.  She didn’t know who she could
trust.
                All the signs point to him.  She looked down at the book.  A
little ledger.  It had cost her dearly, getting that ledger.  It was an old
accounts ledger that had been in a storage, but it was all she needed to prove
everything she needed.  She clutched it close to her chest, and trembled.
                Who could she turn to?  Who could she trust?
                She didn’t even know if she trusted Danarius with this, not if
this man was involved.
                How many others could be conspirators?  Who could she go to? 
The only option seemed to be to go before the Circle, and tell all of them, at
once, including the accused.
                It was her only option, so she waited in the entry hall for her
name to be called, her throat dry and her face pale.
                Finally, they called her name, and she all but jumped when they
did, rising from the hard wooden bench.  She walked woodenly into the room, and
she scanned it briefly.  Her master seemed surprised to see her there.
                She had the ledger, and a satchel of other evidence.  She would
need it all for what she had to do.  “The…  The conspiracy a few months ago did
not end with the death of Magister Jairus, as we had thought,” she began.  The
other mages stirred, but listened.  She had to tell them everything, so she
did.  She told them of how it didn’t feel right to her, of how things seemed to
be missing.  She spoke of all of these things, and did her best not to stutter
or say something silly.  When she had their full attention, she presented her
evidence to the Archon himself.  “This ledger,” she said, her tongue darting
out to wet her dry lips.  “Receipts.  Transactions—everything.”  She flipped it
open, and she knew her hand was trembling when she pointed to it, but she tried
to keep her eyes on the ledger.  “Some of the men that attacked the magisters
were slaves.”  She swallowed hard.  They had not been able to find them in the
records because they had not been taxed by the Chantry, because…  “They were
property of the Chantry.”
                There was an uproar at first, and Hadriana tried not to listen
to it.  She knew what they would say, and what they would do.  The Black Divine
especially.  She cringed, and stood still while the mages began to quarrel. 
But the Archon was calm, and he looked on with interest as she presented the
rest of her evidence—a scroll of names and another, more incriminating, copy of
a tally from a merchant—how many slaves they had at port, and how many he had
brought to market.  The numbers did not match up.
                The Archon had Hadriana excused, and gave her an escort home. 
Danarius sent his own escort, though—one he trusted more.  Fenris, namely.
                Hadriana rode in the carriage, still trembling from the ordeal,
but it had to be done.  The Black Divine… had conspired to kill the magisters. 
He had enlisted Jairus, because Jairus had been easily swayed with his distaste
for slavery and desire for equality.  He had fed the magister pretty lies, and
gained an ally.  No one would suspect the Black Divine of such corruption.
                She did not leave the house for several days to come, and
Danarius did not leave either, though he had frequent visitors, even at odd
hours.  But Fenris was not guarding his master right now.  No, rather, Danarius
had ordered him to guard her.  She would have ordinarily resented this, but
right now, she felt better with a bodyguard, all things considered. 
                Though the truth was that she still disliked having him about,
and in her fear-edged boredom, she did her utmost to make him miserable,
because she was miserable.  She wondered what sorts of things she would have to
do to him before he flat-out refused to come near her anymore.  Just how
obedient was he to Danarius, anyway?  Interesting, considering that she could
deny him various meals, and make him do a variety of menial and even degrading
tasks, and he did nothing about it.  Even most slaves drew a line somewhere,
she had found.  He seemed to have no real breaking point that she could find
however, and she did try.  She let him starve, made him stay awake for days,
sent him to work, and any number of other tasks, yet he never said one word
about it.  Matter of fact, the knife-eared bastard barely blinked.
                Half a week later, Danarius was called to court again.  The
bells tolled, and she nearly wept in her relief:  The Black Divine was dead,
and a new one had been chosen.
                Danarius came to Hadriana and praised her, and gave her a
letter from the Archon himself.  It was in his own hand, and wrote that he was
reviewing her for an early promotion.  After the wedding, if the testing went
well, she would be a magister—years ahead of time.
                It had been a bold, frightening move.  She had been so scared
that she would be slandered, hurt, killed.  But… a magister—she?  He had been
impressed with her, and Danarius, who she looked to like a father of sorts, was
immensely proud of her.  Everyone was, suddenly.
                She had gone from the simple country mage, “butcher girl”,
picked up from the gutter by happenstance, to almost a hero amongst the ranks
of magi.  When she went to the Circle, even the magisters wanted to greet her. 
The Archon and his son both kissed her hand very gallantly.  She met the new
Black Divine, and he thanked her for her work, and said that he looked forward
to working with her in the future.  And she had smirked at that Altus boy who
had given her the cruel nickname, and he had to be courtly and kind, and thank
her for her work.
                She could barely believe how well everything had worked out. 
She had taken the biggest chance of her life, and…  This had all turned out so
well.  They had made her a Senior Enchanter almost immediately, giving her a
new set of robes for the position and a staff, and she had accepted them with
great pride.
                Danarius gave her the entire story when everything had settled
down.  The information she had found had been incriminating, but when they
conducted a thorough search of the Black Divine’s suites, they discovered other
things amiss—he didn’t give her details as to that, and only said that certain
records were missing entirely, or the books were off, and other such details. 
Ultimately, when put not to the question but to blood magic and mind reading,
it was discovered that many of the slaves belonging to the Chantry had some
minor information, though most of the acolytes and initiates alike were free of
any guilt.
                Most, but not all.  Those found guilty were tried and hung, as
appropriate.
                If she hadn’t gone digging… who knows what could have
happened?  The ones behind the assaults had been unskilled, surely, but many of
these past assassination attempts on a variety of magisters were suspected to
be the true work of the Black Divine, and some of those had even succeeded.
                She shuddered to think of the mayhem that might have happened
if she had chosen to stay quiet, and was always happy to think that she had
not.
                Everything had been for the best and the speakers that had been
rousing the public to occasional rioting silenced, a sort of uneasy peace
settled over the city.  Hadriana was glad of it.  Minrathous had been in a
quiet turmoil for years, and now it seemed almost calm in comparison.  Oh, the
Magisterium still dueled and squabbled, and in the outskirts, there were minor
rebellions of slaves, easily put down, and darkspawn in as many places, but for
the most part, she felt a certain peace she had not felt before here, like
everyone could relax—just a little bit more.
 
                Shaislyn turned when the Qunari called to him.  They were too
far for him to hear their words properly in the wind, but his frightened mind
thought their words were commands to  halt.
                They know, he thought in terror.  They knew he had been spying,
and knew what he intended to do.  Their weapons gleamed in the sunlight, and he
thought, They’re coming to kill me, so I can’t warn them.
                He broke and ran, abandoning the walking stick.  They called to
him again, and now he heard them as the wind changed.  They wanted him to
stop.  They were commanding him to stop, in both their tongue and the Trade
tongue.  Well he wasn’t going to.  Why would he stop—so they could kill him? 
He wasn’t going to stop, not for anything.
                He was so close—he knew it.  He had seen the gulls earlier this
morning, and knew the ocean could not be far.  He was so close—he knew it.  If
he just ran fast enough, they would fall well behind him, and he could be
there.  He could warn everyone, and save everyone.
                But he was a frightened, exhausted child, and they were grown
men and warriors, and they caught up to him easily enough.  They were unarmed
as they ran toward him, but in Shaislyn’s terrified state, that meant little. 
They were big enough to crush him, he felt.  Maybe they had some special way of
dealing with Tevinter informants.
                They know.  They knew he was a spy and had been lying to them. 
Maybe they had always known, and had just watched him.  Maybe they had been
stalking him and waiting for him to tire so they could kill him without a
struggle.
                To a child, it made more than enough sense to be true.  To a
terrified child, it was like gospel.
                You kill spies.  They’re going to kill me.  I don’t want to
die.  I don’t want to die!
                “No!” he screamed as one of them caught his arm.  His spell of
sight winked out in his exhaustion, but his mana could fuel other spells now. 
His fist curled into a ball.  Fire—one of the simplest of spells--engulfed the
Qunari.  He let go of Shaislyn almost immediately, and the boy tried to run,
but was blind, and stumbled, and fell.  He lashed out blindly, and tried to
listen, but they seemed to be everywhere.  In his panic, he attacked in every
direction, all around him, until he collapsed to his knees, panting and light-
headed.
                He had not eaten properly since camp, and that had been
days—maybe over a week—ago.  He had not slept for more than a few hours at a
time since then either, and not well.  He may have been starting to grow sick,
but he usually attributed the dizziness to how tired he was.
                Everything felt so dim.  The world seemed so quiet.
 
                Hadriana was clearly unhappy—that much was plain from her
demeanor, but she was quite verbal about her complaints as well.  “I’m
practically a hero,” she protested.  “What right do you have?”
                Danarius barely glanced at her.  “The right of your master,” he
replied.  “And my decision stands.”
                She stamped her foot in anger.  Her heel struck against the
hardwood floor.  “I’m undergoing testing to become a magister.  I’ll be a
magister this time next year!”
                He was unmoved.  “But you aren’t now,” he reminded her.
                Her blue eyes blazed with fury.  “It’s the event of the century
and you’re not allowing me to go!”
                She had done nothing but complain about this for days.  The
answer was always the same, but she kept at it anyway.  “No.  My affairs in
Minrathous still need to be run in my absence, and it’s dangerous besides,” he
said with the patience of a saint.  “If you’ve nothing further, you are wasting
my time, Hadriana.”
                “But—“
                “Fenris, see my apprentice out,” Danarius said with a
disregarding flick of the wrist in her general direction.
                Her hands balled into fists at her side, her back straight with
indignation.  The slight of being called an apprentice, when she was in fact a
Senior Enchanter, did not go unnoticed.  Fenris moved toward her, but she
glared at him, turned on her heel, and stalked from the room, slamming it on
her way out.  Danarius watched her go, and sighed.  Every day it was the same
plea.  She really wanted to go to the wedding, and she would not be content to
stay.  She had somehow gotten it in her head that because a magister or two was
bringing their apprentice that she should be going as well—particularly as such
an “important” apprentice.  But that was precisely why he didn’t want to bring
her.
                The Archon, the new Black Divine, himself, a number of other
magisters, many powerful families—all would be gathered, right on the war
front.  It was just too dangerous to allow her to come.  His decision stood. 
The ship would leave in less than two weeks, and Hadriana would not be on it.
                Of course she still complained about it, loudly, and by the
week’s end, he had expressly forbidden her from talking about it.  Oh, but how
the young woman would fume!  Her blue eyes would glower, her nose twitched, her
lips curved into a sneer.  Any time the event was mentioned, her lips would
press into a thin line, and her brow drew down in a venomous glare.  Ah, if
looks could kill…
 
                Fenris went to bed hungry for the umpteenth time in the past
month.  Hadriana was unhappy, and so she devoted her attention to making all
the servants, slaves, and himself in particular, miserable.  She knew he hated
fish, and told him he could either eat that or starve.  It wasn’t so much
strength of will or stubbornness so much as disgust.
                Anytime something smelled bad, it seemed to smell like fish. 
He hated the smell of the docks, of the fishing galleys, he hated the smell of
the fish cooking.  There was just something about fish he genuinely disliked. 
Why would anyone eat something that smelled so bad?  Or looked like that for
that matter, with their bulging eyes and gaping mouths.  The boy at the gallows
had looked like a fish when he was hung, Fenris thought, all bulging eyes and a
gaping mouth.
                It was her favorite trick, though, for starving him.  If his
master questioned her, she could ascertain that he was being fed, and then he
was just reprimanded for being a picky eater.
                I’m not, he thought with a sigh.  He’d eat nearly
anything—except fish.  At least the cat liked it.
                It wasn’t the same cat as from Vinewood Manor.  This one was
bigger, and where the other had been grey, this one was white as his hair, with
blue eyes.  She had started coming in to his room seeking warmth on a chilly
night little over a year ago, in the late fall.  He had let her sleep on his
bed, and she had kept coming back since then.
                Fenris had long since decided that the life of a cat was
something he envied—they went where they pleased when they pleased, were found
useful, and most people liked them.  Also, no one really owned a cat the way
they could own a slave.  A cat belonged to someone because the cat allowed it,
and would simply leave if they were unhappy.
                The cat was happily curled up into a little white ball on his
bed now, for that matter.  The more he tried to scoot away from her warm little
body, the more she insisted on sleeping practically on top of him.  Or under
him, worming part of herself under his chest, which was annoying but he never
quite had the heart to shoo her away—not when she was the only companion he
had.  He liked the horses, but he never got to spend the time with them he
would have liked, and truth be told, he was certain he liked dogs better than
cats, but all Danarius had were hounds, and they were kept outside anyway.
                Annalkylie had had a dog once, when she had visited.  She
always had animals—her hunting hawks and horses and the like.  But her dog was
a well-mannered wolf dog she called Lily, and the dog had growled at and tried
to bite Hadriana, and Fenris found himself liking the dog since then. 
Annalkylie had commented that she really wanted a mabari hound, but Danarius
had flatly refused, as had the rest of her family.
                Marriage… didn’t suit Annalkylie.  Try as he might, he couldn’t
imagine her with child or any such thing.  He knew she had hated the idea
originally, but had seemed to accept her fate as time went on.
                Yet he found himself thinking of that day on the shore, where
she had commented that they could destroy her phylactery, and she would become
an apostate, and he…  She had meant to free him from slavery.  He didn’t
understand that.  He didn’t know what it would mean to be free.
                Annoyed, Fenris sat up, rubbing at his eyes.  He hooked some of
his long hair behind his ear without thought, and stretched.  He was unable to
sleep.  He went to his chest of drawers, and rummaged about through them until
he found the tunic Danarius never had him wear.  The shade was off, he had
said, and Fenris had known that before he even put it on.  Elves were sensitive
to colours, after all, and the tunic had not been quite the right shade of
green.  A new one had been made, of course, but he still had this one.  And,
wrapped up inside it were the two small figures of the halla and the wolf.  He
sat on the edge of the bed, and ran his fingers over the smooth wood.
                He wondered what they had been doing there.  Who had put them
there, and forgotten about them?  They had been covered in dust at first, and
he had needed to clean them, so they had obviously been there a long time.  He
wondered if it had been a child, playing some game, and had just lost them. 
But for a slave, such things would be treasured.  No, that didn’t seem likely.
                It was a puzzle, and every time he looked at the two figures,
he felt like he was that much closer to solving it, but he never did.  Nothing
made sense.  Why would they have been there?
                 When the door opened, he straightened, and slipped both
figures into one hand, keeping it at his side away from the door.  The cat on
the bed jumped, and settled.  Fenris bowed his head when he saw who it was.
                “Good.  You’re awake,” his master said, shutting the door.  “I
can’t sleep either.”  Fenris felt his master’s gaze linger on him, and deep
down, he knew what was going to happen.  He rose to his feet, turning to face
Danarius.  Behind his back, he clasped his hands, and switched the two figures
to his other hand.  He went back to his knees, just a little too close to the
bed to ordinarily be comfortable, but perfectly enough to place the two figures
under the skirt of the bed as discreetly as possible.  “Get rid of the damned
cat.”
                Fenris had forgotten about the cat.  He rose, and lifted the
little creature tenderly from the bed, regretting disturbing her peaceful
slumber.  She complained at first, but then rested against his warm body, quite
content.
                The elf started to walk around the mage to deposit the cat in
the hall, but Danarius stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.  “No,” he said
instead.  “Kill it.”
                He froze.  What?  It was just an animal…  “Master…”
                “Exactly.  Consider what you just said,” Danarius instructed
him, a dangerous note to his voice.
                Fenris looked down at the cat.  Why would he do this?  Why…? 
Perhaps, if he were to drop it off of the balcony just right, he could pretend
he had failed.  Danarius would punish him, but…  He pretended to glance around
the room, as if uncertain of how to kill the cat, then started to move to the
balcony.
                Danarius’ fist wrenched into his slave’s hair, hauling him
backward.  “You stupid knife-eared wretch,” he hissed.  “Use that power I gave
you.”
                Fenris looked down at the cat.  It was so trusting.  It had
slept with him most nights over the past year.  But his master had given him an
order.
                The cat died quickly, and had been so trusting of him that she
had not even been alarmed, except for the scarcest few seconds.  Patches of
white fur clung to the blood on his hand.  It had splattered up to his elbow,
and he cradled the dead animal in his regret, blood and fur clinging to his
chest.  Danarius told him to throw it off the balcony, so he did.  He watched
the tiny white body disappear over the edge, hit a rooftop, and slither into
the darkness below.  Blood dripped from his hand.
                He was so entranced by the quiet horror that he jumped when
Danarius shoved him against the balcony, bending him over the side of it.  He
grimaced at what he felt was happening, his grip on the rail tight enough to
hurt his hands.
                His master had been drinking.  He could smell it on his breath,
but really, he only did this when he had been drinking.
                His teeth bit into his lip as his master’s hands ran down his
back, along his spine and the lyrium that traced it, and to the place of his
ultimate design.  But he only moved his fingers against it, taunting him with
what he could do to him.  He applied pressure, but only enough to taunt. 
Danarius could do anything to him.  Anything—and there was nothing Fenris could
ever hope to do about it.  It was just the way the world was.
                His hand fell away, then caressed his thighs, running back up
his sides.  “You were lovely without the lyrium too, but this…”  Danarius
caressed his back, ran his hands down the elf’s arms, and didn’t seem to care
about the blood.  He wouldn’t.  Everywhere he touched, the lyrium flared to
life for an instant, reacting to his master’s touch obediently, waiting to be
used.  Even his body knew he was a slave.
                His hands traced the lyrium up to his collar bone, up his neck,
to his mouth.  His lips parted, taking the fingers into his mouth without a
whisper of a command.  He sucked, and licked, and did everything that was
expected of him, and his master ran his fingers through his pale hair.  He was
not regretful when Danarius removed his fingers from his mouth, but grimaced
all the same, and for a different reason.  The damp fingers pushed between his
legs, and wasted little time.
                As he worked inside him, he grimaced, and flinched, but did not
cry out or weep.  He could endure.  This wasn’t the first time.  He was certain
it wouldn’t be the last.  But the morning always came afterwards.  All he had
to do was wait.
                He tried not to think about it as it happened.  He tried to
think of something else—anything else.  He thought about the dead cat, and
wasn’t so certain that was any better.  If he looked hard enough, he could see
its tiny, broken body lying on the stone below.  If Fenris acted quickly, he
could throw himself down after it, and die.  He could end this right now.  He
could propel himself over the balcony.
                That the idea was so attractive was cause for a fear of its
own, and he suddenly desperately wanted away from the balcony.
                Fortunately, it was the moment his master was of like mind, for
he moved his hands away, and shoved Fenris toward the door.  He went back
inside numbly, and awaited further instruction, which was to wash off the
blood.  He did so slowly, while his master undressed himself.  Feeling dead
inside, he climbed onto the bed, and waited.  Better the bed than the floor, or
the table, or something more abrasive.  He tried to be practical, and logical
when he could be.
                He tried to think of something else—anything but the mage
thrusting deep inside him—but he couldn’t quite seem to.  He couldn’t even make
himself go far away, and try not to experience it.  Instead, he tried to count,
and soon he was counting the seconds, and that seemed to help.  But just as
quickly, he found himself counting each thrust into him, instead of the time. 
That made it worse, and he tried to go back to just a rhythmic counting: 
Mechanical, unfeeling.  But the thrusts were too much in time and he couldn’t…
                At 228, he shoved Fenris further down, until he was laying
prone on the bed, on his stomach.  He moved his face to the side, to try to
better breathe.  It was not allowed, so much as tolerated, and his master’s
fingers held onto his hair.  Less than a hundred more, and he moved him again,
back onto his knees, but with his face down.
                He hated it.  It hurt, and felt alien, and he didn’t want
this.  He dared not voice those thoughts, but imagined that the way he grimaced
and gasped, it was clear anyway.  If his master had ordered him to stop, he
would have done his best to try.  He yelped with a particular movement, eyes
squeezing shut.  One of his hands clamped over his mouth, trying to stifle the
whine he felt rising in his throat.  He didn’t want to offend the magister, no
matter how much he hated it.
                He cringed when his master’s hand reached around him, and
cupped his manhood in his hand.  He ran his fingers over it, and whispered, “I
was the one who had you circumcised.”  He tugged against it, gently at first,
and then his hand wrapped around him firmly, decidedly.  “I could have had you
castrated, my pet, so be grateful.”
                His hand was dexterous, and teased and manipulated him until he
couldn’t help the blood flow, and he was panting, and heard his master
laughing.  Even the thrusting inside him was starting to feel good.  Or maybe
he was just going mad.  That seemed likely too.  All things considered, that
seemed pretty likely, actually, when he thought about it seriously.  Wouldn’t
it be so much easier to just lose his mind?
                He thought, It doesn’t change anything.  I don’t care what he
does to me.  It doesn’tmatter; I’m still his slave.  A tiny voice insisted,
It’s still rape.
                No.  No…  He was his slave.  A piece of property, meant to be
used in whatever way his master saw fit.  He just wished his master had gone to
a damned whorehouse instead.  At least the whore was good at pretending to like
it.  Surely that would be better?  A whore who knew the art of sex, who could
better please him anyway, had to be a better choice.
                He almost wanted to say so, but he didn’t.  He held his tongue,
as he was accustomed to doing.  Speak when spoken to and only when required.
                He was only doing as required.  His master apparently wanted
him to enjoy it a bit, so he did.  He could think of it that way.  It hurt a
little less that way.
                Fenris started to come with a cry, half of pleasure and half of
despair, and his master kissed his neck for it, whispering for him to do it
again.  He didn’t, and the fist around his erection tightened enough to choke
it off.  He couldn’t have mimicked the cry if he wanted to, though, and that
was all there was to it.  It had been heartfelt, and everything he had been
feeling.  He couldn’t hope to try.  Anything else would be false, and he could
not lie to his master.
                But Danarius was drunk enough not to particularly care if he
hadn’t obeyed him just then.  He only continued working to get himself off,
even as he gripped so hard the elf was in pain from it, and after only a short
while, he was squirming, needing to release desperately, and his grip was so
tight that it hurt, and even so he didn’t wilt.  His hand fell away from his
mouth, fingers twisting into the sheets.
                I’m so used to pain, he thought miserably.  His master shoved
him down flat, pumped into him a few more times, and slipped out of him,
spilling his seed on his back, over the lyrium markings, but his hand had left
him, and the elf wanted to cry when he came onto the sheets.  But some part of
him had died—what felt like a long time ago—and his eyes didn’t even water.
                Danarius cupped his cheek, almost affectionately.  It only
added insult to injury, really.  He called him beautiful, and left him laying
there, covered in semen, alone in the dark.  He swallowed hard, and licked his
dry lips.  A tear rolled down his cheek, and he was a bit surprised to find it
there.
                He picked up the two carved wooden figures he had carefully
hidden under the bed, wrapped them up again, and put them back.  It was
comforting to touch them, to wonder at them for a moment.
                He washed off, his mind in a numb haze, and fell back onto the
bed, curling up onto a dry spot on the sheets—a dry spot covered in white cat
hair.  He didn’t ache right now—not much—but he would in the morning, he knew. 
He’d ache for days after, and likely be sick from it.  A small, tiny part of
him hated Danarius for it, even as the larger, rational part of him insisted
that it was wrong to do so.  But he kindled that tiny bit of hatred, and found
a dark sort of comfort in it.
                You can’t hate him; he’s your master.  You are nothing; he’s
everything.  You cannot hate him.  Whatever he does to you, it’s within his
right.  That’s all.
                But the tiny voice inside him cried out, as if in pain, It’s
not true!
                And he had no argument for that.
                His last waking thoughts were of a freckled, red-headed girl he
didn’t know.
Chapter End Notes
     Fenris' thought process in that last segment was more important than
     what was actually going on: He is going from an aloof detachment to
     slowly learning what it means to hate. Worse, he has no other
     experiences to reign in his hatred--like love, kindness, compassion,
     or friendship. Those are the things we use to fight against our own
     hatred. It's like Fenris is facing a battle unarmed.
     Unfortunately, Varania is going through a similar transition, and all
     of her anger and resentment is for Leto, her happy memories and
     positive emotions instead being eclipsed by the bad ones.
***** The Sea of Tears *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris is nearly seduced by the call of the sea and his own suicide
     and Shaislyn is in grave peril.
                Shaislyn sat in the cage with his legs against his chest,
hugging them tightly to himself.  His eyes were raw, and he supposed that he
had been crying again, for all the things he couldn’t do—and failed to do. 
Outside, the world went by.  Qunari, horses, a few scattered elves and even
humans—but mostly the horned giants.  Before this misadventure, he had never
seen them so closely before.
Things could have turned out so differently.
                A spy, they had said.  No one would suspect a child, they had
said.
                It was frightening for him, but they had turned him out of the
sanctity of the Imperial city.  He had played the part of a runaway, a survivor
of a burned village.  He had come to the Antaam hungry, wet, and exhausted.
                They had fed him, bathed him, and a refugee who spoke the Trade
tongue asked him why he had come.  He had been frightened, but gave the refugee
the lie his masters had told him to say.  “Mama took me and ran after Papa…
sold us,” he said, doing his best to sound frightened, wide-eyed and innocent. 
The first part wasn’t so difficult; it was the rest.  He swallowed.  He had
come up with the lie some weeks prior.  “I couldn’t keep up with Mama.  When
the dogs were after us, she got scared and left me, but I fell in water…  I… 
I’m…”  And he pretended to struggle, and only stared at the human with eyes he
knew were so pale a blue as to almost be white.
                “Blind, child.  I see that,” he had said, not unkindly.
                He was nearly fluent in Qunlat, learning as quickly as only a
child can.  But, like he pretended not to see, he, too, pretended not to
understand.  He did his best to not react when they spoke to one another, in
their strange tongue, of what to do with a blind refugee.  But the general
agreement was that they could not abandon him.  Fortunately, there were other
refugees who spoke the Trade tongue more fluently, and so he had been passed to
them.
                But no one really had time for a blind child who could never be
of use with a bow, axe, or sword.  The other children were set aside to learn,
such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and since he was blind, no one even
mentioned that he should attend; what would be the point?  He had heard that he
would eventually be sent to a semi-permanent camp in north Seheron, and perhaps
ultimately to Par Vallen, if it came down to it.  He heard the few other
children whispering about him.  They could really just pick something to mock
him about, really—there were so many things, and he had heard them all, and had
heard them all his life.
                That had been before, though.
                His hands balled into fists of frustration, then loosened.  It
wasn’t worth the effort.
                He had done as his Imperial masters had told him to do; he had
listened, and watched, and snuck about the camp as he had been trained to do. 
When someone found him, he only pretended to be lost.  It was amazing how much
leeway they would give to a blind child to be lost, or so he had thought.
                It may have roused no suspicion at first, but perhaps they
noticed how often he became lost in the sprawling encampment.  Maybe he had
reacted wrong when he heard their plans, though—and perhaps he was wrong to
assume they knew so much.
                Attack at the wedding.
                I have to warn them, he had thought with a cold certainty. 
They had told him to stay, and be “taken back” in battle.  But the battle could
not wait.  They were going to attack the city.  He knew which city.  There was
only one that a royal wedding would be at.  His mother was there, too.  He
couldn’t bear to think of the city under siege, or burning.
                He just had to escape and tell them.  He had tried, but the
scouts had caught him.  At first, they had apparently mistaken him for a
refugee, he knew that from listening to them talk—suspicions having been raised
about him only after someone had recognized him when they brought him back. 
Their suspicions were confirmed when he had been caught.  He shouldn’t have
attacked them.  He wished, now, that he had not jumped to such a hasty
conclusion, for they had not thought him a mage at least, no matter what else
they may have known or not known.  He had left under the cover of night, and
even managed to avoid the sentries by timing it just right,and his spell of
seeing was invaluable at night, where the dark did not affect his vision the
same way as with people who were not blind.  He had skirted the army and
disappeared into the dense evening fog, and was making his way—feverishly—back
to the Tevinter forces.  That was when the scouts had found him.
                He had killed someone that day, he reflected.  Strangely, he
felt nothing.  He had been scared and terrified, and he was only sorry that he
had not killed all of them.  Sorry that he did not have the ability to kill all
of them—not just the scouts, but their entire race.
                Now, he sat awaiting judgment, in his cage.  He didn’t know
what he could say to convince them that they were wrong.  But they were right. 
So very, very right.  He also knew that there was a slender possibility that
they really had no idea he was a spy, and that they were only caging and
collaring him because he was a mage.
                And still the army marched southward, to the city.  And there
was nothing that Shaislyn could do about it.
                At night, he sat in the cage.  By day, he was bound at the
wrist and led like a common criminal.  The debate, from what little he had
managed to hear, was on what to do with him.  Many suspected that he was an
informant and a spy, from what he had guessed, but they had not exactly
questioned him as of yet.  Too much else to do, he assumed.  That he was a
“Saarebas” complicated the matter a bit.  If asked why he had run, he intended
to say that he had ran because he was afraid of what they did to mages.  It was
true—oh, so painfully true.  He felt like it would be believable too.
                He had to think of how he had ended up in this cage every day. 
He had to, or he would forget.  He would forget everything.  It felt like he
had spent his life shackled.  He had been caged and bound for so long.  It
seemed like that was all there was, but he had to think and remember that it
had not always been like this.  It hadn’t.
                He had had a family once, he needed to remember.  He needed to
remember Varania, Lura, Jameson, Vanessa, his grandmother.  He needed to
remember them all, before he began to believe he had spent his entire life in
this cage.  He needed to remember how he had come here, so he replayed the
events in his mind every day, and tried to remember what it was like to see,
but every day the memory of sight seemed more and more ludicrous to him.
                The cage was bad enough, but to suddenly have his world go dark
again…  It was almost too much to bear.  How could he return to a nameless
black, knowing all he was missing in the world?  It would be less cruel had he
never known.
                The cage had been something hastily constructed, but like
everything the Qunari did, it was expertly done even so.  It wasn’t quite high
enough for him to stand, and not quite long enough to stretch out completely. 
He was kept in the cage nearly all the time.  He had a “handler” of sorts—what
the Qunari called Arvaarad.  He was a relatively young Qunari, who seemed to
resent his half-elven charge.
                What was the point in the position, after all, when that mage
was a child and blind?  So of course Arvaarad resented him.  He brought him out
less often than he really needed to relieve himself, and only under
supervision—which was horrible.  He brought him food too, but struck him if he
tried to speak.  Not hard—just hard enough to sting a little, and he gave up
after a while.  He never gave him enough water though.
                He had learned to respond when the Qunari called him
“Saarebas.”  Despite that, he tried always to remember that it wasn’t his name,
no matter how much they tried to ingrain it into him that it was.
                Every time he had to respond, he would think, Shaislyn.  My
name is Shaislyn.  Mother called me “Shai”.
                They had been marching lately, moving in to position, and he
knew why.  They were going to attack the city.  It made him weep, to think
about all those people dead at the cruel hand of these monsters.       
                He could not even cry out his anguish.  He could not speak, for
his words only came out a garbled mess.  They had not only taken his life, his
sight, his name, and his gift:  They had taken his voice too.  Was he even a
person any longer?
                What made a person?  Was it their ability to communicate? 
Their ability to create and build and interact with the world?  Was it
language?  The ability to believe in something as intangible as a god—was it
their faith?  They had taken what it meant to be a person away from the child,
and he believed he would never have that again.
                The little sparrow that had been visiting him over the past
couple of weeks landed in the grass beside his cage.  He reached into his
pocket, making soothing noises at it.  Noises were all he had left, after all. 
He pulled out the crumbs from his pocket—something he saved for the little
bird—and tossed them gently in its direction.  He listened to it peck at the
crumbs, chirping appreciably.  He wished he could fly like the bird could.  It
could fit through the bars of this cage, and just fly into the sky.
                He lifted his head when he heard someone approach.  The pattern
of the steps suggested that it was Arvaarad, and someone else.  Their footsteps
frightened his sparrow friend away in a flutter of wings.  Keys jangled, and
the cage door opened.  The young Qunari grabbed him roughly by the arm, hauling
him to his feet.
                They did not lead him, so much as drag him, to wherever they
were taking him.
                Am I finally being questioned?
                But what would be the point in that?  They must know he was a
spy, and an informant.  They must also know that he had not reached the
Tevinters in time.  So why bother?
                He knew there was no use in resisting.  He had only tried to
run once, and quickly learned his lesson.  Fact of the matter, he could do very
little with the collar around his neck that Arvaarad did not wish for him to
do.
                He tried to memorize the path they took, if nothing else,
memorizing the steps, the turns, creating a map of sorts in his mind.  He did
not know what he could use it for, but he tried to remember it all the same.
                A tent flap was opened, and he was brought inside.  The air in
here was different, and someone else waited.  He could tell by the presence and
their footfalls that all three were Qunari.  Shaislyn was brought to a pole in
the middle of the room, and shackled with his back against the pole.  One of
the Qunari held on to his shoulders.
                “Saarebas, you must be still,” he said in the common tongue,
perhaps still not guessing that he spoke theirs as well.  Be still?  Be still
for what?
                A hand touched his lips, and something cold and sharp pressed
against the corner of his mouth.
 
                “The castle needs more staff for the wedding feast,” Lura
chimed one evening.
                Varania barely glanced up.  “They’re only accepting
blondes—with blue eyes,” she reminded her, her voice flat.
                Lura’s honey eyes sparkled.  “Not in the kitchen,” she said
proudly.  “I won’t even have to prance about half-naked and glistening.”
                Varania almost laughed.  Almost—because Leto had been one of
those servers at one point.  She wondered if, had things turned out
differently, if she ever would have been one—and cringed at the thought.  “It
pays well?”
                Lura grinned.  “I can get you a job too—I know the head cook,”
she added.  “Client of mine.  Said he’d give me a job for the evening—or two if
you catch my meaning.”
                The mage certainly caught her meaning, but saw no humor in
whoring.  She didn’t know how Lura could make light of it, and it vaguely
disgusted her that she did.  “I don’t want to know about your clients.”
                Lura rolled her eyes.  “I meant that I can get you a job there
too.  Look—it pays well, and it’s just the one night.  Having a mage on hand
for kitchen accidents isn’t a bad idea either, so I may even get some extra
coin out of him for that.  What do you say?”
                Varania hesitated, but nodded.  “I could help,” she offered. 
“I’m not a good cook though.”
                Lura waved her off.  “They have cooks.  What they don’t have
enough of are people to run errands, wash the dishes, make everything look
pretty—whatever.”
                “I thought they had slaves for that,” Varania said darkly.  The
Imperium had slaves for everything.
                The whore barely blinked.  “They’re doing more menial things.”
                The mage crossed her arms.  “What’s more menial than washing a
plate?”
                Lura laughed.  She had a pleasant laugh, a light in her eyes
when she did it.  “Washing a floor, tending the guest rooms.  Let’s not forget
all the horses…”  She counted off her list on her fingers.
                Varania sighed.  “All right.  Sign me up,” she muttered.
                Lura grinned.  “You won’t regret it.  I hear it’ll be the talk
of the century.”
                At that, the mage laughed.  “I believe that dragons were
supposed to be the talk of the Dragon Age,” she mused.
                The other laughed along with her, but said good-naturedly, “Oh,
no.  I believe that Her Perfection will change the record to read the Wedding
Age.”
                “That sounds boring in comparison,” she bantered right back. 
Despite all the banter, though, they both really needed the money.  Situations
only kept getting worse.  There had been a temporary reprieve when Varania had
secured the other job, but her boss there had let her go as well.  Not because
she couldn’t keep up this time, but rather because she had a cousin from
Tevinter coming to live with them, and she needed a job.  Family came first,
and Varania lost her job.  She had been doing odd jobs and healings since
then.  This job would help tremendously, even if only for a little while.
                Still, there would be magisters there.  Perhaps she could even
manage to…  No, that was impossible.
 
                No amount of water, wine, or otherwise ever really helped,
Fenris reflected, swallowing the last of it.  Maybe it was all in his mind, but
he tasted it long after it was over.  Danarius stared at him a moment longer,
and then told him to get out.
                He did not need to be told twice; he left immediately, and
found the brandy Danarius had given him to help him sleep, and drank a bit of
that to get rid of the taste.  He stashed the flask again, but found himself
too restless to go to sleep even so.  He stole out of the cabin, and walked
along the dark hallway, listening to the moaning of the ship.  There was
something so nostalgic about being in the hold.  Something he could not place.
                He wandered up on deck.  This late at night, only a handful of
the sailors were up to man it, and all the passengers were in bed, if not
asleep.
                The elf leaned against the railing, looking down at the dark
waves.  The ocean seemed so timeless, like if he fell in, he would fall
forever, swallowed up into an abyss of water, cradled in the mother ocean for
an eternity.  It seemed almost comforting.  The waves looked soft and inviting,
and the waters of the Ventosus Straights warm and calm.  As if, if he were to
fall into it, it would reach out and accept him in an eternally loving embrace
like nothing else in the world ever had—or would, for that matter.  The sea
would take him in, wrap him in itself and pull him to its secret depths.  It
would take him far, far away from his life, and this world, to a place he
couldn’t feel or even know pain, suffering, or sorrow.   Or regret.  It would
wipe it all away, baptizing him in its calm and its beauty, giving him an
everlasting peace, a promise of a world without pain.  It would wash away every
sin, every tear, every heartache.  All the loneliness and isolation, it would
cleanse.  It would make him pure and whole and he would never again wonder who
he had been or who he could have been.
                The waves crashed against the ship, little whispers begging him
to topple over the rail, to be carried into the water, weightless as it pulled
him under.  The dark, dark blue of the nighttime sky was seductive, the water
shimmering in the starlight, the moons reflected off its distant waters, as if,
if he could travel far enough, he could touch its reflection.  He could swim
into the moons’ mirror, fall into the water forever, as eternal as the sea and
the moons.
                The realization that he wanted to die did not shock or surprise
him.  He wanted to fall asleep and never wake.  He wanted to plunge into that
dark abyss below the surface of the sea, and continue to fall into it for an
eternity.
                It would be so easy to fall in.  His master may even be able to
say that his favourite pet had simply slipped and drowned—all an accident of
sorts.
                One hand gripped the rail, and one hand touched the leather
collar at his throat.  It was tooled and embroidered leather of high quality,
but it was still a collar… the sort of which one would use to leash a dog.  It
was just one more reason he would rather die.
                “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a voice asked him.  He turned, his
hand dropping away from his throat.  Annalkylie smiled back at him, then looked
out at the ocean.  “They wouldn’t let me bring my hawks,” she complained.  Then
she winked.  “But my handmaiden brought my falcon.  By the time they found him,
it was too late.”
                He said nothing, but she strode up beside him, and looked up at
the stars over the water.  “I could look at this for hours,” she said softly. 
“It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that there’s so much suffering and pain in
the world, when it’s this beautiful.”
                He looked down, back at the water.  He didn’t know if he was
glad she had come, or hated her for coming when she did.  She would stop him if
he tried to jump now.  Oh, he may be able to make it, but she would do
everything she could to “save” him.  She would probably even  be good enough to
lie for him and say he had slipped when the sailors fished him out of the sea. 
But at the same time… he really did fear death.  Life had a certainty to it
that death did not.  He didn’t want to throw it away on something he didn’t
know, not truly.  Even if it were the most beautiful thing he could ever
imagine.
                She squinted off at the distance.  “They say we’ll be able to
see Seheron this time tomorrow.”
                He looked northward, his heart feeling heavy.  Seheron…
                Danarius had stood on the deck of the ship as it set sail, and
stared toward Seheron.  He had glanced at his slave, and said, “You were
brought here on a slave ship from Seheron, Fenris.  Your accent is gone,
though.”
                Had he been a slave in Seheron too?  Or simply captive?  How
old had he been?  He wished he knew.
                Annalkylie was staring at him.  He blinked when he realized
that she had been for some time.  “Thinking about something?” she asked him
curiously.
                He glanced away, back toward the water.  “No, my lady,” he
said, the lie coming easily to his lips.  In fact, he barely thought about it
as a lie.
                She frowned.  “You know…”  She looked around the deck, and took
a step closer to him.  “I... found the records.”  Fenris didn’t know what she
meant.  “I mean—I was studying, and I found one of the notes my uncle wrote… 
It’s about…”  She hesitated.  “It’s about the Ritual, with the…”  She gestured
at him with one hand.  He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.  “The lyrium, I
mean—tattoos… things.  Whatever.”  She sighed.  “What I’m saying is, I found
the notes.  I haven’t had the time to read it all, but…  What I read.  I
thought you needed to know that—“
                “Lady Annalkylie!” a voice scolded.  The young mage flinched,
and turned, a sheepish grin spreading across her face.  A stern-looking servant
marched up to her.  “Young lady, you will catch your death of cold out in
this.  Back to bed immediately.”
                “But I need—“
                “No,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.  “To bed. 
Now.”
                Annalkylie looked helplessly back at Fenris.  “You need to
know—“
                “Bed,” the woman interrupted.  “Now.”
                The girl sighed, and mouthed, Later.  She shrugged at him and
trailed after the servant, who scolded her all the way back to her cabin.
                Fenris wondered what she had intended to say.  Would it even
matter?  It was just about the Ritual.  He already knew all he cared to learn
about that, frankly, so he wasn’t even certain that he cared to know whatever
she thought was so important.
 
                Danarius had politely requested a private dinner with his
niece.  He had even banished Fenris to “somewhere else” and didn’t particularly
care what the elf was up to—not right now anyway.
                The two mages talked of mundane things, and discussed the art
of their gift for several minutes as well, but toward the end of the meal, the
magister changed the subject to the real reason for the shared meal—things he
normally preferred to take alone.
                “I wanted to talk to you about my will,” he said, and removed a
document from the desk.  “This is a copy.”  He placed it on the table.
                She did not look at it.  Rather, she refused to, keeping her
blue eyes on him.  “Uncle, you’re not that old,” she pretended to scold him.
                The magister lifted his glass, taking a sip of it.  “Old
enough,” he chided her.  “It’s time I start thinking of what I want to do with
the estate and my assets.”  He glanced at her.  “I’ve no heirs, as you know.” 
He stared into the contents of his glass, swirling the liquid around slowly in
the cup as he thought aloud.  “You are obviously well taken care of, and
Agasius will, of course, inherit your family estate from my brother, and I will
give him Vinewood as well.  But what of the estate in Minrathous?”  He looked
at her.
                She raised one delicately arched eyebrow.  “You will not give
it to Hadriana?”
                He scoffed at the idea.  “And deprive her of earning her way
through the world?  Perish the thought—she’d never have it.  No, she wants to
earn everything she receives in the world.  Giving her the estate would imply,
to her, that she could not have achieved such a thing on her own.”
                Annalkylie nodded, as if she approved of this manner of
thinking.  “I agree,” she said reasonably.  “And the businesses?  What of
those?”
                “Those I will give to Hadriana, as a gift of her service. 
Nothing more,” he considered.  The girl might even take that as an affront, but
really it was an honor—a trust, as it were.  “If you don’t want the manor… 
Well, I’m quite certain your future husband will be able to provide you with
anything you might require.  Get rid of it, if you don’t want it, but it’s
yours.”  He set the glass down, and looked at her seriously.  “But there’s one
thing you must keep.”
                She frowned, quite curious.  “Oh?  What could that be?”
                He laced his fingers together.  “Fenris,” he answered, voice
soft, as if speaking his name too loudly would summon him.
                Annalkylie straightened.  “What?”
                He looked at her.  “What am I to do with the lad when I die? 
Do you think Agasius or my brother would want him—or sell him to the
military?”  He let the question hang in the air for a moment.  The silence was
enough of an answer.  “I cannot hope for more from Hadriana—though knowing her,
it will be the Proving until he dies.  I don’t want my prized possession to die
like that.”  He made a face, his contempt for the idea showing plainly. 
“Without an heir of my own that leaves… you.”
                She only blinked, and was silent as she processed this.  “He’s
your life’s work,” she said with slow realization.
                He gave a single, curt nod.  “Yes.  And I’m trusting you with
him.  Of course, I will give you all the documents I have kept regarding
Fenris, and the Ritual.”
                She stared down at her empty plate, and wished she had some
food to occupy her, and stall her reply.  Fenris and the Ritual were his
legacy.  “This is all very… sudden.”
                “I apologize.”
                She shook her head.  “No.  It’s… fine.  Just… unexpected.  Yes,
I see where I am the best candidate.”  She flashed a winning smile.  “Of course
I’ll take excellent care of your lyrium-imbrued elf.”
                He chuckled.  “I am pleased to hear of it.”  Though she still
did not so much as glance at the will, he felt leaving it out was no longer
necessary, so he returned it to the drawer, and locked it.  He would burn it
later—just in case.  The only copies he really needed were in Minrathous.
 
                Annalkylie tried to find a moment to talk to Fenris privately,
but never managed to catch him alone again.  She saw him plenty of times, but
it wasn’t like she—a highborn lady—could really pull aside a slave for a
private chat.
                He deserves to know, she thought sadly.  She would want to
know.
                But she couldn’t manage to talk to him.  She never caught him
on deck again during the few times she managed to escape her cabin without some
servant yelling at her to get back inside.  She despised being told what to do.
                So, she spent much of the voyage in her small cabin, alone with
a few books and her handmaiden for company.  She wished she could have at least
brought Lily, her wolf dog.  But, truly, the sea was no place for a dog.  One
small joy was feeding her falcon, though.  Danarius had decreed, with some
smoldering, that if she were cheeky enough to bring the bird, she could feed it
and tend to it herself, rather than wasting anyone else’s time.
                Truly, though, she did not mind this.  She cleaned up its
droppings and fed the creature scraps of meat.  It gave her time away from
others, to think about her life and where it was going.
                She had no regrets, she decided.  Oh, there were things in her
life she would change if given the chance, but true regret?  No.  Everything
was as she would have it, she supposed.  But sometimes she wished she had been
born an apostate—some witch out in a forest.
                Kylie looked across the sea, but not toward Seheron, as was her
ordinary custom, but out at the other ships in the fleet, the ones escorting
them, and the other ship that held her husband-to-be and his family.  Her
mother and father, and her siblings were with her on this ship, and she did
spend some time with her sisters.  She played the harp, and Caleigh sang. 
Cristabelle was on a third ship, one more for guests, as she opted to be with
her husband and child—else she would have likely played her flute.
                Kylie still hated embroidery, but that was politely glazed
over, as she had taken up the harp and dancing instead.  Everyone else seemed
to appreciate her musical skills, but what thrilled Kylie the most was the
sound of the crashing waves, the occasional shriek of her falcon.
                She studied the ships for a moment, and then looked out past
them, back toward the mainland, at a particular spot along the coast, just
outside Minrathous.  They would be in Seheron by nightfall, perhaps sooner, as
they had been favoured with good weather and fair winds.  She couldn’t hope to
see it from here, but she knew that, by nightfall, there would be a fire on the
horizon.
***** Duty *****
Chapter Summary
     Two magisters are at odds, and Fenris tries to cope with his
     nightmares. Varania worries about seeing Danarius at the wedding.
The whore trailed her fingers down his chest, her lashes fluttering.  Her
breasts heaved when he caressed her slender waist.  She climbed atop him, and
they embraced.  She moved against him, pushing him into her.
                When it was done, he rolled her off of him, leaning over her,
watching the sweat trickle between her breasts.  She smiled lustily up at him. 
“I’ve never lain with a magister before,” she breathed.
                He scowled.  “I never mentioned that I was a magister,” he
complained.
                She laughed, her arms wrapping around his neck.  “I’ve heard
about you,” said the dark-skinned Rivaini beauty.
                “Oh?” he inquired, suddenly quite curious.
                Her smile showed a bit of her perfectly white teeth.  “Oh,
yes,” she said in her breathy voice.  “Only one magister has a slave like
that.”
                “Fenris,” he mused.  His pet stood at the door, vigilant, and
probably doing his best to hear absolutely nothing of what was going on just on
the other side of the door.
                She squirmed under him, running one of her long legs against
his hip.  “Do his tattoos cover all of him?  Or just his arms and neck?” she
wondered.  “I saw a bit on his feet too.”
                His lips found her neck, and for a while neither spoke as the
conversation became distracted by his mouth and roving hands.  He leaned back,
away from her, and traced a pattern on her breast.  “Every bit of him,” he
said.  “Watch.”  A light touch of magic, and he traced the design perfectly,
from memory, onto her breast, in a thin crust of ice that made her nipples
hard, and her breathing quicken.  It was perfect in its detail, but melting
quickly.  She looked at it, then frowned.
                “Even his penis?” she wondered, before she leaned forward, and
took the magister in her mouth.
                “Yes,” he gasped, his fingers burying in her thick, dark hair. 
                Her mouth left a trail of kisses up to his neck.  “That sounds
exciting.  I’d like to see that,” she mused, drawing him back down on top of
her, her legs wrapping dexterously around him.
                He considered, and then smiled.  “Would you, my dear?  I could
bring him in.  Have him strip for you.”
                She giggled at that.  It was a very womanly sound—not girlish
at all.  “Mmm.  Does he really glow?”
                “If I command it,” he said.  Her hand positioned him, then he
stopped, and smirked.  “He’d make a fine… toy.  He’s really quite lovely.”
                She grinned wickedly at that idea.
 
                Fenris had been at the door for the better part of the night,
and had absolutely no desire to be there.  He watched the other clients come
and go.  He watched the whores pass by in the night.  Still his master was
preoccupied with the exotic whore.
                Though, he was not unaccustomed to this.  Danarius was no
stranger to whorehouses, and Fenris, unfortunately, was no stranger to standing
guard outside the door, listening to it and trying not to with all his might.
                Most of the more expensive places might have thicker walls,
yes, but the doors were not so thick, and it was the door he had to stand
beside.
                It would be bad enough if he hadn’t ever been under the man. 
It was worse, though, for it, because he knew what it all meant with a cold,
dead certainty.
                It had been sort of quiet for a while, though, so maybe they
had stopped?  Somehow he doubted it.  A brief reprieve, maybe, was all.  But
the door opened, and he at first thought that perhaps it really was time to go,
but it was the dark-haired Rivaini whore who came out.
                She was naked, and stared at him like she was going to eat
him.  “Come inside—your master wants you,” she said, and laughed as if it were
a joke.
                Oh, if only she knew.  Or… maybe she did.
                Danarius was lounging on the bed, naked and sweaty.  Fenris
tried not to look directly at either of them.  The whore shut the door, and
climbed onto the bed with his master, curling up around him rather than beside
him, her hands trailing down his chest, slowly going lower.  Danarius was
staring at Fenris, though.
                “My pet,” Danarius purred.  The elf didn’t like that tone of
his voice.  Nothing good ever happened when he spoke like that.  “Take off your
clothes.”
                Why am I not surprised?  He obeyed, making no effort to stall. 
He peeled off his clothing awkwardly, and if any effort was put into the
command, he only made it as unattractive as possible.  He stared downwards,
peeling off the tunic.  He dropped it beside him carelessly, and twitched, just
a little.  He didn’t want to do this.  He could feel them both watching, their
eyes roved over him as certainly as hands as he stepped out of his trousers,
kicking them beside the tunic.  The room was warm, but he crossed his arms as
if it were cold.  He wanted to hide, his eyes fixed on the design on the
carpet, the blues and yellows swirling under his feet like water.
                “Wow,” the whore said, staring at him in a dim light.  She
looked at the magister.  “I want to see him glow.”
                “Fenris.”
                He did not looked up, but summoned his rage.  It wasn’t
difficult.  In fact, it came easily to his call.  The room lit up with the
lyrium.  The whore cried out in a mixture of fear and delight.  He was sorely
tempted to just drop through the floor and escape this—claim it was an
accident.  He didn’t think Danarius would believe him though.
                “Is… is it all right to touch him?” she asked him.  “Can
anyone… get that close to him?”
                Danarius laughed.  “My sweet, he’s quite tame.  The lyrium,
though, is still up for debate.”
                Fenris flinched slightly.  Tame.  Something about it made his
stomach clench.  His eyes traced the pattern on the carpet.  The blues and
yellows faded to green closer to the bed.  Was that an elephant amidst the
whorls and twists? 
                The whore timidly moved up to him, and touched his arm. 
                Yes, it was an elephant.  The blues were waves, crashing around
it as if the magnificent beast had risen from the surf and the sand, its long
tusks bedecked with tassels and chains, the animal fitted for parade.
                Then, more bold, her hand pressed against his chest, tracing
the glowing tattoos.  He looked up instead, away from her.  The drapes were not
as interesting as the carpet, he noticed.  They were a green and gold paisley
print.  The blue and gold bed drew the entire design together.  It was nicer,
he reflected, than having every single piece of fabric match.  It looked more… 
                She traced the marks down, down to…  He cringed, and she bent,
licking along the lyrium daringly, all the way down between his legs.  She
traced the lyrium there, and then took him in her mouth.  Fenris’ eyes slid
closed.
                Less, he amended.  It looked less perfect. It was okay if
something in here was askew, or broken, or if they bed were messy, because it
did not rely on a cruel perfection to be visually appealing.  Danarius called
him perfect, but when he looked in a mirror, all he ever saw were all his
flaws, the brokenness, how nothing seemed right.  Nothing ever felt right.
                If he had bothered to look, he would have seen her mouth
glowing, the lyrium even shining through the wet cavern.  He heard Danarius
chuckle, and he gasped, then swallowed hard.  He wanted nothing more than to
shove her away, but did not wish to incur his master’s ill will.
                The whore, satisfied, moved away from him, running her hands
back up the lyrium.  The light abruptly flickered out.  She laughed, one of her
hands encircling his swollen cock.
                “Magister, can I play with him?” she asked excitedly.
                The man considered.  “Yes, sweetling.”  She laughed with
delight.
                “Come,” she told him, and led him to the bed.  He walked as if
in a dream—some haunted nightmare really.  She shoved him down, and laid him on
his back.
                “Master… don’t…” he heard himself plead, closing his eyes.  “I
don’t want…”  He didn’t know why he tried.  He had never intended to beg like
that.  He had never done that before.
                It came as a shock when Danarius put his hand against the
whore’s shoulder, stopping her from climbing on top of him.  “It seems my pet
prefers men,” the magister told her.
                The whore laughed, and Fenris looked away.  That wasn’t it, but
he didn’t care.  Let them think that.  Let them think anything—anything that
would free him from this room, this bed.  That woman!
 
                The whore pouted, looking back at his pet.  “He’s so
pretty—you’re right,” she sighed.  “Fine.  Send him out.”  She crossed her arms
indignantly.  “I’m not good enough for him.”
                Danarius laughed.  “You just don’t have a cock.”  The whore
chuckled, leaning over Fenris, her breasts mashed against his chest.  The elf
flinched as if it burned, his eyes sliding closed.  He was so… miserable and
despaired that the magister felt, oddly, moved to pity.  “Get off of him,
sweetling,” he said gently.
                The whore shifted, but did not completely get off of the elf. 
“He doesn’t like me,” she drawled.  “But you have a cock.”  Her eyebrows lifted
in mock innocence.
                He watched Fenris’ face contort—just for a moment, into
something akin to horror before it faded into a melancholy expression.  He did
want to take him.  He wanted to push him on to his knees and have the whore oil
him and prepare him with her fingers and mouth, and then he wanted to slide his
member into him—slowly.  Inch by inch, appreciating how tight he would be, and
how good it would feel.  He really didn’t take him that often, if at
all—perhaps six times in ten years.  He had no doubt Fenris remembered each
time vividly though, from the way he flinched and cringed.
                Danarius suffered no illusions that consent meant willingness. 
It was more that his slave was only that:  His slave.
                Yet… Fenris was in such obvious pain from this.  His suffering
was plain to see, even to the most uncaring.  He felt—Fenris could deal with
Danarius, but the whore was something else.
                “Get off of him,” he said, a little bit firmer this time.
                She grinned wickedly, sitting up, but her hand was still on the
elf’s defined stomach.  “I have some oil…  Let’s play with him.”  She smiled
lustily.  “I’ll touch you while you fuck him.”
                Tempting.  The stupid whore had no idea just how tempting, but
he had already made up his mind.  If he pushed too hard against Fenris’ oh-so-
paper-thin sanity, the man would break.  Lately, the magister knew he had been
pushing a little too hard.  “Leave my pet alone, darling.  Let him go, and come
to me.”
                The whore was reluctant, and also didn’t seem to see what he
was saying.  She moved so that her back was on Fenris.  “Then fuck me on him,”
she said, spreading her legs.  Then she grinned, moving, bowing her head
between the elf’s legs.  “He didn’t mind my mouth so much.”
                Danarius saw Fenris flinch as she drew him into her mouth. 
Watched the elf grimace, as if in some kind of horrible pain.  The magister’s
patience was at an end.
                He gripped the whore’s hair, though she was accustomed to rough
play, and was not alarmed.  She should have been.  The magister ripped her off
of his slave, dragging her from the bed.  He shoved her to the floor roughly. 
“I told you not to touch him.  Three times, I told you to leave him be.”
                She was afraid now.  Her legs curled up against her chest.  She
stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.  “I… I thought…  He was your slave,
and…”
                “He is,” Danarius snapped.  “And nothing happens to him without
my blessing.  He didn’t want you—wasn’t that clear?”
                She was genuinely alarmed.  “I…” she stammered.
                His fingers curled into fists.  “I told you to stop.  Fenris
wanted you to stop.  But you didn’t.”
                “Master,” the elf interjected, his voice gentle, even
soothing.  He had been so angry that he hadn’t realized how his power was
building, his magic wanting to react to his mood.  He glanced back at his pet,
naked in the bed, and beautiful, and his anger was forgotten.  The elf looked
at him, sage alien eyes wide.  “Please…  Don’t hurt her.”  He was always
begging him not to hurt people, usually children, but sometimes women.  Leto
had done the same thing.  He had a weakness for children.
                Danarius stared at his slave for a long moment.  “Aren’t you
angry that she touched you?”
                The elf’s eyes flicked downward.  “No.  It’s… all she knows.”
                Maker, he was beautiful.  “Get out, whore.  My pet saved your
life,” Danarius snapped at her.  She yelped, snatched a thin robe from a peg on
the wall, and was gone in an instant, the door slamming shut behind her. 
Danarius went back to the bed, where Fenris still sat.  The elf looked up at
him hesitantly, not quite at his face.  The mage touched his pet’s cheek,
gently guiding his face to look up at him.  He smiled—and it felt good
actually, genuine.  “You owe me the rest of the night, though.  I already paid
her.”
 
                It’s easier, Fenris thought, his heart heavy, if I can get off.
                It wasn’t—not really, but it hurt less when he told himself
that.  If he could moan and come, he could tell himself he wanted it.  It made
it easier to bear.  Danarius never hurt him at least, not when he took him to
bed.
                I should be honored he even wants me.  He’s a magister; I’m
just his slave, his pet.
                It could be worse, he told himself.  It isn’t that bad.
                He thought of the slave girl he had witnessed being raped
before an audience.  He thought about Perya.  Danarius had always been gentle
about it.  It didn’t leave him feeling less broken and used, but at least…  At
least he doesn’t hurt me.
                Danarius could make him orgasm with a touch of his hand, magic
manipulating him.  He could just rape me.  It wasn’t inconsiderate.  He didn’t
treat him wholly like a whore, or wholly like an orifice either.  Whatever his
master wanted him for, he had no right to complain.
                So why did it hurt so much?
 
                Lysander watched the gate, while the others crept inside.  He
waited until the last of them had gone, and then he hauled the body away from
the main gate, obscuring it in the bushes.
                His father’s sword felt heavy against his back.  He hadn’t been
the one to kill the Templar—that was Jason’s work—but it felt like it had been
himself.  It might as well have been himself.
                Lysander had been training to be a knight—someone good and
just.  Now here he was, skulking in darkness.  What they were doing was
treasonous.  True, the magisters may thank them privately, but outwardly… it
was treason.
                But it had paid well—really well in fact.  He wouldn’t have
done it at all, but it paid so well.  He wouldn’t want to do anything to help
the magisters—not after what they had done to his father.  Killed him, seized
the business, all their assets… everything.  The magister had thrown he and his
sisters out with nothing but the clothes on their backs—and the sword.
                That had been years ago, and it had been a hard life since
then.  He had taken every job he could get.  He had a strong back, and had
stacked crates at the docks.  He had swept floors, scoured pots, done
everything he could to feed and clothe the girls.  It had never quite been
enough.  He couldn’t get a real job.  He sometimes got some work as a scribe,
but if anyone learned who his father had been, how he had been publicly
disgraced, well…  No one wanted to employ him after that.
                So he had changed his last name to Minas.  Common enough—no one
even thought anything of it.  If they inquired as to his background, he made up
how he had come from a poor family.  If they inquired as to the fancy sword, he
only said that it had belonged to his father—some token of a wealthy man’s
favor, long lost upon the child now wielding it.
                He had killed people, since coming to the streets.  The first
time, a common thug had tried to kidnap one of the girls—either rape her or
sell her, or both.  Lysander had been so angry that he had killed him.  After
that, the other came easier.  The mercenary work, that is.
                He was hired to put down slave riots, mostly.  There was no
glory in putting down desperate men.  It was grim, unsatisfying work.  The army
would pay him more, but where would that leave the girls?  Sometimes, he would
help kill darkspawn, and that was more satisfying than the other.  At least
that was justifiable, and Tevinter always had darkspawn outbreaks like no other
country in the surface world—the Anderfells aside.
                He did his best to keep them clean, too.  The oldest—now
fourteen—had quietly suggested working at a brothel.  He had taken his sister
in his arms and made her promise never to mention that again.  No matter how
bad things seemed, they could never get that desperate.
                After all, they were better off than they had been.  Once, they
had been in a box in a gutter.  Now, they at least had a roof over their
heads.  True, it was a leaky one, with rats, but it was a home of sorts.
                Lysander moved back to the gate, his worn, dirty leathers
creaking.  He waited, staring downwards, listening to the clash of swords from
within, knowing the signal fire would not be reached in time.  That particular
Templar had been paid off, and he was the only one allowed to leave unscathed. 
In short order, his comrades in arms, and the Templar, hurried from the
building.  Lysander joined them, and they began to run across the field, to
their waiting mounts.
                They did not make it before the bomb exploded.  It was a work
of lyrium, but a good one, crafted by dwarves.  The building exploded, but that
was nothing but a cover-up.  The real damage had already been done.
                All those phylacteries… shattered.
                They met a dwarven woman two miles south of there, and she paid
them the rest of the dues—individually, before she left them with her guards. 
The men parted ways.  It was good practice to forget one another’s names after
such an event.  The Templar had already gone, in fact.
                Each went off separately, even if many were headed back to
Minrathous.
                Lysander himself made it back to the city on his rented horse
by the afternoon the next day.  He returned the animal, and argued with the
merchant on whether or not there had been a tear in the saddle before he had
left.  There had, but the man was so loud that a guard was roused, and Lysander
paid the man quickly before a scene was made.
                He grumbled to himself, and trudged home, exhausted and
hungry.  No one paid him much heed.
                After this, he should be able to pay off the moneylender the
rest of his current debt, and get the girls something new to wear.  Or, close
to new anyway.  Maybe some meat—that would be nice.
                He walked by the Mermaid’s Kiss and felt himself shiver.  The
brazen women in the windows above called out to the men on the streets, and
even to him.  There were men too, of course.  He would never admit it—to
anyone, least of all his sisters—but he had sold himself there.  The
proprietor—Serrah Chaisty—had been telling him for an entire year beforehand
that he had a man that would pay for him.  Three whole sovereigns, he had said.
                Lysander stared down at the cobblestone, and didn’t look up.
                Well, Issie had gotten sick, and he could barely afford food,
let alone medicine or a mage to heal her.  Chaisty had only had to smile
knowingly when Lysander finally swallowed his pride and came to him.  He hadn’t
been lying, though, and the man certainly did come two days later.  Lysander
had been desperate to keep Issie well, but she just seemed to keep getting
worse.  Chaisty had given Lysander a bed for the night.
                It had been terrifying.  Worse than terrifying, and when he
cried, the man had licked the tears off his face before he pushed his head into
the pillows.  It had muffled his cries of pain.  Chaisty had found him in the
alley in the morning… vomiting.  The man had the audacity to laugh when he
handed him the money, saying he was taking some of it for the rent of the room,
some more for ruining the sheets.  When he took a whole sovereign, Lysander
felt cheated, but too sick, and too unable to do anything about it to stop it.
                It had taken nearly all of the money to heal Issie.  Lysander
certainly didn’t regret healing her, but he shivered every time he walked by
the Mermaid.  Similarly to how Chaisty smiled knowingly every time Lysander
stumbled out of one of his rooms, and went to the back alley to vomit. 
Desperation drove him to it, and a desire to do better by the girls.  What else
could he do?  He couldn’t always find work, but Chaisty always seemed to have a
client interested in a young man with blonde hair, who had a reputation for
crying a lot in bed.
                But the purse at his side had a nice weight to it.  This was
his big break.  With this…  It wasn’t exactly a way out, but it was a good
start.  If he could get in good with the mercenary guild and pay his dues, he
could find work more regularly—better paying jobs too.
                No matter what horrors he had been through, or committed, the
things he had done he was ashamed of, when little Issie flew at him as he
stepped through the door, and Matilda rushed to embrace him, everything in the
world seemed right.  He looked at Issie and insisted that she had gotten taller
and prettier since he had seen her last—a few days ago.  She giggled, and
blushed, and he was happy to be alive.
 
                “You’re late,” Madame Aurane told her as Lura rushed in.  She
panted, trying to catch her breath.
                “The gate at the alienage was closed,” Lura said.  She swiped
her brow.  “I had to scale the wall—don’t talk to me about being late.”
                Aurane regarded her the same way she might regard a mouse who
had dared to enter her establishment.  “Go wash yourself off.  Your appointment
is in fifteen minutes.”
                “Appointment?” Lura asked, a bit surprised.
                Aurane’s facial expression did not change.  “Yes.  You were
asked for, specifically, by name.”
                Lura frowned.  “Oh.”  Then she hurried to the bathing room. 
The water was tepid, and the soap scented.  She scrubbed down quickly and
brushed her hair.  She donned the low-cut gown that hugged her waist and hips
and strode up to her room.  She made sure that everything was in order, and
then realized that she had not thought to ask who it was that had requested
her.  She walked back down the stairs, reasoning that she still had some time. 
She asked Aurane, and she showed her the ledger.  Lura looked at the name. 
“Oh,” she said, and wondered how angry Aurane would be if Lura were to walk out
the door.
                “He’ll pay two sovereigns for the night, and you’re taking
Allison’s room,” Aurane said.  She looked at her, waiting to see what her part-
time whore would do.  Lura only stared, so the human said, “Lura, you will
perform or you will not come back again—do you hear me?  It’s your job, your
duty.”
                Lura nodded once.  “Oh,” she said again, and turned away, and
went back to the room.  She waited, but not long.  He came to her, and she
pretended not to know him.  She knew that he knew her, but it was better if she
pretended.  Even when he laughed and called her by name, even when he commented
on how he had bedded her before.  She let it all wash over her like water—wet,
but it would dry, and she would be no worse off for it.  He said he had paid
enough for her to do things, things that she would rather not do, but she did
them.  There wasn’t much other choice for her, not really.  And Madame Aurane
would not allow complaint from customers, not unless they hurt one of her
whores.  Some things hurt, but nothing that was lasting, save the emotional
damage, and when she thought about it, there wasn’t too much about her that was
worth preserving.  Leto had made a sacrifice to get her away from this, and
what had she done?  She would be ashamed if he knew.
                As he was finally dressing, she asked him, “Is Leto alive?”
                Danarius looked back at her, his gaze lingering more on her
breasts than on her face.  “No,” he told her, voice bland.  “He’s gone—he
didn’t last through the Ritual.”
                She stared at him, her eyes wide and unbelieving.  “But…  I’ve
heard that you…  That you have a bodyguard that’s…”
                “Another slave.  Someone else survived the Ritual.  Not Leto.”
                “Oh,” she said, her eyes flicking to the floor.  And she
suddenly didn’t care about anything that had just transpired.  Not even the
things he had said to her.  She found that she didn’t care about much of
anything, in fact.  He had paid for the entire evening, but it had only been a
few hours.  As he was leaving, he dropped two gold coins into her lap.  She
stared at them as if from far away, and scarcely heard the door shut.  She sat
for a long time, but did not cry.
                Her heart was broken, and she felt numb.  Too numb to think for
the longest time, and when her mind was finally forming thoughts and whole
sentences again, she could only think, Leto is dead.
                And she sat for a while longer, and finally a tear rolled down
her cheek, then another, and she was laying on the tangled sheets and crying,
her grief racked through her like a thing alive, and she knew she would never
love again.  She didn’t think she could ever even dream again.
 
                He was sitting on a slated rooftop.  The stars were out, and
the person beside him excitedly pointed at a shooting star, which he just
barely missed enough to know that she had seen it.
                “Make a wish,” he heard himself say in a voice that was not
quite his own.
                The redheaded girl had smiled, and closed her eyes, and wished,
then opened them again, all smiles.  “How many stars are out there?”
                “I don’t know—millions?”
                She scooted closer to him, and snuggled up to his warmth.  He
felt a sort of protectiveness of her, and she a childlike adoration for him. 
“Can we count them?”
                “But there’s millions of them,” he protested, but she begged
and badgered, and he relented.  They leaned back on the roof, and counted.  As
the numbers ascended, the scenery around him began to change, and suddenly he
realized he was dreaming.  Fenris looked at the girl, and moved instinctively
away from her.  He wanted to ask, Who are you?  But he did not need to—the girl
was staring at him in shocked horror too, as if she did not know who he was
either.
                The lyrium was glowing, and when he looked up, the stars were
not stars, but tiny dots of lyrium.  The girl ran away from him—farther and
farther away into the night, and he called out to her, but she did not even
turn around.  He was alone, and there was nothing but the glowing lyrium.  He
heard an infant crying, and tried to look for it, but did not see it.  He heard
other sounds—terrifying sounds of hacking limbs and bloody, curdled cries. 
Something touched his arm, then fell away as he jumped.  The things in the
darkness were all around him, and he could not see them, not even for the light
of the lyrium.
                They touched him occasionally, before they fell away with a
hacking, bloody sound.  Then he heard someone say his name, and he turned and
looked, but saw no one.  He ran, but could not escape the dark world of lyrium
and the things in the dark.  They were everywhere, and it went on forever… 
Someone called his name again…
                Fenris’ eyes opened with a startled gasp.  The light from the
lyrium was casting shadows on the wall, and he could not calm enough to control
it.  Someone touched his arm, and he jumped, and looked up at Danarius.  His
master must have come back from the whorehouse recently; he was still dressed
and smelled like sex.  Fenris had only wondered why he had been insistent to
leave his bodyguard behind.
                “The servants would not go near you,” he explained, running a
finger along the brightly glowing lyrium.  Fenris’ heart pounded, eyes wide
from the nightmare.  He swallowed, and the light dulled, then he remembered the
things in the dark, and it just brightened again.
                Danarius rubbed his thumb along Fenris’ cheekbone, and cupped
his face.  “They’re just dreams,” he told him. 
                Fenris was not entirely certain he believed him.  It had felt… 
Nothing had ever felt so real.  He also had not had this many problems
controlling the lyrium since the Ritual.  It was almost embarrassing really. 
“Yes, Master,” he whispered, but the lyrium only dimmed again, then flared.
                Danarius sighed, and sat down beside him.  A few minutes later,
a little patient coaxing and calming, and Fenris was laying down with his head
against Danarius’ leg, and the magister was idly running his finger along the
lyrium on his slave’s arm, his other hand in his hair.  The lyrium had dimmed
considerably, and it would always glow, but Fenris was still not exactly calm. 
He felt like if he were to sleep again, he would only dream the same dream
again.  He wondered if the infant crying in the dream was going through the
same torment he had been—the things he could not see brushing against him.
                “Feeling better?” his master inquired.
                Fenris was silent a long moment.  “No,” he admitted.
                “I know a sleeping spell.  You wouldn’t dream.”
                To tell the truth,  Fenris had been having nightmares since
they had first docked a couple of days ago.  Sleep did not come easily to him
here, and he wanted to be gone from this place as soon as possible.  “I
wouldn’t?”
                “No.”
                Fenris accepted this idea with perfect trust, and the magister
cast the spell, and watched his pet relax, and fall asleep.  Rochelle had, upon
learning the spell was possible, told him to study it, because it might be
useful for future children.  Using it now had been… difficult.  His child would
be a little older than Fenris now, if it had lived.  That was a rattling
thought.
                He moved the elf back onto the cushions, and looked down at him
in the gloom of the room.  His apprentice was trained, his wife was dead, his
child dead, but he still had his legacy lying on the bed.  That was
something—more than some people had even.  Then why did it still leave him
feeling empty?
 
                Vanessa looked at the magister across from her.  She despised
all of these politics and backstabbing words, daggers cloaked in every
sentence.  She would rather speak frankly than read between the lines.  It was
exactly why, if she ever went back to the mainland, she would resign.
                “Have you taken an apprentice?” he asked, very casually it
would seem.
                She forced a pleasant smile.  “I haven’t the time,” she said
honestly.  “Too much work with the military, you see.”
                Danarius nodded thoughtfully.  “You take your duties very
seriously, it would seem.”
                “And some do not take them seriously enough.”  Her fingers
knitted together.  “We need more men, and more ships.  Not slaves; I want
trained soldiers and sailors.”  She had gone to each magister who had come
individually.  Some had offered to placate her with money, others offered
slaves, some even offered weapons, but it was not what they needed.  “We need
supplies.  We need tradesmen:  Blacksmiths, bow makers, fletchers, and
furriers.  I need more destriers.”
                “I’m breeding destriers,” he said amiably.  “Though training
them is very difficult, and they are very expensive.”  He straightened. 
“Still, how many do you need?”  He knew the war effort was important at least. 
Some of the southern, more inland magisters were so far detached from it that
they infuriated her.
                They talked business, and prices.  He invested in ships, but
what she had gone after Danarius for were the war horses and supplies.  They
spoke for a time about that, before Vanessa moved on to the next subject.  “I
need to feed the men too.  And I flatly refuse to feed the slaves in-field on
gruel and rice.  I need something more sustaining for them too.  Everyone needs
to keep their morale and their strength up, the slaves especially if we keep
sending them to dangerous areas.  They too easily defect when we treat them
poorly.”
                Danarius nodded thoughtfully.  Some magisters had argued with
her on that point.  At least he was reasonable.  But she had been banking on
him being reasonable.  “My brother grows wheat, rice, and barley.  Perhaps I
can speak to him.”
                Vanessa sighed, but nodded.  “What we really need is more
meat—cows and pigs.”
                The magister shrugged.  “I’m afraid I disposed of my family’s
sheep some couple dozen years ago, but I, perhaps, could come across some
cattle.”  He frowned.  “But I want something.”
                “You always do,” she sighed, and gestured him on.  “What can I
do for you?”
                He was silent for a moment.  “There’s a boy—about eight years
old—a slave.  Owned by the army,” he began.  Vanessa frowned.  “He’s half-
elven, and blind.”
                Shaislyn, she thought.  He had come from Minrathous.  Was
Danarius his mother’s master?  “What of him?”
                He smiled pleasantly.  “It would be very convenient for me if
he were to be marched north and die in battle.”
                Vanessa’s eyes widened in shock.  Why?  He was just a child… 
Then she looked at the man.  The curly hair, the pale blue eyes, even some of
the features.  “I see,” she said.  “You’re the boy’s sire, aren’t you.”
                Danarius stared at her, daring her to continue.  But she
already knew where it was headed.  He had no heir to speak of with his lady
wife dead so long ago, magic bleeding out of his bloodlines.  And Shaislyn,
being his son, was a political scandal.  Why, then, hadn’t he killed the boy a
long time ago?
                She sat back in her chair.  “You could have had him killed at
any time when he was in the alienage.  Why didn’t you?”
                “I used to think I might have need of him in the future, but I
am quite certain now that it would be better if he died.”
                She didn’t know what he meant exactly by that, but it angered
her nonetheless.  “No.”
                He raised an eyebrow.  “Very well.  Is he at the fort?”
                Her eyes narrowed dangerously.  “No.  I won’t tell you where he
is, and when he gets back, it is none of your business.”  She rose to her
feet.  “I’m adopting him.  I will abolish all records of his bloodlines, and
for all sakes and purposes, he will be my son.  Will this be sufficient to
getting rid of him?”
                He looked annoyed.  “No.”  They were both silent, the magisters
staring at one another, testing the other.  “But I don’t need your permission
to have him killed, Vanessa.  It would just be simpler.”  He rose from the
chair.  “I’ll see about the destriers and the grain.  You consider your
decision.  The same accidents that could befall a half-trained slave could just
as easily befall a magister.  So be careful.”
                Vanessa was seething by the time he left.  He had tried to buy
Shaislyn’s life with a few head of cattle.  Well, when he got back, she was
adopting him, and that would be the end of it.  She would have to be careful
for a while, but perhaps an accident could just as easily befall Danarius.
 
                Varania paced back and forth.  “I heard the guards talking,”
she said.  “On my way back from the Circle, I mean.”
                Lura looked up.  She was up to her elbows in soapy water,
scrubbing their chipped plates and pots.  “About what?”
                Varania stopped walking abruptly.  “They’re going to close off
the alienage the night of the wedding,” she said, rounding on Lura as if it
were her fault.
                The brunette blinked, and went back to scrubbing.  “We’ll be at
the castle all night, I imagine.  They’ll open them again in the morning—I’m
sure.”
                The mage bit her lip worriedly.  “We shouldn’t go,” she said,
wringing her hands nervously.
                “It’ll be fine,” Lura told her again.  “Look—I’ve climbed that
gate before, and I can get you over it too.”
                Somehow, Varania wasn’t surprised.  It wasn’t the gate closing
all night that worried her, though.  “You remember the bride’s family name?”
she said, seemingly changing the subject.
                Lura frowned.  “No—I hate politics.  What’s it matter?”
                Varania threw up her hands.  “How can you miss that?  It’s
Danarius.”
                Lura dropped the wet rag back into the soapy water, then looked
down and busied herself again.  “It doesn’t mean anything.  We’ll be in the
kitchen,” she pointed out.
                Varania crossed her arms, and couldn’t think of anything else
to say.  “I…  If he’s there, I can’t go.”  Memories of the rape still haunted
her, years later.  It had left her with child, and she had been so young…  How
could anyone do that to someone else?
                Lura looked up.  “We really need the money from this, Varania.”
                The mage shook her head stubbornly.  “I know, but…  But…”
                The brunette looked up, her eyes full of compassion.  Lura was
angry with her for it.  How could she know?  How could she know what it was
like?  “I’m sorry… But we need this.”
                She shivered, and looked down.  They did really need it.  They
would lose out on it for her selfishness.  She knew she wouldn’t even see the
man, but…  “I…”
                Lura considered.  “He may not even be there.  But if he is, do
you think he’ll have Leto with him?”  Her voice was a bit hollow-sounding when
she spoke, but Varania attributed this to how tired she looked.
                Varania’s head shot up, her eyes full of hope.  “Do you
think…?”
                She smiled encouragingly.  “See?  A silver lining—maybe we’ll
both get to see him.  But only if we go.”
                She resumed her pacing, but was quiet as she thought.  Lura
continued to wash the dishes.  It had been years.  What would be the odds the
magister would even recognize her?  Varania was just another elf, after all. 
Leto though…  The chance to see him again would be…  She stopped.  “All right. 
I’ll go—if you’re sure.”
                Lura grinned, though it looked a little forced.  “Sure I am.”
***** Confidence and Cowardice *****
Chapter Summary
     Seheron will fall.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The ceremony had dragged on for ages, the bride fighting back
yawns, and hiding her boredom in a plastered smile.  Her gown was the finest
Orlesian silk, from the outermost layer, to the lining, to the threads it was
stitched with.  She imagined the poor seamstresses stitching each piece
together, bit by bit, having to guess at how much a young girl would grow,
leaving the seams with much allowance just in case.  The last-minute
adjustments to see that as much of her flowering bosom as possible would show
under the plunging neckline, that her slender waist was given every accent from
the corset. 
                Tangled grape vines edged along  the hem of the gown, little
precious gemstones stitched in place of the grapes on the appliqué, gleaming so
brightly they shone even when she stood still.  The train of the dress was long
and flowing, the grape vines flowing up the back of it, the wolf, her family
crest, rising from the vines.  It made her think of the slaves tending those
grape vines, bent under the weight of their toil.  The grape vine design
fringed her sleeves and neckline, but gemstones were much too heavy for a
lady’s delicate wrists and so freshwater pearls of like colours were
substituted.  She wore a gold and diamond circlet, its perfect twin about her
throat, a single stone of black jet at the forefront, as was appropriate to the
Imperial Chantry.
                Annalkylie’s dress alone was worth more money than many ever
saw in their lives.
                Everyone was dressed for the occasion, of course, and quite a
lovely array of peacocks they made—though they had nothing on Orlais,
Annalkylie was more than certain.  The ceremony, she was equally certain, was
very beautiful for those who cared about such things.  It was full of grandeur,
decoration, and beauty—little expense having been spared to give the illusion
of no expense having been spared.  There were fragrant flowers in gold vases,
garlands and silk drapings, the air was perfumed with burning oils instead of
incense and it mingled well with the fine spread of delicacies.  The food was
prepared as beautifully as the clothing, looking so lovely and artfully
prepared she was almost reluctant to sample any of it for fear of destroying
the edible art.
                The servants were dressed finely and in matching colours, the
wine flowed, and music played.  The slaves were covered in an expensive gold
dusting so that when any light fell on them, they would glisten as if they were
living statues.  Sapphires were pinned in their hair and worn at their throats,
gold jewelry adorned their arms, a chain loose about the waist.  What was the
point in owning another person if one could not decorate them like any other
piece of furniture?
                Not everyone was wed by the Black Divine himself, and not
everyone was wed before a court of magi either.  Of course it was a glorious
thing, but the young mage barely noticed it beyond the fluttering in her chest.
                Anyone who noticed her nervousness would only attribute it to a
maiden bride on the eve of her wedding night, of course.  Everyone wanted to
compliment her, dance with her, talk to her.  Gifts had been given, and now
they had moved on to the feasting and entertainment.
                She sat with her lord husband.  He was very gallant, and
charming, and was all in all a perfect spectacle in his fine robes—something
befitting a mage of his rank on this most notable of days.  Kylie participated
in the talk, the laughter, but she drank only very little, and kept good track
of the time.
                There were so many things that could go wrong, so many minor
details.  Had she been careful enough?  Had she selected the men carefully
enough?  Could any of them betray her?  Would they?  What would she do if they
did?  Had the phylacteries all been destroyed?
                The third course was served, and she told her lady-in-waiting
that she needed to go to the privy.  Naturally, she helped her, and it took
longer than she liked to actually leave the hall.  So many people saw her
getting up as an opportunity to speak with her and congratulate her, after
all.  Many of them had been in their cups, and their words were slurred, and
more friendly than may have been usual for them, and so she found it difficult
on more than one occasion to excuse herself.  But, she finally made it out, and
they hurried—so much time was wasted after all.
                They did not go to the privy, but rather, to an empty guest
room.  Kylie’s lady-in-waiting was not only such, but a bodyguard—and a body
double.  Kylie had found her herself, and their likeness was so similar that
they may have been twins, although they had no relation of course.  All that
Evadne needed to do was not speak, which was precisely why Kylie had been
withdrawn throughout most of the ceremony, only smiling and nodding as much as
she could, speaking as little as possible.  Anyone watching her would only
assume she was just a nervous bride.
                But it wouldn’t be long now.
                Evadne helped Kylie out of the dress, and let down her hair. 
The only difference between the two girls—except upon close inspection—was that
Evadne’s hair was straight to Kylie’s curls, which was why she had opted to put
her hair in a net of pearls and disguise it.  Similarly, Evadne had pinned her
hair into a bun at the top of her head.
                Next Evadne stripped out of her more practical, but suitable,
gown and helped Kylie into it.  Kylie struggled lacing Evadne into the big
wedding dress, but with her guidance, they had it on.  After the ceremony, a
couple of servants had bustled it, else, it would be difficult to move in the
room with such an exaggerated train.  Next, they put the mage’s jewelry on
Evadne.  Kylie’s bejeweled shoes were a little too small on Evadne, but Evadne
had insisted she could endure.  Last, a touch up of the paints and rouge on
Evadne, and Kylie washed off her own.  They fixed one another’s hair, and snuck
back into the hall, Evadne taking Kylie’s place at the table.
                The feasting continued, and Kylie was terrified that someone
would notice.  What would she say if they did?  What would she do?  She could
laugh, and giggle, and say it was a joke.  It would be a thing of poor taste,
but a joke nonetheless.  She couldn’t very well tell them the truth, after all.
 
                The guests themselves had been drinking for a few hours, but
Fenris was completely sober, and did not miss the very long amount of time that
Annalkylie had been gone, or how she had looked up continuously at the light in
the skylight.  She may just be counting the hours until she would have to bed
down with her new husband, but he wondered.
                It was a bodyguard’s job to notice, after all—even little
things like that.  Something seemed different about her when she returned, but
he could not quite say what.
                There was dancing, and revelry—something like a controlled
madness in the servant quarters he had passed through but briefly.  They, too,
were treated to casks of ale and mead, breads, cheeses, and he smelled fish
too.  He supposed it was to be expected in a port city.
                The current course was roast peacock, served with an olive
stuffing and roasted asparagus.  The birds had been roasted slowly over an open
flame and seasoned to perfection, then were painstakingly re-feathered,
garnished on a bed of green and purple grapes, and brought out on rolling
tables.  Re-feathering them, to Fenris, seemed like a horrifying waste of time,
when they would only be plucked again to eat.  But how was one to know it was
peacock if it wasn’t presented as such?  How indeed.  Fenris imagined that the
kitchens could feed them goose, and dress it up like a peacock, and very few
here would know the difference—particularly after all the wine and spirits that
had gone around.
                At least he didn’t see any atrocities committed—yet.  With so
many magisters gathered from all across the Imperium, it was really only a
matter of time.  He found some modicum of comfort in that, while his master may
be… cruel… his family, Annalkylie’s family, were none of them mages save
herself, and seemed, for the most part, a decent sort at least.  He had never
seen them murder children anyway.  The Archon and his family, though… he had
nothing but a creeping feeling from them.
                A minstrel took up his harp, and sang—a song composed about the
beauty of the bride primarily.  If he had known Annalkylie at all, beauty was a
poor choice to impress her.  It wasn’t that Annalkylie wasn’t pretty—she was—it
was that it never mattered to her.
                Fenris had heard her speaking to an older servant once.  The
older woman had told her, “You look beautiful, my lady.”
                Annalkylie had not smiled.  “Beauty touches us and is gone too
quickly.  I would rather have wisdom, and truth,” she added the last part as an
afterthought.  It was practical, but it was a sad kind of practicality she
had.  She had received nothing in life she had truly wanted, and what she had
thought she wanted had become a viper in her hand.
                He imagined that a life at court would change her, and not for
the best.  Still, if it didn’t change her… maybe she could change it.  He
really believed that if all the magisters and mages alike were corrupt, she
wasn’t.  She was the best of them.  She could change the way things were.  She
had a kind heart—he knew it.  Annalkylie helped the poor.  The concept of
slavery seemed to upset her.  If there really were human mages like that… maybe
there was some hope for them, especially if she were in the position of power
she was getting through her marriage.
 
                Lura hurried back and forth in the kitchen, bringing things,
getting rid of other things.  The kitchen was so noisy and busy that she didn’t
notice the sound of the war horns until she saw some of the others stop.
                Then she heard it.
                All was silent for a long moment, and when the horn stopped its
cry, and everyone realized that it was the sound of attack, all broke into
chaos.
                The servants immediately abandoned their posts.  Some went one
way, others a different way.
                Lura was too short to see Varania.  Where had she gone?  The
girl was a mage, and even so, she dared not lose her here.  She wouldn’t
forgive herself if something happened to Leto’s little sister.  Varania was all
she had left of the man she had loved.
                “Varania!” she cried, but over the din and confusion, no one
could have hoped to hear her.
                There was a booming crack, and she turned to look.  An enormous
black kettle had been knocked over, and it had split up its side.  Its boiling
contents spread across the floor, but it looked to have quenched the fire for
the most part.
                A sudden press of bodies forced her to either move or be run
over.  She chose to move.  She attempted to break away from the horde of
bodies, but found it impossible, and she just seemed to keep getting shoved
along.  Her cries and objection sounded on deaf ears, and then she was pushed
through a doorway by the wave of bodies, and everyone broke away.  Most ran, in
every direction.  Others followed someone else, and still others seemed lost on
what to do.
                Order was attempted to be maintained—a steward trying to bark
out orders to return to the kitchen, or to be orderly and civil.  No one paid
him much heed, though.
                Lura did not see Varania.  Her heart skipped a beat, and she
pressed her way back inside when the crowd had thinned.
                “Varania!” she called to a mostly empty kitchen.  There was no
answer, and she tried again as she searched.  She hesitated, and went out into
the hall.  People rushed by her.  A dwarf nearly knocked her over, and she
stayed close to the wall.  Guardsmen rushed past her, and didn’t even seem to
notice her.
                She pushed open a door, and found herself in the great hall. 
Moments ago, people had been feasting, and reveling.  Now it stood empty. 
Well, not entirely empty.  She looked on, her lips frowning in disapproval.  An
elven servant was plucking the utensils from the table.  They had all been gold
and silver.
                He looked at her.  “You got a problem?” he snapped.
                She shook her head, and left the room quickly, before he
decided to become violent.  This is why people were suspicious of elves.  It
was why they thought them all cheats, thieves, and liars.  But she supposed…
anyone in poverty, if desperate enough, would lie and cheat and steal.  Their
reasons might even be good, but it was still thievery.
                Where had Varania gone?
                Well, no matter where she had gone, Lura needed to find
somewhere safe to stay until the Qunari—that was what the attackers were, she
was certain—could be beaten back… or until the Imperials fell.
                Either way, she had best find somewhere safe.
 
                All around Varania was chaos, and she tried not to be swept up
in it, but still the sense of urgency and desire to run was contagious.  She
tried to flee, but knew not where exactly.  Someone snatched her arm suddenly,
whirling her to face them.  “You,” he snapped.  “You’re a mage.”
                “Y-yes—“
                “Then come with me,” he said, and gave her no choice in the
matter.  He had simply drug her forward, and she had no choice but to keep up. 
He met up with his fellows, and the guards hurried.
                “What’s going on?” she asked them.
                One of them looked at her.  “We’re under attack,” the woman
answered her flatly.  “Isn’t it obvious?”
                “Is it… the Qunari?” she asked.
                “Who else?” a man demanded.  Varania fell silent.  The Qunari. 
And they were all but kidnapping Varania to help fight them.  How could she
tell them that she didn’t know how to fight?  Would they even listen?
                She had to try.  “I don’t know how to fight,” she protested. 
“I never have!”
                “The gate is open as we speak.  Fight or not, do you think
you’ll live?” the man holding her arm shot back.
                Varania wanted to protest.  She wanted to insist that she would
only get in the way, that she would make things worse, but how?  The gates were
open—not broken, but open.  The Qunari would be in the city already.  How could
this have happened?
                When she was outside, she was thrown on a horse, behind a
soldier.  She saw the magisters fleeing, and thought she saw…
                “Leto!” she screamed, hand outreached, but he didn’t hear her. 
In fact, he was already gone.  She wanted to cry.  So close…  They had been so
close, and she had barely managed to glimpse him.  She knew it was him, from
the bottom of her soul, she knew it was her brother, even though he was older
and his hair was different.  And the soldier spurred his horse in the opposite
direction.  The gates—he was taking her to the gates.  The magisters—and
Leto—had gone to the docks in the opposite direction.
                Those bastards, she thought, bitter tears tracking down her
cheeks. They’re fleeing on their ships, and leaving the rest of us to die.
                The horse thundered down the cobblestone, and it was all the
young woman could do to hold on.  There was so much confusion that she could
barely understand what was happening.  People were running.  Screaming.
                Then she saw it.  Ahead, the city was burning.  Most of the
city’s mages were in the field, with the army.  An army that had either
perished without word, or else simply would not make it in time.  Either way,
it didn’t make a difference to her if they couldn’t help.
                The soldier pulled up his horse.  It wasn’t the gate.  She
peered past the soldier, and her heart hammered, eyes widening.  The city was
on fire.  The huge city gates stood open, and the Qunari horde poured in.  The
street had been blockaded with carts, wagons, and rubble, but it was
temporary.  Archers fired from rooftops.  Ordinary citizens ran past the
soldiers, fleeing, but to where?  Desperate guards and soldiers alike were
trying to hold back the horde, but even Varania could see it was hopeless.  She
saw a man fall from a rooftop, an arrow jutting out of his chest.  He hit the
ground hard, but over the din all around her, she did not hear his skull crack.
                She stared at the body, and was so transfixed that she did not
realize the soldier was trying to help her down until he simply grabbed her and
hauled her off his mount.  She was half-drug to the haphazardly constructed
wall in the street.
                “A staff!  The mage needs a staff!” the soldier cried.
                A woman rode up, reigning in her horse.  At first, Varania
assumed that the rider must be another soldier in civilian garb, but her eyes
arched in surprise when she saw that it was Vanessa.  The magister had taken a
blade and sliced open her expensive gown she had worn to the wedding, to give
her legs room of movement to mount the horse.  Her feet were in stockings in
the stirrups, and perhaps she had also walked out of her restricting shoes. 
The woman nodded to Varania, and tossed her a staff.  Varania caught it, and
recognized it for Vanessa’s own.
                “Where’s Shaislyn!?” Varania cried.
                The magister looked on her with pity, and shook her head sadly,
before she wheeled the horse away.
                Dead?  Already?  No…  No, how could that be?  The city had not
fallen yet.  So surely…
                But she had no time to think about her lost son; she was being
ushered up the steps onto a rooftop, and there was not a moment to lose.  She
looked back over her shoulder and saw the magister.  She did not flee with the
other magisters.  Rather, she had stayed behind.  She had stayed to command her
troops, to lead them, to fight.
                She had stayed behind to die with them, when she could have
fled with the magisters, and lived.  Varania found herself respecting her for
that, and hating the magisters who had fled.  They could have helped.  All
those mages would have made a difference.
                But the horde was fast approaching.  Varania wanted to run. 
She wanted to throw down the staff, and run like a coward, begging passage on a
ship.  She was a mage.  There was no reason—none!—that they would not take
her.  If they were taking anyone, it would be a mage.  Surely.
                But she had been summoned here to help, and seeing Vanessa
standing tall on her horse, her power shimmering around her hand, and waiting,
she did not.
                “Hold!” the magister screamed.  The Qunari came to the
blockade, and they began to scale over it.  Arrows were drawn to the archer’s
cheeks.  “Hold!”  The horde came closer.  Horned giants, malicious and
fearsome.  Blood already stained their weapons.  Innocent blood—they had been
murdering everyone in their path, anyone who showed the slightest resistance. 
“Now!”
                Arrows were loosed.  Many hit, but many didn’t.  Flame erupted
from the magister’s hands, and she raised both her hands above her head, and
summoned the firestorm.  The fire rained down over the horde, breaking apart
the wagons.  Fiery splinters assaulted the giants, and the entire blockade
burst into flame.  Men screamed, and died.
                Varania was frozen in place, watching it happen and found she
could do nothing.  She had never seen anything like this before in her life. 
She had never been so close to a Qunari.  She had never seen battle before.
                But she knew the Tevinters were too few to hold.  No one was
watching her.  She dropped the staff, and to her it sounded so loud that surely
everyone had heard her, but no one even turned to look as she fled back down
the steps.
                I’m such a coward, she thought, as she pressed her back against
a wall, and slipped down an alley.  She walked at first, then ran.  The sounds
of battle raged on behind her.
 
                Vanessa spurred her horse about, kicking the animal forward. 
“To me!” she screamed above the mayhem.  “To me!”
                Her men broke, and came to her.  Some had horses, but most did
not.  “Get me a sword,” she instructed.  Someone handed her one.  She raised it
high.  “For the Imperium!”  And she charged forward, her men in a tight fist
behind her.  They broke through the Qunari lines, had a brief squabble, and
then she broke and ran, her men following her in a tight cluster, into an
alley.  To delay the giants, she had left them a gift of blood magic and
demons.  They navigated the close streets.  Few of the Qun followed after them,
and those they killed.  They went after the Qunari, hounding them doggedly. 
They lost men, but the guerrilla tactics they used were effective.
                Being a magister, she had certain knowledge that the commoners
would not.  Namely, the whereabouts of the Imperial army.  With a growing sense
of dread, she realized that they had been tricked:  The Antaam had pretended to
go north, and sent enough men, traveling in a wide loop, to give the illusion
that that was what they were doing, while the rest of their army traveled to
the city.  The Imperials had gone after the diversion, and she knew that none
of their scouting parties had ever returned.  She could have just as easily
attributed it to the Fog Warriors, but now she wondered.  It had not been her
decision alone that had caused the Imperials to trail the diversion and attack
them instead, but she had influenced it.
                They rushed through the horde, and disappeared into another
alley, only to reappear later.  They used the only advantage they had: 
Knowledge of the terrain.  They would not last forever, though.  Her men knew
that, and she knew that too.
                All she could do was try to stall them and keep as many as she
could from reaching the docks, which was where most of the citizens had fled. 
The docks, now, were their only hope.  For any survivors, it would be forced
indoctrination and a sort of mental slavery through what the Qunari referred to
as “reeducation”.
                Many of her fellows had forgotten, but the magisters were
leaders, and the Imperial citizens their followers.  A leader’s first and
foremost responsibility was to the people, not to themselves.  She would try to
buy as much time as she could before she, too, was cut down, for the people to
escape.
                She knew that many, though by no means all, of the citizens
hated and spurned her for being a mage and a magister, especially in war-torn
Seheron where everyone was tired of the fighting.  She knew that with all her
heart, but even still, she wanted them to live.  She wanted them to have the
life that was denied her:  A loving family, children.
                A life without Circle politics and demons.
 
                Iden rounded on Danarius like a viper.  “Where’s my daughter?”
he hissed.
                The magister looked at his brother.  “Why would I know?” he
countered.
                His wife’s fingernails were digging into Iden’s arm.  It had to
be painful, but the man hardly seemed to notice it.  “She was there when the
horns blew,” she insisted.  “Then she… wasn’t.”
                “I thought she had escaped,” Agasius said.  “I thought she was
with us!”
                Danarius glanced at the ships.  “She might already be on
board.  I’m sure she’s with the Archon,” he said decidedly.
                “Did you see that?” Caleigh countered.
                The magister admitted, “No.  But she would have had guards. 
I’m sure she simply arrived before us, and is already on board.”
                His family seemed unconvinced, but there was nothing anyone
could do about it.  They looked about the docks for her.  Citizens were flowing
into the docks.  Stampeding really, but the soldiers kept them orderly enough. 
Those who were too panicked were killed—there was nothing else for it really.
                “It’s time,” the boat captain yelled, rushing up to the
gathered magisters and their families.
                They began to move forward, onto the boat.  The man pointed at
Fenris.  Danarius froze.  “The elf stays,” he said.
                Danarius stared at him, unbelieving what he had heard.  “Get
him on a different ship, then, but he goes,” the magister insisted.
                The captain shook his head.  “There’s no room,” he insisted
right back.  “He’s a slave.  He stays.”  The man moved on, leaving no more room
for argument.
                The magister glowered, but could do nothing.  Rank meant
nothing right now.  Power meant nothing.  They were all running, and being a
citizen and being a slave meant all the difference.  The magister turned back
toward Fenris, conscious of the others flowing into the ship past him.  “You
stay alive,” he told him.  Fenris blinked at him.  Blood was splattered on his
clothes, on his face.  They had not made it to the gates unmolested.  “I will
return to collect you as soon as I am able.  Stay alive.”
                It was all he could do, so he turned and left his prized
possession standing at the docks, and being slowly pressed back into the crowd.
                The boat filled quickly enough, and the captain set sail
immediately.  Danarius stood on deck, gripping the railing so tight his hands
hurt, staring at the dock.  The city burned, and he could smell the pitch.  He
could hear people screaming and dying.  He heard stone crumbling, and sounds
that could only be magic, but he was staring at his prized possession.  He
watched Fenris, standing alone in the crowd, and watched his pet drifting
farther and farther away from him.
                What if the elf were slain in battle?  Worse, what if the
Qunari took him?
                That captain was going to pay.  Better still, he was going to
die.  Slowly, and painfully, but not until they were safely back in Minrathous.
 
                At his back, he could feel the heat of the flames from the
burning city.  People were dying, and crying out in anguish.  All the boats had
set sail, leaving the rest to the mercy of a merciless people.
                Fenris watched the boats disappear.  He felt abandoned again,
but this was so much worse than any time before it.  He felt like he was being
left here to die.
                He needed to leave.  He felt that very strongly.  He needed to
get away from the docks.  The Qunari would come here when they noticed that
most of the survivors were here.
                The elf wondered where he could go to hide, to escape the
horde’s notice.  When he thought about it seriously, it seemed obvious.  He
would go to a place they would not check.  Somewhere they had already been and
were not likely to return.
                He did not know this city well, else he may have taken back
roads and alleys whenever he could.  Rather, he carved a path in blood to the
city wall.  He had fought a Qunari before.  He was confident enough, and
rightfully so.  The fires toward the gate had mostly died.  Beyond, he heard
the fighting continue.
                He imagined it would stop soon.  The Tevinters were too few,
after all.  It was hopeless.
                He heard a woman cry out a name, and paid it no heed.  Maybe
she mourned a lost lover, or a child.  So many people had died already.  So
many more would be dead by morning.
                He heard someone run toward him.  He turned, ready to fight,
but it was just an elven woman.  Maybe a servant, but he did not think a
slave.  She was out of breath, and her long brown hair was in tatters.  Hope
reflected in her wet honey eyes.  “I…  Maker, I thought…”  She gasped, as if in
disbelief, and then made a small noise of pain as she slid to the ground.  The
Qunari, blade still slick with the woman’s blood, turned his blade toward
Fenris.
                Fenris moved forward, around the woman.  There was a brief
flurry of swords, a bright glow of lyrium, and the Qunari lay dead in moments,
the skirmish ended.  He looked back at the woman.  She would die out here,
alone in the street with no one to mourn her.  He knelt beside her, one hand
still on his sword.   Was she even still alive?  Yes, he saw.  Her breath came
ragged and was fading quickly, but she still drew breath—for the moment.
                He looked down at her, gently wiping her hair from her face,
the only modicum of comfort he knew to provide.  He had no words to give her,
no reassurances; he was no priest or holy knight.  He was just a slave.  She
was so pale.  They always looked so pale when they bled out like this.  She
even smiled—or tried to, her eyes still hopeful and even serene.  When was the
last time someone had ever looked at Fenris like that?  He didn’t know.  Was
she delirious?  Did she even see him, or was she already that far gone?  Was it
some lost loved one she truly smiled for, someone she would be reunited with
after she had breathed her last breath?  “Leto…” she breathed, blood trickling
from her once cherry lips.  Maybe it was the name of someone she knew, or half
a name for that matter.  It could even be a place for all he knew.  Maybe she
was delirious.  When Fenris died… he had no one he could smile like that for. 
No name that would trickle from his lips like blood.  In that moment, he felt
more alone than he ever had.
                Distantly, he heard shouting, the clash of steel.  He heard the
pounding of hooves, the screams of the dying.  He heard pottery smashing and
saw a building catch fire in the night, the smoke rising to meet the sky. 
Glass shattered, and he heard an infant scream.  A shiver ran up his spine.
                An infant wailing.  Someone shouting.  Blinding pain. 
Oblivion.
                He could not stay here, that much was clear.  He checked her
pulse again, and found that the young woman had passed on.  Gently, he closed
her soft brown eyes, for the last time, and moved on.  It was the most he could
do for her.
                His ultimate goal was to make it out of the gate, and away from
the sacked city.  It seemed the safest route.
                He never made it that far, though.  A party of Qunari found
him.  They had apparently thought it would be short work to dispose of one elf,
but Fenris wasn’t just an elf.  For that matter, he wasn’t just a soldier, or
just a slave, or just a bodyguard.  Sweat dripped from his brow, soaking his
hair, as he swung his sword.  The most important thing to remember, Master
Taggart had said, was to breathe evenly.  Think before you swing.
                The swords clashed.
                One mistake could kill you.
                They had been lessons well-learned.  He controlled his
breathing, and thus the way he moved.  Fluid, like water, cutting through the
air—and flesh and bone.
                You won’t always have time to change your angle of attack; the
weapon is too heavy.  Before you do anything, think.  Before you swing, think. 
Before you cut, think.  Before you step, think.  Will you survive if you do
this?  Will your master survive?
                Taggart had told him that, with his choice of weaponry, he
would not be able to defend well or often.  But he had said that it was good
that he was an elf—and back then, it had made Fenris secretly happy to hear it,
because everyone else had seen it as a downside.  He had said that elves were
lithe and dexterous, and that would be his only defense against attacks.
                “You’re strong, but you’re not big enough for heavy armor,” he
had told him.  They had even tried it; Fenris just couldn’t move in it.  He was
utterly useless in heavy armor.  “So you must learn to dodge.”  He had added
that last part with a malicious grin, and spent the next several weeks hitting
Fenris with a heavy oak stick, and yelling at him when he couldn’t dodge in
time, even though he had been carrying a lead weight that weighed as much as he
did.
                And Fenris remembered that lesson too when the second Qunari
joined the fray, brandishing two blades.  The quick rogues were the most
dangerous to him, for he could not do the dance of blades long with them, and
they were nimble and could run circles around him if he let them.
                And another warrior joined, and he kept an eye on both of them,
falling to defense even when he knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do.  He
needed to attack.  A good attack was as good as a defense, in the right
circumstance.
                He suddenly changed tactics and pressed forward with a violent
swing.  The blade missed the rogue, but shattered one of the daggers, and
seemed to have hurt his hand.  The lighter Qunari temporarily disabled, he
turned to the other, striking out with the pommel of the sword.  He struck, but
the blow glanced off the horns, as the brute turned his head at the last
possible moment.  It still staggered the Qunari backwards, and he sensed more
than saw the rogue behind him again.  He dashed quickly to the side, and the
other missed.  The elf struck, and this time cleaved the Qunari’s arm off at
the joint, and then spun to face the other.
                He was glowing, he realized, and the others were running to
stop him now.  Would they see him as a mage’s pet—something to be stopped at
all costs?  It didn’t matter.
                He fought, and remembered his lessons.  He remembered the
lectures, the riding lessons, and the steps he had learned in the dance of
swords and blood.  He fought with an easy grace, and felt more at peace than he
had ever felt in his life.
                He felt the most at peace with a weapon in his hands.  Just
that small amount of control was enough to calm him, despite the chaos of
battle all around him.  He was confident.  At this, he was the one in control. 
He was the one who wielded the power of life or death.  Not the magisters, not
his master.  Just him.
                He fought, and pushed them back, and killed some of them, and
for a moment, it seemed like he would kill them all and continue on his way. 
He even saw that happening:  All the Qunari attacking him (or was it the other
way around now?) would die, and he would continue on, toward the gate.  He
would run free from the city and its death and flames, and he didn’t know what
after that and it didn’t even matter.
                Cut.  Swing.  Attack.  He pressed forward, stepped back.  He
dodged and parried, and cut.  His life narrowed down to one pristine—maybe even
holy—moment.
                Saarebas rounded the corner.  He was unconcerned.  He could
kill mages, even Qunari mages.  Especially Qunari mages, who were strictly
untrained and undisciplined in magic.  He was strong, and confident, and an
expert swordsman.  His master had commanded him to survive, and he would.  He
felt like he was invincible—like he could destroy the entire army.
                He backed up, under an awning, using the wall so that they
could no longer keep trying to stab him in the back.  The mage harried him with
every step, and he had to counter attacks from the two other surviving Qunari
as well.  Then the ground began to shake.  Saarebas stood tall, his arms raised
and Fenris realized it was the mage’s work.
                He was confused for a moment, but then the awning crumbled.  He
saw it happen, but could not break away, or hope to escape it.  He could only
watch it fall.
                The awning was not a contraption of cloth and wooden beams. 
Rather, this one was mostly wood, and had been attached to a stone building. 
When it fell, it had fallen and taken a good portion of the wall with it.  The
Qunari started to back away when the stone cracked.  Fenris made to run, but
too late.
                The awning crashed down, and buried him under it.
 
                A contingent of soldiers from the city had broken away.  Rather
than defend the city, they had fled it.  Very promising men, that.  It seemed
like at the last moment, they had a change of heart, and attacked the Qunari
encampment instead.  Sort of spiteful, Shaislyn thought.  Or perhaps things
were really that hopeless in the city.
                He listened to the goings-on from his cage, and was quietly
pleased with all the mayhem going on.  Let them die.  Let them all die.
                He hated the Qunari.  He hated them passionately, and with all
his being.  He hated their religion, and their ways.  He hated all of them.
                His lips were dry, and cracked and out of habit, he tried to
lick them to wet them, but the stitching got in the way.  That horrible
stitching.
                He could eat only very little, and only certain foods, and in
tiny bites.  They had given him enough room in the stitching to open his mouth
enough to eat, but nothing more.  What was even the point?  He didn’t need to
open his mouth that wide to talk, so this just seemed cruel to him.
                He had cried and wailed, and tried to scream, but though he
could produce the sound, with how limited his jaw movements were, the motion
was difficult.  All the same, he had done it for days.  Now he just cried, and
lamented his inability to remove the stitching.  He had tried dozens of times. 
Each time, Arvaarad had beaten him, and it only ingrained his hatred further.
                They had dictated the Qun to him, and he had no doubt that he
faced more horrors in the time to come.  They would convert him, given time, or
something worse.  The only reason they had failed to castrate him had been good
timing.
                He had kicked, and fought as best he could, and they had just
managed to get his pants off when the encampment had fallen under attack by
someone he assumed must be the Imperials, or maybe the Fog Warriors.  He had
been hopeful then, but the Qunari had won out, but they had never bothered to
try to castrate him again.  There was too much else to do, he supposed, to
worry about whether or not they had cut off a child’s organs.
                The stitches, though, were something else.
                Arvaarad watched over his charge, making sure none tried to
free the “evil mage” locked in a cage.  Shaislyn hoped the Qunari died, and
perhaps someone out there heard his prayers, for the attack was brought to
them.
                The Qunari barely had time to raise his sword before an arrow
took him in the throat.  The big horned-headed ox fell back onto the cage, and
slithered to the ground.  The Imperials thundered past on their horses, not
even seeing Shaislyn.
                The child knelt, and reached desperately for Arvaarad’s belt. 
The key to the cage was on his belt.  Or, better still, the control rod.
                He searched for it blindly, and realized, with a sinking
horror, that the Qunari’s waist was barely out of his reach.  He tried, and
strained, but could not reach his waist.  Not even for the dagger, to cut out
the stitches.
                His eyes watered.  All this…  He had been so close, and now…? 
He leaned his head against the bars.  He would really live the rest of his life
like this?  He couldn’t bear it.  It was awful beyond his worst nightmares.  He
would rather die.
                He tried to pull the Qunari forward, but he was too heavy. 
Shaislyn couldn’t get the proper leverage, could not drag him further.  He was
just too heavy.  A tear rolled down his cheek at his own hopelessness.  He
couldn’t even help himself.  He was blind and knew what it was to see, and
muted, and had no magic.  He might as well be dead.  He would rather be dead
than live like this.  Nothing was worse than this.  Nothing.
                He reached out again, more in desperation than anything else. 
His fingertips touched something.  Carefully, he ran his fingers across it, the
tips barely touching it.  He gasped.  It was the control rod.
                Shaislyn strained with all his might, but still could not quite
reach it.  If he just had a stick, or something to roll it closer.  Frustrated,
he pulled his arm back, thinking.  What could he do?  He didn’t have anything
like that.
                But Arvaarad did.  The arrow in his neck.  The arrow had caused
the man to make a gurgling sound when he died.  Shaislyn wasn’t certain if it
were in his neck, or the Qunari had just made a noise, but he reached forward
to check all the same.  It also didn’t mean the arrow hadn’t just sailed
through him either, for that matter.
                Shaisyln’s hand brushed against the arrow shaft.  The arrow had
pierced right above the brute’s clavicle, and gone right through his neck.  He
wondered if it would be easier to push it through the rest of the way, or draw
it out.  With his other hand, he checked to see if it had gone all the way
through.  He found the arrowhead at the other side—a work of steel he guessed,
through the sticky blood.  There was a bit of something else on it too, and he
decided not to think about it right now.
                The arrow was barbed, and he had to think for a moment on what
that meant, before he remembered.  He needed to push it out the rest of the
way, or the hooked end would only get stuck on the Qunari’s insides.  He
grimaced, and pushed.  It was harder than he had thought.  There was muscle in
the neck, and bone, and none of that took too kindly to wood being shoved
through it.  Shaislyn grunted with the effort, but got the arrow free.
                It was bloody, and gross to hold, but he held it like it were
something precious.  This arrow is going to free me, he thought with reverence.
                He found the rod again, and used the hooked end of the arrow to
tap against it, find the other side of it.  He rolled it forward.  It twisted
to the side, and his heart skipped a beat.  He couldn’t roll it if it turned. 
He moved the arrow to the side farther away from him, and pushed it down.  It
flipped again.  He cursed, though it sounded like gibberish aloud.  He was
slowly getting used to that, though.
                Painstakingly slowly, he got the rod close enough to grasp it. 
He snatched it up, and, desperate, realized he didn’t know how it worked.
                He dropped the arrow, and felt along the rod for any signs of a
mechanism to make it work.  It was a decorated thing, but he found no special
levers, knobs, nothing of the sort.
                The disappointment flooded him, and was nearly too much to
bear.  What use was this thing if he didn’t know how to use it?  What good was
anything?
                He just wanted this collar off.  He wanted to see again, to
speak again.  He wanted to be free.
                Something clicked, and he touched the collar.  It slid, and
fell into his hand.  He clutched it for a moment, disbelieving.  He wanted to
dance, to sing.  He wanted to laugh, but the stitching on his mouth made it
clear that this was disapproved of.  His stomach churned as it occurred to
him—that was all it was.  The collars kept their magic in check, kept them from
speaking.  But the stitching… the stitching was to take away their laughter and
expressions.
                Shaislyn wanted to weep all over again, and he knew he would,
but not now.
                He activated his vision again, and it felt good to be able to
see.  Now, how to get out of this cage?  He had his magic back, but he couldn’t
use it to escape the cage.  No matter how he saw it, he needed those keys.  But
how?
                He glanced back at the bloodied arrow, and wondered if he could
get to the key with that.  But, no.  The ring was attached to the Qunari’s
belt.  He would need it closer to get to it.
                Then… what could he do?
                He tried to pull the Qunari closer, but he could not get the
leverage, and he was only a child; the body was too heavy and the task proved
all but impossible.
                He looked up at the sky.  Sunrise was coming.  The sky was dim
yet, but gray with early morning.  He was hungry, and found himself sighing. 
The Qunari would come back, collar him again.  Nothing would change.
                The sparrow fluttered down and landed on the cage.
                He stared up at it, seeing it for the first time.  “Stupid
bird,” he said, shaking his head, almost surprised to hear real words this
time.  It didn’t hurt as much any more when he spoke, with the stitching.  It
felt strange was all.  Hearing his voice, speaking real words, made him feel
kind of giddy.  “Don’t you know people died here?  Don’t you know it’s a
battlefield?”  The silly creature didn’t have the sense to fly away, he
realized.  He gave it a couple of breadcrumbs through the bars, as he normally
did.  It had come to the point where it ate out of his hands now.  He was
heartened that it came to him at least once a day.  The little bird was his
only friend and companion throughout all of this, and that it had traveled with
them made him happy.
                It ate the crumbs, and looked down at him.  “I wish I could
fly,” he muttered as the little creature fluttered down into the cage with him
to peck at the crumbs he had dropped.  When it finished, it looked at him
again, chirped, and flew through the bars.
                He watched it sail away, not a worry in the world.
                Shaislyn’s fingers gripped the bars, and his eyes slid closed. 
He still saw everything around him, though, the way only he could.  The Qunari
would be here soon.  They would collar him.  Castrate him.  Ship him to off to
somewhere for indoctrination or Tranquility, if they even did that.
                If he could be a sparrow, he could fly away.  He could slip
through the bars, and be gone long before they got here, and no one would be
the wiser.
                His gift of sight shut off in his despair.  He didn’t want to
watch the horde make its way back to the encampment.  He didn’t want to watch
his doom approach.  Tears dripped down his cheeks.
                Shaislyn was trapped, and he was never going to be free.  He
was “Saarebas” and he was going to be that forever.
                He wished and prayed with all his might that he could be like
that sparrow, and fit through the bars and fly away.
                He imagined what it was like to be so free, to be small enough
to go wherever he wished.  He imagined what it was like to have wings.  He
could fly away from everything, if he had wings—from this cage, from the
Qunari, from everything.  He thought about the sparrow, how it was coloured,
and how the creature behaved.  He thought of how it chirped, and sang songs in
the morning.  He thought of the way it moved, and was frightened away by
Arvaarad.
                He wanted to be like that sparrow.  He would trade lives with
it straight across.
                He crossed his arms tight, and wished with all his being.
                Wishes did not come true, not without hard work.  Magic did not
grant wishes.  But magic can do wondrous things, all the same.
                His gift enveloped him, and he was comforted by it.  His magic,
his gift, and some would call it his curse.  It was his connection to the Fade,
and what made him who he was.  It was beautiful, and had never been something
he had feared or hated.  He welcomed it with open arms, accepting it for what
it was and who he was, what his magic had made him.  It coursed through him and
over him.  It was soothing, and divine.  For a mage well in tune with their
gift, using it was like the Maker himself touching their heart.  It was a
religious experience—something divine, holy.  It was not ugly, or a taint.  It
was nothing that could ever be vile, or corrupt.  It was beauty in every
essence of the word, and Shaislyn accepted it, and loved it with every fiber of
his being.  He would give up his gift for nothing.  He would never want to
change who he was, or what he was:  A mage.
                Shaislyn had not been given a good life.  He had been dealt a
rotten hand from the start, and knew it.  A product of rape, a half-bred
child.  He had been born blind, and a mage.  Yet he felt harmony, and
confidence.  He was a bastard child, and why did that matter to anyone?  He was
a half-breed, and what was so great about being purely elven or purely human? 
He was blind, but hadn’t he proved that he didn’t need to see, only that it was
nice to do so?  He was a mage.  Above anything else in his life, he was a mage,
and fiercely proud of it.  Magic… was beautiful, and he was proud to be one of
the few to wield it.
                When his eyes opened, he knew what he had done.  The thrill of
it was exciting.  He opened his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he
saw through his own eyes.  He looked up at the sky, and found that he knew how
to fly.
 
Chapter End Notes
     Confidence and cowardice: Fenris finds his confidence, and Shaislyn
     accepts who he is (which is also a kind of confidence). Alternately,
     Varania is a bit of a coward. And, I think, so is Kylie in this
     scenario.
     And god damn it, Vanessa is amazing in this chapter.
     One more thing: I did promise that Lura's end would come. Did I
     deliver or what?
***** Survivors *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania is uncertain about her future. Fenris gradually learns what
     freedom is about.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            In the dark, the refugees cowered in the back of the hold.  Toward
the front, soldiers, guards, and sailors guarded the supplies in long, dull but
rotating shifts.  Rations were cut short to feed everyone, and everyone was
hungry and thirsty.  To prevent theft, they had needed guards.  No thieves
could be tolerated, no matter how small a thing, for they ran for their lives
across the sea.
            Varania was one such refugee.  She sat in the dark with the rest of
them, amidst everyone’s collective stink of unwashed bodies and the odor of
seasickness.  Babies cried, mothers wept, fathers would sometimes bicker. 
Earlier that day, a group of men had angrily went to the sailors, demanding
more food for their families.  None could be provided, however, and it broke
out into a fight.  Varania was nearby, and, being a mage, quickly put the
instigators to a deep slumber, for which she was thanked profusely.  Being a
mage also meant that she was moved closer to the exit and thus the food, for in
the event that the ship were attacked again, she could be brought up quickly.
            People had already died on the crossing, succumbing to seasickness
or thrown overboard for theft.  She prayed that she was not one of the
collective, nameless bodies tossed into the sea, even though she felt as though
she may deserve said death.  But she had been so frightened—she didn’t want to
die.  She was no heroic warrior, to stand against the Qunari.  Nor was she as
courageous as Vanessa to brave the odds and fight.  How could she, when she did
not know how? 
            Even to her, it sounded like an excuse to her own cowardice.  But,
she found some solace in that the magisters had turned and fled as well.  If
they would not stand and fight, who could blame her for running?
            There were other ships with this one.  Every ship in the harbor,
for that matter, that had made it past the Qunari lines.  The Qunari ships had
spouted fire that night.  The mages had answered with their own fire, and
lightning.  Varania had even been one of them.  She wasn’t very good at it, but
she was still there.  It was the only way she—an elf with no coin—had gotten on
the ship to begin with, so she had to, but even so, it was different than being
in the midst of that battle.
            She thought of Vanessa, gallantly fighting against all the odds,
leading her men into battle, and dying with valor.  It was beautiful, and sad. 
She wondered if the magister would be remembered that way.  She hoped so.  She
had never known Vanessa very well, but she hoped the woman would be remembered
as dying to protect the people of the city.
            I have no home, Varania thought sullenly.  The only home she had
known since childhood was the hut in Danarius’ slave quarters.  She had begun
to think of the alienage as home, of sorts.  But now that was gone too.  What
would she do?  More accurately, what could she do?
            Shaislyn was dead.  Everyone she knew was dead.
            She looked upwards.  No.  Leto was still alive, somewhere.  Or was
he?  He could have died protecting his master that night.  So many people had
died—soldiers, guards, civilians.  A bodyguard could easily die protecting his
master, and why would her brother be fortunate enough to escape such a fate?
            No matter what, Varania did not hold much hope for Leto being
alive.  Even if he were, what did it matter?  She sighed to herself.  It
didn’t.  She had never felt so alone.
            She wondered if Lura had made it out in time.  She wondered if she
had managed to wile her way onto a boat—any boat.  She wondered if she had
escaped the city, or was being marched with the Qunari to endure their
indoctrination.
            Not all the ships that had escaped had survived the night.  Many
had not, but they had at least beaten the Qunari back—for the moment if nothing
else.  But the giants could come back at any time, with their ships and their
own magic.
            It was terrifying, and worse still to be locked in the hold, told
not to wander.  She found herself wishing that she had been wise enough to
steal something from the castle as it had burned.  Or from a shop—or
something.  Anything.  Now she had nothing, because of her stupid
sensibilities.  She had been unwilling to break law and do what she knew was
wrong, and now she was paying for it:  No money, just the clothes on her
back—stained with soot, blood, and sweat--and they would be filthy by the end
of the voyage.  At least she had her magic.  If nothing else in the world, she
always had her magic.
            She was hopeful that perhaps Minrathous would be better.  Perhaps
she could find a better use for her magic in Minrathous or Qarinus.  She was
getting better at healing, so maybe she could even find work in a clinic.  Or
maybe, if she worked hard enough, she could even find a mage to apprentice
under.
            Her home was destroyed.  She was truly alone now.  Yet, even so,
hope remained.  So many people had died that night, but she wasn’t one of
them.  She lived, so there was hope.  She felt like her mother had said that
once, a long time ago—or maybe it had been someone else.  Maybe Leto, or even
Ginger?
            No matter who said it, there was truth to it, and in this troubled
time, it gave her comfort.
 
            Shaislyn’s first instincts had been to fly to the alienage, and
look for Lura and his mother, but he couldn’t find them.  For that matter, he
couldn’t find anyone, and flew back to look at Antaam after he had rested.  It
moved slowly, as ever, and many were dead, but not enough to cripple them.  The
survivors of the city marched with them, guarded by the Qunari soldiers.  As a
bird, most faces looked alike to him, but he could pick out the elves at
least.  There was a surprising amount of them.  Former slaves, he realized, as
well as most every elf from the alienage.
            The Qunari had freed them, and even to an animal, they seemed oddly
joyful of it.  Some were just understanding what their liberation meant. 
Others had known all along.  They were fearful, and scared, but overall,
Shaislyn sensed hope.  The humans were less joyful and more resentful. 
Shaislyn noticed they were kept separated, likely to avoid trouble on the march
more than anything.
            He would not find his mother here.  And if he did, he had no
intention of rejoining her.  If she was there, there was nothing he could do
for her.  He could barely help himself, after all.  And if Lura were there,
well—they would treat her well.
            He flew back to the city.  A sparrow’s wings were not made for
great journeys, but they flew vast distances all the time despite that. 
Besides, flying was joyous and liberating, and a part of him wanted it never to
end.
            But he was content; he could do this again.  He would, in fact, but
he could not abandon the world for the life of a bird—not yet.
            So he went to the fort, and landed in the kitchens.  He skittered
on the floor, and thought about what it meant to be himself.  His magic
swallowed him, and he shed the form of the bird like clothing.
            His mouth was stitched shut still.  Icy dread welled in his
stomach, and he activated his spell of sight.  Fighting down the panic, he
opened drawers until he found a small kitchen knife.  He parted his lips as
much as the stitching would allow, and carefully cut the thick thread.  He cut
all the stitching, and set the knife down.  He pulled the threads out,
flinching as they went through the holes.  He trembled, and silently, he wept
with relief and elation.  His hands covered his mouth, where the heavy thread
had been.  He grinned, and suddenly started to laugh, for joy.  He opened his
mouth wide with a grin, simply because he could, and laughed loudly, because he
could.
            He was free—Free!  He let out a great cry of joy, and found himself
running—barely able to contain himself.
            It felt good to run.  He spun in the hallway, danced up the steps. 
He pissed in a private privy, and secretly rejoiced that no one was watching
him for signs of conversing with demons while he did it.  He was hungry, but
too ecstatic with freedom to eat.
            He was free of the Qunari, and he laughed.  No one could ever cage
him again.  No one in the world could cage a shapeshifter.  That was what he
was.  It was what he had been meant to be.  He was no conjuror, no healer, no
elemental summoner nor entropy master.  Those were not his talents, nor his
art.  He felt, this was.
            Shaislyn let out another “whoop” of joy, bounding into what had
been his classroom, of sorts.  He stopped suddenly, unsure of why he had come
here.  A part of him had been half-expecting to find Vanessa.  The room was
filled with the ghosts of his memories of her, and he thought, I’ll never see
her again.
            He walked to the desk, his fingertips running over the worn oak,
touched the old bookcase, looked out the window over the yard.
            I’m not a slave any more, he thought with cold certainty.  How
could he be, when the city had fallen?  Vanessa is probably dead.
           That thought troubled him.  He hoped she had died as she had lived,
like Jameson had.
            He whispered a quick prayer for her soul, and for Master Taggart
too.  Even the boys that had made fun of him and called him names, he prayed
for.  Then he knelt on the floor, and prayed for his mother.  He prayed for
Lura, and the uncle he didn’t know.  He prayed for the father he didn’t know,
and all the people who had died.  If they must die, let them die as they lived.
            When he finished, he found that his eyes were wet, and he finally
allowed himself to cry for all he had been through, and all he had lost.
 
            Zekiel had been the only elf in this particular sect of Fog
Warriors for years now, and had become quite accustomed to it.  In fact, he
barely noticed, and the Qunari, unlike humankind, were not accustomed to
pointing out with frequency one’s heritage.  He always found it quite odd that
all a human could seem to do was point at him and say, “Say, do you know you’re
an elf?”  “Really?  I never would have known!”  They always acted so huffy when
he actually said that too.  What had they been expecting him to say?
            “They sure do leave a mess, don’t they?” he inquired of his friend,
Ashaad.  Ashaad could have chosen a different name after he left the Qun, but
had not, curiously, and always refused to comment on it.
            “They are Antaam.  Of course they leave a mess,” he said with all
the distaste he held for the Qun.
            “Maybe we will find something of use though.  Look!”  He pointed
ahead.  Rather than dash forward, he walked.  There was no hurry here.  “It’s a
sword, I think.”
            Zekiel spoke the Qunari tongue primarily.  It took conscious effort
to speak in the Trade tongue for him.  His mother, a woman he scarcely
remembered, had first taught him how to speak the King’s Speech, but his
command of the tongue was loose after so many years of disuse.
            Ashaad had more interest in the blade than did Zekiel, and the elf
knew he would.  If it weren’t broken, it could be worth pulling from the
wreckage.  They could only see the hilt, and a bit of the blade from where they
stood, but from the pommel, it was an expensive blade.  Zekiel knelt down
beside it.  “Help me move this rubbish,” he said.  The pair tried to pull the
blade free, but it was caught on something under the rubbish.  The two pushed
the stone blocks off, and found a heavy wooden awning.  It was cracked, and
looked like it had been smoldering at one point, but had never fully taken
flame.  Ashaad lifted it back, and made a noise of interest.
            “Zekiel,”he called, inclining his head toward the underside of the
awning.
            “Hmm?” the elf inquired, wandering to the other side.  He observed
the body minutely.  It was covered in soot and ash, and mostly buried under
rubble.  “Dead elf.  Leave him.”
            Ashaad scowled.  “I think he’s alive.”
           Zekiel helped Ashaad lift the awning away, dragging the rubbish a
short distance, then went back to what he was certain was a corpse.  He knelt
beside it.  Well, for a corpse, it had pretty hair.  Or, rather, had pretty
hair at one point; it was pretty badly singed and blackened at the tips.  He
put his finger to the corpse’s throat.  “See?  Dead as…  Wait.”  He stilled,
and leaned down, listening with all his might.  “He’s breathing.”
            Ashaad grunted with affirmation, and inspected the sword.  The
blade was well-crafted, and just broad enough that it had protected the elf
from the brunt of the rubble when the wall collapsed on top of him.  He seemed
to be hurt though, all the same.  But alive.
            “Help me move him,” Zekiel said.
            Ashaad grunted.  “You mean, carry him—without your assistance.  You
take the sword, then.  I wouldn’t want to wake without my blade.”
           The elf surveyed the damages on the white-haired elf.  He poked at
him, and the elf reacted just enough that Zekiel nodded approvingly.  “I think
he’s all right to be moved, if you’re careful.”  Then he looked at the elf’s
face, staring at the tattoos.  At first, he thought they were only tattoos. 
His immediate thought was—What’s a Dalish doing here?--but then he recognized
the substance.  He had only seen lyrium once—maybe twice.  But he would bet his
life that the tattoos on this elf were made of the stuff.
            If they skinned him…  If they just let the elf die, or slit his
throat here and now…  All that lyrium was expensive.  It could set them up for
months.  Why would someone tattoo lyrium on him?  It was so costly.  Why would
they do that?  All the money…  It had to have taken time, expertise—that too. 
Maybe more.  Someone loved you, he thought.  Like any piece of expensive
property or jewelry, but loved you nonetheless.
           Which also meant, of course, that if that someone were alive,
selling him back to that person could be just as profitable as stripping the
lyrium out of his skin while also being less messy.  Zekiel didn’t like the
idea, but knew the Fog Warriors needed coin—weaponry, medicines, supplies, none
of it was cheap.
            “Is that…?” the Qunari wondered.
            Zekiel nodded.  “Lyrium,” he breathed, and they were both thinking
the same thing for a moment.
            “It’s dangerous to touch it,” Ashaad said suddenly.
            “Do you think we should leave him?” Zekiel inquired.
            But the elf flinched, and stirred, his lips parting in a small
sigh.  His eyes started to open, and Zekiel caught a glimpse of sage green
before his eyelids slid closed.  Damn my inhibitions, he thought to himself.
            “No,” the former scout answered.
            Zekiel sighed, and found himself carrying the sword, and Ashaad
carried the unconscious elf.  Zekiel wasn’t sure which weighed more, in
retrospect.
 
            Shaislyn had taken Jameson’s books, and put them in a heavy leather
and oak case.  It had held some relic once—likely something priceless, but no
longer; someone had taken it.  But the books fit in it, after he removed the
plush lining.  He shut it, and took a shovel, and buried it in the practice
yard.
            When he was done, and had eaten, he moved into the city.  He was
confident now.  No one could hurt him.  If they tried, he could just turn into
a bird and be gone before anything happened.  In fact, why not turn into a bird
now?
            He saw no reason not to, so did.  Flying was a special joy, and
seeing with his own eyes a delight.
            He observed the city, and watched an elf and a Qunari carry another
elf—a wounded one.  He followed them, curious.  What were they doing?  Antaam
had moved on.  Or were these really Qunari?  Could they be the Tal-Vashoth?
            Curious, he surveyed the might-be-Qunari encampment.  They had
taken up residence in the ruins of the castle for the time being, though showed
little interest in looting it.  Oh, they looked at pieces now and again, but
showed more interest in the weaponry than the artifacts and tapestries.
            They also did not feast themselves, but rather ate only their
fill.  Even a bird grew hungry, though, and he found some breadcrumbs, like the
sparrow he had modeled himself after, and pecked at them.  The Thedosians—he
wasn’t sure if they were Qunari or Tal-Vashoth--paid him no mind.
            He fluttered to a high beam when one came too near, but always went
back to pecking at the crumbs.  He went back to his rafter, and watched the
goings-on.  The Qunari and elf had finally come.  The others asked questions,
and one of them, who seemed to know some things about healing, had them take
the injured elf into a guest room—one that still had a bed that wasn’t broken. 
Curious, Shaislyn followed, but found the way shut.  He fluttered outside
through an open window, and landed on the sill.  This window was broken, but
only in the sense that it had a hole in it, and most of the pane was still in
place.  But sparrows were small, and he fluttered inside.  The elf turned and
looked at him, then back at the unconscious one on the bed.
            The Qunari who had carried him excused himself briefly, and the
other instructed the brunette elf to undress the unconscious one.  The Qunari,
having come back, began wetting a cloth in a basin while Brunette worked at the
bloodied clothing.  Most of it was so torn up and bloodied, sticking to skin,
that the elf opted to cut it off of him, which he did.
            The leather lay in bloody pieces on the floor.  Shaislyn flapped up
to a beam in the ceiling, to watch from a better angle.  He fluffed his
feathers, as if roosting.  He heard himself twitter, and stretched his wings.
            The pair inspected the unconscious elf—Shaislyn revised that to
tattooed elf—for further damage.  Much of the blood seemed not to be his own. 
He must be a warrior, a good one.
            They treated and bandaged the elf’s wounds, and the Qunari left the
two elves.  Brunette left a bit later, and Shaislyn fluttered down from the
rafters.  Brunette had pulled a sheet over Tattoo.  Shaislyn landed on the
sheet, and walked across his chest.  He looked down at the tattoos, and leaned
down.  Birds explored the world with their beaks, which they used a lot like
hands.  He touched his beak to a mark on his shoulder, and tugged on it gently.
            He jerked back in alarm when he realized what the mark was.  It was
lyrium.  He had never been this close to lyrium before, but he knew that was
what it was.  Nothing else in the world looked like that—liquid metal, with a
luster unlike anything else in existence.
            It was strangely beautiful, especially to his little bird mind.  As
a bird, he was inclined to bite it again, possibly play with it, and explore
its possibilities.  Birds were naturally curious creatures, after all, and if
it were in this man’s skin, logic dictated that it couldn’t be that dangerous.
            Rather, he resisted the urge to peck at the lyrium, and he wandered
up to his neck.  It was warm there, and he was so tired.  He closed his eyes,
snuggling against the elf’s neck.  His feathers fluffed, and he yawned.  He
shifted his wings, and opened his eyes, then closed them.  Just for a moment.
            I’ll just close my eyes for a moment…
 
            Zekiel opened the door, his scissors in hand.  He had sort of
become the little group of warriors’ unofficial barber.  Plainly speaking, he
was the only one who knew anything about cutting hair—mostly because he had
been planning—well, not planning so much as informed—that he was going to be a
barber, before he abandoned the Qun.
            Finding the Fog Warriors, for him, had been a blessing from…
Andraste.  The Maker had been his mother’s god, before she had joined the Qun
as a refugee, a Viddathari.  He had taken to reading the Chant of Light when he
had came across the book.  He wasn’t sure if he believed in it any more than he
had believed in the Qun, but it wasn’t as bloodless and unfeeling as the Qun
was.  To a degree, it still felt cold to him—alien.  But maybe that would pass
with time.
            His first doubts in the wisdom of the Qun had been when he was two
years old, his mother a runaway slave, caught in the in-fighting in Seheron,
and had come to the Qun.  She had to give up her child for education; the
Qunari do not exist in family groups.  He had not seen her since, and to a two-
year old, that was crippling.
            To Zekiel, that was in poor taste.  His entire existence was
nothing but a duty, and it was duty that made his mother give him away.  Was it
no different from slavery?
            But even for all that, he would have tolerated the Qun.  He would
have obeyed it, maybe eventually found a sort of deadened joy in it, if he
tried hard enough, all except for one thing.
            Zekiel went to the bed, and couldn’t help but smile.  The little
sparrow that had followed them into the room was nestled under the unconscious
elf’s chin, and seemed so exhausted that it did not wake when Zekiel had
entered the room.
            “Little one,” he crooned to it, and it stirred, but didn’t wake. 
He put his hand near it.  Most birds were light sleepers, and would wake to
that, but this little sparrow did not.  You have the instincts of a
grapefruit.  Why are you alive, bird?  “Wake up.”
            He made his voice louder, and a bit harsher.  The bird squawked,
startled.  It stared at him, as if aghast.  It took off suddenly, fluttering
back to its rafter.  It squawked angrily at him, chittering as it scolded him. 
Zekiel chuckled, but half-expected the bird to shit on him in revenge for
disturbing it.  Instead, the bird fluffed its feathers, more in an aggressive
way than in a cute fluffy way, and zipped out the window.
            The elf looked back at the other, and gently moved his head enough
to gather his long hair.  It had once been very beautiful—nearly to his hips
and white as milk.  Now, it was charred at the tips, and singed all the way to
his shoulders.  There really was no saving it.
            With some regret, Zekiel trimmed it off delicately, making sure all
of it was even.  It was difficult with the elf unconscious and lying down, but
he took his time and managed it.
            He tossed the hair in the rubbish heap outside, and it seemed like
the others had decided that caring for the unconscious elf was officially his
responsibility.  So, he complained, and sighed, but secretly didn’t mind as
much as he thought he would.  Ashaad helped him get the elf to drink
something—via a tube in his mouth, and practically drowning the poor thing.
            The elf’s eyes finally opened that evening, when Zekiel came back
to see about pouring mashed and watered turnips down his throat.  Delighted to
see him awake, Zekiel put the bowl down and went up to him.
            “You’re awake!” he said, unnecessarily.
            The elf stared at him for a moment, looking as confused as ever. 
“What…  What happened?” he asked, but seemed reluctant to know the answer even
as he asked it.
            Zekiel sat down in the chair he had pulled up next to the bed on a
previous trip.  He explained how he had found the elf laying under some
rubbish, and gestured to the sword they had stuck in a corner of the room.  The
elf seemed gratified to see it.  “Oh, I’m Zekiel, by the way,” the Tal-Vashoth
said, painfully aware that he must have an accent.
            The elf seemed quite aware of his accent, and was staring at him
strangely.  “What happened to the city?” he asked.  The elf, too, spoke the
Trade tongue as though he were not entirely used to it.
            Zekiel frowned.  “Aren’t you going to give me your name?  Do that,
and I’ll tell you.”
            The elf looked away, and seemed very forlorn in that moment.  As
if, in all the world, he was isolated and alone.  Maybe he was.  “I don’t… know
my name,” he confessed.
            The elven Tal-Vashoth looked at him, and wondered.  There’s more to
that story—a lot more.  His instinct was to ask him, but then he saw the look
on the elf’s face, and he held his tongue.  It was something painful.  “Then
what shall I call you?”
            The elf stared down at his hands, and Zekiel saw that he was
looking at the lyrium.  “My master called me ‘Fenris’,” the elf offered without
looking at the other.
            “Why?” Zekiel heard himself ask.  “That’s an odd name to just start
calling someone.”  He had meant for it to be light-hearted.
            Fenris tried to smile, and failed.  “His ‘little wolf’,” he
answered, almost mechanically.
            Zekiel paused.  “Well, I bet he’s dead now.  So you’re free.”
            Fenris looked at him, clearly not understanding what Zekiel was
saying.  Poor thing, he thought.  He’s been a slave all his life, and has no
idea what that even means.  “My master is alive,” he argued.  “I saw him leave
on a ship myself.”
            “Then he abandoned you.”
            It must have been the wrong thing to say, because Fenris’ sage eyes
filled with inner pain in that moment.  He seemed like he might say something,
but the elf looked away instead, his eyes sliding closed against the pain.  He
laid back down, turning from Zekiel.
            “I…  You must be hungry,” Zekiel tried instead.  “I’ll bring you
something to eat—don’t try to get up yet.  You were hurt.”  Abrasions, for the
most part—things that were made worse because of splinters and grit in the
wounds, cuts, and many nasty-looking bruises.  By the elf’s breathing, they had
judged his ribs to be bruised internally as well, but not broken, and by the
way Fenris moved, that seemed to hold true.
            Fenris made no reply, but did not move.  Zekiel left and took his
bowl of watery turnips with him, wondering what he could have said wrong. 
Maybe it was just the thought of being abandoned—the shock of realizing that he
was just petty property to his master?  No, he surely must have known that for
years.  But Zekiel wondered.  Fenris was covered in lyrium.  Expensive lyrium. 
No.  Someone had put a lot of care into that man—and money.  Fenris wasn’t
petty property.
 
            He meant well, Fenris thought with a sigh.  But he had no idea how
close to the truth that felt like.  He felt abandoned.  Disposed of.  Danarius
hadn’t wanted to leave him, that was clear.  But he had left him.  He had left
him, and knew Fenris might die.  He had been concerned, he knew, but he had
still left him.
            He felt angry about it.  Alone.  Very alone.  Zekiel was an elf,
true, but he noticed his accent; he was…  What was that word?  Tal-Vashoth,
probably.  But his first language had been Qunlat.  He had killed so many
Qunari.  What would they do if they knew?
            No, he realized.  They already know.  They know, and they had
rescued him anyway.  He would have died, from exposure if nothing else, buried
under the rubble.  He knew that the army had moved on, if the Tal-Vashoth were
here now.
            What did that mean?  He didn’t know.  The Tevinters would not have
done it; they would have held the port.  But, he supposed, that was the
difference between Imperial thought and Qunari thought.  But then, the Qunari
had obviously attacked for the opportunity of destroying some of the
Magisterium and crippling the Imperium.  If the Imperials had attacked a Qunari
city, it would be to take the city.  Seizing control of a city had not been
their goal.
            His despair clutched at every corner of his being.  He had been
abandoned.  Sadness, then anger coursed through him—lighting up the lyrium for
an instant, before his temper cooled, and gave way to the despair.
            He had tried so hard…  He had done everything his master had ever
asked of him.  And he just…?  Rationally, he knew that wasn’t the case. 
Rationally, he knew his master had never intended or wanted to leave him, and
had been forced to.  But he was partially delirious from his wounds, hunger,
exposure, and dehydration, and he was not thinking rationally, nor did he want
to.
            He felt as alone as ever--abandoned and neglected, and that was all
there was to it.
 
            Shaislyn walked down the lonely street in the dark, unafraid. 
There were worse things than the dark.  And maybe sometimes his imagination
turned shadows into Qunari, they were all in his head.  He knew they were real
elsewhere, but these were in his head.
            He was going to the castle, where the Tal-Vashoth were.  They
called themselves Fog Warriors.  He supposed that was better than using the
name the people they had abandoned called them.  After all, there was a reason
they had left their beliefs behind them.
            The halfling child simply didn’t know where else to go, or what to
do.  And anyway, he was hungry besides, and they had food.  Maybe he would
learn from them where he should go.  Seheron wasn’t safe.  But in that case,
what could he do?  This city was all he had ever known.  The refugees had
crossed the sea to Minrathous.  Should he go there?
            But a little sparrow couldn’t fly that far on its own, could it? 
No, he thought.  The wings are too small; he wouldn’t make it.  He would have
to learn another form.  Maybe some kind of fish, or a bigger bird.  That would
take time.  He would need time to watch, and learn.  And he was a child, and
didn’t know how to take care of himself.  Maybe these Tal-Vashoth would help
him.  And if not, it wasn’t a wasted effort.  No harm ever came of trying, or
asking.
            He was stopped at the gate, and the Qunari hailed him in his own
tongue, “Halt.”  Then he saw that Shaislyn was just a child of eight, and
stepped aside to let him pass.  “Go into the hall—you’ll find food there, and
if you are hurt, we will see to your wounds.”
            Shaislyn was half-tempted to thank him in Qunlat, but stopped
himself, and only nodded gratefully instead.  They had accepted him
unthinkingly.  After all, what harm could a child pose?  Fools, he thought. 
I’m a mage.  Maybe not a learned mage, but I could summon demons.  Any mage—no
matter their age—could.
            But he kept on anyway, and was grateful for their somewhat lax
security.  When I’m an adult, I won’t think a child harmless just because it’s
a child, he promised himself.
            Sure enough, he was greeted with, not exactly open arms, but a
certain level of sympathy and pity.  He didn’t know what else to do but to play
into it.  What child his age wouldn’t be upset?  Was it wrong that he was
finished being sad?  Or maybe he was lying to himself about that too.
            But he pretended, and no one asked about his eyes.  They found him
a bunk in what had been the servant’s quarters.  The upper floors had, for the
most part, suffered the majority of the looting and damages.  The lower floors,
alternately, were untouched, so most everyone slept there.  Shaislyn quickly
discovered that they let him do whatever he liked.
            Living with the Fog Warriors was unlike everything he had
previously experienced.  They weren’t family exactly, and they were nothing
like the Imperial army either, nor were they like Antaam.  They went where they
desired, and they had no leader precisely, though everyone seemed to agree a
particular Qunari who went by the strange name of Aban was their unspoken
leader, of sorts.
            Some things still needed doing though—chores that were designated,
and everyone was expected to pull their own weight.  It was generally agreed
that they should move on soon.  They had piled bodies into piles and burned
them.  When Shaislyn asked, they told him that if they left the bodies to rot,
it can cause plague.  Furthermore, while the Tevinters were happy to inflict
plague on Qunari and the rebels, and the Qunari cared not for an Imperial city,
the Fog Warriors did not want the people of Seheron to suffer because of each
side’s selfish ambitions, which was why they existed in the first place.
            Shaislyn was still kind of afraid of the Qunari, and if they
noticed the scars by his lips, they never said anything about it.  He was out
by the docks one mid-morning with Zekiel—who was the only one he really felt
comfortable around--and Zekiel was teaching him how to skip rocks earlier. 
Shaislyn had gone off in search of more smooth, flat stones—which was easy,
considering how ruined the city was.
            Zekiel turned, and smiled.  “So—you finally decided to leave the
room,” he said, hailing to someone Shaislyn couldn’t see.
            “It still hurts to walk on it,” the other said, in an affected
Tevinter accent, but in the King’s Speech.
            Intrigued, Shaislyn peered around the corner.  “You’re lucky your
leg’s not broken,” Zekiel commented.  “It was bruised up pretty badly—I was
worried it was fractured, and we don’t have a healer.”
            “I suppose I’m lucky then,” the other said, and Shaislyn was
surprised to see another elf briefly, before he recalled the injured elf from
earlier.
            “Still hurt to breathe?” Zekiel asked the other.
            A shrug from the tattooed elf.  “And speak.  And… everything—but
I’m tired of lying in bed all day.”
            Zekiel looked back at Shaislyn, who immediately ducked back behind
the wall, feeling like he should not have been watching.  “Hey—come on out. 
For a wolf, Fenris doesn’t bite a whole lot.”
            Fenris made a face, and Zekiel grinned at him.  Timidly, Shaislyn
looked around the corner again, and then slowly strode back up to them.  He
looked up at the stranger, and studied him for a long moment.  He had seen him
once as a bird, but he pretended that it was the first time.  He knew the
lyrium wasn’t dangerous.  Or maybe it was—maybe under certain circumstances, or
prolonged exposure.  But Shaislyn was unconcerned about it.  It was clearly a
refined lyrium, so he had nothing to fear in proximity to it—in theory.
            “Hi,” Shaislyn said.  “I’m Shaislyn.”
            “Fenris.”  The elf had questions—Shaislyn could see it on his
face.  But why guard his tongue like that?  If he had a question, he should ask
it.
            The boy frowned, and the lie came easily to his lips.  “I hid in
the alienage during the attack.  And I was hidden in the cellar when the Qunari
came and took everyone.”
            Fenris blinked, and then turned his head to look out at the sea,
suddenly lost in thought.  He looked back at the other two.  “I’ve heard talk
of the Fog Warriors moving on.”
            Zekiel smiled reassuringly.  “Both of you are more than welcome to
come.  I trust neither of you know anything about camping or hunting anyway? 
You couldn’t take care of yourself.”
            I could, Shaislyn thought.  Maybe he could learn how to be a bear,
or a wolf—he could take care of himself.  Zekiel had teasingly called Fenris a
wolf.  Shaislyn wondered why.  He wondered what it would be like to be a wolf.
            The grown-ups started talking, and Shaislyn quickly grew bored, and
wandered back down to the pier.  He looked down at the waves, but didn’t see
any fish.  So how could he learn to be a fish if he never saw any?  He frowned
to himself.  Well, maybe being a fish was a bad idea.  Fish got eaten all the
time.  He should pick something that was less likely to get eaten.  Like what?
            He looked up at the sky, and watched the gulls.  A seagull wasn’t a
bad start.  He wasn’t so sure they could make the crossing, but it was
something.
            An eagle was hunting, he saw, just off the pier.  It dove down, and
came up clutching a wriggling prize—some kind of fish.  He found himself
grinning at the thought of becoming a mighty eagle.  That sure beat a sparrow! 
He tried to watch the eagle, but the bird only flew away, and he sighed.
            There were crows all over the city right now—big black birds,
feasting on the carrion.  It was gruesome, but necessary.  His nose wrinkled. 
They were burning bodies again.  He looked back at the city, and watched the
acrid smoke rise from the pyre.
            The living animals had all been taken by the Qunari to feed their
forces, but still food had remained.  They were not the sort to loot, and had
not pried apart every cupboard, but the Fog Warriors had after most of the work
of clean-up had been done.  He had disliked it at first.  It was rude,
disrespectful to the dead, but then he thought about it.
            He had taken Jameson’s books because he didn’t want someone else
to, and because Jameson had been dear to him, and he wanted to keep them safe. 
The Fog Warriors hadn’t known the people here, but the things they had held
precious in life were no use to them in death.  But they could be useful to the
living, so why not take it?  Like the medicines that Ashaad had found, or the
weapons.
            A few more days passed, and everyone seemed to be talking about
moving on.  Shaislyn was bored anyway, and would not mind leaving.
            Zekiel was teaching Fenris Qunlat, he discovered, when he walked up
to them one late afternoon at the docks, giving him names for words, as well as
occasional spurts about what their cult-like religion was all about.  They
needed to work on his pronunciation.  The words were right, but his accent made
it difficult to understand.
            “You want to learn it too?” Zekiel asked Shaislyn. 
            The half-elf had had enough Qunlat lessons in his life.  “No,” he
said.  “I’m hungry.”
            “Right.”  The elf hopped down from the crate he had been perched
on.  “Let’s go see what we can find, shall we?”
            They headed back to the castle, where the others were discussing
when they should leave.  Tomorrow morning seemed to be the agreed upon date. 
Shaislyn was anxious to go.  He wondered what traveling with them would be
like.  Maybe he would have an opportunity to study wolves and eagles.  He
certainly hoped so.
            The others talked over him, often, as if he were not there.  People
did that with children, especially in another language, but Shaislyn understood
them all.  He usually didn’t pay them much heed, but today, they were
discussing what to do with him.
            “We could bring him to Schavalis.  The woman there may take him—she
has other children,” one of them offered.
            “That’s a good plan,” Zekiel agreed.
            They don’t even ask me what I want, Shaislyn thought miserably, but
he kept his expression schooled.  Instead, he finished eating, and helped with
the washing, lest they begin to think he was lazy or spoiled.  Afterwards, he
went to the yard, and watched the Qunari warriors fight.  He sighed to
himself.  His lessons had been cut short.  Maybe…  But he was too afraid to
ask.
 
Zekiel often went on long walks with Fenris, who was still recuperating from
having a building fall on top of him.  At first, Fenris had to rest frequently,
but he was getting better gradually, and the walks were doing some real good.
 Today, Shaislyn had decided to come along.
“What’s an alienage like, anyway?” Zekiel wondered.
Shaislyn laughed.  “It’s a ghetto.”
“Yes, but I mean, is it like a human ghetto?  Or is it worse?”
“We’re not far--we can go look at it.  Can’t imagine why you’d want to see it
though,” the boy muttered.
“I’ve just never seen one,” he said honestly.
This was baffling to Shaislyn.  “You mean, with the Tal-Vashoth, they don’t
keep the elves separate?”
Zekiel shook his head.  “No point; there aren’t enough of us to be prejudice,
and a lot of the Fog Warriors are Qunari; so even though we’ve all given up the
Qun, we still believe we’re all equal.”  He paused.  “It’s humans that are
weird about it; I mean, all these human-governed countries aren’t properly
utilizing a large portion of their potential work force.  It’s insanity.”
Fenris laughed.  “They don’t see it that way; most humans view elves as
worthless.”
Zekiel was genuinely puzzled.  “But why?  If I put a bag over my head, no one
would ever be able to tell the difference.”
“Aside from your thick Qunlat accent,” Shaislyn chimed in.  “These are the
gates.”  The gates of the alienage were scorched but not burned away, one hinge
broken, and they lay open wide.  The three filed through the gate.
Fenris looked around the alienage; he had never been in one either.  His eyes
roved from one crumbling building to the next.  A wind bled ash from a fire,
and the whole of the alienage was hard to see through the fog, the mists just
seemed to make it feel more desolate and isolated.  “Many of my master’s slaves
live better than this,” he said quietly.
“Slaves are valuable; elves are not,” Zekiel whispered as they followed
Shaislyn along the street.  “Street” was a polite term.  Before the Qunari
attack, it had been a street paved with broken mud bricks, uneven with missing
bricks and broken pieces, an open sewer on one side of it that flooded when it
rained.  A rampaging fire, looting, and destruction had turned the street into
a mess littered with shattered glass, broken pottery, splintered furniture, and
decaying bodies of animals.  The people, the Fog Warriors had burned out of
respect for the dead.  The buildings leaned against one another like people
worked too hard and tired to their bones.
“There’s no venedahl,” Zekiel commented, sounding disappointed.
Shaislyn snorted, gesturing at the buildings.  Sometime that awful night, there
had been a fire in the alienage, and many of the buildings were now naught but
ashes.  “Does it look like anything can grow here?” he said with a flat look.
“No, it doesn’t,” Fenris said gently, but he wasn’t looking at the buildings;
he looked at Shaislyn’s tawny frame, his malnourished body.  He had never once
cried out for a parent, or missed his home.  Looking at the lingering misery of
this place, he knew why.
“Where was your house, Shaislyn?” Zekiel asked, changing the subject.
The boy hesitated, and stammered.  “Um…”  He looked around, and back at the two
adults.  “Everything looks so different with no one around… and it’s all burned
down, I…”  He pointed, toward the bones of a building, now only so much ash.
 “Ah…  That’s it.”
“Oh, in the apartment building?” Zekiel said.  “How’d you get out of the cellar
when it caught fire?”
The boy froze.  “I…”
“He’s obviously upset about it, Zekiel.  Leave him alone,” Fenris said.
 Shaislyn looked visibly relieved.  The half-blood had said he had hid in the
cellar, yet…  He supposed that there was no good reason that he hadn’t been
able to get into an apartment building’s cellar.  Maybe it caught fire sometime
after the Qunari had been by.  Or maybe Shaislyn was simply reluctant to talk
about it because he had stolen into someone else’s house to hide.  Either way,
he had survived that night, and Fenris didn’t think the how or why of it could
be that important.  Wasn’t it enough that he had?  So many people hadn’t.
“Sorry,” the Tal-Vashoth muttered.  “I can’t believe elves really live in
places like this.”
Fenris looked at him morosely.  “You should see how the slaves in the country
live, or in the quarries—especially for foreign-born slaves.”
“But I expect that.  This is hardly a step above that.”  He sighed.  “And
humans treat us like this everywhere--and why?”  He swore.  “The only good
thing about the Qun is that this would never be allowed.”
“Why is that?” Fenris inquired.
He looked back at him.  “Only damned good part about living under the Qun:
 Everyone is equal.  Everyone has a place in the world.  Elves, humans,
dwarves, Qunari, Fex, we’re all equal.”
“Are there those that are more equal than others?” the Imperial elf inquired.
Zekiel made a gesture, holding his finger in the air for emphasis.  “I think
you’re seeing where this is going.”
“I’ve never seen a Fex before.  What do they look like?” Shaislyn asked.  He
had only heard the name mentioned, once, by Vanessa in her many teachings of
the Qunlat and Qunari.
“They’re only in Par Vallen I think--I’ve never seen one either.  They’ve been
indoctrinated into the Qun forever, though.  I guess there are just more
Qunari.”
Shaislyn was disappointed.  “Oh.”  He looked off, in the direction he knew the
graveyard to be, where his grandmother’s ashes lay buried.  One day, when he
died, he wondered if anyone would try to remember him, or would he just be one
more escaped slave, a tally in a book.  Fex—with nothing but a name, conquered
by life and death.
 
            Evening found Fenris standing alone on the shore, watching the sun
go down with a quiet tranquility he had never quite found before.  It was odd
not being told what to do every day.  The Fog Warriors sometimes gave
suggestions, but that was all they were—suggestions.  He hadn’t understood at
first, and they still puzzled him, but it felt… good.
            He even liked the traveling, to a degree.  They didn’t have horses,
and pulled most of their things in ox-drawn carts.  The going was slow, but
pleasant, and gave the others time to hunt for game.  Walking was still a bit
painful, and he had to pace himself when he walked, because breathing was so
difficult, but they let him ride in the wagon if it were too bad, and everyone
understood.  There were a few different Qunari who spoke at least some of his
tongue, but being around them, and listening to them talk, he picked up their
words quickly, and they seemed happy when he started practicing it, so he had
kept at it.  He still stumbled over the words, and he had an easier time with
the Trade tongue, though that was a language he had not used very often as a
slave.  Come to think of it, he had never learned either Tevene or the King’s
Speech, but rather had woken simply knowing both of them, and had never
questioned it.  But not every slave spoke both tongues.  But then, his master
had told him that he had come from Seheron.  Maybe he had been free once?  And
free again?
            Seheron felt like a safe refuge to him.  If he had been free in his
life, it had been in Seheron.  And he had returned, and was free again.  The
shifting fog and grassy knolls kindled something in his soul—maybe joy?  For
the first time in his life, joy?  The joy of freedom, and what may be his
homeland welcoming him back to its soil?  He knew it was only temporary; the
idea of being free forever seemed foreign, and silly.
            The only other one who spoke Tevene at all was Shaislyn, and it was
obviously his first language, though the boy spoke the Trade tongue equally
well, saying that his mother spoke better Tevene but his grandmother was better
in the King’s Speech.  Shaislyn was surprisingly not very underfoot, listened
attentively for a child, but had a bad tendency to wander off, though he never
strayed far and came back for meals. 
            In traveling, everyone had duties they had to attend to, and help
with, but they went where they pleased.  In the city, they had been a large
group, but now many of them were branching off, saying they were heading north,
and another group wanted to check on the whereabouts of the Antaam.  Now, they
were a much smaller group, so there were more chores.  He was learning to help,
but they didn’t expect him to, per se—save to work for his food.  They gave
orders, but they didn’t treat him like a slave.  They treated him, for the
first time in his life, like an equal.
            He looked down at the object in his hands, his heart wrenching in
anger.
            His fist clenched, rage building.
            The hate coursed through him like a thing alive, burning through
every artery.  He felt it tainting his soul irredeemably.  It was painful, and
nearly a match for the burning in his skin.  Because he had been bedding in the
servant quarters before the attack, a small chest of his things were still
intact.  He had changed into the most practical outfit available, and with no
small amount of contempt, had thrown the trunk into a fire.  No one had
commented on it, nor asked what was in it.  It had been serving outfits, things
he had hated to wear.  He had given the jewelry to the Fog Warriors, to do with
as they wished.  He saw no reason not to.
            People looked at Fenris, and regarded him as some kind of
monster—based on the lyrium, or the abilities it gave him, maybe how he took
some amount of pleasure in killing.  But Danarius was a monster.
            He knew that now, knew that from the depth of his soul that
everything up until now was wrong.
            He hadn’t… understood.  He felt like, to a degree, he still
didn’t.  But treating him the way he had?  That was wrong.  The child he had
murdered, the things his master had done…
            It was unforgivable.
            A part of Fenris wanted to go back, all the same.  He wanted to go
back to Minrathous, to the world he knew and understood.  It was easy to do as
he was told.  Easy to follow orders.  Everything in his life had been a
guarantee.  Now, his future just seemed uncertain, maybe even bleak—who knew?
            Alternately, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his
shoulders.  He felt good.  More than anything… he felt… happy—if this was what
happiness felt like.  He didn’t want to let it go.  Even so, he could feel it
slipping away from him.  He imagined the weight of the collar back on his neck,
the tug of the leash, the way the slender chain tinkled, or the way he had
thought constantly of how easy it would be to snap it.
            He stood up, pulled back his arm, and hurled the collar as far as
he could.  It sunk beneath the waves, and was lost.  He touched his throat, and
his heavy heart felt that much lighter.  It was gone, at least.  Another could
be made, but that one was gone.  No one would be the wiser.  Even if Danarius
did come to retrieve Fenris, and he knew he would if he could, who was to say
it wasn’t lost in the battle?
            Oh, he might be suspicious, considering the clothes Fenris was
wearing, but who would be the wiser?
            He sat down on a driftwood log, and emotion caught in his throat. 
All the feelings he could not understand, or could not express welled inside
him, and he blinked away the unbidden tears.
            He heard footsteps, and looked up.  It was Zekiel, but without his
little tag-a-long.  Shaislyn was usually with him.  Fenris suspected that the
Qunari scared the child.  “It can be hard to let go of your past, even if you
hate it,” Zekiel said gently.
            Fenris looked up at him.  “Was it hard for you?”
            Zekiel’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and he sat down next to
him on the crate.  “Ashaad left the Qun because of a disagreement when one of
his peers was promoted.  He said that his peer was self-serving and cruel, and
he was told that it was the will of the Qun.  So he left.”  He paused for a
moment.  “I guess many of the others have stories similar to that—but we all
left for different reasons.”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  If Zekiel wanted to be evasive, that was
his right.  “I see.”
            Zekiel paused for a long time.  “Some left the Qun because they
disagreed with it, or because they wanted something different.  I guess you
could say that I was the same… but I left for love.  Or, rather… because I
couldn’t have it.”
            Fenris knew nothing of love—love of anything.  It was an abstract
concept to him, and nothing more.  He looked out at the sea, and listened to
the waves.  He had nothing to say in response to what Zekiel was telling him,
so he said nothing.
            The other elf took his silence for what it was, and continued.  “I
was a child when I noticed that I was different from the other boys my age, but
I never thought about it.  There was no room to talk about it, and I never said
anything; I couldn’t.  Life in the Qun leaves no room for yourself, and your
wants.”  Fenris assumed that Zekiel must have meant that he was an elf.  The
Tal-Vashoth looked down, at his hands, then back at the ocean.  “I was
instructed on what I would do with my life.  With every aspect of my life.”
            “That sounds like slavery,” Fenris said, a note of bitterness in
his voice that had not been there before.
            Zekiel only sounded sad.  “It was.  It is.  But you have to be
devoted to it.  It consumes you, and there is nothing left but obedience.  You
have freedom to choose to do as you are told.”  He laughed bitterly.  “A slave
has the same freedom.”
            Instinctively, Fenris wanted to argue this, then stopped, and
considered.  There is always a choice.  Even if that choice is death.  Who had
said that?  “In a manner of speaking.”
            “Asit tal-eb,” Zekiel said.  “It is to be.”  He was silent for a
moment, as if he did not wish to go on, but he did.  “I may have found
happiness in it, in time.  I would have accepted my role in the Qun, and served
willingly, and gladly in it.”  He looked up at the darkening sky.  “Then I
met…  Athlok.”
            “Worker?” Fenris guessed at the translation, a touch confused.
            “We don’t have names in the Qun,” Zekiel told him.  “Much like your
master undoubtedly changed your name.”  Zekiel looked down.  “Anyway, that
wasn’t what I called him.”
            “Will you tell me what you called him?” the elf asked.
            Zekiel looked at him sidelong.  “I haven’t even told Ashaad this,”
he said, then snorted.  “But he wouldn’t care.”  He was silent again.  “Kadan
was… a Qunari.  Small for a Qunari, though—he would never be a soldier.” 
Kadan? Fenris wondered.  It was a term of endearment.  They were still talking
about Athlok, were they not?  “We met, a few times.  We talked.  He was…
different… too.  We talked some more, and were glad to find someone else.” 
Zekiel’s blue eyes closed, as if in pain, then opened.  “We knew what we were
doing was wrong—it was even… strictly forbidden.  And we knew that we would get
in trouble for doing it.”
            Fenris slowly began to get the idea of what Zekiel was actually
talking about.  “So…  I understand that you…”  He amended his previous thought;
it had nothing to do with him being elven. 
            Zekiel looked back at Fenris.  “I’ve always looked at men, rather
than women.  So did Kadan.”  He looked away, and did not look back until he had
schooled his expression.  “Of course, we were both taken, and we needed to be…
reeducated.”  He glanced at him.  “Anyone caught having sex—or even
masturbating for that matter--without being told to purely for the sake of
reproduction, is seen as being mentally ill.”
            Fenris found himself gone still.  Everything about that was wrong. 
Sex was a natural, normal act.  True, it would all but solve rape crimes, but… 
Mentally ill—just for giving in to a perfectly normal, natural desire?  Worse
still, they weren’t… allowed to have sex except to conceive?  Do they have no
joy in their lives?  He assumed that also meant that love, especially, was
eradicated from their lives.  Zekiel had mentioned to him, a little bit, about
how they don’t have “families” or “parents” per se, and he realized that must
mean that…  That seemed so sad.  Even Danarius’ slaves, all except Fenris, were
allowed those basic privileges.  In the Qun, just like Danarius had kept
records of his slaves for breeding purposes and documentation, they kept
records for breeding their own people like cattle.
            Zekiel’s blue eyes shifted towards him, as if daring him to say a
word, daring him to ask what “reeducation” meant, but he didn’t need to, the
way he spoke.  “Kadan was sent back to Par Vallen, and I was marched to a
reeducation camp in northern Seheron.”  A pause.  “He… wouldn’t even speak.  I
asked him if he loved me, and he wouldn’t even answer, not even when he left… 
I cried.”  He shook his head.  “I couldn’t stay.  So I didn’t.”
            “You never tried to find him?”
            “Par Vallen… is a big place, Fenris.  I couldn’t have, unless they
told me where he had gone, but they did not.”  He looked back at the sea.  “I
hated the Qun.  I even hated Kadan, when he refused to speak.”  He shook his
head.  “I hated everything, and everyone.”  He stood up.  “All that hating
takes a lot of energy, though, and it’s not worth it in the end.”  He left
Fenris, then, and started walking back toward the camp.  Fenris hesitated, and
followed after him.
            He wanted to say something comforting, but he had no words to give
him.  He wouldn’t know what to say.  He didn’t want to let go of his hatred. 
It might hurt him, but he needed his hatred too badly to let go of it.
Chapter End Notes
     Sometimes, I want to strangle my own character and scream "He's your
     god-damned uncle, Shaislyn!"
***** Sacrificial Lamb *****
Chapter Summary
     Lysander, though he doesn't know Fenris personally, begins to
     sympathize with him. Shaislyn just wants to escape Seheron.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The problem with studying animals is finding them, Shaislyn
decided.  He wanted to learn to be a soaring eagle, or a ferocious wolf.  But
finding those animals?  Impossible—even as a sparrow, he had trouble finding
them.  So, when he traveled, he looked, and was always watching.  He observed
squirrels, and crows, seagulls too.  He observed crabs, and the oxen.  He
didn’t want to be an ox though.
                And who would want to be a crab, or a squirrel?  Crows weren’t
useful either—they didn’t glide like eagles did.  Or did they?  He had never
seen one gliding.
                He needed something that would fly over the sea.  Or perhaps,
he was looking at this the wrong way.  Perhaps, he needed to find a ship.  A
little squirrel could hide in a large ship, or a lizard.  So he watched the
squirrels, and the lizards to learn what he would learn.
                He tried to feed the squirrels, to get them to come closer. 
The others mistook what he was doing for innocent childishness.  He let them go
on thinking that.  He didn’t trust them—why would he?  He didn’t want them to
know that he was a mage.  Maybe the Fog Warriors suspected, but maybe they did
not.  He knew the stitching on his mouth had scarred, but perhaps they still
did not guess.  Such a thing could be an odd abrasion scar.  Such things were
known to happen, he reasoned.  No one ever said anything about it anyway.
                He was never in one place long enough to win over the squirrels
though, but the crows were not so shy.  He resolved to watching the crows.
                One day, they came across a tree, with hanging corpses.  They
were Qunari scouts, from the Antaam.  The Tal-Vashoth tipped their heads to
them, but continued on without cutting them down.  Shaislyn supposed that they
did not wish to call attention to themselves if they did not need to.
                Birds were in the tree—large black creatures cawing and pecking
at strips of flesh.
                “The crows…” Shaislyn heard himself whisper, watching one tug a
bit of flesh loose.
                Zekiel touched his shoulder gently in a manner that was
supposed to be comforting, and he pointed to one in particular.  “That one is a
raven—see the crows leaving him alone?”
                It was true.  The raven had a body all to itself, and now that
Shaislyn was looking, he saw that it was a much bigger bird than the crows. 
Shaislyn stopped and watched it, fascinated by the grisly display.  The eyes
had already been plucked out like fine delicacies.  The raven’s sharp beak
tugged at a strip of flesh in the Qunari’s neck, a gaping hole already exposed.
 The warriors continued walking past him, and he felt the line begin to leave
him, but he stared at the raven.  Its wings were large enough to glide, and
ravens were not so different from crows.
 
                Matilda limped on her crutch after Lysander.  “You can’t do
this,” she insisted, hobbling after him.
                He swallowed the lump in his throat, and looked back at her. 
“What else can we do?” he asked her, his voice soft.  His eyes were wet. 
“Issie will die if I don’t.”
                Matilda glared at him, or more accurately, tried to, but she
loved her brother too much to be truly angry with him.  “I don’t want you to do
this to yourself.”
                He smiled, as if it were nothing.  “Don’t worry about it.”  He
put a comforting hand on her shoulder.  “I love you, sis.  I love both of you.”
                Matilda shook her head, as if in pain.  Her soft brown curls
bounced when she did it.  It made her look cute.  “You shouldn’t have to do
this.”
                He only kept smiling.  “Watch after the house while I’m gone. 
Someone needs to be with Issie.”
                The girl looked down.  “All those times you didn’t come home at
night…”
                He kept the smile on his face.  “Nonsense.  Do you really think
I’ve been lying to you all these years?”  He had.  He knew he had, but still he
smiled.
                She looked at him, and seemed to be near to tears.  “Yes.”  She
quivered.  “All those times you left, and came back in the morning with some
coin…  And I thought…  I don’t know what I thought.  I don’t think I did.”  She
bit back a sob.  “I was so glad to have it—either ‘cuz Issie was sick, or we
were starving…  I never even thought…  Please, Ly, don’t…”
                His face was beginning to hurt from the continuous smile.  But
he dare not stop.  If he frowned, it would be all the affirmation that Matilda
needed that he hated it.  Please, Mattie, don’t make this harder.  “I’ll go
instead,” she insisted.  “I’m a maiden.  They’ll pay for that.”
                His heart skipped a beat, and he put both his hands on the
determined girl’s shoulders.  “No, Mattie,” he said gently.  “No.  It’s all
right.”  He looked at the girl, with her cute curls, big brown eyes.  He
couldn’t bear the thought of her in a brothel.  “We will never be that
desperate, I promise you.”
                At that, she was angry.  “But we can be desperate enough for
you to sell yourself the same way?”  He had no words for that, and was silent
for a moment, his smile fading away like the setting sun.  She took it for
assent.  “Ly, you mustn’t.  You’re a man…  You can’t.”
                He forced the smile back on his face, aghast that he had lost
it.  “Exactly.  Mattie, you can get pregnant, and then what would we do? 
Please, stay with Issie—she needs you.”
                His tone of voice calmed her, and the truth of his words.  She
looked down.  “If only Issie wasn’t sick all the time.”
                They both knew that it would be easier on both of them to let
their baby sister die.  If they didn’t have to spend so much money on medicine,
they might afford more for themselves—a lot of things actually.  They wouldn’t
need to watch her, or care for her.  But they couldn’t let her die; she was
their baby sister, and they could not let her die.  “I know,” he said gently. 
“Go sing her a lullaby.  She likes that.”
                Matilda sighed, and kissed her brother on the cheek.  “Take
care of yourself,” she told him, but clearly didn’t like letting him go.
                He nodded and promised that he would, and return as soon as he
could.  Matilda turned and hobbled back the way she had come.  An accident a
couple of years ago had left her crippled—a merchant’s cart had fallen on her
and crushed her leg.  She had kept the leg at least, but would walk forever
with a limp.  One day, she might only need a cane, but for the moment, she
needed a crutch.  Lysander didn’t know what the two would do without him—one
crippled, and one sickly, both young girls.
                He loved them both with all his heart, though, and really would
do anything for them.  The money from the job a month ago had been great.  He
had bought the girls some clothes, food, and even fixed some of the leaks in
the roof.  He had been careful with the coin, and did not fritter it away on
anything, but the cost of living had its expenses, and he wanted so badly to
provide for those girls…  Maybe he shouldn’t have bought Issie that doll, but
she loved it.  She carried it with her everywhere, and slept with it, and he
had missed so many of her name days; didn’t she deserve a toy once in a
while—one that wasn’t broken?
                It was foolish, though, and he knew it.  They should have only
used the coin on necessities.  And it was summer right now—they really didn’t
need the leaks fixed.  It could have waited.  No matter what he thought now,
though, it was done and there was no going back.
                He had heard about the strange request from Chaisty.  He had
told him that Alesand, the mistress of the House of Jade, had a very specific
request from a most prestigious client.  With limited time to find one suitable
at the markets, she had begun to ask around at the local brothels.  Lysander
would not have known about the… job… at all except that he had happened to
reluctantly ask Chaisty if he needed another male for a night or two.  Chaisty
had thought about it, then realized that Alesand needed someone of his basic
description.
                A young male—one that has either never been with a man, or it’s
been months since then, and inexperienced.  That alone wasn’t so difficult to
find, but the client was exact:  Strong of body, like a swordsman.  That
narrowed it down a bit more, but it still wasn’t why the brothels were having
such a hard time of it.  The client also wanted one… less willing.  “If you
cry--” Chaisty had told him.  “--he’ll pay more.  But no begging, and be
obedient.”
                What kind of man wants something like that? Lysander thought
with a sinking feeling.  The House of Jade, though, was prestigious.  It would
pay a lot.  Furthermore, despite that this client basically wanted to rape him,
he was willing to pay for it.  For a rich man, wouldn’t it just be easier to
find one of their young male slaves, and rape them instead?  Maybe this was
easier though.
                Besides, even though he would owe a certain amount to the House
of Jade for use of the room, and another small amount to Mermaid’s Kiss for
recommending him, it would be more than he would have made at the Mermaid for a
week.  It would set them up for a while, and he could look for better work in
the meantime.
                He was nervous when he entered the House, and a well-dressed,
very polished servant eyed him with such contempt that he almost slunk away. 
The servant approached him with the same air of obvious disdain.  “What brings
you to the House of Jade, serrah?” he inquired.
                Lysander suddenly wanted to run.  If he were going to, this was
his last chance.  “I…”  His throat suddenly felt dry.
                The man’s frown deepened.  “If nothing at all brings you here,
perhaps you should leave,” he suggested, and his eyes flicked to a guard by the
door.  The guard shifted, and Lysander knew he had to say something quickly, or
they would just throw him out and not listen to him.
                “I’m here about the… job,” he blurted.
                The servant seemed more annoyed than anything else.  “You’re in
the wrong place.  Guard, I think this man is drunk,” he called.
                “No!” he insisted.  “Chaisty sent me—from Mermaid’s Kiss.  I’m
to ask for Mistress Alesand!”
                The guard stopped mid-stride, and the servant’s entire demeanor
changed.  He smiled pleasantly, all previous nastiness apparently forgotten. 
“Oh, I see.”  He looked him up and down, and sighed.  “It’s good you came so
early.  Come.”
                The servant turned on his heel and strode away.  All Lysander
could do was follow him.
                It’s not my fault I’m so filthy, he thought to himself. 
Poverty didn’t exactly allow for good grooming habits.  He was lousy with lice
and fleas too, he bet.  They had told him to arrive an hour early, at the
least.  He had left earlier than he needed to, though, just in case, and he was
quite early even by those standards.
                The servant opened the door, and ushered Lysander in, and the
door shut behind him.  He was standing in what looked like an office room, of
sorts.  An aging woman with good posture sat in a high-backed chair behind a
desk.  She gave him an appraising look, and her expression was nothing short of
disapproval.
                “You’re the one Chaisty sent me?” she inquired, her tone
brusque.
                He only wanted to slink away.  “Yes,” he admitted, looking
down.  What did she think of him?  Whore, most likely.  Desperate too.
                “I see.  Step out.  You’ll be shown to the room.  I want you
washed, and dressed in the clothes I have laid out for you.  When the client
comes, you will obey his every command to the best of your ability.  You may
refuse nothing.”  She wasn’t even looking at him any longer as she spoke. 
“You’ll find oils in the top drawer of the dresser.  I want you to put on the
rose oil—over all of your body.”
                His fingers clenched.  Like a slave!  It was one thing to be a
whore, but they were treating him like a slave!  He was a free man.  How dare
they—
                She was staring at him now, her sharp eyes penetrating.  “You
are displeased.  Why?” she snapped.  “You are being paid a generous sum.”
                His teeth ground together in his anger.  “You’re treating me
like a slave,” he hissed.
                She frowned.  “Tonight, you are,” she said, in a tone that
brooked no argument.  “But you are not being bought, you are being rented,
mercenary.”
                That caught him off-guard.  “How did you…?”
                Her eyes flicked to his hands.  “Your hands are callused.  You
walk confidently, but as if you are missing a weight at your back, likely from
a sword.  You also speak as though you’ve had some form of education.  All of
which tells me that you might have been born in a well-to-do family, fell down
on your luck, and now you’re here.”
                He didn’t know what to say to that.  He had never thought it
was that apparent.
                She raised an eyebrow.  “In this business, I need to know
people, and read people.  I have to keep my girls and boys safe, after all. 
Tonight, I’ll keep you safe.  In the morning, or whenever your client leaves,
you may visit the resident healer—he’ll treat any mars you might have—consider
it a bonus.”  She considered.  “I’ll send him up to you before your appointment
too.  Now, go.  You’ve much work to do.”
                He had nothing left to say, so he left the room.  A slave was
waiting for him, and wordlessly led him up the stairs and down the hall.  He
opened the door for him and showed him inside.  The slave gave him a cursory
tour of the room before he left him to change.
                Lysander stripped out of his dirty leathers, and hid them in an
empty trunk.  That hadn’t been instructed, but it seemed obvious enough.  The
hot water and soap felt good, no matter what the reason was.  There was a
shaving kit laid out, with a mirror.  He scratched his jaw, but still had no
stubble as of yet.  His father had once told him that he hadn’t started to get
facial hair until he was in his early twenties, and that his friends had teased
him endlessly about it.  So it was unlikely that Lysander would get any until
then.
                When it did grow, though, it would just be one more annoyance,
really.  But maybe it would keep his face warmer during the colder months.
                He had plenty of time, so he spent it all on personal
grooming—things he hadn’t been able to do in years.  Bathing was an extravagant
waste he could not afford, but he still felt so light afterwards that he
wondered why he did not do it more often.  The water, when he left it, was
brown.  And most likely contained more than a few drowned fleas.
                His hair was longish, to his shoulders, and it was more because
it meant fewer haircuts than as a fashion statement.  It was longer than he
realized it was, though.  It being so dirty and tangled, he hadn’t known it was
that long.
                Lysander toweled himself off, and realized he should do
something about the tub.  He really should have figured that out before he had
dried off—oh well.  He poked around for a bit, and plunged his hand back in the
water, searching for the stopper.  He found it quickly enough, in the tile, and
pulled it out.  The water drained out through a series of pipes, and he dried
off again.  He listened to the water draining, and was reminded of what his
family house had been like.
                That magister had taken it, and everything else, though.  It
had been his home…  The only one he had ever known.  There was a knock at the
door, startling him.  He pulled the towel around himself just in time for the
door to open.  A young mage, clearly an apprentice of some sort, strode in,
looking more annoyed than anything else, to be there.  He muttered darkly while
Lysander stayed still.  The mage inspected him, then laid his hands not on him
but almost touching him.  Blue light played about his fingers, then with some
effort, he pushed it forward, enveloping Lysander for one instinctively
terrifying moment.  The mage left with barely a word, and Lysander actually
felt better than he had in a long time.  All the little aches were gone, scabs,
all of those sorts of things.  He couldn’t say if any disease had been cured,
except to say that he felt good.
                He went to the bed, and found the clothes laid out with some
reluctance.  He ran his hand over the fabrics.  They were silk.  He almost
began to dress, and at the last moment remembered the oil.  He gritted his
teeth and found the drawer containing the oils.  Out of curiosity, he explored
the other drawers too, but found them empty.  Was this an empty room?  Why
would they keep it?  Maybe just for nights like this?
                He went back to the first drawer.  The bottles were different
shapes and sizes, and the liquids were different colours, and some were
colourless.  He wondered how he was supposed to tell which was the rose, before
he examined the corks on the bottles.  They had little symbols carved into
them, and it took him a moment to recognize them.  Most of them were flowers
and plants.  Lysander didn’t really know too much about how to tell one plant
from another, but he did recognize the rose blossom.  He picked up that one,
and uncorked it.  He sniffed experimentally, just in case.  Yes, it was the
right one.
                Why didn’t they just write it out?  Stupid question—not
everyone could read.
                He started at his feet, and worked his way up.  Was he supposed
to do his face too?  She had said “all over.”  He hesitated, and put it on his
face too.  He pushed the cork back onto the bottle, and put it back in its
drawer.  The glass clinked as he placed it back, and pushed the drawer closed. 
He felt like he would slip and fall.  The oils the slaves were coated in were
nothing like proper oils to care for the skin—they were thicker and more prone
to sitting on top of the skin than being absorbed by it.  At least he smelled
nice.
                He had gotten so used to the way he had smelled that he hadn’t
noticed it, but now he wondered.  He went back to the bed, and examined the
clothing, if it could be called such.  It took him a moment before he realized
that he didn’t know how to wear any of it.  It didn’t look like clothing to
him.  It didn’t make any proper sense.  Well, if a slave could figure it out,
why couldn’t he?
                Lysander struggled with the bits of fabric, and when he thought
he had it on, he looked in the mirror and decided that it had to be wrong, so
he stripped it all off again.  Why couldn’t he just wait naked?  He grumbled to
himself and continued to struggle with it.
                A knock at the door made him jump.  So soon?  Wasn’t he early? 
Lysander’s heart hammered in his chest.  Was he supposed to get the door?  He
went to the door, and pulled it partway open.  He shyly hid behind it, and was
actually relieved to see the slave from before.
                The slave pushed the door the rest of the way open and glanced
around the room.  He made a face, and snapped his fingers.  Two more slaves
dashed in.  He pointed to one of them, and then to Lysander.  The woman picked
up the clothing he had left in a heap on the bed, and went to him.  The other
started fritting about the room, lighting candles, drawing the shades.
                The first slave observed, and gave instruction where
needed—which was very little.
                Lysander blushed and stammered as the woman dressed him, and he
felt like she was judging his incompetence at not figuring out the garment. 
The thin gold chains he had thought were supposed to be some kind of jewelry
were actually what held most of the garment together.  The rest was held
together by hopes and a prayer, or nothing at all.
                The three preened him a bit before they left in a hurry.
                He looked around the room, more than a little worried.  They
had lit the candles in the room—the drapes were shut.  He wondered what he
should do until the man arrived.  Slowly, he sat down on the bed, and abruptly
jumped back to his feet when the door opened again.  He relaxed when it was
another slave.  This one carried a bottle of wine, a plate of cheese, fruit,
and bread, and not one but two cups.  He thought that odd.
                “Why two cups?” he asked, suddenly anxious that there would be
two clients instead of one.
                The slave did not look up when she spoke as she set the little
table.  “The courtesans often dine and drink with their clients.  Remember that
the clients must pay for the wine, so try to get them to drink as much as you
can,” she said.  Her accent was faintly Antivan.  She looked at him then.  In
the eyes, and he felt outraged for a moment that she would dare.  But then he
realized that, tonight, he was of no higher station than she was.  “He’s
arrived.  Don’t greet him on the bed.  Greet him at the door, and try to get
him to sit down and drink first.”
                It was the best advice anyone here had given him yet.  “Thank
you,” he told her, and meant it.  Besides, if he sat down and drank first, it
would be even just a few more minutes where it was not happening.
                She had already begun to turn, but she looked back at him. 
“You’re welcome,” she told him, and disappeared from the room.
                He almost sat down on the bed again, so nervous was he.  His
legs were shaking.  He paced instead, and tried to remember to breathe.  He sat
down in one of the chairs at the table, and tried to control his shaking
hands.  The man didn’t knock.  Instead, the door opened, and Lysander jumped
again, his eyes widening.
                A magister, he realized at once.  He stared down at his hands. 
He had never hated the magisters, until his father died.  But now he did.  It
doesn’t matter.  It’s just one night—that’s all!
                Lysander rose to his feet, knowing he was not as graceful as
any of the other whores the man could have bought.  He suddenly felt
incompetent for this.  “Mesere, welcome.  Why don’t you—“  His words caught in
his throat when the magister turned and appraised him.  The man wasn’t looking
at his face, for which Lysander was grateful, for he could not school his
expression at first.  He clamped his mouth shut, and forced himself to relax. 
“Mesere?” he tried again once he was certain that he had schooled his
expression.
                “I don’t care for the games.  I just paid to fuck you, which is
what I intend to do,” the man snapped.
                The boy wanted, suddenly, to hide.  He wanted to run from the
room and go home.  He wanted to be anywhere but here.  Not him.  Why him?  No,
of course it was him.  It would be, the way his rotten luck was.  “I…  Yes,
mesere.”  He rose to his feet, and kept his eyes on the floor.  “What can I do
for you?”  He tried to keep his voice even.  It was an effort.  The magister
may have mistaken it for nervousness and fright, instead of anger and horror.
                “You can start by addressing me as ‘Master.’”
                Then I am a slave, for the night, Lysander though glumly. 
“Yes… Master.”
                The man snorted a chuckle.  “Lift your head.”
                Lysander obeyed, and stared straight ahead, past the older
man.  “I would have paid more for an elf,” he muttered.  “But a human will do
too.”
                At that, Lysander could not bite back his remark, “Good luck
finding an elf that practices the sword.  Try a gladiator.”
                To his surprise, the magister laughed.  It was true though—most
elves were too poor for such things.  They were laborers, not mercenaries, for
the most part.  And if they did practice the sword, they were in the army, or
they were gladiators, and there were very few exceptions in Tevinter.  The
Imperium had little use for their kind, outside of simple labor.  “Do you think
I should have just fucked one of my gladiators, is that it, boy?”
                Lysander hesitated, and found himself looking away.  “It is
your choice, mese—Master.”
                “Why would I do that?  It’s so hard to replicate what I want,
and if they react badly, then I would have to sell them.  I don’t want to sell
them.”  He looked at him, and Lysander had the creeping feeling that he might
recognize him.  “But you—you’re disposable.  I don’t care what you do after
this.  I don’t care if it destroys you.”
                And there was the truth Lysander had wondered at.  He would
rather have a whore for a night than a slave forever, because on the off chance
it destroyed the one he took, he’d rather it be the more disposable of the
two.  It was rational, Lysander supposed.  And rape did destroy people—broke
their minds and their will to go on.  Well, he had endured and proven resilient
before.  He saw no reason this should be any different.
                He also learned something else.  To a degree, the magister
cared about his slaves.  The same way anyone would care about their property,
but that was better than some.  Better not to damage their own property, he
supposed.
                “All the same, what shall we start with?” he asked.  He wanted
to make his tone coy, but it came out more meek than coy.
                That seemed to suit the man just fine.  “Get out of that.  The
House will make you pay for it if it rips—I’ve no doubt.”
                Lysander looked down.  That hadn’t occurred to him.  “Thank
you,” he heard himself say.
                “It’s the last bit of kindness you’re likely to see from me.”
                Lysander started to peel off the garment.  He had been alone
before.  He had been stranded and had to walk halfway across Tevinter to get
back to Minrathous before.  He had been orphaned years ago, and felt miserably
alone when he had to raise the girls.  Now, he felt the same way he had back
then—alone, vulnerable, and stranded.
                The magister sat down, and watched him, though left the tray
and the wine untouched.  The boy only wanted to hide when he had nothing left
on, and the man continued to stare at him.  After a prolonged silence, he
finally said, “You’ll do.  You’re no proper replacement, but you’ll do.”
                Who am I replacing? Lysander wanted to ask, but held his
tongue.  Whoever it was, he did not envy them.  Rather, he pitied that person,
and hoped they were out of this man’s reach forever.
                “Tell me honestly—when’s the last time you’ve been with a man?”
he inquired.
                Lysander had to think about it to get an exact date.  He
frowned in thought.  “I think…  I think it was about eight months ago,
mese—Master,” he caught himself.
                “And a woman?”
                Lysander looked away.  He couldn’t afford to waste coin buying
a woman, and he was always so filthy, so flea-ridden, and destitute, that was
never an opportunity that had presented itself.  He didn’t know what to say, or
how to say it.
                But his silence spoke enough.  “I see.  And you hated being
with a man?”
                He stared down at the carpet under his toes.  “Yes.”
                There was a moment of silence.  “Then if you hate it, do you
only do it for money?  A woman won’t pay for you?”
                Lysander glanced upwards.  “Few women feel a need to,” he
admitted.
                The man at first seemed like he would say more, but changed his
mind.  “And those men bought you for the same reasons I am?”  He smirked. 
“Because you’re known to cry.”
                His fingers curled into fists.  “You would too,” he heard
himself snap, his temper getting the better of him.
                A very long pause this time.  “You remind me more of Leto than
Fenris.  And I’m not sure which of the two I’d like more.”
                Lysander obviously wasn’t meant to understand what he said. 
Maybe it was about whoever he was replacing.  But was he replacing two people? 
He wasn’t sure that he understood, and was also certain that he didn’t really
want to.  The first name sounded elven—so that one was an elf, hence his
comments on how he would have preferred an elf.  The other he wasn’t so certain
of.  What the hell kind of name was that?
                He was ordered to the big, canopied bed.  The man pushed him
down, bending him over the side of it, and he was suddenly glad of the rose
oil.
                Lysander had done this a total of six times, counting tonight. 
Each time was different, he would have to say.  It didn’t always get gradually
worse, after all, but it didn’t exactly get better either.  He also wasn’t sure
what kind of man was a lesser evil than the others.  The smaller they were, the
less it usually hurt, but the longer their stamina.  The opposite was also
true.
                His fingers wound into the blankets without conscious thought,
in an effort to hold onto something, anything.  He bit his lip to keep from
crying out, but it didn’t stop the whimpers in his throat.  His eyes squeezed
shut, and they watered.
                Some people went far away during times like this.  They just
thought about something else, and it was like they weren’t even there,
detaching themselves in an almost magical way.  Other people were so caught up
in the moment that they were immobile and unthinking and unfeeling.  Lysander
was neither of those things.  Sometimes, he could think about other things. 
The worst bit was that he would think of the most random things sometimes, and
it came and went too.  For example, one moment, he would be wondering if his
hip would bruise from how hard the magister was holding him, and the next he
would be thinking about his sisters.
                Those were the thoughts that got him through it.  Everything
was for them, and if he could not sell his skills as a swordsman, then he had
to sell his body.  If he were alone, and it were not for the two girls, he
wouldn’t be doing this.  He would rather starve or die of fever in a gutter,
alone.  But it was for the girls.
                The magister gripped his hair on occasion—tight enough to hurt,
and pulled his head back.  On one such occasion, he craned his neck in just
such a way as that it was difficult for him to breathe.  Then his fingers left
his hair, and Lysander gasped for breath.  The magister’s hands trailed down
his neck, his palm sliding around his throat before he applied pressure.  At
first, Lysander could breathe in choking gasps, but it gradually became more
and more difficult, until he could not breathe at all, and he felt himself
going limp, and still he didn’t ease his grip.  Everything just felt fuzzy and
dim.  Am I going to die?  Just like that?  I didn’t even fight back…
                Then the pressure suddenly eased, and his vision spiraled back
into place so quickly it almost hurt, but not as much as the thrusting inside
him.  The magister had thrown him onto his back, and Lysander looked up at the
canopy while it happened, his lower lip quivering.  Was this it?  What happened
if he never got a big break, some job that made a difference in his life?  What
happened if he couldn’t get his family out of poverty?  Would he have to keep
doing this?  Worse—what happened when he couldn’t anymore?  When he was too
old, too much of a man?  He wasn’t sure he could still sell himself like this
when he was, and as much as he hated doing it, the idea of never being able to
fall back on prostitution scared him.
                He pushed him around a couple more times, and he thought about
trying to find a job at the docks or something.  He would never sell his
father’s sword, not if he could help it.  It was all there was left, and
without it, he couldn’t even do mercenary work.
                It was the early grey of pre-dawn when the magister finally let
him fall into a ball on the floor, his knees rubbed raw, shaking and uncertain
that he could walk.   He supposed he must have wept, because his face was wet,
and his eyes felt sore, among other things. 
                The magister was dressing behind him.  He heard him move to the
door.  “Lysander.  I trust this is about your sisters?  No man who hated such
things would endure it for something less… noble.”  His eyes opened wide.  He
knew.  He had known the entire time.  Despair pulled at his heart, and he felt
humiliated on top of everything else.  “In the future, why don’t we skip the
middleman?”
                Lysander felt like he might vomit.  “You knew,” he whispered,
as if in pain.  “You knew it was me.”
                “I told you that you should have just sold the girls.  Now, the
older one will never sell with her crippled leg, and the other only grows more
sickly, doesn’t she?”
                His eyes squeezed shut.  “Go fuck yourself,” he hissed.
                “I’d sooner fuck you again.  Tell me, do your sisters know you
whore yourself out to buy them medicine?” he inquired.
                A tear rolled down his cheek.  “You took everything from me,”
Lysander whispered.  “Everything!”  You won’t take this.  You willnottake my
sisters from me!  “Go to hell.  This is never happening again.”
                “Oh?  Well, if you ever need the money again, you know where to
find me.”
                The door opened and closed, and Lysander wanted to break
something.  Or someone.  Sick, sadistic bastard.  Who had Lysander replaced? 
No one deserved to be treated like that, by someone like that.  No one.
Chapter End Notes
     So. Even though this chapter technically does not include Fenris, it
     is still very much about him and the kinds of things he endured, when
     Lysander replaced him. Lysander's growing sympathy is also relevant.
     I like it though, y'know? You ever think about all these individual
     people that maybe have a greater influence on your life than you ever
     imagined, yet you only knew them for the briefest moments, your lives
     only brushing once or twice in a lifetime, yet change one another so
     much? I guess that's another aspect of this story. Aramael, for
     instance, has never met Fenris, yet has influenced his life in many
     ways (shot him, was Kylie's courier, etc). Who, then, in our lives,
     has influenced the course of our personal histories even though we
     may not know them?
***** Cut *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris tries to come to terms with what his life has been like.
     Shaislyn proves to be therapeutic for him, and Zekiel is
     understanding.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            The road seemed so familiar, like he had been this way before, but
that was impossible.  Fenris had never been to Seheron.  But he remembered what
Danarius had said—he was from Seheron, originally.  So maybe…  Maybe he had
been this way before, a long time ago.  Maybe he had walked along the same
road.  It was possible, but who could say?
            “Watcha thinking about?” Shaislyn asked suddenly, appearing at his
side as if from nowhere.
            Fenris glanced down at the child.  “Nothing.”
            He frowned up at him.  “Liar,” he accused him.  They were both
silent for a moment.  “I keep having the same dream.  I’m small and helpless,
and things are going on that I don’t understand.  Someone holds me, but I’m
afraid of the one holding me—so scared that I don’t even cry out.  Then I keep
seeing the colour blue—but I don’t know what that is until I wake up--and I
hear people screaming and crying.  Then I’m screaming but no one will help me,
and then I wake up.”
            “It’s just a dream,” Fenris told him.
            Shaislyn frowned, and shook his head.  “I don’t know.”  He
shrugged.  “Maybe, but most people at least have different dreams.  The past
few weeks—since the city burned—it’s always been the same dream.”  Fenris
shivered involuntarily.  Before the wedding, he had had terrible dreams too and
couldn’t think of why.
            “You could try a sip of whiskey before you go to sleep,” Ashaad
suggested pleasantly.
            Shaislyn scowled up at the big Qunari.  “How can anyone drink that
fermented horse piss?”
            The adults only laughed.  The half-elf sighed and darted off
again.  The Tal-Vashoth took a lackadaisical approach to dealing with
Shaislyn.  The child could go where he wished, and no one bothered him about
it, so long as he was back by the time they were setting up camp, to help with
the nightly chores.  For the longest time, Fenris was certain that Shaislyn had
to be blind, considering how pale his eyes were, but he must not be.  He had
never seen him with a cane or a staff, and he commented on sights frequently
enough.  He just had odd eyes, he supposed.
            The more he was with the Fog Warriors, the more he came to realize
just how awful his life up until now had been.  He had never had a point of
comparison before, but it hurt when he thought about it.  He had never known he
could live a different way.  It had simply never occurred to him that it was
possible, or that there could be an alternative, even a choice.
            They went where they wished.  They had no master, no boundaries. 
To him, it was strange at first, but marvelous when he started to get used to
it, though it left him bitter.  Their freedom came so naturally to them.
            The group decided to strike up camp a little earlier than was
normal—the hunting party had come back with a big elk that needed tending, and
they were all eager to get the animal on a spit.
            Zekiel suggested, “You look like you could use a rest.”  He
pointed, though it was hard to see through the fog.  “There’s a bathing pool up
there.  When you get to the stream, follow it northward—you’ll see it.”
            Fenris gave him his thanks, and excused himself from his duties. 
No one seemed to mind overmuch, and he made a mental note to do more to help
later tonight or tomorrow.  Still, a bath sounded excellent.  He was covered in
dust, and he hadn’t bathed in days.  Danarius had wanted him to bathe every
day.  It was strange not to, though somehow delightfully disobedient.  The
stream was easy enough to find, even in the dying light, and he followed it
upstream, just like Zekiel had said.  They must come this way frequently.  What
would it be like to live like they do—really live like they do?
            He found himself daydreaming, and banished the thought.  That was
silly.  Fenris found the pool, and stripped out of his clothes.  It was cool,
but it had been warmed by the sun throughout the day and was tolerable.  The
bottom of the pool was sandy, and he discovered the center of it was actually
moderately warm.  Standing on his toes, he could just barely touch the bottom. 
He held his breath, and went under.  It was kind of nice to be weightless like
this, untouchable, worry-free.
            He remembered that he had almost thrown himself into the sea on the
crossing, like a dark stain on a white cloth in his memory.  If he had, he
wouldn’t be here now.  How could he have ever so seriously considered his own
suicide?  He could not do anything by dying, and who was to say that death was
any better than life?
            He came up for air again.  “You forgot this!” a voice called from
the shore.  He blinked, and turned to look.  It was Shaislyn—covered in mud, a
leaf stuck in his charcoal hair, possibly bits of twig too.  He was waving a
bar of soap.  “Zekiel sent me after you.”
            “You need a bath,” Fenris suggested.
            Shaisyln threw the bar at him and darted off into the forest. 
Against his will, he found himself smiling.  The soap floated to the surface,
and he scooped it up before the gentle currant took it.  He walked ashore to
scrub, and pondered on what the best way to dunk Shaislyn in the water would
be.
            He finished his bath and dressed, and put the soap on a large leaf
by the pool, hoping nothing would disturb it.  He followed the path that
Shaislyn had taken—crashing through the forest carelessly.  He found the boy
halfway up a wild cherry tree, straining to reach one of the ripe cherries.
            “Can you get me one too?” Fenris asked him.
            Shaislyn did not break his concentration by looking down.  “Sure,”
he said, just as his fingers plucked a cherry.  “Catch!”  He dropped it down,
and the elf caught it.  Shaislyn scrambled up to another branch and snatched
another cherry.  That one, he popped immediately into his mouth.
            “They brought back an elk,” Fenris reminded him, tossing the stem
from the cherry away.  “Let’s go have some.”
            Shaislyn looked down at him.  “But—the cherries…  It’ll be forever
before it’s fully cooked anyway.”  The child went back to picking cherries. 
Their entire exchange was in their native tongue, Tevene.  Sometimes, they
would banter back and forth about one another’s accents.  Fenris would insist
that Shaislyn pronounced things incorrectly, and Shaislyn was just as insistent
that he didn’t.  Seheron was ruled by Tevinter and often spoke Tevene in
cities, but they had their own unique accent, a series of slang that Fenris was
unfamiliar with, and to a degree, a different dialect.  Fenris’ accent, thus,
was a more posh, polished version of Shaislyn’s, though each was still
perfectly understandable to one another.
            Fenris watched the boy, the child climbing to reach another cherry,
as if it were the most important thing in the world.  Ah, the life of an eight-
year old.  “Come on, you have chores to do, you know.”  Fenris popped the
cherry into his mouth after a cursory inspection of the fruit.
            Shaislyn sighed.  “Yes, Mother,” he complained, but started
climbing down anyway.  When he climbed to the base of the tree, the child
turned and spit out the cherry pit.  Before the boy could dart off, Fenris
caught his wrist.  “What are you doing?”  The child’s tone was suspicious.
            The elf began leading him back toward the pool.  “You need a bath.”
            At that, the half-elf dug in his heels and fought with everything
he had to get away.  It was all to no avail, as Fenris was much stronger, and
just proceeded to half-drag him through the forest.  “I had a bath two weeks
ago!  I’m clean!” he protested.
            “That was two weeks ago.  You have mud all over you and leaves in
your hair; you’re not clean.”
            “Am too!”
            “Furthermore, tromping through a pond does not constitute
‘bathing’,” Fenris lectured.  Shaislyn wailed as if he were dying.  Fenris was
secretly amused.  “Stop that.  What would your mother say?”
            Shaislyn looked up at him, and stopped struggling for a moment. 
“We lived in the alienage.  The water there is brackish and brown, and it’s
hard to get enough of it for a proper bath, so mostly you just wash with a
bucket and some soapy water—after you boil it at least three times.  And I
don’t think she’d care very much anyway.”
            Fenris wondered if he were exaggerating, but something told him
that he wasn’t.  Slavery wasn’t much better.  Danarius may have treated his
slaves at the manor decently well, but he had seen the slaves at Vinewood too. 
“Of course she’d care if you were filthy, and tracking mud all over her house.”
            Shaislyn considered that.  “Maybe.  But only if I were making a
mess.  I don’t think Mother actually cared about me very much.”
            Fenris missed a step.  What?  “Why would you say that?”
            The half-elf was silent for a long time, and gave up fighting
Fenris altogether, and walked beside him instead.  Fenris did not relax his
grip on his wrist, however.  “Mama was raped,” he said, as if that explained
everything.
            Fenris was silent for a long moment.  He had been raped.  He knew
that now—without doubt, and it burned when he thought about it too hard.  It
had been horrible, and all the worse because at the time, he had been insistent
that it couldn’t be called rape.  If Fenris were a woman, and had been raped…
and were with child… would he hate the child too?  He didn’t have an answer for
that.  “I’m sorry,” he said, almost mechanically.  It was the only response he
could think of to say.  What does anyone say to something like that?
            “Don’t be.  It’s not your fault,” Shaislyn said matter-of-factly. 
He was silent for a moment.  “Mama was from Minrathous, and used to be a
slave.  They never really talked about it much, but after I was born, they came
to Seheron.”
            Something about the story made him pause.  That would have been
about eight years ago—around the time Fenris had woken, now that he thought
about it.  Had she run away?  Was that what Shaislyn had meant?  But Shaislyn
had been an infant, so he wouldn’t know.  There really wasn’t much use in
asking him about it.  “Ah, here we are.”
            Shaislyn, upon seeing the pool, started struggling anew.  Fenris
had left his gauntlets, or this might be difficult—he snatched Shaislyn by his
tunic and proceeded to yank it off of him.
            “Stop it!” he complained.  “I don’t need a bath!”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow and wrestled the child out of his tunic. 
Shaislyn put up such a fit, though, that he gave up on the rest of it.  His
clothes probably needed to be washed anyway.  He picked him up, and walked
closer to the bank.  Shaislyn’s eyes widened.
            “No!  Don’t!  I’ll get undressed!  Promise!” he pleaded.  Fenris
wasn’t so certain he believed him, but decided to give the child the benefit of
the doubt.  He set him down, but stayed very near to him, just in case. 
Shaislyn grumbled to himself, pulling off his boots.  Fenris had always thought
he had probably just stolen them from one of the houses.  If he had grown up in
the alienage, he had grown up with elves, and most of them didn’t wear
shoes—shoes were expensive.  Now that he thought about it that way, it seemed
odd that Shaislyn did.  But then, Zekiel wore shoes too, but in the Qun, there
weren’t alienages either.
            Shaislyn dropped his boots to one side of him with great disdain
for the older elf.  Then he dove forward, and was up and running again in a
moment.  Fenris was faster.  He caught Shaislyn before he had reached the
forest line, and threw the child over one shoulder.  Shaislyn struggled and
complained all the way back to the pool.
            He considered for a moment, and then tossed the boy into the
water.  He gave a cry, and hit the surface with a great splash.  If the child
didn’t know how to swim or something, Fenris would have to go in after him.  He
waited, and watched the surface of the water with growing concern.  Shaislyn
had tromped through the water, sure, but he had never gone in over his head… 
Did he…?
            He was watching the deeper part, where he had thrown Shaislyn, and
not at all the shallows.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something emerge
from the water suddenly, and splash with all its might in his direction.
            In the blink of an eye, he was soaked again.  He swiped at his face
and sighed.  He supposed he should have seen that coming.
            “I’m clean now,” Shaislyn informed him, and stalked past him. 
Fenris caught him with one hand, and set his sword down with the other.  He
kept a grip on the child’s arm and went to get the cake of soap.
            “You’re not clean until I say you are,” he informed the boy, and
brandished the soap at him.  Shaislyn yelped in mock terror.  By the end of it,
they were both laughing, and soaked to the bone.  It was somehow therapeutic
for Fenris, too, and he felt better.  He guessed that the laughter, the play,
even at his age, felt good.  And there was something special about a child
laughing, and even enjoying his company.  Shaislyn had never been afraid of
him, or the lyrium for that matter.
            Fenris had to hang the leathers up to dry, and saw no real harm in
getting back in the water for a while.  Seheron was hot anyway, and the water
felt nice.
            Shaislyn was swimming back and forth.  His hair was really very
dark when it wasn’t so dirty.  His curls were plastered to his face and
blessedly free of all twigs, leaves, and mud—for now.  “Does the lyrium glow?”
he asked, poking Fenris in the shoulder, tired from his game of diving to the
bottom and collecting sand and pebbles.  “I mean brighter than it is now.”
            “Sometimes,” he answered.
            “That’s kind of awesome,” he commented.  Oh, child, if only you
knew what it did, and how painful it was.  But Fenris wasn’t about to tell
him.  “You ever wonder what your life would be like if you were human instead?”
            The question was so innocent and sudden that it took Fenris by
surprise.  He blinked.  “No.  I never have.”  He hadn’t even thought of what
his life could be like if he weren’t a slave.
            Shaislyn considered briefly.  “I have.  And if I were completely
elven.”  He frowned.  “I mean, other kids used to make fun of me in the
alienage.  They’d call me names and stuff.”  He was silent for a moment, as if
he were considering saying more.  “The humans never seemed to know what to do
with me though, and most of the human children would either ignore me or treat
me like the other elves.”  He sighed, and looked downward for a moment, then
back up.  “You ever get teased for being so tall?”
            Fenris looked at the child for a moment, wondering if he should
make something up.  “I don’t remember my childhood.”
            The half-elf glanced at him sidelong, with a look that said he
clearly didn’t believe him.  “Honest?  You look like a mash-up of an elf and a
Qunari.  I bet you, kids made fun of you a lot.”
            Fenris shoved him, and had half a mind to dunk him in the water
again.  “Watch your mouth, child.”
            Shaislyn made a face.  “Did you have to cut off your horns to pass
as an elf?” he teased him, and dove back into the deeper water before Fenris
could throw him into it.
            The pair arrived back at the camp washed and relatively dry, and
just in time for them to start carving into the roast.  It had been cooked over
a fire, and they had been able to smell it long before they could see
it—sending visions of the fat dripping down and sizzling in the coals.
            Fenris returned the cake of soap to the supplies before he sat
down.  One of the Qunari gave him a plate when he came back, which he thanked
him for, and found a place to sit down by the fire.
            “Feeling any better?” Zekiel asked him.
            Fenris looked up at the sky, at the stars, and took a deep breath. 
Before he had laughed and wrestled Shaislyn into a bath, he hadn’t even
realized he hadn’t been feeling well.  But he had felt so good afterward, he
knew he must have.  “I suppose so,” he said, though his heart still felt heavy
somehow.
            He ate quickly, and helped wash.  They drew lots for watches. 
Shaislyn always wanted one, but he was always put to bed as soon as possible. 
Zekiel drew the first watch, and there were enough of the others that Fenris
did not even end up with a watch that night.  The elves, and Shaislyn, usually
shared a tent—more because of size than anything else, and Shaislyn was more
comfortable with the elves than the Qunari anyway.  The Qunari took up almost
twice as much room as the elves, so it was just more convenient that way.
            Fenris was actually looking forward to a full night’s sleep, but
when he laid down, all he could think about was the rape.  It sickened him that
he hadn’t even been able to think about it as such at the time.  What did that
say?  He had never even considered that his life could be any different, and
that saddened him more than anything else.
            He had lain awake for what felt like hours, and Shaislyn had crept
from bed half an hour ago.  He didn’t know what the boy was doing, but knew he
wouldn’t go far, if he would even leave camp.  The tent was dark, but elves had
decent night vision.  He raked his fingers through his hair unthinkingly, and
stopped.  His fingers clenched in it, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than
to rip it all out.  Danarius had grabbed it, pulled him by it, controlled him
with it.  He had grown it long because it had pleased him, and cut it.  He had
sold it to a wig maker—sold parts of Fenris’ body like he was so inclined to
do--and Fenris was suddenly, hatefully, glad that half of it had burned away.
            But it still came past his shoulders, and he still wanted it all
gone.
            He didn’t have a short knife, but Zekiel did.  If it wasn’t with
him, it would be in a small bag he kept in the tent.  Fenris found himself
hunting through it, but found something better.  Zekiel’s shears, in a leather
case.  He freed them from the case and started hacking at his hair.  There was
no reason to it, or even design.  He wanted it gone, like he wanted that collar
gone.  He didn’t want it to be pushed behind his ears, didn’t want it catching
on things.  He hated it, suddenly.  He hated his hair like he wanted
desperately to hate Danarius.
            And, when the tendrils of hair fell around him, he realized he was
sobbing, holding the sharp shears behind his head, listening to the snipping
noise, feeling the way his hair slid down his back in clumps.  And he did hate
Danarius, the tiny piece of hatred he had first managed to feel for him
swelling with every lock of hair lost.  He hated him more than anything.  He
hated him more than he could have ever dreamed.  His eyes squeezed shut, and
the hair continued to fall as he cut—cut—cut.
            Someone caught his wrists, gently, and pulled them away from his
head.  “Careful—you’ll trim your ears,” Zekiel said, his voice gentle.  He set
his lantern down beside them, giving the tent some illumination.  Fenris stared
at him, feeling the hot tracks of tears against his cheeks, embarrassed to be
caught like this.  But the other elf only smiled warmly.  He took the shears
from him, and moved behind him, and began to cut.  He had a comb, and combed
out his hair as he snipped away at it.  “You didn’t leave me much to work
with.”
            “I’m sorry,” Fenris heard himself mutter, and swiped at his eyes,
suddenly ashamed to have been caught like this.
            Zekiel pretended not to notice.  “In the future, do this
outside—there’s hair everywhere.”
            It was light-hearted, and meant as a joke, but Fenris couldn’t find
it in him to laugh right now.  The hatred burned in him like a thing alive, and
a lot of that hatred… was for himself.  The Tal-Vashoth knelt in front of him,
looking at his hair length.  “It looks good,” he promised him.  “With what I
had to work with anyway—but you definitely should have always had hair framing
your face—it all one length was doing nothing for you.”  Again, it was meant
lightheartedly, and to provoke a smile at least, but Fenris only looked at
him.  He brushed it off as if he didn’t notice Fenris’ lack of emotion, or the
drying tears.
            Zekiel helped him clean up the hair—namely picking up the blankets
it had fallen on and shaking them out outside.  By the time they came back,
Shaislyn was in his blankets, as though he had been there the whole time.
Chapter End Notes
     Fun fact: Chapter 3. Mieta tells Leto that when he has kids, he can
     dunk and splash them. Kind of a cute reference. I do shit like this
     frequently throughout this fic, and I like to imagine that other
     people get it.
***** Feathery Wings *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris and Shai have some "family" bonding time. And then there is
     alcohol.
            The next evening, they had arrived in what had once been a city,
Shaislyn assumed.  The walls still stood, but moss and weeds had largely
overtaken the majority of the city.  He had heard the adults talking, and they
had been explaining to Fenris that the city was largely where they brought
refugees—survivors of the fighting, who had no desire to join the Qunari or
Tevinter, and that had been this city’s origin.  They explained it all in
Qunlat, and Fenris struggled only a little with the translation, and requested
that they speak more slowly once or twice.  Shaislyn needed no such handicap.
            Ashaad had said, quietly, that the Antaam had not always been so
violent with their conversions.  They had tried, for a while and at the urging
of their teachers, to give others a choice of sorts—with the idea that it would
not rile an Exalted March.  That is to say, to let them come to it more slowly
and in their own time, but Schavalis had not ended well, and that had been
their last experiment.  “Stick to what works, I guess,” Ashaad said
sarcastically.  He was the only Qunari Shaislyn had ever met who had completely
mastered the art of sarcasm.  Zekiel didn’t even understand sarcasm all the
time.
            “When did the city fall?” Shaislyn asked, interrupting.  He
realized that he had asked his question in their tongue and felt himself
still.  Would they suspect?  Would they accuse him of anything?
            But his worries were groundless; rather they praised him for
learning so quickly.  One of the Qunari called it the gift of the young. 
Shaislyn said nothing about it, but repeated his question.
            “About twenty-five years ago or so, maybe less,” Zekiel answered
with a shrug.
            Shaislyn observed the broken buildings, the obvious signs that the
forest was overtaking it again. “Can I explore?  Is it safe?”
           Zekiel shrugged.  “As safe as a dilapidated building can be.”
           Shaislyn looked at him, confused.  His mother had referred to the
alienage as “dilapidated”, but that had been safe enough.  “So…”
            The older elf laughed gently.  “Go.  Run and play, child—but don’t
go into the buildings; they’re falling apart.”
            Satisfied, Shaislyn dashed away from the main party and went down a
side alley, anxious to explore.  It would be more fun as a squirrel, or a
sparrow.  He was still working on becoming a raven or a crow.  He needed to
watch more of them.  When he was certain that he was alone, he expanded his
vision, just to double check.  He wasn’t really sure how other people saw, but
he thought it was confusing to see from this perspective; it was hard to know
how to move, but it was perfect for standing still, or reading things people
meant to hide from him.
            He saw everything he could have possibly seen from every possible
angle, all around him at once.  He saw himself, and he looked like a small,
scrawny child even to his eyes.  And perhaps the scars by his lips weren’t as
noticeable as he had assumed.  At any rate, it gave him double assurance that
no one could see him.
            He abruptly shut off his vision, and his world went dark again with
a suddenness that was almost frightening.  Sometimes, he didn’t know how other
people dealt with never being able to shut out their sight.  Wasn’t it
difficult to sleep at night?  He liked the dark of his blind eyes when he was
trying to sleep.  And sometimes, he only wanted to listen, and he seemed to
listen better when he didn’t have his vision distracting him.  How did not-
blind people deal with that?
            His magic engulfed him—a loving embrace.  Beautiful and divine, and
richly powerful.  As always, he gave of himself freely and fully, and accepted
everything about it.  He thought of the bushy-tailed grey squirrels he had seen
before, and when his eyes opened again, he was small and looking up at the
world from a rodent’s perspective.
            Tiny and vulnerable as he suddenly felt, one thing he really liked
about being a squirrel—he could run.  It felt like he was running faster than a
horse, faster than anything he could have ever felt.  Nothing compared to
flying, but the squirrel’s ability to dart and climb were amazing.
            He explored the trees, darted around on the ground when he dared. 
He had to be wary of cats and hawks, of course, but he wasn’t worried
overmuch.  Squirrels had good hearing, and he was fast.  Other squirrels
oftentimes weren’t sure of what to think of him.  They looked at him, and
sniffed at him, and only ran away, even when he tried to play with them.
            He got bored with the squirrels, and moved on.  He squirmed between
a post in a fence, and ran across a moss-covered stone.  He stopped, and
looked, and hopped further on.  He ran up a statue, and looked around.  This
was a graveyard, he realized.  He shouldn’t play here; he should just move on.
            He changed directions and wandered up the overgrown path.  The gate
here was broken, and he slipped out.  He meandered up a hill, and found what
seemed to be a village square of some sort.  There was a flat, weathered
pedestal, and a pile of old stones.  Curious, he crawled up to the stones, and
discovered that one of the stones was a carved stone helmet, and he even found
a stone sword hilt.  It had been a statue.  He sat, and wondered what it had
looked like.  He bounded away, down the road.  He watched children playing at
what had once been docks—refugees, like the Fog Warriors had said.  They were
elves and humans mostly, but he did see one dwarven child.  They mean to leave
me here with them, Shaislyn thought with some annoyance.
            It was time he insisted they teach him the sword again.  He wanted
to learn, and why shouldn’t he?  His only ability as a mage was in his sight,
and transformation.  True, they were brilliant gifts, but they were not
practical for defending himself.
            He moved away from the docks, and watched the adults unloading
looted goods.  Bored, he bounded away again, hid up a tree until a dog passed,
and continued on.  As the day grew dimmer, and he began to worry about owls and
other predators, he bounded into the nearest house, listened and looked, and
found a corner to change back in.
            The house was old, just the sort that Zekiel had told him to
avoid.  He was unafraid, though.  If the floor fell out from under him, it was
the work of a blink of an eye to turn into a sparrow again.  He didn’t have to
take as long as he did; he had proven to himself that he could do it at a
moment’s notice.
            He walked through the house.  It had been looted several times
over, but still traces of its former inhabitants remained.  He saw tick marks
on a doorway where an adult had marked a child’s height.  There weren’t very
many, and they were quite small when they stopped.  Somehow, that made Shaislyn
very sad.  That child probably didn’t live any longer.
            The city had been sacked.  The child was probably dead.  If not,
they were more than an adult now, and probably didn’t even remember the
sacking.
            He found a back door, and opened it.  The hinges creaked so loudly,
and echoed in the streets, that he flinched.  He let it hang open as he stepped
into the long-overgrown garden.  There was a murky pond in the corner, and the
grass was so high that Shaislyn could barely see over it.  It was probably a
very pretty place, years ago before its caretakers had gone.  The apple tree
may even still bear fruit in the proper season though.
            “There you are,” someone said. 
            Shaislyn whirled around suddenly, as if he had been caught doing
something he should not have.  “Oh,” he said, and sighed.  “Did they send you
out looking for me?”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “No.  I volunteered.  Of course I should
find you doing exactly what Zekiel told you not to do.”
            Shaislyn frowned.  “I don’t think it’s that dangerous.”  He
frowned.  “What’re you looking for me for?”
            The other looked down at him.  “Dinner,” he replied.
            “I’m not hungry,” Shaislyn answered.  He had eaten a few nuts as a
squirrel.
            Fenris paused.  “You should come meet Krista.”
            Shaislyn looked down.  Oh.  This was about introducing him to the
woman they planned on leaving him with.  He crossed his arms stubbornly.  “I
don’t want to just be dumped somewhere like a child.”
            “You are a child,” the elf countered.
            The half-elf pouted.  All the things he had been through:  He had
been sold into slavery, learned Qunlat, marched with the Imperial army, been a
spy, been a Saarebas, escaped, and learned to shapeshift.  All that—and they
still just treated him as a child.  But they didn’t know, and his temper flared
at being treated like an ignorant child.  His jaw set defiantly.  “That didn’t
stop Lura from selling me.  Or Vanessa from training me.  And it didn’t stop
the military from using me to spy on the Qunari,” he hissed, and his eyes went
wide when he realized what he had said.  He clamped his hands over his mouth.
            Fenris had gone very, very quiet.
            Shaislyn’s lower lip trembled.  “I…” he gasped.
            The older elf looked around, and listened, and looked down at the
child.  “Don’t speak about that.  To anyone,” he whispered.
            “I didn’t mean to…”
            “It’s not your fault.”  Fenris looked pained beyond words, beyond
what Shaislyn really understood.  The elf beckoned him.  “Let’s leave this
place.”
            Shaislyn looked down.  “You leave it.”  He turned from him, his
arms crossed in anger.  The child heard the adult approach, and shied away. 
“Everyone I know is dead,” Shaislyn whispered.  It was a truth he had been
avoiding.  Oh, he had mourned for them, but he couldn’t bear to admit that they
might be dead.  Perhaps, he was not truly finished mourning, and the wound went
so deep, he didn’t think it would ever really heal.  “What am I supposed to
do?”  His voice came out broken, and he had sworn he wouldn’t cry any more, but
his eyes began to sting, and water.  Had he really only been numb until now?
            Fenris had nothing to say to that, and maybe he didn’t know
either.  He didn’t reply for a time, and thankfully didn’t come any closer. 
“There are other children your age—you can stay here.”
            Shaislyn looked down.  “I want to look for my mother, and Lura, and
Vanessa.  If any of them are alive, I need to find them.  I can’t do that if
I’m here.”  He swallowed hard, and stared upwards, at the sky, holding back the
tears.  He was afraid that they would discover that he was a mage, afraid of
what they would do to him if they did.  He couldn’t stay here.  Maybe for a
little while, but he had to get back to the mainland as soon as possible,
farther from the Qunari.  He only felt like he would ever be safe in the
Imperium.
            “It’s dangerous.”
            The child didn’t look at him.  It was dangerous if he stayed too. 
He couldn’t hide that he was a mage forever, not from the people he lived
with.  “I don’t care.  I can’t stay here, and I’ll leave by myself if they
won’t take me with them.”  His hands balled into determined fists.  “I have to
find them.”  And the tears spilled.  “It’s my fault if they’re dead.”
            Fenris felt sorrowful.  How could a child feel so responsible for a
tragedy like that?  And the poor child had been through so much too.  “No, it’s
not your fault.”
            Shaislyn rounded on him, angrily.  If Fenris had been indifferent,
if he had been spiteful, he could have tolerated it.  But Shaislyn could not
tolerate compassion and understanding.  They were more alike than either could
abide.  “How would you know?”  He blinked, and another tear rolled down his
cheek.  He lowered his voice.  “I knew about the attack weeks before it
happened.  And I couldn’t get away to warn them.  It’s my fault,” he insisted,
pointing toward himself.  “All those people died because of me.”
            Fenris looked pained, but like he didn’t know what to say. 
Shaislyn swallowed the lump in his throat and turned away, wanting to run, so
he did.  He ran back through the house, out the front door.  He ran down an
alley, and pushed open a gate, and found himself in a different yard.  This one
had once been a garden, and it looked like it was herbs and vegetables, once,
and now it was all wild, but the rose bush was still alive.
 
            How could a child blame himself for something like that?  It was a
heavier burden than a child should ever have to bear, but he insisted that he
did.  Why?  Why did he refuse to be comforted?  Any normal child would
want—desperately—to be told that it wasn’t their fault, and be comforted,
Fenris was sure of it.
            He wondered if he should let him go, but he wasn’t so certain that
that was a good idea.  It ended everything on a very poor note, and children
could be so impressionable.  But then, what did he know?  He had never spent
much time around children that he could remember.  What would Zekiel, who
always took care of the boy, do?  What would be best for Shaislyn?
            What Shaislyn had said, though, disturbed him more than he
preferred.  The Imperium was using a child to spy on the Qunari?  It was
brilliant—he had to admit that.  No one would suspect a dirty, half-elven child
after all.  And how close they had put that child to death when they had sent
him to spy—that was intolerable.  But they didn’t care—Shaislyn had been a
slave too.  And also hadn’t seen why it was terrible.
            He walked back through the house, and couldn’t shake the feeling
that he knew this place, even though, logically, he knew that was impossible. 
His master had said he was from Seheron, but this had been sacked such a long
time ago—almost thirty years ago.  His master had mentioned, another time, how
old he was.  If Fenris did the math, he decided that made him about twenty-six
now.  If he had been from this city—unlikely—he had been a toddler at the
time.  He couldn’t imagine, even for a moment, what it was like to be that
small.  He wondered what it would be like to remember growing up.  He had been
an adult when he had woken.  What was it like to be a child?
            I could always ask Shaislyn.  That thought had a ring of sarcasm to
it.  He would think I was teasing him.
            He left the house, and listened for any tell-tale signs of the
boy.  He heard a gate creaking in the breeze, and was prompted to follow it. 
Sure enough, it was left open, and he saw obvious signs of someone coming
through the overgrown yard—bent stalks, trampled grass.  The door into the
house had broken years ago, and the plant life was retaking the house.  It
looked like Shaislyn had gone inside.  Fenris sighed, and wondered why he was
doing this for a moment, before he followed after him.  The doorway led into
what used to be a small kitchen, adjacent to what might have once been a
bathing room.  When he walked past it and into a large main area, he heard a
creak from up the stairs.
            “Just leave me alone,” Shaislyn said, his voice monotone.  Fenris
looked up, and saw him sitting at the top of the stairs, looking forlorn.  The
elf glanced at the stairs and wondered, a little incredulously, how he had
gotten up them.  Many of them were rotted completely away, and what was left
couldn’t be safe.  “They won’t support your weight.”
            “I wasn’t going to try it,” Fenris assured him, and was content to
stand below him.
            Shaislyn stared straight ahead as if he saw nothing around him. 
“Leave me alone.”
            Fenris sighed.  “It’ll be cold.”
            “I don’t care.”
            A short pause.  “Aren’t you hungry?”
            He shook his head.  The elf didn’t know quite what to do with
Shaislyn.  He didn’t even know what to say to him.  He had very little
experience with children.  He didn’t feel right leaving a child here alone all
the same.  Thankfully, the child began to speak instead.  “If your master is
dead, what are you going to do?” Shaislyn asked him.
            “I hadn’t thought about it,” Fenris admitted after a short pause. 
But he didn’t really believe that Danarius was dead, not truly.  He felt like
he would know if he were.  He wasn’t sure how or why, but he had to know. 
Danarius was too much a part of his life not to know if the man died.
            Shaislyn nodded once, as if confirming his own thoughts.  “I don’t
know what to do if they’re all dead either—Mother and Lura and Vanessa, I
mean.”
            Fenris blinked, and frowned.  Vanessa…  “Vanessa Aurelius?  The
magister?”
            A smile tugged at Shaislyn’s lips.  “The very same.”
            And the elf darkened a bit.  “Your mistress, I take it.”
            Shaislyn looked down at him, both literally as well as
figuratively.  “I like Vanessa.  You seem to hate your master, but I want to
find her.”  He paused.  “I hope she’s alive.”
            Fenris stared at him, and suddenly felt mortified.  He wanted to
shake Shaislyn, yell at him, tell him all the reasons he should hate Vanessa. 
He was at a loss for words, though, and didn’t know how to begin.  The half-elf
was a child—he didn’t know any better.  Shaislyn was quiet long enough for him
to find the words.  “She’s just another magister.  She’ll kill you to fuel her
magic if she feels the need.  Why are you so devoted to her?” he demanded, but
was unable to say everything he really wanted to—to a child at least.
            Shaislyn gave a strained smile.  “You would have liked Vanessa too,
Fenris, if she had been your master instead.”  Fenris started to object, and
saw the boy’s expression.  Doubt held him for a moment—maybe not all the
magisters were as corrupt as his master—but then the moment passed.  “She
taught me Qunlat.”  He hesitated.  “And taught me to make tea.  She would buy
me things—like books, and tell me she’d be offended if I didn’t read them.”  He
kind of laughed.  “She bought me candy, and scolded the other boys when they
made fun of me.”  He shrugged one shoulder and his voice lowered.  “She hugged
me goodbye the day I left.  I think she was crying.”
            Fenris didn’t even know what to say to that.  He wanted to believe
in Shaislyn’s tale of a magister that wasn’t twisted and evil, but everything
he had seen made him doubt it was even true.  What if it were all some plot of
Vanessa’s?  That would make sense.  What use was a spy if he wouldn’t report
back to his master, because he would rather run away?  “You shouldn’t trust
anything that she said or did,” he said instead.
            Shaislyn paused, and looked away.  “If you’re trying to get me to
come back with you, you’re doing a poor job of convincing me,” he muttered,
pulling his legs up against his chest.  He paused, rose to his feet, and ran
into a room, to a place Fenris could not follow.  But it gave him some time to
think, anyway.
            The child… had been through a lot for someone his age.  Everything
he had said and done had only driven the boy away.  Maybe he should just leave
him.  He was half-tempted to, and the child deserved it.  But, no…  Shaislyn
was just a child.  None of it was his fault, and he didn’t understand.
            Fenris wondered what it would be like to be so innocent.
            “Shaislyn?” the elf called up the stairs, eyeing the wooden stairs
with distrust.  There was no answer.  He must be ignoring him.  He sighed, not
at all trusting the stairs to hold him.  He paced around the room, and that
feeling of familiarity just wouldn’t leave him alone.
            There was a loud cracking noise and a cry of alarm from upstairs,
followed by something heavy falling in another room.  He ran to the bottom of
the stairs, and halted.  “Shai?” he called again, louder this time.
            “Don’t come up here!” he yelled.  “The floor is rotten—and it won’t
hold you!”
            His eyes widened as he grasped the implications.  The floor had
collapsed, or a piece of it anyway.  Shaislyn had probably caught himself on
something, but obviously wasn’t well.  He looked at the stairs again, and set
his sword down.  Carefully, he crept up the stairs, his back pressed against
the wall, stepping only where the boards would be strongest, testing each step
before he put weight down.  He tried to be fast, and listened for sounds of the
child falling.  But when he looked up, the boy was standing at the top of the
stairs, and scowling with all the seriousness of a child.
            “I wouldn’t do that,” he insisted.  “Go back down, and I’ll… come
down too.”
            Fenris decided to just be grateful that the boy was all right, and
went back down the stairs.  The child followed in much the same manner.  He
breathed a little easier when he wasn’t standing on the stairs, and came away
without any splinters too.
            “You won’t tell anyone?” Shaislyn asked him, quietly.
            “No,” Fenris responded.
            The boy nodded, and looked up.  “Mama used to call me ‘Shai’ too.” 
He smiled crookedly.  “It feels like a million years ago.”
            He knew the feeling.  “Let’s go—it’s getting dark.”
            The boy paused, staring downwards as if he had not heard him.  He
looked up again.  “You can call me ‘Shai’, I guess… if you want.”
            They were mostly silent on the walk there, then Shaislyn said, “I’m
sorry—that I kept running away I mean.”  He frowned.  “Every time I get upset,
I want to run away.”  He paused.  “But no one ever came after me before, or
tried to stop me.”
            There was something sad about that.  What kind of a parent did he
have?  “You really want to find them, Shai?  It sounds like they didn’t really
take care of you.”
            Shaislyn frowned.  “Vanessa did.  I don’t care what you say about
her—it’s not true.”  He sighed.  “And Mama always worked really hard to feed
us.”  He frowned at Fenris.  “We couldn’t always eat, y’know.  They didn’t sell
me because they had a choice.  What would you do?  Two women and a child, and
they couldn’t feed themselves, let alone the child.”
            “They should have sold themselves,” he muttered darkly.
            Shaislyn, to his surprise, laughed.  “And what?  What would I do? 
I’m a child; I can’t take care of myself, can I?  You think I’d be any better
off?”  Fenris had no reply for that.  He shook his head.  “No, someone would
just rob me, and I’d be some street urchin the rest of my life.  Is that any
better than slavery?  No.”
            Fenris wanted to argue, but at the same time couldn’t really find a
flaw in the boy’s matter-of-fact logic.  Shaislyn had lied about hiding in the
alienage the night of the attack.  Fenris wondered how much of the rest was
lies.
            A silence fell over the pair again, and again the boy broke it. 
“You’re leaving with the Fog Warriors, aren’t you?”
            “I…  Yes, I’d like to,” he admitted.
            The boy nodded.  “Convince them to bring me.”
            Fenris snorted.  “I don’t know that I can convince them not to
leave me.”
            “Just… speak up for me when I ask.”
            “I make no guarantees,” the elf said instead.
            The boy rolled his unnaturally pale eyes and sighed.  By then, they
were close enough to the docks where they had built from the rubble of the
walls and the other houses, a large house to accommodate the children, and a
separate sort of barracks for the warriors.
            They were already eating when the pair arrived, and the hostess
quickly found them seats.  Shaislyn seemed to get along with the other
children, and they asked about him, and he was friendly enough, despite how
badly he seemed to want to be rid of them.
            Krista, a human woman with a scar that marred her face, took care
of the children here—she and the older children, that is.  They had started
putting the youngest children to bed, and seemed to be hinting for Shaislyn to
follow.  Krista had commented to Fenris earlier that she often had some amount
of trouble with newcomers, though.  Shaislyn was having none of it, and came
and sat with the adults.
            The Qunari were telling a hunting story in their tongue, and now
Fenris knew that Shaislyn had known the language all along.  The boy listened
with rapt attention, and then asked, “Why do you call yourselves ‘Fog
Warriors’?”
           Aban seemed pleased by the question or perhaps the boy’s
pronunciation, and beckoned the child closer.  Shaislyn went to him.  “We
strike suddenly, and are gone just as suddenly, disappearing into the
trees—like fog.”
           Shaislyn seemed to think about that.  “I want to go with you,” he
decided.  “I want to try to find the refugees.  And I want to learn how to
fight.” He paused and for a moment, his eyes looked haunted beyond what a child
should ever know.  “I never want to be helpless again.”
           Of course, some of the Fog Warriors tried to convince him not to. 
And of course others were proud of this brave child.  In the end, Fenris had to
do nothing at all to help Shaislyn, because Aban seemed only too happy to bring
him.
            “What weapons do you want to learn?” Aban asked him.  Shaislyn had
once asked Aban about his name, something no one else had done.  Fenris had
been curious too, so had listened.  Apparently, Aban had floated to Seheron on
a raft he had made, and even swam partway, to get there, so he took his name
from the sea that had nearly ended his life.
            Shaislyn didn’t even think about it.  “Swords.  Two of them.”
            “And so you shall.  Now, go to bed, child—it’s a long day
tomorrow.”
            With that, Shaislyn rushed off to bed happily.  Krista seemed
grateful.  Fenris stayed with the Qunari for a while, listening to their
stories with a sort of reverence and hunger for companionship he had never been
allowed to indulge in before now.
            They served ale, and Fenris usually didn’t drink it, but he had
used all of the medications he had  a long while ago, and the lyrium just
seemed to burn.  He just kept drinking it, and realized, about six cups in,
that he was drunk, and the others were amused enough to keep pouring it.
            When Fenris drained the eighth, Zekiel stopped Krista from
refilling it.  She was a good hostess, but always assumed her guests knew when
to stop.  “I think he’s had enough,” the elf said.
            Fenris sighed, leaning heavily back in the chair.  The world was
spinning, and he felt good.  The alcohol had dulled the pain, and he never
wanted to go back to feeling so much of it again.  He listened to the stories,
but didn’t always hear them.  Zekiel and Ashaad said something to him, and it
took him an extended moment to respond, which was when the two decided he
needed to get to bed.  They gave him a cup of water and Ashaad threatened to
carry him if he couldn’t walk.
            He got to his feet, and stumbled.  Zekiel caught him, and pulled
his arm over his shoulder.  Ashaad walked with them, and the two talked, but
Fenris didn’t always understand what they were saying.
            They went outside, and the cool air felt good on his face.  He
couldn’t say he remembered the walk into the empty guest room, but he
remembered Ashaad leaving them—something about seeing that Zekiel had
everything well in hand, and having no desire to play nanny to a drunk.  Zekiel
gave him a sarcastic thanks.
            “You need to go to the privy?” Zekiel asked him, with the tone of
voice that implied he had asked it several times.
            Fenris frowned, and had to think about the answer.  Zekiel took him
anyway.  Fenris may have spent an ungodly amount of time inside, but eventually
came out again.  Zekiel walked with him back to the room with the patience of a
saint.
            He set Fenris down on the bed and asked him, possibly at least
twice, if he could get out of his clothes, or at least the armor bits.
            Fenris fumbled with it, and couldn’t seem to make any sense of it. 
Zekiel left him for a moment while he fiddled with a couple of candles, and
opened the shutter on the window to let in the breeze.  He also went to get a
cup of water, and a bucket, in case Fenris had to vomit apparently.  Zekiel
returned, and Fenris was still staring at his gauntlets, so Zekiel helped him
out of them, and the breastplate.  He placed them gently on the floor.
            “Sorry…” Fenris muttered as Zekiel thrust another cup of water at
him.
            “Drink it,” he insisted.  Fenris took it, and started to sip at it.
            Zekiel sighed, and pursed his lips.  “Fuck, you drank a lot.  Some
of that was dwarven ale.”
            Fenris finished the cup, and he wasn’t certain if he dropped it or
Zekiel took it back, but he wasn’t holding it, and he was lying down on the
bed.  “I don’t remember.”
            “I bet you don’t,” Zekiel said.
            But that wasn’t what Fenris had meant.  He meant, I don’t remember
anything.  I don’t remember who I’m supposed to be, or any family I might have
had—I don’t remember!
            “Goodnight.  I’ll check on you again later.”  Zekiel left.  Fenris
may have lied there an hour or half a minute, but he realized he had to piss
again.  He half-fell out of the bed, and the door opened again.  Zekiel stared
at him.
            “What do you think you’re doing?” he practically shrieked.  “Get
back in bed!”
            Fenris staggered to his feet.  “I have to… go to the privy.”
            Zekiel scowled.  “Use the chamber pot.  I’m not walking with you
all the way back there again.”
            Fenris walked past him, one hand leaning heavily against the wall,
trying to remember where it was.  “I don’t want to smell it later.”  And I
don’t think I can aim that well.  Despite Zekiel’s complaints, he walked with
him anyway, and even waited for him, and walked with him back.
            This time, Zekiel got him to the room, and pulled down the blankets
on the cot.  He led Fenris to the bed, muttering to himself the entire time. 
Fenris stumbled, and the other caught him, and it didn’t seem easy.
            “Fuck, you’re heavy,” he muttered.  He helped him into the bed. 
“Here, let me help you out of that; we can get it washed.”
            Fenris sat up, groggily, but beginning to feel better.  “I am so
drunk,” he commented.
            Zekiel actually smiled warmly.  “It’s all right.  I’ve seen
worse.”  He paused, concentrating on undoing the closures on his tunic.  “You
seem… happy.  Or just really drunk.”
            “Both,” Fenris whispered, and tried to focus on Zekiel’s face. 
“I’ve never…  I’ve always been a slave…”
            “It’s all right,” the other said again.  “I understand.”
            Fenris reached out toward him, and caught his arm.  “No—I mean…” 
He struggled for a moment to find the right words.  “I mean that I was always
alone.”  He looked down.  “My master kept me separated—from everyone.  And…”
            “Hey.”  Fenris looked back up.  Zekiel was smiling, but it looked a
little forced, and his eyes looked sad and troubled.  “It’s over now:  You’re
safe.  Even if he wants you back, we won’t let him take you.  Don’t worry.”
            How could he know what he was saying?  How could he know what any
of that meant?  Fenris didn’t believe, not really, that his master would just
let him go.  He was… his prized possession, his pet.  He wouldn’t just give him
up for lost.  Danarius could bring the weight of the Imperium down on these
people.  He could have them all killed.  He could…  Fenris was so tired.
            Zekiel helped him out of his clothes, and bundled them up.  He made
Fenris promise to go to sleep before he left, and the elf was tired enough to
comply, despite his worries.
 
            The day had been long.  After breakfast, Shaislyn had to go to a
field with a Qunari, who only spoke Qunlat, and began his teaching.  They used
wooden practice swords, and the child enjoyed it thoroughly.  It was much more
fun than learning from Master Taggart, with the other boys to mock and ridicule
him, and try to trip him.
            He learned faster without their watching eyes and their chortles of
laughter when he made a mistake.  And when lessons were done, they went to
lunch.  He inquired as to how long they might stay in Schavalis.  None of them
really seemed to know an exact day, but only a couple more days, they all
agreed.  Krista found Shaislyn some clean clothes to wear while his were
washed.
            He instinctively avoided the other children, knowing full well that
he was an outsider.  They would look at his eyes, and see their unnatural
colour, and that he was distinctly of elven blood, and would shun him, even the
elves, for he was too human-looking.  They might be polite with adults around,
but he knew better.
            Rather, he went off alone, practicing steps in sword fighting,
until he was far away enough to be comfortable.  He watched the crows for a
while, studying them.  He watched for hours, and toward the nightfall, he felt
like he knew them.  He had been watching since the idea came into his head. 
The first form was the most difficult, the book had read.
            One bird was a good base for another, it had also read.  The same
went for lizards, for fish, for equines, and for many sorts of rodent.  He hid
himself, and became a crow.  It was different, being a crow as compared to a
swallow.  He felt more powerful.  Not much more powerful, but powerful all the
same.
            His wings were big enough to soar, and he was big enough to not
worry so much about predators.  He flew down to the docks, and observed the
children at play.  He winged over the city and stopped to watch the Qunari
practicing with their swords.  Fenris had joined them today, and Shaislyn was
impressed with him.  He felt oddly joyful to see an elf that skilled—and
strong.  It gave him some hope for their kind.
            He guessed he did think of himself as being more elven than human. 
Why wouldn’t he?  He was raised by elves, in an alienage.  People called him
half-elven, not half-human.
            Shaislyn wanted other people to see him and think those things
too.  He wanted to grow up, and have others look at him, and say, There’s hope
for the elves.  They weren’t all weak and subjugated.  They could be strong,
and fearless, and free.
            As a shapeshifter, he knew now that he could never be caged against
his will.  No one could cage a shapeshifter.  He wanted this freedom for all of
his kind.  He wanted to give them all wings, so they might all experience the
freedom and the joy he felt when he was flying.
            One day, he promised himself.  One day I can do something.  I won’t
be a child forever.
***** Slavery *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris' betrayal.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                The Fog Warriors decided to wait until one of their scouts had
returned almost two weeks later, and told them that the Antaam was moving to
port, an escort to their captives.  It did not sit well with the Fog Warriors,
and they made the decision to go give them some trouble.
                Shaislyn would have insisted that he go along too, but they
were going to be doing real fighting.  What they didn’t know was that Shaislyn
had every intention of following them, though—as a bird.  For real fighting,
they did not want to bring him.  They had agreed to bring him for scouting and
“foraging” but not on something like this.
                Well, the women he was looking for could be among those
captives, so he wanted to know.  He put up an appropriate fit at staying
behind, and Zekiel and Fenris both said that they weren’t going, so he was
somewhat consoled, though also frustrated.  He wasn’t sure how fast a crow
could fly, and while Krista might not know him well enough to assume that he
had just wandered off into the city and disappeared for a while, he doubted
that Fenris or Zekiel would be so fooled.
                Well, there was nothing for it.  He disappeared from them and
followed the Fog Warriors from the sky, and often flew ahead of them.  He
imagined that it would look weird for a lone crow to be circling them like
that, so he only flew by them a couple of times in a day.  He found it vastly
amusing how slowly people traveled on foot, even when they hurried, and how
quickly he caught up to them every day.  He flew beyond them, for a long time,
soaring in the wind lazily, and spotted the Antaam.
                He was afraid for a moment, then remembered that he was a bird,
and one that was not at all uncommon amongst an army.  He swooped down low in
the midst of the captives, and landed on the back of a wagon.  He turned
around, and looked among them.  They were treated fairly, he noted, but even on
the march, they preached the Qun to them.  Either way, the message was clear: 
Convert, or die.
                For most, the choice was obvious, and they did.  He noticed
some animosity between humans and elves and the couple of dwarves, but the
Qunari preached to them about that as well, that it was wrong.
                Shaislyn liked that bit, and moved on, seeing no one he
recognized.  He flitted from wagon to wagon, and looked at everyone walking,
but saw no trace of Varania, Lura, or Vanessa—or anyone he remembered for that
matter, but as a bird, it was hard to distinguish facial features.  Feeling a
sense of defeat, he circled above the army again, too afraid to search in his
birth form, which he knew now was the only true way of finding and recognizing
them.
                He flew away, suddenly no longer caring about this mission.  He
flew lazily back to Shavalis, and it was past sunset when he fluttered to a
landing.  He was tired, and just wanted to go to sleep.  He checked to make
sure that he was alone before he changed back, and wandered back to his
sleeping quarters.  He was met with a scowling Zekiel.
                “Where have you been?” the elf demanded.  Shaislyn shifted
uncomfortably.  “We’ve looked everywhere for you, but you just disappeared.”
                The child looked down.  He couldn’t tell anyone the truth. 
What would they do to him?  “I was just… exploring,” he said.  “Sorry—I lost
track of time…”
                Zekiel sighed.  “Of course.  Look, don’t do that.  The
Imperials and Antaam both have scouts you know.”
                Shaislyn shivered at the thought of being taken captive again. 
He yawned, and Zekiel let him get to his bed.
                The Fog Warriors came back exhausted, but seemed generally
pleased with themselves.  Shaislyn didn’t have to guess why; he had witnessed
it.  They attacked just like they said they did, and it was brilliant, and
worked.
                He watched, sitting on a fence, as the Thedosians practiced
with their weapons, fletched arrows, and fixed spears.  Fenris was there too,
sparring with a Thedosian easily twice his size.  Shaislyn could watch Fenris
fight all day, and often found him to be a source of inspiration.  He wished
that Fenris’ fighting ability was less of a rarity, and more of a commonality
among elves.  He wanted so badly for elves to be like that—not subjugated and
weak—but fearless and strong, and free above all.  Maybe one day, Shaislyn
would be half as good as Fenris was.  Zekiel was fletching arrows nearby, and
the child went over to him.
                “Can you shoot?” Shaislyn asked him.
                Zekiel raised an eyebrow.  “They wouldn’t keep me if I wasn’t
good for something,” he said half-jokingly.
                “I wouldn’t mind learning the bow,” the child commented.  “But
it’s useless when you run out of arrows.”
                At that, Zekiel laughed.  “And what good do you think a sword
is after you’ve cleaved bone a couple of times?  You think it just stays
sharp?” he chuckled.  “You hit something in armor a couple of times, and it’s
pretty dull—then you’ve just got an awkwardly balanced club.”
                Shaislyn thought about that, then looked over his shoulder,
back at Fenris.  For practice, he had a big hammer.  Maybe there was more to
that than he had at first considered.  “So…  You think two swords would be
useless?” the child asked.  He tried not to let his own feelings about the
matter show, lest they colour Zekiel’s words.
                Zekiel considered, and shook his head.  “Not at all.  Just make
sure that when you strike, you kill.  The more you hit someone’s armor or even
their sword and don’t kill them, the more it will dull your blade.  So you have
to make every strike count, or it’s all for nothing.”  A pause.  “Stab, don’t
slice—try to kill quickly.”
                The half-elf considered his words with care, and treated them
like gospel.  It was good advice, and it made sense when he thought about it.
                In this manner, days and then weeks passed, and the summer was
exciting and interesting to Shaislyn.  To his eyes, Fenris seemed happy.  When
he had first met the man, he had been as miserable as could be, and the worst
part was that he didn’t seem to know it.  Now, he just seemed happy and
content.  Shaislyn was glad to see it, actually.  Though sometimes, Fenris got
kind of broody and hateful.  When he got like that, Shaislyn would make a point
of saying something funny, or dumped water on his head—or something like that. 
He would rather have Fenris mad at him and throw him into a brook than have the
older elf look so gloomy.
 
                Danarius’ first act of business upon landing in Minrathous had
been to account for all of his family.  Annalkylie was missing, but she could
have easily been on one of the ships that had sunk in the crossing—the Qunari
had given chase, after all.  The mages had met them, and any archers they had
on board, but ships had still sunk.
                He mourned the passing of his favourite niece, and gave his
condolences to his brother, as well as her husband and family-in-law.
                Annalkylie had a grave in the family plot, as her marriage had
never been consummated.  A body could not be recovered, but her memories were
buried alongside all the others.  Danarius had walked among the gravestones,
remembering everyone who had passed:  His father in the hunting accident; his
mother to wasting disease; his twin sister to madness and, ultimately, suicide;
Roschelle and the stillborn infant; and so many others.
                The tower outside of the city that their phylacteries had been
stored in had burned in their absence.  He did not lament that, though it was
curious:  Had it been Qunari, rebelling slaves, even a magister perhaps?  There
was some discussion on whether or not they should even create a new one.  Most
were against it, at least for the magisters themselves.  For their mageborn
slaves, that was different, and new ones were made immediately, but this time,
stored elsewhere.  They also questioned what to do with the lower-ranked Circle
mages, and the debate only seemed to go ‘round in circles.
                There was so much to do that he couldn’t even begin to think
about Fenris fully until nearly two months had gone by.  Time passed so much
faster than he could have anticipated.  He was somewhat consoled, despite all
of that, because he knew without a doubt that Fenris was alive.  His life
flared like a single candle in a void, and Danarius would always know where to
find it.
                He had to arrange for a voyage to go collect his pet, and
debated on whether or not he should even go himself.  But then another magister
raised the issue that damage in Seheron needed to be better surveyed and
accounted for, and if he volunteered and waited a week or so, the taxpayers
would pay for it, instead of a private venture—which played very nicely into
his plans.  This time, Hadriana had been quite content to stay at home, and
seemed nothing short of grateful that she had not gone, despite her former
tantrums.
                Naturally, upon arrival, he first assessed the damages to the
town.  Clean-up would be months in the making, and even after three days of
searching, they found no survivors, which was to be expected.  The city looked
like scavengers had picked through it many times over since the initial attack,
and for the most part, the bodies were even already burned.  A small division
of the army arrived on the second day, to make certain they were safe during
their stay, while the main body chased after the Antaam.
                Danarius wrote his report:  A staggering count of the dead
bodies still being pulled from the rubble and washed ashore, the amount of
looting that had gone on, anything salvageable, and a disturbing lack of
survivors.  He had to constantly ascertain that Fenris was still alive. 
Fortunately, the elf was in the opposite direction of the Antaam, and had not
been swallowed up by the Qunari.  If he had, there would be no feasibly
retrieving him, which would be infuriating.
                He wondered what the Qunari would think of Fenris.  It made him
a bit uncomfortable to think on that, but they would probably take one look at
his abilities, and what he could do, and leash him just like they did with
their mages.  Just one more reason they needed to be stopped.  They needed to
be killed.
                But all that would come later.  The troops sent by the military
flatly refused to come with him on his private venture, stating that because it
was just that—a “private venture”—that they had no business in it.  No
matter—he had never relied on their help anyway.  He brought his personal
guards and a few slaves, and rode off in the direction he knew his prized
possession to be, and simply hoped that Fenris was well in addition to alive.
 
                They had been gone from Shavalis for not quite a week when one
of their scouts intercepted them, and said that there were Imperials at the
sacked town, and that they should avoid the area for a while.  It was good
advice, for they had been headed south.  They changed course and veered
eastward instead, steadily.
                Another scout had reported that the Antaam had arrived at their
port, so the Fog Warriors had no business harassing a fortified location.  But
they held no qualms with harrying the stragglers and the Antaam scouts, or the
Imperials for that matter.
                Ashaad had been a Fog Warrior for many years, and a scout for
longer, and a hunter before that.  He knew what he was doing, when he moved
quietly through the forest.  It was not Par Vallen, which had been a home of
sorts though it was always taught that Par Vallen was not home, even to
children who knew nothing else.
                The big Qunari preferred to scout alone.  Some of the others
liked to be in pairs or groups, for safety, especially during long scouting
missions, but Ashaad found that few could match his stealth or his woods
skills, so simply preferred to be alone.  Besides, he liked the solitude.  He
found that he craved such solitude more than anything else, oftentimes.
                When he had been a part of the Antaam, a piece of something
rather than a whole something—even if that “thing” was “nothing” according to
the Qun—he had often craved and longed for solitude, which he was always
denied.  Single scouts existed, but many went in groups, especially for long
distances, which was more what they needed.  A single man was just too easy to
kill.  But so much harder to spot, he had found.
                He could have reached out and touched the magister’s horse, so
close was he, and these humans didn’t even know he was there.
                He studied the robed man he knew to be a mage, memorizing his
features.  One human, to Ashaad, looked much the same as any other:  Small,
hornless, often helpless-looking creatures with dull skin.  How they had
managed to survive and thrive was more than Ashaad could understand,
particularly when they were so scattered and warred amongst themselves so. 
They were a violent race, and the elven history spoke to the truth of that.
                There were few elves in the Qun, but enough, and precious few
humans too, at least in Par Vallen.  But Ashaad had more experience with
elves.  Elves looked much the same to him, too, but he wondered how comparable
they were to humans.  He could always ask Zekiel, but his friend might chastise
him rather than answer him directly.
                Ashaad listened to their words, but they spoke little that was
relevant, or of use.  He did not learn where they were going, but the magister
continuously looked in the same direction that the warrior knew Zekiel and the
others to be, which was cause for concern.  He needed to report this, but what
could this man want?
                There were enough men here—good warriors, he saw, from the way
they moved with their weaponry and cared for their blades and bows—to cause
some trouble, but not really enough to do anything serious.  A mage could
easily tip the scales, but, as Zekiel would say, a well-aimed arrow could put a
quick end to that.  He wondered what, in that case, they could want.  The
magisters sent their slaves to do their fighting for them.  Whatever this was
about, it wasn’t about fighting.  And these men lacked the order and discipline
Ashaad had associated with the Imperial Army.  What, then, did that mean?
                After he observed a while longer, he decided that these men
were guards.  Strange, very strange.  All the same, the others needed to know
as soon as possible.
                Ashaad crept back into the forest.
 
                Shaislyn, in the form of a crow, perched in a sycamore tree,
and listened to the Thedosians talking below him.  Ashaad had come back from a
scouting mission, and seemed perturbed, so Shaislyn had come closer.  It was
just before midnight, and the half-elf had yet to go to sleep, opting instead
to sneak out of the tent and fly first.
                He liked being with the Fog Warriors.  No one seemed to care
too much that he was in bed at a “decent hour,” so long as he got up in the
morning and did his chores.
                He listened to Ashaad’s description of the magister and his
party, and the giant seemed most troubled that the humans were so close.  They
debated briefly on breaking camp, and ultimately decided that traveling in the
dark was unwise, and breaking camp in the dark would be nothing but a hassle. 
They stayed put, but doubled their guard.  The Fog Warriors grumbled, but
consented to this extra form of caution.  Ashaad went to his tent, and Shaislyn
decided that he had better get some sleep too.  It would be wise.  He flew off
into the forest, and found a small space under a mulberry bush.  He changed
back, and crawled out from under it.  He snuck back into the camp, and this
time was actually scolded.
                “There’s Imperials nearby—don’t wander off,”the Tal-Vashoth
said to him, not unkindly.
               Shaislyn promised that he would stay nearby, and went directly
to bed, but found he couldn’t sleep.  He rolled, and listened to Zekiel
breathing, and the sort of low humming sound that came from Fenris’ lyrium.  It
wasn’t a bad sound.  Actually, it was sort of lulling.
                Shaislyn had asked Fenris about it once—how he tolerated the
constant humming.  It had taken Fenris several seconds to even understand what
he meant.  He simply stated, “I don’t hear it anymore.”
                The child had made a face.  “You just got used to it,” he had
informed him.  There was a bright, sudden flash of blue light.  Shaislyn had
been alarmed the first time he had seen it, but now he only recognized it as
one thing:  Fenris had a nightmare was all.  His emotions could make the lyrium
run rampant.  It was a lot like a mage’s abilities, when it came right down to
it.
                Shaislyn sometimes felt like pointing it out to him,
particularly when the topic of mages was brought up, and Fenris always had a
disgusted look on his face.
                The lyrium flashed again, then stayed at a steady but bright
glow.  Shaislyn frowned, and sat up.  He crawled over to the older elf and
touched his shoulder, but jumped back when Fenris jumped, his hand reaching
out.
                Shaislyn’s “vision” was no different in the dark as from the
light, only so much that everything was in different shades.  He saw Fenris’
eyes open wide for a moment, then he relaxed, and the lyrium paled again. 
Shaislyn glanced at the liquid metal in the man’s arms.  The liquid seemed to
run across his skin, constantly moving, constantly in flux.  It traveled, even
in the smallest lines, back and forth.  It was so much more than just a tattoo.
                “You were having a nightmare,” the child whispered helpfully.
                The elf sighed, and sat up, rubbing his eyes.  “I should thank
you then,” he said in a low voice, so as not to disturb Zekiel, and Shaislyn
wondered if he could be teasing him somehow.
                “Do you remember your dreams?” Shaislyn asked, pulling his legs
up against his chest.
                Fenris shook his head.  “No.  I don’t—not often anyway.”  There
was something about his voice that implied that he was very grateful for that.
                Shaislyn frowned, and nodded.  “Sometimes, I dream about my
sister.”
                Fenris looked at him, and frowned.  “You never mentioned a
sister.”
                The child glanced away, then back at the other.  “She’s dead. 
She died when we were infants—we’re twins.”  He paused.  “I don’t remember her
though—but I dream about her.”
                Fenris looked at him.  “What are you implying?”
                Shaislyn’s lips pursed together, briefly annoyed that the other
didn’t get it.  “Your memory; how you don’t remember your childhood.  Maybe you
really do—just not when you’re awake.”  He yawned.  “Night.”
                “Night.”  Shaislyn climbed back into his bed, burrowing under
the blankets.  He shut off his vision, and now it was dark enough to sleep.
 
                Danarius was ruthless in his pursuit of his pet, and the Tal-
Vashoth less so, and he caught them, in a manner of speaking.  The Qunari
runaways had settled on a hill and looked down at him in the meadow.  For a
while, the two sides found themselves at a standoff, each one just a bit
unwilling to move.  Danarius sent one of his men with a message to parley, and
when the man returned unharmed, it was only a matter of waiting.  One of them
came down to speak.
                “Why are you here, human?” the Qunari said in the Trade tongue,
getting right to the point rather than mince words, like any civilized human
would have done.  He also stayed a respectable distance away.
                Danarius sat atop his horse, and was annoyed at the
impetuousness of this horned brute.  “It seems you have something of mine I
lost.  I simply came to retrieve him,” the magister answered smoothly.  It
really was as simple as that, and could be remedied just as simply.  Why, he
was even willing to pay them for Fenris’ safekeeping.
                The Qunari knew instantly who he meant, the mage could see it
in the Qunari’s alien eyes.  “We will not give him to you.”
                Danarius’ eyes narrowed.  “I’ll reward you.  It’s only fitting,
as you’ve kept him safe for so long.”  And treated his wounds, he reflected. 
He always knew somehow when Fenris was hurt.  He didn’t feel it, nor could he
tell exactly what it was—but he always sensed the danger and the hurt all the
same.  He might compare it to being paralyzed and having the paralyzed limb
injured—one knew it happened, but didn’t feel it.
                The brutish creature shook his head firmly.  “No,” he said, jaw
set.
                The magister’s fingers clenched in the reigns.  He should kill
the creature where it stood.  “Let me speak to Fenris.”
                The Qunari appraised him, silent as their kind were known to
be, before it turned away without answering, one way or the other.  Danarius
waited.  He was a patient man.  He could wait, and see what happened.  He
watched the Tal-Vashoth climb back up the hill, and speak with the other
waiting creatures, and they disappeared behind the hill.
 
                Fenris listened to the Qunari talking in their tongue, though
he was not quite fluent in Qunlat.  It had begun in heated whispers, but now
they were arguing with each other, and he quickly realized what it was about,
to his despair.
                Danarius had found him.  Worse, Danarius was here—at the bottom
of the hill.  Most of the Qunari were in agreement that they would not hand
Fenris over to him, to live the rest of his life as a slave.  Others insisted
that they should, because in a fight, many of them would die.
                “One is not worth so much,” a Tal-Vashoth argued.
                “Which is why we will distract them, and run—like we are known
for,” Aban said decidedly.  Now, he had all of their agreement.  Fenris only
looked away.  So.  It was ending.  This was it.  Fenris could see it all so
clearly.  The past few weeks had been a dream-come-true, but the funny thing
about dreams was that they never lasted.  A few weeks from now, that’s all it
would feel like, a dream.  Something that couldn’t have possibly happened.  It
would be fall in Minrathous, now, he imagined.  The trees would be turning in
the orchards, the servants beginning to make winter preparations on the manor. 
The vineyards would be doing the same.  He thought of the view from his window,
and all the other rooms in the manor.  A few months from now, this would feel
like it never happened.  Maybe it would even snow again this year.
                “No,” Fenris said suddenly, as the Qunari began breaking camp
to run.  They looked at him.  The elf suddenly felt uneasy.  “I will…  I’ll
go.  You don’t need to get hurt for this.”
                Zekiel touched his shoulder gently, and when Fenris looked at
him, the elf smiled reassuringly.  “Don’t worry about it:  It’s what we do.”
 
                Danarius pretended to fall for the Tal-Vashoth’s feint, but he
and a portion of his guards broke and headed off where he knew Fenris to be. 
On a horse, he caught up to the small party in an open field.  His gaze settled
on Fenris.  His slave’s hair was practically sheared off, but he seemed
otherwise to be fine.  He even bowed his head.
                “Fenris,” Danarius called to him.  He watched the elf start to
move forward, and another elf, this one brunette, hauled him back, and
whispered something to him.  Fenris looked at the other elf, and seemed torn
for a moment.  Danarius was pleased to see that Fenris moved away from the
other elf, and would have obediently came to him, except a Qunari stepped in
front of him, protectively, the magister noted.
                The Qunari from before held a weapon in his hands now.  “I told
you that we wouldn’t give him to you.”
                The magister had just about had it with these rebel Qunari. 
“Fenris.”  The elf looked up.  Danarius felt himself smile, and he moved his
staff into his hand.  “Kill them.”
                The elf’s eyes flickered with half a moment of indecision,
before his sword was in his hands.  The Qunari didn’t even know how to react at
first.  The elf just cut into them with a steady precision.  Calculated, cold,
and unfeeling.
                All the Qunari’s attention now was diverted to dealing with the
sudden threat of Fenris, or more specifically his greatsword.  Danarius watched
with interest, and only occasionally had to assist his pet with a well-aimed
spell.  His own guards worked at keeping the Qunari from the magister.
                Zekiel—though the magister did not know his name--bent back a
bow, not looking toward Fenris, but toward Danarius, who was the real threat. 
The elf knew that Fenris would stop if Danarius were dead.  Goose feathers
touched his sun-kissed cheeks.  Danarius saw, but too late.  The bowstring went
taught, the bow arced.  The arrow left the stave, the string striking the elf’s
arm as the arrow cleaved through the air.
                What Danarius didn’t know was that Zekiel had held a bow since
he was a child.  He had started with a stave when he was old enough to stand,
and would stand with the stave, and if he lowered it for even a moment, the
overseer would tan his hide.  When his mother and he had escaped and joined the
Qun, he had been allowed to go hunting, as they had been in a small learning
community, and he had learned how to use a bow.  However, the Qunari did
nothing by halves, and they trained him well:  He could shoot while running. 
He could shoot while jumping and hit his target.  He could hit a moth’s wings
from two hundred yards—and that was when his instructor had told him, with
barely a note of approval, that he may one day make a decent archer.  Zekiel
was better than that now.
                A Qunari broke the line of Danarius’ defenders, and it actually
had the opposite effect of what the giant had intended:  The flash of the axe
made Danarius’ horse rear and wheel, and the arrow, rather than sink into his
neck, pierced through his side.  Pain lanced through the mage, and he lost the
reigns on the horse.  His first thoughts were of how much it hurt, and then
that he needed to cast a healing spell.  As its hooves came down, and it danced
away, he slipped, and fell from the saddle, landing hard on one side.  The
arrow was pushed violently further into his side, and he felt his world begin
to dim.
                Don’t faint.  Don’t faint.  Don’t faint.
                A tiny thread of magic, blue and healing, trickled over him. 
It had been a weak cast, but he was surprised he had managed it.  He wasn’t
going to faint, he knew that now, but he needed real care soon.  His eyes slid
closed in concentration as he tried to summon his mana.  Trying to use blood
magic right now would only make it worse.  Part of being a skilled mage was
knowing when to use the right spells and type of magic.
                Around the magister, he heard the fighting continue.  He heard
the clash of swords and armor, the sound of a blade striking a shield.  He
heard men screaming in mortal pain, screams of rage, screams of anger—and
anguished perceived betrayal.  Then he heard only the sounds of pain, belabored
breathing, the panting that comes after a fight.  He risked a glance up.  Many
of his own men were wounded or dead, but the Qunari seemed to all be dead,
including the brunette elf—hacked nearly in two by a greatsword that had even
split his yew bow.  The fighting seemed to have stopped.  His horse had ran off
too—blasted thing.
                All around, were bodies of the dead and the dying, the dead
attracting flies and carrion, and the dying moaning their pain—that one mortal
moment that left no distinction between magister and slave.  Fenris stood
amidst them, looking lost somehow, like something about him was dying with the
Tal-Vashoth around him.
                There—movement.  Something stirred, and made a small noise. 
Danarius turned and looked, expecting a half-dead Qunari to be moving.  But it
was a child.  What he at first thought, from a distance, was a human child, but
then saw that that wasn’t true at all.  But it was also incorrect to call it
elven, or dwarven; it was a half-breed child.
                It made him think about Fenris’ sister, about her child.  It
would have grown into its power by now.  It would have been… about that age
actually.  He blinked, and saw the hair, the pale, pale eyes.  It couldn’t be… 
Vanessa had assured him that the child had gone north with the army.
                But there simply was no mistaking the hair.  It was the same
shade of coal-and-cinders as his brother’s, the same shade as his niece
Caleigh, or his own late mother, and the child had that hair.  Coupled with the
eyes—eyes he now knew were blind—he knew.  He knew with a cold, dead certainty
that somehow, this was his bastard, mage-born son.
                And Fenris had met the boy.  He didn’t think he knew.  He
didn’t think either of them knew.
                “Fenris.  Bring me the boy,” he told him.  Each word was forced
and hard-gained, and he felt himself getting light-headed.  It was getting
difficult to think and reason…
                Fenris moved to obey, his movements stiff.  He didn’t step
around the gore, but rather moved as if he didn’t really see or recognize it. 
His feet were bloody, and Danarius made a face when he stepped in a bit of
brain and bone.  Fenris didn’t flinch—didn’t even recognize it for what it
was.  The elf looked sick, pale, and, if Danarius had only known better, ready
to bolt like a frightened rabbit.
                The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, and he was staring at
Fenris as if he could see him.  The boy fell backwards, landing on the bloodied
soil hard.  He backpedaled, away.
                “Don’t come near me!” the child cried pleadingly.
                Fenris paused, but only paused, and kept walking toward him.
                “I mean it!” he continued, trying to scramble backwards, and
yelped when he put his hand against a rib jutting out of a Qunari’s chest.  He
withdrew his hand quickly in horror, and looked at the corpse, then back at
Fenris.  “How could you?”  Tears welled in the child’s blind eyes.  “You’re a
monster!” he screamed.
                And Fenris stopped walking, as if he had been struck across the
face.  Danarius’ eyes narrowed.  Somehow, the child could see.  He wasn’t
certain how, exactly, but he was positive that the boy was somehow using magic
to see.  That intrigued him.  What kind of spell was that?  What other uses
could such a thing have?
                “They helped you, and you killed them!” the child shrieked, and
clutched at his bleeding arm.  Blood soaked his entire left arm, and from the
way he held it, it seemed to hurt.  “You’re a monster, and you deserve to die! 
All of you deserve to die!”
                “Shai…” Fenris whispered.  Danarius would have the boy
captured, see what he could learn of this spell of his.  He had a few questions
of the lad too, the spell aside.
                “Shut up!” the boy cried.  But that hair.  That was a family
trait.  If he brought the boy back to Minrathous for questioning, if any one
should see him, it would only be a matter of time before someone saw those
curls, and compared them to Caleigh or Elden.  No, the mage thought.  This
child is a mistake I should have corrected long ago.  He never should have been
allowed to live this long.  He had questions—about this spell of the blind
boy’s vision, a few questions about how using him in the ritual might have
affected him—but it was not worth the political scandal of being seen with him.
                “I’ve changed my mind,” Danarius decided.  “Kill him.”
 
                Oh.  An order.  Orders were easy to obey.  Easy to follow.  It
was so much harder to think, to reason.  To process what had happened, what was
going on.  It was like someone else was controlling his body.  No, that was
irresponsible and irrational.  That placed blame on a god-like figure that
Fenris did not believe in.  It was like waking from a dream and knowing that
the dream had been pretty, but you had to let go of it, because it wasn’t
real.  It was time to wake up.  He was a slave.  That was all he would ever be.
                The Fog Warriors had been like a dream, nothing more.  To
believe he could be anything more than a slave was an illusion.  This was
reality.  It had been childish to think, even for a moment, that there was
anything else.  There was nothing else.  To deny it was to deny his own
existence.  To deny that he was a slave was like denying that he was an elf, or
denying that he breathed, slept, ate.  He couldn’t; it wasn’t possible.  It was
not something he could fight or stand against.  One does not fight when the sun
rises again in the east.
                Fenris adjusted his grip on his sword.  Shai was shaking now,
in something akin to terror.
                There was no room for guilt, or remorse, or even thought. 
Thinking was painful—best not to do that.  Just the order, and nothing else in
his mind.  Obey your master:  Kill him.
                You’re a monster.
                Maybe.
                Kill him.
                Yes, Master.
                That was all there was.  There was nothing else.  Nothing.  He
was a slave, and that was the end of it.  A slave, and that was all.
                He stepped forward.  It would be a simple matter.  He was just
a child.  How he had avoided getting accidentally killed was beyond Fenris—just
a stroke of luck, he imagined.  Or was it?  He wasn’t sure.  Maybe dying in the
melee would have been better, but he wasn’t sure.
                “Fenris, please, you don’t have to do this,” Shai pleaded with
him.  He had liked Shaislyn.  The kid was obnoxious and rude sometimes, but he
had liked him all the same.  He didn’t want…
                He didn’t want to do this.  The thought struck him like an
arrow through the chest.
                So… why had he?  That thought was like the arrow twisting in
his gut, the barbs catching on his vitals.
                It was like awakening from a dream to discover that it was a
nightmare.
                He could smell the viscera, the blood, vomit, feces, and urine
that went along with the peculiar air of death.  And, oddly enough, he could
smell meat—raw meat, and that was the most disturbing thing about murdering
people.  After a point, they just smelled and looked like meat.
                The combination was revolting, but something he was accustomed
to.  But he felt like… the blood would never really come off.
                Guilt hit him then, shaking through his entire body through the
numb haze, crippling him as certain as any blade.  He stopped moving, his
fingers gripping the hilt of his sword.  The half-elven child looked up at him
with his strange eyes.
                “I’m sorry, Shai,” he said, and readied himself to strike.  It
would be a simple task.  One swing, and it would be done.  His master would
take him back to Minrathous.  The blood would wash off--simple as that.  All of
this would be nothing but a distant, unreal memory.  It had never felt real to
begin with, surely it wouldn’t be so hard to go back to Minrathous.  It was
easy.  Easy to do as he was told.  Easy to continue doing as he was told.  It
was expected.  It was certain.  It was all he had known.  A few weeks wasn’t
enough to change years of indoctrination.
                “No!” the boy cried, and his tone had changed from pleading to
angry determination.  The poor kid…  Fenris knew the boy couldn’t outrun him,
and the child certainly had no chance in a fight either.  The boy was going to
die, simple as that.  Exactly as his master wished.  All that ever mattered
were his master’s wishes, and nothing else.
                Everything seemed to happen at once.  Shai jumped to his feet
and threw an open hand outward.  Though it might not have been his intention,
his magic drew on the power of his blood.  Fire erupted from his hand, but he
wasn’t attacking Fenris.  He had set the grass on fire, and the boy swung his
hand in a wild arc, creating an effective wall between himself and Fenris.  The
blood on his arm steamed and evaporated, but there was more flowing from the
wound.  The elf stood dumbfounded for an instant, and backed away automatically
from the heat of the blaze.  The fire leaped higher than it should have if it
were a normal fire.  Bodies cooked and crisped in the blaze, curiously filling
the air with the aroma of cooking meat.  He saw glimpses of Shai, as the boy
ran in the other direction into the shifting fog.
                All this time, Shai had been a mage.
                Fenris felt, oddly, like he had been lied to.  Funny,
considering that he had never really asked, and Shai had certainly never
mentioned it.  But, all the same, lied to by omission if nothing else.
                But the boy didn’t make it very far.  From the corner of his
eye, Fenris saw Danarius cast out his hand, and Shai cried out, stumbling, and
fell, slipping in blood.  Mages could, with practice, prevent other mages from
casting spells.  Danarius gasped in pain and two of his guards knelt at his
side to see what could be done for his wound, but neither were mages.
                The fire burned out, and Fenris could see Shai, kneeling, and
struggling to his feet, but he didn’t run when he stood up.  He reached his
hands out, and walked, stumbling without a cane or staff to guide him.  It was
sad to watch a blind child struggle so desperately to keep his short life, his
very birth making him destined for loneliness.  And yet he still tried so very
hard to escape and live.  It was a puzzle.  The boy was blind, mage-born, and
half-elven, with no family to speak of.  Why cling so frantically to life? 
What else could there be except to pass on?
                Danarius not only wanted him to kill a child, but a blind half-
elven child, who no doubt had been dealt a bad enough hand.  He thought of all
the things that Shaislyn had told him privately, all the times the boy had
confided in him and trusted him.  He thought about dunking the child in the
pond.  He thought about the child feeding the squirrels.  He thought about how
he had laughed, and teased Fenris when the elf became too gloomy.  Fenris
thought about how Shaislyn had thrown a pinecone at him, and the elf had
retaliated by tossing the boy in a nearby brook.  He remembered how they had
both laughed about it.
                Then he thought about Zekiel.  He thought about Ashaad and
Aban, and everyone else he had betrayed.  He remembered their faces, their
voices.  He remembered their words, their laughs, the way they had welcomed him
and helped him.
                He looked at the corpses around him, and swallowed.  I can’t.
                He couldn’t do it.  He felt like he couldn’t do anything.  How
could anyone do this?
                “Kill him,” Danarius repeated, holding his wounded side.  Blood
was soaking his robes, over his hand.
                But the elf couldn’t obey.  He couldn’t refuse, and he couldn’t
obey, so he did the next best thing:  He ran.
                As he ran, he thought he saw a sparrow fly over his head, and
when he glanced back, the half-elven child was gone or hidden, and Danarius had
finally collapsed of his wounds.  He did not look back again.
 
                Fenris heard someone breathing hard through the trees.  At
first, he had thought it must be the forest itself and the leaves in the
wind—he was little experienced with those—but after a moment of listening, he
knew it must be a person.
                I should just go away, he thought, even as he headed toward the
sound.  Whoever it was sounded exhausted, and occasionally cried out in pain. 
They might need help…
                He pushed a branch aside, and his lips pressed into a thin
line.  Well, the Maker certainly did have a sense of humor, didn’t he?
                “Shaislyn,” he said, and the boy looked up with those eerie
unseeing eyes.
                The boy’s face twisted into a look of utter contempt.  I
deserve that.  “Come to kill me?” he spat contemptuously.  “I won’t be much of
a fight.”
                Fenris knelt beside him.  “Let me help you,” he said, choosing
to ignore the boy’s harsh words.  I deserve that too.
                But Shaislyn shied away from him, holding his obviously hurt
arm.  It was sliced open and his sleeve was drenched in blood.  The child
couldn’t dress it well, though he was making the attempt.
                “You’re a mage,” the elf said, unnecessarily.  “Can’t you…”
                To that, the half-elf glared at him.  “You’re an elf. 
Shouldn’t you be bowing and scraping to some magister right now?”
                He may deserve the cruel japes, but he wasn’t about to take
much more of this from a mage, even a child mage.  “I offered you help, mage.” 
He spat the word like an insult, and the child only stared at him.  “If you
would rather bleed to death, then do so,” he said morosely.
                The child was silent for a moment.  “You haven’t come to kill
me then?” he said.
                Fenris looked away.  He felt like mages deserved to die, but
for this one, there was nothing but guilt.  Guilt is a fantastic motivator, and
Shaislyn’s accusing eyes and words were enough to stay his hand.  “No.”
                The half-elf was silent for an even longer time.  “Then help
me—I think I’m in trouble.”
                The child was half-right.  The sleeve had to just be cut off,
and the kid had a small pack with bandages in it.  He couldn’t stitch the wound
shut without the proper equipment even if he knew how, but he cleaned the cut
with cold water from a nearby spring, and bound it tightly.  It was shallow,
but it was bleeding a lot, though not quickly.  He thought it quite curious
that it could bleed like that for over a day and the boy had somehow gotten
ahead of him.
                “Where’s your master?” the child asked, cocking his head to the
side.
                Fenris had never been entirely comfortable with the way the
half-elf stared at him.  His eyes were entirely too pale, and now it was only
worse that he knew it must be some kind of strange magic, and the idea of being
seen through magic was a disturbing one.  “Gone.”
                He was silent again.  “I wish you had abandoned him half an
hour before you did.  A lot more people would be alive,” the child said, and
rose to his feet.  “I caught a rabbit.  If you help me with a fire, you can
have half of it.”
                Guilt drove him to it—and a gnawing hunger in his stomach. 
Twilight found the unlikely pair sitting across from each other at the fire,
neither one entirely trusting the other.
                “Will your master be looking for you?” the boy asked as the
rabbit cooked on its skewer.
                “Not for a while yet,” Fenris assumed.  “He was wounded.”
                He looked at him, studying him with blind eyes.  He must see
using magic, Fenris thought for the umpteenth time that day.  There was no
other explanation for it.  A part of him wanted to ask about it, and another
part didn’t want to hear the answer.  “They’ll look for me too.  I have a
phylactery,” Shai explained.
                A pause.  “You said you were used to spy on the Qunari…”
                The half-elven boy seemed sad.  “Why do you and everyone else
in the world judge me not on my actions or my words, but on what I look like
and how I was born?” he asked, but not in the way that begged an answer.  He
just looked sad.  “I wasn’t lying when I said I was a slave.  I convinced Lura
that she needed to sell me, or she and my mother wouldn’t be able to eat.  The
army paid more for mage flesh.”  He shrugged one shoulder dismissively.  “And
the Qunari wouldn’t question a runaway child, would they, if one came stumbling
into their camp?  And do you suppose, if that child knew their language, that
they might overhear something?  It’s amazing how frequently people assume that
because I’m blind, I must be deaf and dumb too.”
                “You are blind then,” Fenris said, the comment half a question.
                His eyes raised, and looked at him, staring directly at him. 
“I was born blind… yes,” he agreed, and his gaze flicked back to the fire.  “I
thank the Maker I’m a mage; else, I’d never be able to see.”                “I
hope that consoles you when a demon falls upon your soul,” Fenris said
bitterly, his words dripping venom.
                But Shai, curiously, said nothing at all.  And he continued to
say nothing for the rest of the night.  As they may be being hunted, they
decided to stand watch.  Fenris took the first watch, but before Shai rolled
over to sleep, he said, in a quiet voice that he had to strain to hear, “We can
all be only who we are, Fenris.  Nothing more… and nothing less—my grandmother
used to tell me that, before she died.  I’m a mage, and half-elven, half-human,
bastard-born, and I’m blind.  What are you?”
                Before Fenris could think of a reply, he rolled over, and
either instantly fell asleep or pretended to.
Chapter End Notes
     Maker, I kill almost as many characters as George R.R. Martin! RIP,
     Zekiel, you were fun.
     In regards to Shai and Fenris' relationship: Fenris' betrayal is all
     the worse because Shai looked up to and even idolized Fenris. They
     were even starting to bond. Kid is going to have some serious trust
     issues when he's older.
     I just looked at the chapter number. 70 chapters!? And only this far?
     Oh, Andraste's Holy Underpants, this is the longest fanfic ever.
***** A Grave for Dreams *****
Chapter Summary
     A short chapter in which Fenris is sorrowful about his recent deeds,
     and Shaislyn gives up hope for his family.
When Fenris woke the next morning, Shaislyn was gone.  Strangely, he was
unsurprised.  Shai didn’t trust him any more—and why should he?
                The half-elf had neatly cleaned up the camp before he had gone,
as a precaution, as they could be being chased.  Fenris was not so certain they
were though; Danarius had been injured, and his retainers would no doubt decide
that the magister’s safety was more important than one slave.
                So, he knew he had a reprieve—for a while at least.
                He stopped to look out over the cliff.  He could see the
northern sea in the distance.  Par Vallen was somewhere that way, Zekiel had
told him… before he had killed him.
                It had been three days since then.  The elf was half-starved. 
He had no idea how to hunt or trap—just a few things that Ashaad had told him
when he went with him to check the traps and the fishing line.  He could go
back to the Fog Warriors, to Shavalis.  Beg their forgiveness, explain what had
happened.  The most appalling part in it was that he knew that they would
understand, and for that alone did he never want to see them again.  He needed
to leave Seheron.  He knew he couldn’t survive on his own in the wilderness and
above all, he didn’t want to die.
                He knew he could always crawl back to Danarius, apologize.  His
master would be angry, and reprimand him, maybe punish him, but the magister
had always thought him too valuable to simply be rid of.
                Well, he thought with some sarcasm.  At least there’s always
one person in the world who wants me.
                How could he get out of Seheron though?  With the last Tevinter
outpost in ruins, for the time being at least, there weren’t any docks, besides
the Qunari ones and he was not so certain that the Qunari would treat him much
differently than they did their mages.  No trading vessels, nothing that he was
aware of.  Of course, he’d never know until he looked.
                As he walked, heading for the coast, determined to walk along
it until he found a way out of Seheron—that wasn’t in chains—he thought.  There
was little else to do.  Sometimes, he thought about how hungry he was, how he
decided that he hated walking, and hated the unwelcoming wilderness.  Other
times, he wondered if Shaislyn had gone back to Shavalis, and he cringed at the
thought of the child telling the Fog Warriors what had happened.
                But Shai had never wanted to stay there.  He was a child, city-
raised.  If Fenris stood little chance to survive out here, what odds did that
child have?  He’s a mage, he reminded himself.  He’ll be fine.  He wasn’t too
sure.  He had overheard plenty of conversations about children coming into
their magic.  Hadriana and Danarius had had a spirited conversation about the
things they had broken before they were “diagnosed” with magery.
                Children, he had concluded from this conversation, had little
control over their own power.  He didn’t know Shaislyn’s abilities in the
least.  Maybe the child knew enough to stay alive.  But maybe he didn’t.
                Should I try to find him?
               Indecision weighed heavily on the elf’s mind.  He finally
decided that, in addition to knowing nothing of hunting, he also knew nothing
of tracking, and it would be useless to look.  It wouldn’t be like finding
Annalkylie in the wood.
                Besides, he had enough trouble avoiding Qunari of all sorts,
Imperials, and outlaws and he didn’t need to add looking for a lost child who
probably hated him to the mix.  Seheron was nothing but a war-torn misery for
anyone who wasn’t a soldier.  He came across the odd farming village.  The
people there were so wary of travelers that even a lone traveler they eyed with
great suspicion.
                “A scout?” a woman demanded, then noticed his ears and eyes. 
“Or a runaway slave?  Go back to the Imperials.”  She crossed her arms, her
scowl alone enough to make him pause.  “You’ll find no help here.”
                He started to object, and say that he was only passing through,
but a graying man spoke up.  “Mayhap—pardon my wife—are you a mercenary?”
                The elf paused in momentary thought.  That was the perfect
reason that he was armed, armored, and alone.  “Yes,” he lied with an ease he
didn’t realize he had.  But he could not bring himself to meet their eyes, even
after all this time away from Danarius.
                The woman’s demeanor changed abruptly.  “A mercenary?”  She
appraised him, and Fenris was quite aware that he was covered in soil and dried
blood.  “Looks to be a vagabond more like.”  But this time her scowl was the
friendly sort.  “Still.  Might be, we can work something out.”
                Fenris blinked.  What?  What did…?  He suddenly felt silly for
wondering, even for a brief moment.  Mercenary work.  “What did you have in
mind?” he inquired.  Actually, this was perfect.  Hours of listening to
Danarius and the Magisterium complain about rates of gold, inflation, cost of
this or that—maybe that would turn out to be useful after all.
                The man pointed down the road.  “There’s an abandoned mill down
the road about two miles from here.  Band of ruffians—I don’t think more than
six—they’ve been causing trouble, and stealing and ruining our crops.”  The man
sighed.  “We’ve got no money to spare, but you look hungry, and we have food.”
                The elf considered.  “Do you require proof of this deed?”
                The man nodded once.  “They broke into the house one night. 
Stole my hunting bow.  If you brought it back, I’d trust you did the deed.”
                It barely required any thought.  “Consider it done.”  The elf
marched down the road in the direction indicated.  It led away from the coast,
but that wasn’t so bad.  Maybe the ruffians would have coin, even if the
farmers didn’t.  A mile down the road, a flutter of wings caught his
attention.  He turned in time to see a crow land on a gallows, its lone
inhabitant rotted to a husk.
                Curiously, the crow did not peck at the corpse.  The winged
messenger of death seemed to be judging him as he passed, staring intensely. 
It was unnerving, but it was only a bird.  He passed it by, and it cawed once,
and took off again, into the sky.  When he glanced up, he saw it making lazy
circles in the sky, barely visible through the fog.
                He looked back at the road.  He came upon the abandoned
mill—which was more like a crumbling ruin, to be honest.  There was one dozing
sentry, and for that they all died quickly.  Fenris found what must be the bow
the man had mentioned.  It was yew.  It didn’t have the same marks as Zekiel’s
but…
                Fenris felt sick, and not just from the hunger.
                He sat down heavily in one of the wobbly stools, and looked at
the bow in his hands.  He did not weep.  He had killed people who were becoming
his friends—the first and only ones he could remember having.  What kind of
person did something like that?
                Shaislyn had called him a monster.  He felt like one.  What
have I done?
                They hadn’t wanted to turn him over to Danarius.  They would
have stood and fought with him.  So why had he done that?  Why would anyone do
something like that?
                But he had.  It hurt so much that he had.  If he could not
disobey Danarius…  All he had ever known was obedience, though.  The worst part
was that his master had known it.  He had been so confident when he had told
Fenris to kill the Fog Warriors.  So sickeningly confident.  Will I always be
his slave?
                The sound of a footstep made Fenris jump, and turn toward what
he assumed was a new threat.  Shaislyn stood in the doorway, and the elf sat
back down.
                The child said not one word, but walked to the table, and set
something down on it beside Fenris.  The elf did not turn and look at it until
the boy had begun to walk away.
                It was the little wolf carving.  He had left the halla at the
mansion, but brought the wolf carving to Seheron—he couldn’t say why exactly,
but was glad that he had.  He had thought it was lost days ago, during the
fight.
                “Where did you find it?” Fenris asked him, reaching toward it.
                Shai turned around, gazing at him critically.  “I’m smarter
than you,” he said matter-of-factly.  “I went back to see what the Imperials
were up to.”  He shrugged.  “I found this.”  He paused.  “I saw you look at it
once—I knew it was yours.”
                Fenris frowned, looking at the tiny carving.  “How did you find
me here?”
                The boy was silent for a moment.  “I saw you come inside.”  He
frowned.  “No one looks like you, Fenris.  I couldn’t be mistaken, even… from a
distance.”
                “Did you go to Shavalis?”  Fenris felt he had to know.
                The boy shook his head.  “No.  They’ll never know—from me
anyway.”  He looked at him.  “You could always lie to them.”
                The thought made the deed all the worse, and the elf looked at
the bow this time, and could think of nothing to say in reply.  When he looked
up again, the half-elf was gone.
 
                Fenris was looking for a way out of Seheron, Shaislyn was
certain.  So was he.  He wanted to find a way out, and a part of him wanted to
help the elf, but another part of him would always despise Fenris.
                How could he not?  All those people…  They had been friends. 
They had done nothing but help him—both of them.  And…
                It was too awful to bear thinking about.
                The little carving had fallen out sometime during the
fighting.  Shaislyn had found it, lying by itself, or he never would have seen
it.
                Crows, he was finding, were common everywhere and no one
thought twice about his presence when he watched them.  By himself, he looked
stranger, but only just so.  It was also easy to watch other animals.
                All animals, he found, had souls—souls he had to learn to
copy.  That wasn’t to say that he had given up eating meat because of this. 
Rather, he saw it as the natural cycle of life, so long as he took only what he
needed and wasted nothing.  Even if he did not eat the guts from a rabbit he
killed, he left them out for other creatures that would.  As a bird, he saw
nothing wrong with eating that which birds normally ate—worms and carrion,
namely.  As a person, such a thing would disgust him.  But as a bird, it was
only what was natural.  If he were terribly averted to it, he could not
shapeshift—of that he was certain.
                He watched other animals in his forms, and began to learn new
ones as time passed.  He searched for his mother, for Lura, and Vanessa but
found none of them.  A month of flying, and searching, and he finally decided,
with a heavy heart, that they must be dead.  He flew to a grassy glade he found
on a lonely hill.  When he knew he was alone save for the natural things in the
forest, he transformed back, and made three small graves.
                In one, he placed a seashell, for his mother had always gone to
the sea and looked out at the waves when she was sad, and he had done the
same.  In another, he placed three heavy stones, because Lura had always been
the foundation of his life—telling him things others would keep hidden, and
letting him explore when others would forbid it.  In the third, he buried an
acorn, because Vanessa had, in so many ways, given him a new life, or tried to.
                In each grave lay a piece of himself—his hopes, his family, his
chance at happiness.
                He left them there, knowing he would never return again.  But
his life was forward, not back—he must look to the future to embrace it.  So he
let go of his past, and sought something new.
***** Promises and Waves *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Fenris finds an old acquaintance who offers help, and he
     struggles with his beliefs--and his hatred.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Lysander was at first alarmed when he saw the small note on the
door to the shack he shared with his two sisters.  His heart hammered as he
opened it, wondering what atrocity it was this time.  Were they raising the
rent again?  They couldn’t afford it.  The thought made his eyes begin to water
when all his grief bore down on him—they could barely make it as it was.  What
else could they do?  He couldn’t get another place on such short notice.  They
would be on the street again.  He just couldn’t do that to the girls.  He
couldn’t.
            His throat dry, he read the letter, then reread it to make certain
that he had not misinterpreted the words.  Danarius wanted something from him. 
What did he want?
            He shoved the note into his pocket.  To fuck him again?  Lysander’s
cheeks burned with shame at the memory, despite that it had been several moons
ago.  The gold had been worth it, he tried to tell himself.  It had helped them
so much.  He knew that if he could go back in time, he could only do it again. 
They had needed the money… more than he had needed anything else.  Besides, one
night was only a few hours, he told himself.  A few hours was all it was, and
that was nothing at all, not really.
            Well, the magister could take his note and shove it.  Lysander
didn’t care.
            And furthermore, Leto or Fenris or whatever his name was, he hoped,
he prayed…  Run, whoever you are.  Run, and never look back.
            He opened the door, and was immediately greeted by Issie running
toward him.  The jovial little girl hugged his middle.  “I missed you,” she
told him.  He had been gone for nearly two weeks.  He had left the girls what
money he had, and gone to put down a riot in a neighboring town.
            “I missed you, little sister,” he told her, gently shutting the
door.  “I brought some food.”  He held up the little sack, and the two girls
both looked so hopeful.  He wished it could be more than what it was.  He
walked to the small table and set the sackcloth bag down.  The girls were
expectant, and probably hungry.  “Everyone’s favourite vegetable—cabbage.”  He
plucked the slightly wilted head of cabbage from the bag and set it on the
table.  The girls sighed, but seemed grateful for the food all the same.  He
smiled.  “And a carrot.”  He removed the carrot—a little dry now, but still
good.  Then he removed the potato, the package of beans and another package of
rice, and saved the best piece for last—a single cut of ham.  Both the girl’s
eyes widened, mouths watering at the prospect.  “Matilda—let’s make a soup,” he
suggested.
            The girl nodded, and rose, reaching for her crutch.  She hobbled to
the stove, and started a fire.  Every morning, Issie would go down to the docks
and a few other districts, looking in the trash for anything they could
use—often just scrap wood for firewood, but valuable to the siblings.  The best
things she found were in the magister’s and the Archon’s trash, but Lysander
knew from experience that those were the most difficult to get to so it didn’t
happen very often.
            The winter had been a hard one for them, but they were still alive,
and still together, and that was what was most important to Lysander.
            Issie helped prepare the food, and Lysander put away his sword, and
sat down.  It was good to sit down after so long.  He had alternately walked
and rode in the crowded wagon both ways, and it was nice just to get off his
feet for a while and stretch.  He talked to Issie while she worked, and had her
recite her lessons.
            When the soup was served, Lysander walked to his pack.  “I forgot
to unpack,” he commented, as if to himself.  “Oh—how did that get in there?” 
He lifted out a loaf of bread.  “What do we do with this?” he asked Issie. 
“It’s a stole-away.”
            She giggled.  “We eat it,” she insisted.
            He looked at it, pretended to sniff it.  “Nah—this is a rock.  We
can’t eat rocks.”
            Issie laughed again.  “It’s not a rock, silly.  It’s bread!”
            “It looks like a rock,” he argued.
            “It’s bread!” she cried.
            He shook his head.  “No, you can break bread in half.  You can’t do
that with a rock—see?”  He broke a third of it off, and feigned incredulity. 
“The rock broke!  Did you see that?”
            “That’s because it’s bread,” the girl said, as if exasperated.
            Matilda was smiling.  “Come, let’s eat rocks with our soup,” she
teased.
            Issie scowled at both her older siblings.  “Bread isn’t rocks.”
            “Here’s your rock,” Lysander said, handing the bread to Issie.  “I
named him ‘Fred.’”
            Issie made a face.  “You’re stupid,” she informed her siblings. 
The other two laughed, and he broke the rest of the loaf in half.  He gave the
larger half to Matilda, and sat down on the uneven stool.  Issie sat on the
bench with Matilda.
            Lysander spent most of the meal trying to get Issie to look the
other way while he snuck bits of pork into her soup.  Matilda watched him, and
gave him pained expressions as he did, but he only looked back at her sadly. 
When Issie looked back at him, he made sure to smile, and told her to keep
eating.  “I want to see the bottom of the bowl,” he told her, sopping up some
of the broth with his bread.  But he knew they were all so hungry that his
sister refusing to eat would never happen.
            He got a bucket of water to wash the dishes in, and Issie helped to
dry them.  Lysander had spent too many nights watching those girls go to bed
hungry.  He almost couldn’t bear it.
            He thought of the note again, and knew he had enough money not to
worry about that for a while.  He took Issie with him to the market, and a boy
there called her a ragamuffin, and made her cry.  “Don’t listen to him,” he
told her, wiping the tears from her cheeks.  “He’s just a stupid boy.  His head
is probably filled with rocks.”
            She tried to smile.  “Are they named ‘Fred’?” she asked her
brother, hugging him fiercely.
            He hugged her back.  “No.  Just ‘Stupid’ and ‘Dumb’.”
            He heard her give a muffled laugh, but it died quickly.  He took
her back to the stalls, and haggled over prices while she waited.  Why was
everything so expensive?  It felt like he had gotten nothing at all, and paid
so much.  He knew it wasn’t really that much he had paid, but he had such
little money that it felt like more.  As he haggled, he saw Issie wander away
out of the corner of his eye, which was fine.
            He found her again when he finished, and she was looking at a
smiling doll in a blue dress, with shiny button eyes.  He wanted to get it for
her, but he knew that the food was more important, but she looked at that doll
with such longing in her eyes that it made his heart break.  There were other
dolls at the cart, and stuffed animals, a wooden soldier, puppets, and other
children’s toys, but Issie had always loved dolls best.
            She looked back at her brother, and the longing was gone.  No, not
gone—just hidden away, where she didn’t want her brother to see it.  “Are we
ready to go?”
            “Yeah,” he said, looking back at the doll, and bit his lip.  He
asked the merchant, “How much for the doll?”  He pointed.
            The merchant barely glanced at it.  “Eight silvers,” he answered.
            “Ly, it’s okay,” Issie said insistently.  “I don’t need it.”
            Lysander bit his lip, his heart wrenching when he heard her say
that.  What child says that about a toy?  When he had gone with his father to
the market as a child, he had thrown tantrums and insisted he had to have a toy
every time they had gone.  Issie should never have had to live like this.  He
reached into his pocket, and Issie grabbed his wrist.  “No, Ly, we need that
money.  Don’t.”  She hugged him.  “All I need is you.  You and Mattie.”
            He touched her hair, and tried to smile, but stared back at the
doll, and thought about the note from the magister.
 
            Miller’s Ridge was a little husk of a town, named after its
flourmill.  The people there were war-torn and haggard, always suspicious of
outsiders, like all the rest, but this one was worse off than others.  Parts of
the town had burned in the war, fields had been destroyed, people had been
killed or captured.  They had reason to be wary.  Any time a stranger came to
town, even a lone one, the adults would look on with suspicion, and keep their
children close.
            It was easy for Fenris to tell when a stranger drew near, because
all the people would grow quiet.  He heard a lone dog bark, before it hushed.
            He had been staying in a half-burned hut over the winter months.  A
couple of the villagers had helped him make a windbreak on the burned half, and
in exchange for food and shelter, he would protect them from wolves, bears, and
at their behest kill off any Qunari that may be spotted.  That last one was
bitter to him, but he saw little options for himself.  Spring was almost upon
them, and he knew it was approaching time for him to move on, before he had
outstayed his welcome.
            When he could not make himself useful by killing or driving things
off, he helped with more busy work—repairing walls and things like that.  Most
of the people wouldn’t get too close to him, because of the lyrium, and others
were outright rude to him, because he was an elf.  He also had come there not
knowing how to do any such thing, but it turns out most of it wasn’t very
difficult.
            Their distance he was accustomed to, and to a degree, he was used
to the bit of racism as well.  But he had never experienced some of the things
they would say when they thought he didn’t hear them:  The racial slurs, the
remarks—even hatred.  And much of it to his face too, for that matter.
            At first, it had shocked him, before he realized that it had always
been like that.  Living as a slave, he had been somewhat sheltered, to a
degree.  No one would have dared say such things to his master’s prized pet,
not when Danarius was nearby anyway, so he simply wasn’t prepared for how often
such things would happen.
            He stood up to inspect the stranger, and touched the hilt of his
sword briefly as he considered.  He walked to the side of the road warily,
listening to the steady clop of a horse’s hooves.  Horses were always trouble. 
The Imperials had horses, and he had to hide from them.  It could be a farmer,
but he didn’t hear a cart to accompany the horse.  He heard a second set of
hooves, and amended that to two horses.  Two horses, but no cart.  Scouts,
maybe.  He hid behind a partially finished wall, crouched, and waited for the
horses to pass.
            He had been half-right, at least, he saw as the animals made their
way past him.  A horse, and a mule, laden with supplies.  On the saddle of the
horse perched a hunting hawk, restless on its perch.  He thought he must be
seeing things at first, when he saw the rider.
            He straightened, eyes wide with disbelief.  She had cut off her mop
of blonde curls, but he was certain that was Annalkylie.
            “My lady?” he heard himself say, falling back into old habits as
easily as if they had never left him.
            Her back straightened, rigid.  Blue eyes were open wide as she cast
around wildly, and then spotted him.  “Fenris,” she gasped.  Terror arced
through her eyes, but not at the sight of him—merely what his presence would
have ordinarily meant.  “Where’s my uncle?”
            The elf’s brow drew down in suspicion, and he debated on whether or
not to tell the truth.  Instead, he reached out, around the wall, and snatched
her horse’s bit, to keep her from bolting before he had discovered the truth of
what was going on.  “It would relieve a great many people to know that you are
well, my lady,” he said evasively as he awkwardly stepped over the wall.
            She had gone ghost-pale, and she tried to pull back on the reigns,
but Fenris would not let go.  The horse tried to jerk away, anxious with its
rider pulling on its reigns, but the elf held fast.  “Fenris, please,” she
begged him.  “Let me go.  Don’t tell my uncle I was here—just let me go!”  Her
eyes watered.  “Please.”
            “Where are you going?” he asked suddenly.
            She blinked, and hesitated, but he kept a grip on the bit.  She
looked around the village, but no one was watching.  No one had even come
outside since she had passed.  She swung out of the saddle, the leathers
creaking.  She approached him, and looked angry enough to strike him for a
moment, but she was not her uncle nor his apprentice.  Rather, she crossed her
arms indignantly.  Frustrated, she replied, “I’m boarding a ship for the
mainland.  They’re meeting me.”
            Fenris hesitated.  “I ran away from Danarius,” he said, glancing
away.
            A grin suddenly broke out across her face.  She let out a cry of
glee, and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him fiercely.  She held him
out at arms’ length.  He tolerated this treatment the way most people tolerated
a trip to the doctor:  With little choice.  “I’m so happy for you,” she told
him, and it seemed genuine.  “Tell me—are you having a hard time on your own? 
Is there anything I can do to help you?”
            He started to say no, then frowned in thought.  “You could get me
out of Seheron.”
            Her arms dropped to her sides, and she bit her lip in thought. 
“I…”  She was studying him, the lyrium.  “There’ll be a bounty on your head.” 
There always was for escaped slaves.  “And you can’t hide.”  She bit her lip,
trying to decide, then nodded once.  “Yes—I think so.  Or, rather, I can bribe
the lyrium smugglers to look the other way when you stole away on the ship.”
            His eyebrows arched in surprise.  “Lyrium smugglers?” he demanded
in a low whisper.
            She shrugged a shoulder.  “Dwarves.  They’re using Seheron as a
cache.  There’s an entrance to the Deep Roads in the bay, and…”  She shrugged
again.  “They took my bribes.”  She grinned.  “Besides, you’ll fit right in
with their wares, won’t you?” she teased.  She glanced up at the sky.  “We had
better get going.  You’ll have to walk, I’m afraid,” she added, and swung back
into the saddle with ease.  He let go of the bit, and walked beside the horse.
            Annalkylie explained that it was a two days’ ride from here to the
bay, and they might find darkspawn along the way.  Fenris commented that he had
seen the scattered creatures recently.
            “Don’t let them touch you,” she reminded him.  “They’re contagious,
and I think you have enough problems.”
            He wanted to laugh; he really did.  It just wasn’t that funny,
given everything.
 
            “You’d save more money if you bought me,” the whore said, looking
at the elf coyly.  “As opposed to rent me for a while.”
            “Owning a slave is too much responsibility for me,” he said, lips
curved into something like a smile.  “Feeding you, clothing you, keeping you…” 
He counted off the list on his fingers and shook his head.  “I’d rather rent
you and let someone else deal with you in the meantime.”
            The slave laughed gently, as if deeply amused.  Why not?  He had
never known anything but slavery.  He probably didn’t even realize why this was
so wrong.  “I’m certain you’ve paid for me several times over.  Just come let
me live in your villa,” he purred.
            Aramael arched an eyebrow.  “What makes you think I have one of
those?”
            The man blinked.  “Everyone…  Everyone talks about how much the
magisters pay you for… what you do.”  His brow furrowed when the other stared
at him inquisitively.  “So…  Surely…”
            Aramael shook his head.  “I’ll see you again—in a couple of days
maybe,” he promised him, and left in a handful of heartbeats later.  Aramael
stared down at the floor as he passed by, carefully keeping his head down
around any humans.  He wasn’t a slave who had to, nor a poor, starving elf from
the alienage who must by social graces, but it was easier than risking
conflict.  It drew less suspicion and fewer eyes.
            As he passed the desk by the front door, the haggard old woman
cleared her throat noisily.  He glanced back at her.  The smoke from the
lanterns and candles clung about the ceiling, lending the room a musty yet
somehow comforting odor.  “You were late,” she said, tapping her fingers
noisily on the desk.
            “Does Eiril have another appointment?” he inquired dubiously.
            The woman’s near-toothless mouth twisted into a dissatisfied
frown.  “Not tonight,” she admitted.
            Aramael nodded understandingly.  “I will not make a habit of it.  I
apologize.”
            “See that you don’t,” she said snidely.  He nodded, and slipped out
the door, pulling his hood up as he did.  He glanced at the position of the
stars and the moon, and headed down to the docks.  A man there pretended to
bump into him as he passed, pushing something against his hand, hidden by his
cloak.  Aramael took it, and the two brushed away.  He changed course, back up
to the market district, taking a meandering path.  A man around the street
corner, Aramael bumped into, slipping a small pouch into his hand as he hurried
past.  Transaction complete, he changed course, heading back for the richer
district.
            The next drop he made was to a servant, who tipped his hat to him,
and pretended to drop something, and then walked on.  Aramael scooped up the
payment from the street, and headed toward his final destination of the
evening, a gleam in his silver eyes like polished steel.
            It had taken so many years, but he had finally tracked down the
last of the hunters that had destroyed his clan.  He had been systematically
murdering them for eight years, ever since he had heard a man at a bar boasting
to a serving wench about killing Dalish.  The man had died quickly—a sharp stab
in the kidneys, a bit of a twist of the blade, and the elf had vanished out the
window like a wisp, leaving less than a trace of his passing.
            He kept a tally and a list of them.  Some digging in the Imperial
bounty offices had produced the records but part of them were missing.  Upon
reading the conditions of it, he was angry, but they had never been instructed
to murder every last elf in the clan.  The bounty hunters had only wanted the
one girl, one the Imperials called a runaway slave, and the Dalish, of course,
had refused.
            He woke every morning in a cold sweat.  The only dreams he ever had
were of watching, too scared to try to help, as his clan was destroyed.  He
dreamt of the evening that he buried them, one by one as the rain came down,
turning the ground to mud.  Sometimes, he dreamt that he couldn’t dig and the
mud just kept sliding back into place.  Other times, he dreamt that the dead
spoke to him as he buried them.  Sometimes, he buried himself in those dreams. 
He liked to imagine that once all of the bounty hunters were dead, that his
nightmares would end.
            He had left the Imperial hunters to rot after dragging their
carcasses a distance away in a heap.  All the halla had either scattered or
been killed, but as he had knelt in the mud in the afternoon light, exhausted
after digging so many graves, one of the white creatures had come limping from
the forest.  It had a crossbow bolt buried deep in its haunches, and its flanks
were soaked with the blood.  It was dying, he could see that at a glance, but
it limped to him anyway, and lay down beside him.  The creature was the only
one to offer him any comfort at all, though he prayed to his gods for
deliverance.  Rather, the halla had died there too.
            He walked down the lonely streets, back down to the nastier parts
of Minrathous, where he waited, and watched, and was mistaken for a whore more
than once—which was irritating, but it gave him an opportunity to pickpocket
the men who strayed too close.
            When his mark passed down the alley, flanked by two male
companions, and a whore at his side, he stood and watched.  The men were
talking and laughing, the woman making agreeable noises and tracing her hand
lightly along his arm.  They retired at a nearby inn, and Aramael watched and
listened, and crept closer.  He heard them talking through the thin walls—heard
footsteps, and when he waited long enough, the sounds of rutting, the woman
making well-feigned moans.
            Aramael was patient, and waited, sitting as if a beggar that no one
paid any attention to.  He waited until he was more certain, and moved
unhurriedly to the nearby warehouse.  He scrambled to the roof of it, and its
slate roof nearly touched the roof of the inn.  He hopped over, walking
quietly.  He found the right window, and listened to the sounds, knowing the
whore was trying to rouse him again.  Aramael waited until he heard the
appropriate sound, then gripped the roof solidly in his strong fingers, and
lowered himself down.  He touched his bare toes to the windowsill, and slowly
lowered his weight onto it.  He crouched for a moment, and slipped inside.  The
pair were so engaged in fucking that they did not see the stranger in the room.
            He moved with the stealth of a shadow, creeping on bare feet.  His
dagger flashed but once, stabbing the man in the kidneys as he thrust into the
whore.  The Dalish twisted the blade sharply.  It was so painful that the man
could not even scream to warn the whore.  In fact, her eyes were closed, and
she had been moaning so loudly that she had not noticed.  The Dalish pulled
back the blade, and went to the window, counting the seconds until she realized
what had happened.
            By the time he heard her scream, he was strolling down the alley,
almost happy enough to be whistling.  He paid his innkeep for the night, and
the man gave him a small stack of letters.
            Aramael opened them once he was back in his room, the window
barred, every corner checked, the door locked and barred.  The first two were
contracts.  He had made quite a name for himself in the past several years.  In
fact… he wondered if he wasn’t half the reason people thought of Dalish as
being thieves and murderers.  But he doubted that, as much as he would like to
think that.  He had learned long ago how to hide his accent.  He had been too
young to be tattooed too.  In fact, people only called him “Dalish” anymore
because of the wooden rings he gave to new contracts as the means of which they
could identify him.  The ones that did not destroy the rings when he asked it
of them were also the ones he had to be careful of.  He was reminded of a story
he had heard as a child about a girl with a necklace of pearls, and how one by
one the pearls had been destroyed because of the carelessness of others.  His
was somewhat the opposite, but the same ends.
            The third was that the man making his new daggers had finished the
work, and the fourth…  The fourth seemed to be a contract, but it was sketchy
on the details.  He frowned.  Worth looking into, though, considering the sum
offered.
            The next day, he took care of a contract, did some pickpocketing,
and met with one of his potential clients and agreed to the task.  The other,
he met with and rejected immediately without giving cause—something he was
well-known for.  He made sure to reject a wide variety of different contracts,
so as never to draw attention to one thing or another, but this one was too
political for his taste.  On his way to a potential client, he picked up the
daggers—truth be told, almost swords.  He inspected the blades, balancing them
and looking for any kind of flaws.  The blades had the bluish, wavy look of
steel folded many times over—a mark of good craftsmanship.  The maker had left
his mark on the base of the blade—an elegantly crafted signature disguised in a
burning hammer.  The hilts of each were fantastical beasts.  On one, the hilt
was crafted into a white dragon, its wings fanned to form the crossguard, its
eyes two small rubies like drops of blood.  The blade was as pale as steel
would become, and the other its twin in every way—save that it was a black
griffin with eyes of blue sapphire, its blade just as dark.  They were all he
had left of his clan.
            He paid the man and sold the old daggers, which were in fact new,
actually.  Really, he had just been putting new blades on these.  These were
the ones he had had with him when his clan was destroyed.  The bow had broken
years ago—something he had always lamented.  If he had been able to find his
father’s bow after the killing, it would have been more of a tragedy though.
            Whoever had taken it after the slaughter, Aramael had never found
it, and he was reasonably certain that he had killed the last of them last
night, so whatever happened, they must have either destroyed it or sold it. 
Probably sold it—a bow like that would have been expensive.
            He strolled up to the manor and the servant at the gate let him
in.  He sauntered inside, and was half-tempted to leave mud tracked all over,
but that was petty and anyway, it was the slaves who would have to deal with
it, so he resisted the urge.
            He swiped his feet on a carpet, and trotted after the servant who
was showing him to the master of the house.  The magister received him in a
well-lit study, but rather than candles or fire, there was that odd bluish glow
that could only be magic.  Probably lit by some kind of mage-turned-slave.  He
bristled a little at the thought, crossing his arms.  Those elven slaves should
be Keepers.  When offered to sit, he refused, and stared at the magister
reproachfully until the man spoke.
            “Shall we skip the pleasantries and get right to business?” he
said.  The elf inclined his head in the affirmative but made no move to speak. 
Aramael disliked pleasantries with the wealthy.  “I find I have need of your
assistance again, Aramael.”  The magister’s pale blue eyes seemed to bore into
his skull.  “But I am willing to triple your usual pay.”
            The elf raised an eyebrow skeptically.  “What do you want?” he
said, making his tone more amiable than he felt like being, for the sake of
avoiding conflict.  Their exchange was in Tevene, and the elf had become quite
fluent in the language.
            “You don’t need to fake that Tevinter accent with me, Aramael.  I
know very well where you’re from,” the magister purred.
The Dalish raised an eyebrow.  “What.  Do.  You.  Want.”  His tone was testy,
but held traces of his true accent.
The man tapped his finger against his desk.  The elf peered at it, realizing it
was a map.  “I’d like you to recover a piece of lost property.”
            “Lost or stolen?” Aramael asked immediately, dropping back to his
feigned accent that had become so much a second nature—so much so that he
feared he may lose the Dalish one completely one day.
            “Both.  Neither,” the other said with a despairing shrug.  “It’s
complicated.”
            Aramael frowned, suspicion lurking in his mind.  “Of what nature is
this ‘item’?”
            “Not an item,” the magister said, leaving the rest unsaid.
            The elf’s eyes narrowed, and he jerked away from the table.  His
fingers clenched, angry at the wasted time, and that the man would dare to ask,
furthermore.  “Good day, serrah,” he said, his tone very much conveying the
“fuck you” he wanted to say.  The elf turned on his heel, and started to go.
            “I thought you would refuse,” Danarius commented.
            The elf was ready to spit venom, his fingers clenched so tightly
that it hurt.  He really would like all the magisters to simply stop being
alive.  “You could never give me enough gold to be a slaver,” he hissed, his
accent very apparent in his anger.
            The magister had the audacity to laugh.  The Dalish began to walk
away, but the magister said quickly, “I have something that might interest you
more than gold.”
            The Dalish whirled around, prepared to say something slanderous,
but his words died on his lips.  His lips parted, and he tried to say
something, and found he couldn’t.  He was drawn to it like a moth to a flame,
and it was just as dangerous.  He held his hands out reverently, and the
magister let him inspect the bow.  The finely oiled yew, the halla horn, the
double curve and the twin dragons on either side, whose mouths would hold the
bowstring if it were strung—a 175 pound draw (which was more than Aramael
weighed), and the longbow nearly as tall as he was.  The arrows it would hold
were practically spears.
            “Where did you get this?” he whispered, and might have stolen it,
except that the magister took it away promptly, and set it back in its case. 
He flipped the lid closed casually, but left the lock untended.  Aramael stared
at the case, feeling numb.
            “I bought it off of one of my hunters,” he said matter-of-factly.
            Aramael’s eyes narrowed.  Who had hired the hunters had been
eradicated from the files.  He had not been able to learn who it was, but now
he felt like he knew.  “You had all of my clan murdered.”
            He shook his head.  “No.  I never gave that order.  You’ve read the
contracts, haven’t you?  Where in there does it say, specifically, to kill all
of the Dalish protecting that one girl?”
            Aramael’s steely gaze flicked back to him.  “Just to use whatever
means necessary to obtain her.”
            He nodded agreeably.  “And I would have been quite content to leave
you all in peace, but you wouldn’t hand her over, would you?”  He “tsked” and
shook his head.  Aramael’s stomach tightened.  Danarius glanced once at the
case.  “I’ll give it to you.  Help my hunters locate my lost property—and catch
him.  Deliver him to me, alive or dead, and I’ll give you the bow.”
            It was the hardest thing Aramael had ever done, but he said, “I
won’t do that to another person for a piece of wood.”
            Danarius looked nothing short of bemused.  “Would you do it for
another Dalish?”
            Aramael blinked.  “What?” he whispered.
            He inclined his head toward the case.  “The bow, and I’ll tell you
where to find the only other surviving member of your clan.  She’s a slave, but
her master owes me a favor.  Is that worth it to you?”
            His eyes narrowed.  “All that is very expensive, especially if
you’re funding this expedition.  Now, tell me; why am I so important?”
            The magister shrugged.  “I’ll be able to trust you, seeing as I
have something you want more than the money.”  A brief pause.  “And, quite
simply, you’re the best at your trade.”
            Aramael stared at the case for a long moment.  “How can I believe
you?” he said softly.
            Danarius looked at him.  “Trust; it’s what business partners must
do.  I will trust you to help guide my men, and you must trust me with this.”
            Aramael left later that night, and went to Eiril earlier than he
had planned, just to be with someone else for a while.  He went back to his bed
at the inn, and cried himself to sleep where he could wander in his nightmares,
for he had become the monster he hated the most:  He had signed the contract.
 
            Fenris made terrible company, Kylie reflected with some amusement. 
He couldn’t carry on a conversation if it killed him, and he would answer
things in one-word sentences that really required more of an explanation.  She
had not asked him anything too important in the day and night since they had
been traveling together, but she was worried about the answers to her more
serious questions.
            From the elf, she garnered that he had run away, and been running
for several months now, though was oddly reluctant to talk about the first
three months.  Maybe it was personal—she didn’t know and he wouldn’t talk about
it.  He didn’t even refuse, he just said there was nothing to talk about.
She was free enough with what she had been doing.  She had a little hideaway in
the mountains, and had been living there by herself for some time.  She had
snuck out of the city with two horses and a satchel of gold—and her hawk.  One
of the horses had broken a leg, and had to be put down, but she had managed to
buy a mule, which were surer of foot and better for packing anyway.  She had
decided to lay low until after the winter had passed, and sneak out of Seheron
with the smugglers.  It was risky business—the smugglers could simply turn her
in to the magisters and there would be little she could do about it.  She
actually felt better bringing Fenris with her.  She wasn’t sure if the elf
could be relied on, if it came right down to it.  But, fact of the matter, if
they were going to turn her in, they’d turn in the elf too—so at least they had
a common desire:  Stay out of the Imperium.
There was one question that she had to ask, whose answer she dreaded.  But she
had to know the answer, no matter the emotional toll it might take.
            “Did my family make it?” Kylie asked, her heart pounding with fear
of the elf’s answer.  “I worry about them every day.”
            Fenris paused, frowning.  “Yes,” he answered quietly.  She detected
a note of suspicion in his voice.  “But where were you when the city caught
fire?”
            The elf had no doubt been wondering at the answer to his dreaded
question since he had joined her the day before.  Kylie fell silent for a
moment.  “Running, same as everyone else.  I just… got lost in the chaos.”  It
wasn’t exactly a lie.
            He stared at her out of the corner of his eye.  Suddenly, he
stopped walking.  She looked back at him.  She knew by looking at him that the
pieces had fallen together in his mind, and she wanted to hide.  There was
nowhere to hide from his accusing gaze.  “You…” he whispered.  “You switched
places with your guard.”  She saw rage enter his eyes.  “You opened the gates
to the Qunari!”  Blessedly, there was no one else around for miles.
            She was taken aback.  “I…  It freed you, Fenris,” she objected,
more to his rage than to his words.  “It freed every slave in the city.  It
gave all those elves in the alienage a better life.  If the Maker were good,
the magisters would have died.  Is any of that really so bad?  The magisters
are evil—you’ve seen it yourself!”
            The lyrium flared to life with his anger, briefly, then he stormed
past her, his temper barely controlled.  She hurried her horse after him.
            She should have stopped there.  She should have let it go, but she
was angry too and she just couldn’t.  “You should thank me—not hate me.  What I
did was—“
            He rounded on her so suddenly that she gasped in surprise, jerking
the reigns back instinctively.  The horse stopped, tossing its head.  His
temper was barely in check, and the glow from the lyrium made the horse back up
in fear.  “’Thank you?’” he demanded.  “I should kill you.  You—You’re no
better than the rest of the magisters!”
            Kylie was shocked.  “That’s not fair!” she cried.  “I never
practiced blood magic.  I’ve never even seen a demon!”  She felt like she might
cry.  He was one of the people she was trying to help, and he hated her.
            “Is there a difference?” he demanded, pointing in the direction of
the city.  “How many people died that night for your freedom?”
            Her eyes welled with unshed tears.  “How many people in the future
will die for yours?” she asked him, her voice barely above a whisper.
            He fell silent, and took a step back.  Slowly, the light from the
lyrium, and his temper, receded with the cold truth.  “The people I kill for my
freedom are the ones trying to take it from me.  Those people did nothing to
you,” he argued.
            He was right, and that hurt more than anything else he could have
said or did.  “I never meant…”
            “No, you didn’t.  You never even thought about it,” he hissed
lividly.  “All you ever thought about was your ‘freedom’.”
            Kylie blinked, and a tear rolled down her face.  She had tried… 
She had thought…  It all seemed so foolish now.  So childish and stupid.  “I…” 
She didn’t know what she intended to say, but he never gave her a chance.
            The lyrium was glowing again—bright enough to probably be seen from
all around, especially if it were night.  Kylie was glad it wasn’t.  Her horse
backed up again, and she was glad of it.  He had put his hand through a man’s
chest and ripped out his heart.  Even through armor, and she in a deerskin
jerkin.  All the magic in the world wouldn’t help her.  “I had always thought
you were the best the mages in Tevinter had to offer.”  He took a step closer
to her.  “I had thought that maybe, you could make a difference in the
Imperium.  Make it better.”  He closed the distance between them, and she was
rapidly aware of how very, very easy it would be for him to rip out her
throat.  He stared up at her on her horse with a glower that made her feel like
a child, and she felt very small suddenly.  “But you’re no better than they
are.”
            With that, he turned, and marched away.  Another tear rolled down
her cheek as she felt her heart break from the truth.  He was right.  He was
right, and he was so angry.  She had had a chance of making it better, and she
had thrown it away.  Was she really no better than the maleficarum?  Was that
what it all amounted to?  More than anything, she felt the sting of his
disappointment… and even betrayal.  Yes, she realized.  Betrayal.  In a sense,
the elf had trusted her to do one thing, and she had done another, and betrayed
everyone she had ever known.
            “Would you rather be my uncle’s slave?” she called suddenly to him,
and he stopped walking.  “Would you prefer to serve wine to the magisters?” 
Her fingers curled into fists around the leather reigns.  “Would you prefer to
stand at his side the rest of your life?”  Another tear rolled unchecked down
her cheek, this one of hurt.  “Would you rather my uncle breed you like a
horse, and treat you like a dog?”  She swallowed hard, her fingernails biting
into her flesh.  “Would you rather have never tasted freedom, but a magister’s
cock instead?”
            That last one stung, but he turned back to her nonetheless.  He
stared at her, and she regretted saying it aloud, and suddenly grew suspicious
of how much truth there had been to her words when she saw how much her words
had stung.  “Lady Annalkylie.”  His voice was soft, but it carried.  “I would
rather live the rest of my life as his slave… than know that hundreds of
innocents died for the sake of my freedom.  And so should you.”
            With that, he turned, and continued walking.  Kylie felt like she
had been slapped.  In fact, the slap would have been preferable.  She swiped at
her eyes.  Why did the elf have to be right?  Why was it so selfish and
terrible for her to be free?
 
            Lysander waited in the hall, and felt as out of place as he no
doubt looked.  He stared downward, and someone escorted him to the office room
where the magister sat, in a high-backed upholstered chair.  He had the look of
a cat with cream as he watched Lysander enter the room.  The young man stopped
a few feet from the desk, and waited for the servant to leave.  The door
closed, and the mercenary looked up.
            He tossed the crumpled note onto the desk—creased and dirty after
months of neglect.  “What do you want from me?” he asked, but he felt like he
knew.
            Danarius smiled pleasantly.  “Sit down.  I have a business
proposition for you, mercenary,” he told him.
            That made Lysander uneasy, but he sat anyway, and didn’t care how
dirty the varnished chair became.  “I’m sitting.  Now what?” he said, and his
nervousness must have showed.
            The magister regarded him for a moment as if from a lofty
position.  “As you are no doubt aware, I have put out a bounty on my runaway
slave,” he said.  His distaste for the situation was plain.  “And while there
are Imperial bounty hunters looking for my lost property, they are… somewhat
less likely to find them than any I would hire directly.”
            Lysander blinked.  “You want to hire me to go after this slave of
yours.”
            “You wouldn’t be alone,” he informed him immediately.  “I have a
number of others I selected to hunt the boy down.  I can’t have him running
about like this—he’s nothing but a danger to everyone.  Fenris can do a lot of
damage by himself.  And if another mage were to study the process…”  He
frowned.  “I’d rather see the elf dead than have him free.”
            The young man took a deep breath and released it slowly.  “All this
for one elf?”
            “It’s more than that.  It’s a matter of my pride.”  He narrowed his
eyes.  “And that elf is… valuable.”
            Lysander looked away, then back at Danarius.  “How is he
dangerous?”
            Danarius snorted a laugh.  “He can put his fist through a man’s
chest and rip out their heart.”
            The younger man stared at him, aghast.  That was no boast—he could
tell by the other’s demeanor.  “What?”  That was also how Lysander’s father had
died.
            The magister seemed bored.  “Fenris is also very skilled with the
sword.  It will take…  Several hunters, I imagine, to subdue the lad.”  He
frowned.  Lysander’s brow creased in thought.  Fenris?  Why was that name
familiar?  “And a cage.  Drugs.  Probably manacles too.  I have some I think
will hold him.”  He sighed.  “I’ve no way to test the theory, though.  I should
have—years ago.”  He shook his head.  “I should have planned for this.”  The
magister glanced away, and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment.  His gaze
shifted back to Lysander.  “Understand I will pay you very well when my pet is
returned to me.”
            His “pet”.  An elf who could wield a sword.  A slave.  Lysander had
replaced someone, that awful night, and now he knew who he had replaced.  His
fingers curled into angry fists, jaw clenched.  He shot to his feet.  “No!” he
cried.  “That elf deserves to be free, after what you’ve done to him.”  His
eyes watered in hurt, both for himself and for the elf he didn’t know.  That
elf had endured so much…  He was finally free, and this man wanted to take it
away from him.  His selfish pride would rather see the elf dead than free—there
was no justice in that.  “And I hope you never catch him.”  With that, Lysander
turned and marched out the door.  He found his way back outside, and stomped
angrily home.
 
            The smugglers haggled with Annalkylie about Fenris, and the elf,
uninterested in listening to it after he discerned that they would allow him on
the ship, wandered away.  He watched the dwarves stacking the boxes to and
fro.  Not all of it was lyrium, of course—much of it was dwarven ale and bolts
of silk—he wondered what else could be onboard.
            He looked out at the sea.  He didn’t even care where the ship was
headed, only that it was not here.  It apparently had a few stops to make, and
Kylie was getting off at one of the first—the Free Marches.  She had insisted
to him that he could not call her “Annalkylie”.  She had said, “I left that
name behind me, and it has to stay there.”  But it was difficult to call
someone by a different name when he had always known her by another, even if it
were a shortened form of her name.  She also blatantly refused to speak a word
of Tevene, and only the Trade tongue, so he had plenty of time to practice it a
bit more.  He was confident enough in the language, but it was still his second
language.
            Last night by the fireside, she had said, “Kylie Gallus, from Vol
Dorma.  She’s common-born and been an apostate all her life.”
            She had made a new life for herself, and a new name.  He wished he
could do the same, but it wasn’t that easy.  She had spent years dreaming this
up, planning and scheming.  He was thrust into it without any preparation or a
clue as to what any of it would mean for him.
            The two had sort of an uneasy truce between them, after the
incident yesterday.  Once, Fenris may have felt some regret over the things he
had said, and making Kylie cry.  But he felt none of it.  Rather, he felt she
deserved it, and more.
            Were all mages like this?  Were they all corrupt, in one way or
another?  He had felt like, if any mage was uncorrupt, it would be Kylie—but
she was no better than the rest of them.  That betrayal had hurt more than he
had thought possible, and had also been the single snowflake that had sent the
mountain sliding down, as it were.  Kylie had already started down the slippery
slope of sacrificing others for her own gain.  She had felt there was need
enough, and she had acted.  What had happened to that frightened little girl
clinging to his leg all those years ago?
            He thought briefly of Shaislyn, and a part of him—a small
part—wanted to argue that not all mages were corrupt, but the half-elf had been
a child and already felt no qualms about lying to people, cheating, spying. 
No, all mages were corrupt.  Allof them deserved to die.  He had never met a
mage that wasn’t corrupt.  He had never met a mage that wasn’t seduced by their
own power in one way or another:  Danarius, Hadriana, all the magisters,
Annalkylie, and Shaislyn—all of them.  They would all commit heinous acts for
their freedom, for their power.  And many of them had.  For the child, it was
only a matter of time--he knew it.
            He should have killed that child.  He should never have suffered a
mage to live.  How many innocents would that boy destroy?  And was that Fenris’
fault, for not killing Shaislyn when he had the chance?
            He should kill Annalkylie, he knew that.  Even when he looked back
at her, and she was walking toward him, looking pleased with herself.  He
should run his sword through her chest, and end it now.  But he didn’t, because
she smiled when she walked up to him, and all he could see was that five-year
old girl looking up at him, clinging to his leg because she was afraid of
wolves, and he couldn’t do it.  And he hated himself for his own weakness.
            “So.  I couldn’t get you a cabin, but—“  She grinned.  Something he
actually kind of liked about her, because it made it easier to be in her
company, was that even though they both knew how ill-at-ease the other felt
around each other, she still treated him as if there was no ill will between
them.  “We can put together a bunk in the hold, and they agreed to just look
the other way with you, Mr. Fugitive.”
            “I suppose I should thank you.”  He kept his demeanor amiable, but
he still felt like his distaste for her was plain to see.
            “You should,” she agreed, cocking her head to the side, opting to
ignore his aversion.  “It cost me quite a lot, actually.”  She sighed.  And he
knew why she had done it.  He didn’t believe it was charity; Seheron was not
that big a place, Danarius knew where he was, and it would really only be a
matter of time before the magister found him again if he stayed—and he had seen
Annalkylie.  That his interests and her interests aligned was simple chance. 
“Oh, well.”  Then she brightened.  “The dwarves told me their route—asked me
where I wanted to be dropped off.”  She grinned.  “Want to come with me? 
Ferelden, maybe Orlais, Rivain?” 
            So you can keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t betray you? 
“Rivain was hit pretty badly by the Qunari and parts of it are just dangerous
to be, Orlesians hate Tevinters, and Ferelden is overrun with Blight right now,
so I don’t recommend a vacation there.”
            She frowned.  “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”  She crossed
her arms.  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
            He almost rolled his eyes.  “I left it in Minrathous—it’s likely to
stay there, though you’re certainly welcome to go collect it.”
            “You never had any,” she accused him, correctly.  “The Anderfells
then.  I hear the desert gets the most beautiful sunrises.”
            “They’re a bunch of religious zealots.  I’ll pass,” he said, and
started to walk away, but she walked beside him.
            “But the Free Marches will be boring.”
            She prattled on for a while longer about all the other places in
the world he could go and see, and some of them even sounded tempting.  He was
interested to learn of countries that caged their mages properly, and killed
them when they got out of line.
            He wished he could find it in himself to kill Annalkylie, with her
dimpled smile and sparkling blue eyes.  But…  He couldn’t.  It was a weakness
that he needed to purge, and perhaps one day he could correct the mistake of
letting her live.
            She continued on, oblivious to his inner musings, and that was for
the best.
            The smugglers were leaving with the tide in the morning, and in the
meantime, the pair camped out again.  Kylie said it spared her a bit more coin
that way.  Her hawk caught a duck, and she feathered and gutted it, then put it
on a spit to roast it—all of which surprised Fenris.  It was odd to see a
would-be magister doing such a mundane chore.
            She used magic to light a fire, but that was all.  She had even
helped gather firewood.  She was careful about turning the duck, and cooked it
slowly over the fire.  The smell was enough to drive anyone insane with hunger,
the sound of the fat sizzling and dripping on the embers tantalizing.
            After they had eaten, and the sky was growing dim, Kylie wandered
off, and Fenris looked out at the stars, and the sea.  He watched the moons for
a time, then up at the constellations.  Taggert had told him about them—some of
them anyway.  Just things to remember, so that he knew directions at night, to
keep from getting lost.  He felt like there was more to the stars than that… 
They made pictures, stories…
            A cry of surprise and pain shattered his train of thought, and he
jumped to his feet, casting about for whatever had made the cry.  He heard a
muffled moan, and frowned.  “Annalkylie?” he called.
            “Here!” she answered.  He couldn’t see her, so he followed the
sound of her voice.
            “Where are you?” he asked, mostly to get her talking again.
            “Up here!  Aw, fuck,” she cursed in a most un-ladylike manner. 
“Ow!”  He found her sitting in a ditch, looking helpless.  It would be so easy
to kill her.  “I think I sprained my ankle,” she whined.
            He sighed, and slid down into the ditch with her.  It would be so
easy to plunge his hand into her chest and rip out her heart.  It would be so
easy to tear out her throat.  So easy to take his blade and slide it between
her ribs.  Instead, he extended his hand, and she took it.  He helped haul her
up, and she stumbled, leaning heavily on one leg.  “Yep, sprained,” she
complained.  She looked up the ditch, and groaned.
            “I can carry you,” he said, and before she could protest, he
scooped her up.  She wasn’t as light as she looked, he reflected, but she
wasn’t as heavy as his sword all the same.  He walked slowly and steadily up
the slope.  He should kill her.  She was a mage, and he should kill her.  But
he remembered the little girl, covered in mud to help the hornet’s stings,
whimpering in pain.
            “You’re like the big brother I never had,” she laughed.  “Agasius
would have made me walk—the bastard.”
            He accepted the distraction from his dark thoughts.  It was too
hard to justify his own actions.  It was too damned difficult to rationalize
what could not be rationalized.  Even if it felt right to kill mages, even if
he felt they all deserved to die, or be caged in their Circles and watched by
Templars…  Deep down, he thought of Kylie as a little girl, or if not that,
then he thought of her giving food to the poor with a gracious smile.  He
thought of that young woman almost weeping because the canary would not leave
its cage.  And he couldn’t kill her.  He had watched this girl grow up, and he
couldn’t do it.  She deserved to die.  She deserved to die for what she had
done, for the people who had died that night.
            But she was right, too—and he was only free now to make that choice
because of her rash actions.  He knew that.  He had to admit to that.  Her one
mistake had been a blessing to himself personally, and to others too.
            He couldn’t forgive her, but he could see the small good it had
done, and how she had changed the world around them—for good or ill, who could
really say.  For that, he was resolved to let her live, for the time being.  He
viewed it as a personal weakness.
            He set the young woman down before the fire.  She thanked him, and
complained that she knew nothing of healing while she tightly bound her injured
ankle in a long strip of cloth.
 
            The dwarf, Bastian, had fashioned Kylie a crutch, and she used it
to limp about the ship.  She was determined not to let so small a thing get in
her way, and for that, the dwarves respected her a bit more.  She watched the
waves, and listened to the smuggler’s stories.  They had some great stories.
            The captain, who Kylie knew only as “Captain”, had some of the best
stories she had ever heard:  Pirates, storms, a maelstrom, a ship running
against rocks, being shipwrecked—everything she could imagine.  She felt like a
child when she listened to his tales, her eyes grown wide with wonder and
delight at the thrilling prospect of adventure and the unknown.
            She loved stories, but the time was drawing to a close when she had
to be content to listen to them.  One day, she would be the one telling them.
 
            A storm had driven Kylie below decks, just in time for her ankle to
be healed—which was annoying as well as a bit frightening.  Boredom had driven
her to borrow a deck of cards from Bastian.  For a while, she played solitary
card games, then went to find Fenris.  She badgered him into playing with her. 
He didn’t know how to play, and she had to teach him what all the cards meant,
and the rules of the games.
            It was strange though—many slaves played games like that, and when
she commented on it, he reminded her that he had been very secluded from the
other slaves.  That seemed, to Kylie, one of the cruelest things Danarius had
done to Fenris—and there had been many cruel things he had done.  Denying a
person even the possibility of companionship, condemning them to years of
solitude and loneliness, was awful.  Even the worst of conditions can be
tolerated so long as there is at least one other person to be called a friend. 
Danarius had denied Fenris many things, but that was the worst thing he had
done to him, and it broke her heart.  Fenris had not understood when she had
cried for him.  It was all he had ever known.
            The storm lasted all day, and well into the night.  Kylie could
scarcely sleep.  If the ship sunk…  If it overturned, all her adventures were
over before they had truly begun.  But the smugglers were experienced, and the
ship did not sink.
            But she wasn’t entirely wrong to be so nervous, she found, because
many of the experienced sailors seemed in much higher spirits and greatly
relieved.  Bastian had a lute, and played a lively tune in the evening.  Ale
flowed, and Kylie was delighted to watch the revelry, even if she felt a
stranger to it.  She drank but a little, finding that the strong dwarven ale
was not to her taste.  Though, no matter—they had others, and of course she
must sample them all.
            Kylie made the mistake of mentioning in conversation how she had
taken dancing lessons, and then she had no choice but to dance, with nearly
everyone on the ship, and especially by herself.  She had really never been
happier.  She had attended dozens of balls and feasts, hunts, and other
revelry.  This was a simple party—a celebration of life—but it was so much more
genuine than anything she had ever been a part of.  If she stepped on someone’s
toes, it was no great social misstep, but a laugh and an apology and it was
forgotten.
            Many of the dwarves still had duties to attend to, so there were
many of them coming and going.  Some had drank until they fell into bed. 
Others had not made it there.  Others were still drinking, and some were more
responsible and had simply put themselves to bed.  Bastian played his lute, and
Kylie caught her breath, and asked him if he knew particular songs.  Once they
found one they both knew, Bastian played, and Kylie sang the words.  It was a
haunting, ghostly melody, out here at sea.  In the song, a maiden waited for
her husband-to-be to return from war, and waited so long that she turned to
stone, and still she waited.  At the end of the song, he never came home.
            Kylie sipped at the ale, this one a vintage from the Imperium and
more of what she was used to.  She had never been allowed to drink such a
peasant beverage, but that had certainly never stopped her from trying it.  She
put her mug down on a table, and stretched, looking about the ship.
            She found Fenris against the guardrail, looking up at the stars. 
When she approached him, he was drinking something from a mug, and by the smell
of it, it was dwarven ale.
            She knew he was drunk before she spoke to him; he reeked of drink. 
She smiled pleasantly.  “Enjoying yourself?” she asked him.
            “Hmm?” he inquired, blinking at her.  “I suppose.”
            Her lips pursed at how he slurred the words.  “Good.”  She relieved
the mug from his hands, and poured the remaining contents into the sea.  His
jaw dropped in astonishment.  She flashed a winning smile, and skipped away
before he could do anything more.
            She put the mug down on the table.  Bastian was playing a lively
tune, and she started to dance again.  She was mid-spin when Fenris grabbed
onto her arm, likely to yell at her about wasting the drink.  With her other
hand, she snatched his wrist, and used her own momentum to propel him forward. 
It caught him off-guard, and she pulled him with her, into her dance.  She led,
and the elf was given little choice but to follow.
            “Nope—move your feet more,” she said.  “Like me, and spin!”  She
moved with him, laughing when he stumbled.
            “I was supposed to be mad at you,” he muttered.
            She laughed, and spun them both again.  “I won’t let you.  You’re
learning to dance instead.”
            He actually smiled.  “Seems I’ve little choice in the matter.”
            “This is part of your payment to me for the crossing,” she teased
him.  “Be lucky I don’t insist you sing too.”
            He admitted, “I’m completely tone deaf.”
            She giggled at the thought of an elf being tone deaf, then
considered it.  The lyrium made a constant, very faint, ringing noise.  If he
heard that constantly, he wouldn’t hear it after years of hearing it.  It was
just how the body worked.  So certain pitches he might not hear at all, and
that would certainly affect any musical talent.  “That makes sense,” she said
instead.  Two songs in, and she had a halfway decent dancing partner.
            After the third one, Bastian changed to a softer song, to give the
dancers a break.
            Fenris started to turn to go.  “Hey, and where do you think you’re
going?” the mage demanded.  “I’m not finished with you yet.”
            He looked back at her, his eyebrow arched.  “Oh?”
            She held her arms out.  “Come on.  Dancing lessons aren’t done
yet.  Yes—no.  Like this.”  She instructed him, and eventually got it right. 
“Ideally, the man leads,” she admitted.  “But you don’t know what you’re
doing.”
            “No, I really don’t.”
            She frowned.  “Stop… pushing me.  When I step forward, you step
back.  When I step back, you step forward.  Got it?  It’s a tempo.  Just count,
and don’t think too hard on it.”  After they completed a circle, she said,
“See?”
            He stepped on her toes.  “No—clearly not,” he said, but sounded
amused nonetheless.
            Bastian stopped, and the two pulled away.  The dwarf said he was
going to retire for the night.  In fact, many of them had.  They had long days
in the morning, though.  The two passengers sat down, tired.  Kylie chatted
freely for a while, about her plans to see the world, before they had both
rested enough to get up.  Fenris was still quite drunk, and the swaying of the
ship was making him nauseous.  He went to the rail, but didn’t vomit—not yet. 
He felt like it was only a matter of time.
            Kylie trailed after him, more because she didn’t want him to pass
out from the drink and fall overboard than anything else.  The young mage stood
beside him—one looking up at the stars, and the other looking at the dark waves
below.
            “Where will you go, if you don’t want to come with me?”
            “I have no idea,” Fenris said with quiet surety.
            Kylie rolled her eyes.  “At least you know that you don’t know,”
she said with a sigh.  She wondered what the stars looked like in other
countries.  She had lived her life under the same stars.  She welcomed the
change.  She turned her head and started to say something, and stopped when he
turned and looked at her.
            “You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone about me,” she
told him, her voice grave and quiet.  “And I’ll promise that I won’t tell
anyone about you.”
            He didn’t need to ask why; the answer was too obvious.  “It’s not
an issue,” he told her, and looked back out at the sea.
            “Promise me that you will tell no one,” she told him, cornering him
like a wounded animal.
            He frowned, glancing back at her.  “Why would I tell anyone?”
            “Promise me,” she repeated, insistent.
            He made a face.  “Who am I going to tell?”
            She scowled.  “You might make friends with someone one day. 
Companionship isn’t toxic; I promise.”  At that, he almost wanted to be
wistful.  It was there for a moment, and then the thought faded into the realm
of impossibility—she even watched it happen in his oh-so emotional eyes. 
“Fenris,” she growled.
            Seeing no way out of this, he said, “I… promise.”
            She held out her hand, extending her smallest finger.  “Pinkie
promise me.  Like children.”
            He looked as if the thought caused him physical pain.  “Kylie…”
            She held her finger up to his face.  “Promise!” she insisted.  “If
I break the promise and tell anyone, you get to break my finger.  That’s how it
works.  Same if you break the promise.”
            She badgered him until he swore on his finger, as well as under
pain of death.  They shook fingers on it, and she grinned at him.  “Because
we’re both secretly five,” she said with a wink, and skipped off to bed.
Chapter End Notes
     What do you think of the bounty hunters so far? My point being with
     them, every person you meet has their own motives for doing
     something, even something you think is wrong--and they might even be
     good reasons! If Lysander agrees, it is for his sisters, and Aramael
     agreed to save someone else. Which begs the question, slaving is
     wrong but Aramael agreed for a good cause (someone he knows over
     someone he doesn't know), so morally, what was the right decision in
     this circumstance?
     I hope you didn't think I was going to slash Kylie and Fenris there.
     I write them as if they were siblings, because that's kind of how
     they see and treat each other, despite racial and social differences.
***** Departure *****
Chapter Summary
     Lysander is coerced into hunting down Fenris. Fenris, oblivious to
     this mounting danger, finds employment, and Kylie finds what she has
     been wanting her whole life: Adventure.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            The ship docked in Rivain for two days, and Fenris had originally
intended to leave there, but the dwarves hinted that they had need of an extra
guard, and he could have a real bunk instead of a space in the hold if he
accepted—and pay.  Having no other real plans and knew he needed coin to
survive, he accepted this.  Kylie was delighted.
            While they were in Rivain, he spent some time guarding the ship,
but when he didn’t have to, Kylie drug him away from the docks and into the
marketplace, insistent that he needed to see the world.  He was suspicious that
she just wanted a bodyguard, just in case.
            All the same, it was good to be away from the docks, and see a city
not owned by the Imperium.  The first thing he noticed was the lack of burning
incense.  He smelled spices and cooking food in the air, but that was from the
shops.  He had never known it would feel so good to be away from Minrathous,
and Kylie even caught him enjoying himself once or twice.
            The mage wanted to sample all the foreign food, and look at all the
local crafts, and of course she drug him along to one of the Rivaini
soothsayers too.  He defended her from more than one pickpocket along this
adventure, and made a mental note to have a talk with her later about such
things.
            A young man at a jewelry shop had looked puzzled for a while as
Kylie went over a few baubles, trying to find a pair of earrings that matched
her eyes.  She asked Fenris’ opinion frequently, and made comments about how
elves were better at matching shades than humans.  “Are you two…?” the man
finally asked, eyes flicking from one to the other.
            Kylie practically gagged on impulse.  Fenris made a face.  “Maker,
no,” Kylie said.  “That would be weird.”  She laughed a little, and smiled
prettily at the boy.  It took Fenris a moment to realize that the boy was fair
of feature, and that Kylie could be flirting with him.  She had never been
allowed such things before, as she had been promised to another from such a
young age.  “No; he’s too old for me.  He’s more like a glorified nanny.”
            Fenris contemplated hitting her in the back of the head, but then
noticed the way the boy leaned forward, his eyes all for her, and he let it
go.  He was content watching and listening to the two flirt, their voices
getting lower and lower.  He heard Annalkylie giggle on occasion.  Kylie, he
reminded himself.  It would draw too much attention if he used her true name,
and that would mean trouble for both of them.
            Rivain was interesting to him.  In the Imperium, he had been a
slave, but even if he weren’t a slave, he would still have the misfortune of
being an elf.  Elves were treated with disdain, violence, and uncaring even
when they were free—sole exception being mages.  In Rivain, the few elves he
did see received no real trouble with humans.  He supposed that was mostly
local culture.  Kylie had described Rivaini culture as being nature-based,
where their manner of worship was very pagan compared to Chantry teachings, and
all of nature was basically deity.  It was also, unfortunately, what made it
easy for the Rivaini people to convert to the Qun; many of their beliefs were
along the same lines.
            He stepped away, leaning against a sturdy post that supported the
stall’s roof.  He watched the people come and go, watched the boy break away
from Kylie once to approach an older woman looking at bracelets.  Kylie waited
patiently, going back to her hunt through the earrings, but abandoned the
effort when the boy went back to her.
            Fenris looked away, back at the street.  He felt out of place here,
in a way he was not accustomed to feeling.  With his master, he had never been
out of place, exactly, so long as Danarius was nearby.  But here… Here, he was
distinctly aware that he was an elf in a market primarily consisting of humans
and dwarves.  He stood out—he always would, he realized.  The lyrium, his hair,
his height.  He could never hide, and he would always stand out, anywhere he
went.  People would recognize him easily.  The thought filled him with unease.
            How easy would it be for Danarius to find him again?  How many
people would say they saw him if asked?  He would be easy to remember, easy to
point out.
            Where could he go?  He thought about staying in Rivain, but felt
like there was nothing there for him, and thinking of the people living there
brainwashed by the Qunari made him uncomfortable.  There was also the Rivaini
fortune tellers.  He didn’t know enough about magic to say whether it was true
or not that they could read the future, but that filled him with unease too. 
Kylie had offered to pay for a reading for him if he wanted it, but the mere
thought made him feel nauseated.  The future was dark and terrifying enough as
it was—he really did not want some cryptic message of foreshadowing to go with
it! 
            Where, then, should he go?
 
            The rocking of the boat made Lysander sick to his stomach, and he
hated sailing.  He had been on ships before, but never for so long.  They had
left Minrathous, and sailed up the coast toward Rivain, where they had stopped
to resupply.  He had been blissfully happy to be off the ship for the brief
amount of time, and reluctant as ever to return, but thoughts of the girls kept
him going.
            Just the thought of it made him angry.  He had been so terrified…
            He had come home late, having worked until past sundown at the
docks loading crates.  It was backbreaking and didn’t pay much, but it was work
at least and he had come home with his wages and had been thinking about the
food he was going to buy the next day.
            He had come home, and expected to smell the cabbage soup, or at
least Issie would attack his legs in a fierce hug.  But none of that happened. 
At first, he wondered if it were not later than he suspected, and that the
girls had simply gone to sleep.  But they would have left a bowl out for him,
and there wasn’t one.  In fact, he felt like there was something wrong.  The
outer room was separated from the bedroom by mismatched boards, and a broken
door served as their passage into the other room, laying against the slender
opening rather than on proper hinges.  Quietly, thinking they were sleeping, he
shifted the door just enough to squeeze past and then fixed it in place.
            He peered around the ill-lit room, and felt a chill go up his
spine.  The girls were gone.  Thinking that perhaps it was some trick of the
darkness, he knelt on the floor, touched the threadbare blankets.  There were
no words to describe his terror.  His mouth felt dry, but sweat beaded on his
forehead.  What had happened?  Had someone taken them?  He swiped his hand
worriedly through his hair.  He had been making payments to the debtors—steady
payments.  Not as much as they wanted, but they had said it was enough so that
they wouldn’t take the girls!  They had been threatening to for years, but each
time, Lysander had managed to pull through.
            They lied, was all he could think.  His fingers clenched, and he
knew his anger would lead to nothing.  They wanted more money.  They had to
have more money, or who knows what they would do to them?
            In the corner, as if it had been dropped and then perhaps kicked
away, was a doll.  He went to it, and picked it up.  Issie had named her
“Emily”.  The paint was fading, and the dress was worn—it had always been a
pale pink, but it was even paler now.  Its yarn hair was dirty and shabby, but
she had loved it still.  He hugged it to him, and a tear rolled down his cheek
unchecked.
            “Issie,” he whispered to the quiet of the night.  Where was she
now?  Where were both the girls?  He knew he had to find them, and there wasn’t
a moment more to lose.
            He set the doll down, and swiped his eyes.  He left the house, and
headed to the merchant district, following the scent of the incense that
attempted and just failed to mask the stench of the city.
            He walked briskly, and found himself running at times, desperately,
the money clenched tightly in his fist.  He would give them all of
it—everything he had.  If he needed to spend a night in a brothel again… well,
so be it.  The girls were more important.  They had always been more important.
            It was late, but the moneylenders were a… shady sort of business,
and someone was there even so.  Still, he had to knock, and a toughened dwarf
answered it, his eyes narrowing when he recognized Lysander.  “Let me through,”
the young man insisted.
            The dwarf did not budge.  “State your business,” he said.
            Lysander swallowed hard.  “You took the girls!  I made the
payments, and you still took the girls!”  He couldn’t hold it back anymore.  He
was just so angry.
            The dwarf took a deep breath, and stepped aside, apparently not
wishing to get involved.  Lysander marched past, and went straight to the desk,
where a weasel of a man sat behind it.  The weasel adjusted his spectacles and
looked up at Lysander, but he had the air of one who looked down on him. 
“Well, I couldn’t help but overhear that outburst,” he commented dryly.
            Lysander ground his teeth.  “Where are they?  What have you done?”
            The man held up a finger, the traditional signal that he would like
the boy to wait.  Lysander crossed his arms, tense.  The weasel began thumbing
through a large ledger.  He apparently found the page he needed, and frowned
deeply.  “If those girls are missing, it’s no fault of ours,” he said, his
voice flat.
            His heart skipped a beat, and he was certain that he had misheard. 
“What?” he whispered, unbelieving.
            The weasel shrugged a shoulder, and pointed at the ledger.  “You
made your payment.”  He leaned back in the chair comfortably.  “We have no
interest in the girls, so long as you are paying.  And you are paying.  Now, if
you’d like to make an early payment, we will accept.  If not, please leave.”
            Lysander covered his gaping mouth with his hand.  He had been so
certain…  He had been afraid, but so certain that they were here.  He had
thought, he might get them back tonight, if he just knew where to look.  And he
had been so certain they were here.  Where else could they have been?  He shook
his head, running his fingers through his dirty hair again.  He swallowed
hard.  He didn’t know what else to do.  He had thought—throw money at them,
everything he had.  He would beg, and plead, and kiss the man’s boots if he
must, but the girls would be turned over to him, and they could all go home
together.  Now…  Now…
            The dwarf caught his arm, and began to lead him away.  Lysander
walked in a numb haze, and a stiff sea wind reminded him that he needed to find
them.  He paced outside, then began walking home.  Think, he thought to
himself.  Where else could they be?
            No.  Who else would take them?  He didn’t know.  He thought as hard
as he could, and still, he didn’t know.  He made it back home, and looked
around the little shack they had lived in together for almost five years now. 
It had been better than the streets, even better than some of the other places
they had lived together.
            He had thought…  He didn’t know.  He sat down on the bench inside
the shack, bewildered and dispirited.  His despair clutched at his heart like a
cancer, and he was dearly tempted to give in to it.  It would be easier to
simply despair, believe his sisters gone.  But he couldn’t.  He loved them, and
he couldn’t give in to it.
            He looked around the rooms again, searching for any kind of clue. 
There was barely a struggle, he saw, if there was one.  There would be no
need.  Matilda wasn’t stupid, and she was crippled besides, and Issie was just
a little girl.
            He picked up Issie’s doll again, and thought hard.  He must find
them.  He had to find out where they had gone.
            Or had it been a simple robbery?  Someone had abducted the
girls—barely more than vagrants—and were going to sell them?  He went back into
the main room, and heaved the little dresser out of the way—something he had
found in a garbage heap and carried back.  Under it was the loose board, and he
pried it away.  In the hidden alcove was his father’s sword, and a little
satchel of a bit of silver and copper pennies.  He bit his lip.  Whoever took
the girls would have demanded to know where anything valuable was.  They would
have hurt them until they told.
            The sword, by all rights, shouldn’t be here, and neither should the
money.  He lifted both items out, trying to piece together the puzzle.  There
was something more here.  Something… else.
            As he went to put them back, he saw something he hadn’t before.  He
reached down, and picked up the slip of paper.  It was sealed with wax, and he
brought it into the light before he broke the seal, to better look at it.  The
seal was a howling wolf, and the hair at the back of his neck stood on end.  He
ripped the seal in half, and pried open the note.  Three words were scrawled in
an elegant hand across the parchment:  I have them.
            “No,” he whispered, his hand squeezing into a fist, crumpling the
note.  He shoved it into his pocket with the coins.  He buckled on his sword,
and left immediately.  Ordinarily, the guards in this district would have gone
to stop him, but for some reason they did not even question his presence
there.  Rather, they only passed him by, and that, more than anything, made him
even more angry.
            He found the gate to the manor closed, and locked.  He banged on
it, and when no one came, he screamed, “Open it!  Danarius, you bastard—open
this gate!”
            “He can’t hear you from there,” a servant complained, striding
toward the gate quickly.
            Lysander shook the gate again.  It rattled, but did not loosen.  He
paced like a caged animal while the man found the proper key on his ring, and
the servant took his damn time.  “Your Maker-forsaken master is a vile pig who
abducts children,”Lysander spat.  The man visibly rolled his eyes, and Lysander
probably would have struck him, but for the bars between them.
            The man found the proper key, and left it in the lock, staring at
him.  “I hold no responsibility for my master or Hadriana’s actions,” he said,
and turned the key.  He threw the gate open, and the young swordsman hesitated,
then walked past him, feeling suddenly ashamed for his behaviour, but felt no
less righteous about it.  He strode to the manor, only dimly aware of the
servant at the gate locking it yet again.  He banged on the door, finding it,
too, locked.  Another deeply annoyed servant opened it for him, and shot him a
contemptuous glare for all the racket he had made.
            “The magister is in the library,” the servant said with some
disdain.  “You will wait for him here, Serah--?”
            Lysander narrowed his eyes.  “No.  I won’t wait.  You take me to
him now or I will kill you where you stand,” he hissed.  He did not offer his
name.
            The man was unmoved and perhaps even unimpressed.  Of course, one
must consider that he was employed by a magister.  “Certainly.  This way.” 
Lysander followed him, and was quietly enraged at how slowly the servant
walked.  He kept at his heels, and made no secret of his displeasure, but the
servant still did not hurry, as if only doing this to annoy him.  It worked. 
Did the magister seek out such generally unruffled employees?  Or did they just
become this way?
            The servant knocked once, and opened the door.  “Magister, you have
an unnamed guest at this peculiar hour,” he said, his distaste showing plainly.
            Lysander pushed past him, and cast about the room.  He had half-
expected to find the magister at a table, perhaps, but he was standing on the
upper balcony, frowning down at him.  It was his apprentice that sat at the
table, and she had the expression of a pleased cat that had killed the family
bird.
            The servant bowed and excused himself.  The door shut.  Lysander
stared at the magister.  “You know why I’m here,” he hissed lividly.  “Where
are they?  What have you done?”
            The magister remained calm.  “I trust you mean those urchins you
refer to as your sisters?” he inquired.  “Hadriana?”
            Lysander’s gaze shifted to the apprentice.  She smiled pleasantly,
even serenely as if she could never do anything unspeakable.  “Safe,” she
answered curtly.
            He stepped toward him, but the big table separated them.  “Where. 
Are.  They.”
           Hadriana was unmoved by his anger, and it was infuriating.  No one
took him seriously.  No one thought of him as a threat.  “They are in a guest
room, of course.  Their every need is being seen to, and I trust they are
happier there than in that hovel of yours.”
            His fingers clenched.  “By ‘guest room’ do you mean ‘dungeon’?” he
snapped, his gaze going back to Danarius.
            The magister leaned against the rail.  “That can always be
arranged.  You see, what happens to them now simply depends on you, Lysander,”
he told him.  “I thought to help you with your little problem, you see, and you
insulted me.”  A pause.  “Well, I won’t tolerate that.”
            And his eyes widened.  “You mean to force me to go after that elf.”
            “Paying men to do something is very fine,” Danarius said, as if to
the beginning of a lecture and the man began to pace toward him, running a
finger lightly along the banister.  “But desperate men…”  He smiled, and
stopped walking.  “Will do anything.  And Fenris is very dangerous.”
            Someone who would take greater risks.  Someone who was desperate. 
“Let me see them,” he said.  “I won’t agree to anything unless I can see them.”
            Danarius nodded tartly.  “Hadriana, fetch his sisters, would you?” 
His apprentice smiled graciously, and excused herself.  She left the room,
walking past him.  “I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a contract.  Bring
back Fenris—relatively unharmed—and you and your sisters will want for
nothing.”
            “What if I kill him?” Lysander demanded, even then feeling his
resolve breaking.  He had the girls.  He had them, and there was nothing
Lysander could do about it, except to go find his damned elf.
            The magister chuckled, as if truly amused.  “I don’t think you
can,” he said.  “Though, in that most unlikely of events, bring back his
corpse—all of it.”
            “And my sisters?”
            “Will be fine until you return.  And, if and when you do, I trust
the three of you will be very happy.”  He turned toward him.  “Don’t you tire
of all this manual labor?  Bring back Fenris—preferably alive but I will accept
his corpse--and I can see that you are accepted into the mercenary guild.  I
think that would solve most of your problems.”
            “You want me to cart a rotting corpse across Thedas?” he demanded.
            Danarius was unruffled by the idea.  “If that bothers you, you’ll
have to skin him,” he said, as if discussing the weather.  Lysander felt ill. 
“If he’s dead, I’ll be wanting the lyrium in his skin, so you don’t have to
skin all of him—just pieces.”  The boy thought he may vomit just thinking about
it.
            Lysander looked away, and he thought about all the reasons he
didn’t want to do this.  That elf had been abused, probably raped, and very
likely mentally and emotionally tortured by Danarius.  He didn’t want to force
anything like that on the elf again.  But… his sisters…  The girls meant more
to him than a stranger, and that was the truth of the matter.  The door opened,
and he turned.  Hadriana stepped through, and to the side.  Issie was the first
through, Matilda hobbling after her.  Both of their faces lit up to see him. 
Issie rushed toward her brother, her arms wrapped around him.  He pried away,
and knelt to hug her, glad that they were both alive.  He embraced Matilda as
well, but the magister interrupted.
            “Touching,” he mused.  The siblings looked up at him.  Lysander
held his sisters tightly.  “Now, you have seen they are both all right.  The
ship will depart in three days.  I suggest you prepare for it.”
            Lysander stared at him.  “I’m curious to know what you would have
done if I hadn’t found your note,” he spat.
            “I would have sent you a more obvious one,” Danarius answered, and
Lysander wondered what that meant.
            Lysander leaned his head against the wall of the cabin, and thought
about Issie.  He had gone back that night and got her doll, and begged with the
magister to let him give it to her.  The man had ultimately relented, with
great reluctance, but it had been Hadriana who, interestingly, sided with
Lysander.
            “A little girl needs her doll,” she had said.
            “Fine,” the magister said.  “You take him to them.”
            She lifted her head high.  “I will.  Come.”  She had turned on her
heel and he had followed her out the door.
            “Thank you,” he said after a while.
            “I’m not doing it for you.  It’s for your sister,” she said.
            He paused.  “Did you have a doll at her age?”
            She stopped walking for a moment, and looked back at him, her eyes
full of hurt.  It took him by such surprise that he froze in place, shocked. 
“Once,” she said, and looked away.
            “Did something… happen?” he asked hesitantly.
            She paused.  “I found out I was a mage,” she said softly.  “I
burned it—by accident.  My mother refused to get me another one.”
            He fell silent.  “Please take care of them,” he pleaded.  “They… 
I’d do anything for them.”
            The apprentice looked away.  “I’m glad,” she answered softly.  “And
don’t worry about them.”  They walked on, in relative silence.  Hadriana let
him have a long, tearful goodbye with them, and he was forced to leave. 
Hadriana pushed a gold coin into his hand.  “From Danarius—as a matter of
goodwill.”
            He wanted to say something, but stopped, thanked her, and walked
away.  He slept little that night, and woke early.  He ate, and washed, and sat
and stared at the wall, able to do nothing.  The ship would be leaving soon. 
He went back to the manor with questions about the voyage.  Hadriana was there
to answer all of them, and he left again, after she let him see the girls once
more.
            He wandered the merchant district, and bought a decent pair of
boots for himself.  His leathers would be fine, but his boots were worn out. 
He took what was left of his savings, and bought Matilda a dress, and Issie a
dress.  On his way out of the market, he spied the doll in the blue dress, and
bought that too, but as he held it, he thought about Hadriana—how sad she had
looked.
            He returned to the manor again, and the servants were just as
displeased with him as before, but Hadriana greeted him and even smiled when
she saw him.
            Somehow, he found himself smiling back, and was reassured when she
promised, again, that his sisters would be fine until he returned.  He gave his
gifts to his sisters, and Hadriana walked with him back through the manor.
            “I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said gently.
            He blinked.  “What do you mean?”
            She tried to smile, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes.  Her eyes
only seemed sad.  “Your family means the world to you—I see that.  I just…” 
She sighed.
            “Do you… not have a family?”
            She shook her head, her curls bouncing.  “Not anymore,” she
admitted softly.
            He looked at her.  “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it.  No one
deserved to have their family taken from them.  No one deserved to be alone.
            She looked up at him, and she still looked sad, but somehow
surprised.  “You… you mean that,” she said in wonder.  She frowned, and crossed
her arms.  Their footfalls echoed in the large room as they passed through it. 
“If… Issie were a mage—I’m not saying she is—but if she were, would you feel
the same way?”
            He didn’t even have to think about it.  “Yes.  She’s my baby
sister, and I love her—no matter what,” he told her.
            Hadriana looked up at the sky through the glass roof overhead of
them.  If Lysander didn’t know better, he would say that she was holding back
tears.  They came to the end of the room, and down a short hallway to the entry
room.  “I’m jealous of her,” she admitted, and turned away.  He watched her go,
and walked back to his “hovel”.  She was right—it was a hovel.  He sighed to
himself.
            Hadriana had assured him that provisions would be provided on the
ship, and the gold was therefore of no real value to him.  He had had nothing
for years.  What was this last bit of money?
            So, the morning  before he was to leave, he made one last purchase,
used the last of the money to make a payment to the debtors, and came back to
the manor, but asked to see the apprentice.  She took him to his sisters
without even asking why he was there.  He left the package in the hall, and
hugged both of them goodbye.  They had a somewhat tearful farewell, but he had
to leave them all the same.  He picked up the package once the door closed, and
looked at Hadriana.  She was frowning at him curiously.
            He handed the package to her, smiled softly, and said, “This is for
you.”  And he walked away.
            That evening, he had found Hadriana sitting on the bench inside his
hovel, tears in her eyes as she thanked him.  He had gone with her back to the
manor, insistent that it was dangerous for a woman to walk there alone, even a
mage.  The end perhaps was inevitable.
            In the morning, he had confessed, “I don’t want to do this.”
            “Hmm?” she had inquired sleepily.
            He shook his head.  “Go after that elf.”
            She paused, rubbing the sleep from her eye.  “Be careful.  Don’t
let him touch you.”
            He stopped for a moment.  “I’d heard.”  He looked down.  “But he’s
gone through so much.  I know that Danarius abuses him.  Can’t he just leave
him alone?”
            Hadriana looked away.  “It would injure his pride.”
            Lysander looked back at her.  “Is that really all it is?  Wounded
pride?”  He snorted.  “This is stupid.”  He shook his head.  “He should just
leave him be.”
            The apprentice was silent for a moment.  “Maybe,” she relented. 
She looked up.  “Any slave who manages to escape probably deserves to be free. 
But Danarius would disagree.  He takes it as a personal insult.”
            “I doubt the elf meant it to be insulting,” Lysander said
bitterly.  “No one deserves what that man put him through.”
            Hadriana raised an eyebrow at the comment.  She looked down at her
hands.  “When Danarius dies, I inherit everything.  Would it make you happy if
I let Fenris go?”
            Lysander looked at her.  “Yes,” he whispered.
            She smiled back at him.  “Then I will.”
 
            When the ship sailed again, Fenris found himself grateful to leave,
and strangely at peace too.  He felt most comfortable while he was moving. 
While he was moving, he knew that he would be harder to track, harder to find. 
It eased his troubles, for the most part.  The ship made a stop or two more in
Rivain before it was hit by a storm.
            The storm ran the hull into shallow, rocky water, and it came
limping into the nearest harbor, in Antiva.  Captain said that it would be
nearly a month before they could be on their way again, with the repairs
waiting to be done.  He said it angrily and with feeling, and lots of swearing,
but the reprieve was not unwelcome by the crew.
            Kylie’s money, by now, would normally have been near-extinguished,
but the Captain had been glad to have a mage on board when it ran against the
rocks.  She had been working endlessly to keep the ship floating, like everyone
else, but there was more a mage could do.  When water started leaking in, she
could turn it to ice as it did.  As a result, the hull was cold and frigid, but
it wasn’t sinking.  It did, however, need constant repairs, which she gave it,
but she was not inexhaustible, nor was her magic, and so she was paid for her
efforts.
            Antiva, in a manner of speaking, reminded him a bit of Rivain, and
also a little of Minrathous.  True, the mage-masters were absent, but dirty
politicians, he was finding, were everywhere.  Antiva also had no exact form of
government, which he found quite odd, and was oft reminded by the smugglers to
be on his guard while they were there.  No government meant that Antiva was
governed primarily by its “merchant princes”, which meant that it all depended
on their good graces—and who could throw the most money at the Crows.
            People, he found, were always suspicious of him on several
different counts.  The first and foremost, because he was an elf.  The second,
because of the lyrium.  The third, because sometimes they seemed to guess his
origin:  That he was a runaway.  Maybe it was the clothes, or his accent. 
Maybe it was the way he acted or presented himself, or spoke—he wasn’t certain,
and his uncertainty only seemed to make it more apparent to others.  He wasn’t
sure if he should feel ashamed of his past as a slave, but, even if he should
be, he wasn’t—not really.  It wasn’t worth being ashamed of, or trying to
hide.  So many people tried to hide that which pained them most.  There were
things he would always hide, but slavery wasn’t one of them.
            He had noticed that both in Rivain and Antiva, Kylie had always
found admirers.  She knew how to charm, and how to present herself.  She knew
how to win people over, and she used it to her advantage, always.  Sometimes,
her admirers would treat her with food, with dresses, jewelry, flowers.  They
would shower her with these things, based solely on her looks.  Whatever they
saw, Fenris didn’t see it.  He supposed he had just known her too long, and
still thought of her as a little girl covered in mud.
            It was why, after all, he couldn’t kill her when he knew he
should.  He thought about it all the time—about how she was a mage, and all the
evils she could commit.  But, he had to admit to one truth she had told him: 
“Anyone could have done what I did that night.  It didn’t require a mage.  Or a
human.  Or a woman.  It could have been anyone.”  It wasn’t anyone, but that
wasn’t the point she was trying to make, and her point was valid.  She had done
nothing that involved magic.  It hadn’t been for magic.  If anything, she had
seemed to want to destroy the magisters.
            It was so difficult, sometimes, to examine his hatred.  His hatred
felt good.  It felt righteous, and just, and he needed it.  He needed his
hatred, or he might not go on.  He felt like there was nothing in his life to
live for sometimes, except to feed his own hatred.  The hate kept him going
when nothing else would.  Sometimes, alone at night in the dark, the lyrium
shifting in his flesh—he could feel it every second of every day like some kind
of hyper awareness of blood moving in his veins with each heartbeat bringing a
new wave of pain—he didn’t know what to do.  Sometimes, he felt like there was
nothing that he could do.  He sometimes felt like he should just give up. 
Danarius would send hunters, or the Imperial bounty hunters would come.  He
could just let them collect him.
            Sometimes he wondered what he would do when the time came.  Would
he fight them?  Or just go quietly?  Living like this was so difficult.  It was
hard to ration his coin, and the work was more demanding.  He wasn’t used to
it, and certainly wasn’t prepared for any of it.  Being a slave meant
guaranteed meals, clothes, a bed—for him at least.  Danarius had always
pampered him.  He had always known that, but he had never quite realized
exactly how much Danarius had pampered him until he began to work.
            It had been years since Hadriana had sent him to the field, and a
part of him had forgotten how difficult it had been, which only saddened him to
think about.  So many people would never escape that torment and back-breaking
labor.  They were bred in it, birthed in it, and would die in it.
            He was guarding the warehouse Captain had rented out to store their
supplies.  There were always two of them at a time, and he paced around the
building, and the other guard leaned against the door.  In an hour, they would
switch.  Dwarves, Fenris was finding, made better company than any human he had
ever met, and cared little for how pointed his ears were.
            A bird sat perched on a rooftop, watching him as he paced round in
circles.  It seemed intent, and he was reminded of the bird on the side of the
road in Seheron, who had watched him the same way.  It preened itself on
occasion, but mostly it watched.  It made no sound, and only watched with muted
interest as he walked.  The fifth time around, and it still hadn’t moved much,
he stopped, and looked at it, a frown adorning his features.  There was just
something wrong about that bird, but he wasn’t sure what it could possibly be.
            Maybe, he thought with some sarcasm.  I’m being paranoid, and I
need to sleep more.
            Both of those things were probably true.  It was so hard to sleep
without any medication or alcohol, and every day he knew the hunters could be
upon him at any time.  Every passing hour meant they could be getting closer.
            He made another circle around the warehouse, this one slower than
the others as he forced himself to calm down.  He even stopped and chatted with
the other guard for a bit, then continued.  When he came back to the door, he
saw Kylie there with a small basket, smiling and laughing with the dwarf.  She
turned when she saw Fenris, and her face lit up with a grin.
            He walked to the other two and she wasted no time holding up her
arm.  “Look—one of the merchant princes gave it to me.”
            He glanced at her wrist.  Around it was coiled a dragon sculpted in
gold, its eyes twin sapphires.  “You have many gifts like that,” he pointed out
needlessly.  And she sold most of them, for that matter.
            “It’s only a matter of time before one of them asks to marry you,”
the dwarf told her seriously.
            But Kylie waved the matter off.  “Even if they do, I’ll just
leave.  Anyway, the dwarves are headed to Ferelden next.  I’m going to sell the
bracelet, though—and head to Orlais.”  The dwarf expressed his wishes of good
fortune to her, and she thanked him for it.  She looked to both of them, and
back at Fenris.  “What will you do?”
            He sighed, because he really had no idea.  “I still don’t know,” he
admitted dryly.
            She sighed.  “I wouldn’t hate the company, but I’ll have enough
problems with Templars in Orlais,” she said.  “Anyway, I’m leaving next week. 
Thought I’d tell you.”  She smiled apologetically at both of them, and handed
the dwarf the basket.  “I brought you both lunch, though.”  She flashed another
smile before she darted off—likely to convince more men to buy her nice things.
            The dwarf immediately opened the basket, and the pair divvied out
the food.  They ate mostly in silence, broken by the occasional comment, and
Fenris went back to patrolling.  The crow had flitted to another rooftop, but
still easily within sight.  Childishly, he thought about throwing a rock at
it—he disliked it staring at him.  As if it knew what he was thinking, it
squawked and winged away.  It circled the building once, and flew out over the
city.
            Fenris wished it were so easy for himself.
 
            They had been in Antiva long enough for the boat to be repaired,
and Fenris was kept busy helping carry the crates back into the hold.  Kylie
said her goodbyes to everyone, and saved the elf for last, mostly because he
looked busy to her.
            “I have something for you,” she said, and reached into her pack,
and removed a small, slender bottle.  It was filled with a dark liquid.  “It
should get rid of the pain—for about twelve hours.  But never drink more than a
spoonful at a time, okay?  Too much can hurt you.”
            He took the bottle from her, and his face was unreadable, all
except his eyes, which betrayed how tired and in pain he was.  She imagined he
would immediately go off to swallow a bit of it.  “Thank you,” he said, looking
back at her.
            She shrugged one shoulder.  “I was thinking about you is all.”  She
frowned.  “I don’t imagine we’ll see one another again, and I know you don’t
like me—but…  Well.  I hope you live your life however you see fit, and I hope
you find your happiness by doing so.”  She had rehearsed it.  It sounded
rehearsed, and there was no saving it now.
            He hesitated, and said, “Kylie.  On the ship to Seheron, there was
something you wanted to say to me.  What was it?”
            She blinked.  After all this time, she had almost completely
forgotten what she had found buried in those notes.  She looked down, and back
up.  “I think you have a living family member,” she said, but frowned.  “The
notes weren’t exact—they mentioned a blood link with you, and it’s cryptic, but
I think it means you have a living family member, probably one of my uncle’s
slaves—and more, someone who would have been there when the Ritual was being
performed.”  She paused.  “It doesn’t mention what happened to them—at least
not as far as I read—but they might still be alive somewhere.”  She frowned. 
“I just… I would have wanted to know.  Sorry—I guess I forgot until now.”
            Fenris was shocked for a moment, then quiet.  He seemed for a
moment like he might say something, then stopped, as if reluctant.  Kylie
didn’t care enough to try to drag the comment out of him if he didn’t wish to
say it.  If he wanted her to know whatever he was going to say, he would just
say it, after all, so she put on her best smile.  “Goodbye,” she said instead,
and decided that it was better this way.
            “Goodbye,” he echoed.  She turned and walked away.  She would be
less conspicuous this way, but she still felt kind of sad to leave the ship,
the smugglers, and even Fenris.  She had given little gifts to most of the
crew, and Captain too.  She enjoyed gift giving, after all.  And she still
helped the poor when she could.  It saddened her, how much hurt and loneliness
was in the world.  She saw so many children begging in the streets, so many
hopeless eyes and joyless faces.  It gladdened her to see hope touch the eyes
of the hopeless when she gave them food or clothing.  She never gave them
money, but she would give food and clothing, and took a special joy in giving
it to them.  Helping others fulfilled her in ways nothing else ever had.
            She had been gone from Tevinter for almost a year now, summer just
ending.  Strange, she barely missed it, save for her siblings.  The spring and
summer months had been amazing, onboard the ship.  She would treasure those
memories, always.
            Waiting to board her own ship, she watched another dock, and a
blonde young man walked onto the deck, and looked out at the city.  She saw
wonder touch his features, but he also seemed sad to her.  Had he left his
family, his lover maybe?  That seemed sad to her too.  She kept walking on.
Chapter End Notes
     Yay! We got to see Hadriana behaving like a decent person at last!
***** Decisions *****
Chapter Summary
     Hadriana must make a decision about her future, and the slavers
     formulate a plan.
 
            Hadriana sat in her quarters, and knew she had other things to do. 
Danarius had been heaping more and more responsibility on her, and she had to
prepare for further testing for admittance to the Circle as a full-fledged
magister.  The final test was in two weeks’ time.  It had been all she ever
wanted, and she knew she needed to study and prepare for it like she had for
nothing else.
            Yet, for all that, she was finding it difficult to concentrate. 
She sat on the sofa, and held the gift in her hands.  It was the most beautiful
porcelain doll she had ever seen—in the sort of dress she would have died for
as a child.  Looking at it made her smile, and all the more because it had been
given to her by someone who had given all he had.  A gift was a fine thing, she
supposed, from a wealthy man—but such a gift was rare and precious when it was
from someone who had so little as that young man.
            It was just a doll, but it was the most precious possession she
owned.  She rose from her seat, and carried the doll to its shelf, and placed
it there.  She glanced back at it once as she went to the innocent-looking tea
tray.  The tea was safe enough, but the little bottle beside it, she just
didn’t know what to do with.
            She paced back and forth in the room, and still had no conclusion. 
It had been a month since that night, and her moon’s blood still hadn’t come. 
It could be a fluke, but she doubted it.  She picked up the letter again, and
sat in a chair as she read it, again.
            Lysander had written to her.  At every stop, he sent another
letter—two letters, she amended.  One for his sisters, and one for her.  She
made sure his sisters received the letters, too, and while the younger sister,
Issie, struggled to read at all, Matilda seemed to do well enough.  Ordinarily,
Hadriana would have left the pair to sit for months in the guest room, under
lock and key, but instead she walked around the manor with them, and listened
to them talk, and occasionally asked questions.  She brought them outside a few
times, and Issie especially liked that.  She had played with her dolls—one old
and one new, in the grass.
            The mage knew she should just leave well enough alone, but she
thought about that handsome blonde boy and just couldn’t quite manage to.  It
was silly, really.  She would have thought she was beyond such nonsense, that
she had more important things in her life.  Yet she still kept thinking about
him, and even worried.
            He seemed anxious, in his letters.  He worried for his sisters, and
for his own sake.  He worried if he were doing the right thing.  Hadriana went
to her desk, and stared at the blank parchment, but the letter would not write
itself.
            She dipped the pen in the inkwell, and decided to start with a
greeting, but felt flustered at that too.  What did she say?  Dearest
Lysander.  She crossed it out and tried again.  My love.  She crossed that out
too, and half a dozen others.  She threw the parchment away, and got a fresh
sheet.  She stared at it, and closed her eyes.  How did he begin his letters? 
Shamelessly, she mused.  She picked up the first of them and reread that, then
set it down.  Perhaps she should be just as shameless.  She started again with
a greeting, and this time, decided to leave it.
            My Dearest Lysander,
            I hope this letter reaches you well.  I wish I could give you more
insight on to the elf’s mindset and motives to help set your mind at ease, but
I sadly cannot.  He used to be very obedient and dutiful—something has
obviously changed, but it still stands that he is very dangerous to everyone
around him.  He simply cannot be allowed to roam free and unchecked.  Better
that he dies than is let loose upon the world.  Beyond that, you must look
after yourself—and my prayers go with you, always.
            I think about you every day, usually several times a day.  I worry
for your safety—and I have never worried for anyone else the same way.  I
wonder, sometimes, what that means—and what it means when I am not afraid of
it.
            By the time you come back, I will be a magister.  It is all I have
ever wanted in my entire life, yet for the first time, I have doubts if it is
what my heart truly desires any more.  I am anxious now, when I think about
becoming a magister, where before I did not possess such anxiety.  Rather, I
had been excited, but now I am excited and happy when I think of you.  What,
then, does that mean, my love?
           
            She hesitated.  Dare she go on?  Should she mention it?  She
touched her stomach, making a face.  Should she tell him?  Or should she
swallow the contents of that little bottle?  She didn’t know.  She set the
quill down, and stared at the parchment, wondering what Lysander would want. 
She stared at the tea tray, her arms crossed, and uncertain as ever of what to
do.
            She wished there was someone she could ask—anyone who would know
what to do.  What was the right thing to do?
            Any normal person might have gone to a Chantry seeking guidance,
but the Maker had never heard her prayers before.  Why would He listen now? 
Moreover, why beg answers from divinity when, according to its very doctrine,
He was the one who had “blessed” her with this dilemma in the first place?
            She rose from her seat and picked the porcelain doll off of its
perch again, staring into its lovely painted eyes, as if the doll would come to
life.  When she was a little girl, she used to imagine that her doll really was
alive, and when she was asleep or wasn’t looking, it would come to life, and
when she woke or returned to the room, it would return to its place as fast as
lightning.  It seemed silly now.  Her sisters had been the ones to tell her
that.  They may have been teasing her, but she wondered if they had ever
believed it.  She wondered if other people had ever believed it.
            She sat back down, hugging the doll to her chest like a child, and
wondered what Lysander would want.  And when she knew what he would want, she
knew what she wanted too.
 
            I often find myself dreaming about our future.  I hope and pray, as
always, that you return quickly, but if not, I will have something waiting for
you when you return.  And though it can be the work of moments for it to begin,
it takes months to form and grow. 
            When you return, Danarius will restore all of your old estates and
assets at my behest, and I think the time will be right to resume your family
name—a prestigious name and if you permit, one I would like to bestow upon our
child.
            I miss you.  Return to me safely and with all due haste.
            Yours always, Hadriana
 
            She read what she had written as she waited for the ink to dry, and
nearly tore it in half.  But, no.  It was everything she wanted to say to him,
though some of it she could never bring herself to say in person.  She needed
to tell him.  She sprinkled sand over the words, let the sand cascade down into
its glass case.  She folded the letter neatly, and placed it inside its
envelope.  She set the envelope down, and delicately plucked a handful of wax
beads, and placed them on top of it.  She held her hand over the wax, and
whispered the incantation.  The wax melted into a hot pool.  She drew her hand
back, and sealed it.  She was having her own personal seal made, but for the
time being, she used her master’s.
            She left her room, carrying her letter, and gave it to a servant
with proper instructions for delivery.
 
            Finding the elf wasn’t the problem, Lysander was beginning to
realize, as he sat with the others—slavers and bounty hunters all—in the gloom
of the seedy-looking inn.  He nursed a chipped pewter cup of something they
claimed was ale, and listened to them talk.  From what they said, the trick
would be luring the elf into a trap, or finding him alone and springing it on
him.  Regardless, it involved a great deal of stalking, watching and waiting,
apparently.
            There was one elf in the party—a very jaded fellow who simply
didn’t seem to care about the matter at all.  The entire thing left a sour
taste in Lysander’s mouth, but the elf just acted methodically about it.  At
first, Lysander had thought the elf may be a slave to one of the others, but
that theory was quickly put to rest when a brawl broke out on the ship between
the elf and a couple of the humans.  One of the humans had a broken jaw by the
end of it, and the other a broken finger.  The elf suffered a few bruises, but
was overall too quick to bring to much harm.  The mage traveling with them had
fixed the wounds, and all three of them endured a long lecture from the second
in command of their little troupe, because the leader didn’t talk much.
            If the young man recalled correctly, the elf had said to the him at
the end of it, “Go fuck off.”  The two humans he had been quarreling with
earlier chuckled.
            The man had been quite shocked to hear those words from a mere
elf.  “You…  You can’t talk to me like that.  I’m human;you’re an elf.”  It had
been almost a protest.  Everyone else had simply gone silent, wondering what
would happen.
            The elf had already been walking away, so he turned on his heel,
his long coat swirling about his knees.  He gave a pleasant yet somehow cheeky
smile and replied, “Oh, I’m so sorry.  I meant to say, ‘please go fuck
yourself, master’.”  In the stunned silence that followed, the elf had simply
walked away.  And somehow—no repercussion that Lysander had seen—probably
because everyone, including their leader had laughed and now the elf seemed to
get along with even the two he had been fighting.
            Lysander had made an effort not to learn any of the slavers’
names.  He didn’t want to know them, and was content to stay a stranger
himself.  He assigned them nicknames of his own—things that were mildly amusing
to him, but nothing he would dare call them to their face.  They knew him as
“boy” and “mercenary” and it had been good enough for him.
            The door opened, and two of the others joined them—the elf from
before, and a man who Lysander suspected had been a thief before this.
            Thief said, “Our runaway is staying at an inn at the docks called
‘The Seahorse’.”  He paused briefly, making a face.  “Seems he’s employed by a
group of dwarves.”
            The elf barely seemed to be listening as he sat down and started
polishing one of his blades, but still he added, “They’re smugglers.”  Daggers
inspected the blade.  “He’s almost never alone—they work him too often to have
much leisure time.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “However, they are heading to
Fereldon.  It would be a simple matter to sail ahead, a few tips to the proper
authorities—and they could all be imprisoned for smuggling—including… the
runaway.”
            The rest was simple.  Fereldon was facing a Blight right now—it was
high risk for the dwarves, but with a high pay.  Alternately, the authorities
seizing their ships would be a decent pay off for the crown—and if a few men
wanted to pay for the elf’s crimes of smuggling, who was going to argue that at
such a crucial time?
            It was simple enough, really, but it involved a great deal of
patience—and the slavers had little of that.  There was some expected arguing,
a few suggested alternatives—none of which were as safe or as well thought out
as what Daggers suggested.
            None of them ever spoke Fenris’ name aloud.  It was easier not to
think about the moral implications of what they were doing.  Some genuinely
didn’t care, and others were cruel about the prospect, but most, to Lysander,
were numb to it.  They detached themselves by not thinking of the slaves as
people—as creatures possessing names and histories.  Fenris was simply “the
elf” or “the slave” or, most frequently, “the runaway”—and sometimes a
combination of those.  Lysander supposed that it made it easier that way.  Most
slave owners, he had learned, never bothered to learn their slaves names—it
kept it impersonal and made them think of their slaves more like objects or
animals.  That Danarius knew his household slaves by name meant something
nearly unspeakable, something that made Lysander ill to consider.
            He heard the door to the inn open and close, but didn’t see which
patron had left.  His eyes flicked back to the half-empty mug of ale.  He was
none too anxious to sail again, but it seemed like they were leaving in the
morning.
***** The Streets of Despair *****
Chapter Summary
     The smugglers catch wind of the slavers' plans and keep Fenris away
     from them.
            Milon walked briskly down the street, his hood pulled up to shadow
his features.  After what he had just heard, he knew he dare not linger, nor
let anyone see him.  He had gone to the inn on the arm of a whore, and had come
down the stairs in time to hear the word “smugglers”.  Being a smuggler, he had
stopped, and listened, hidden behind the wall, and all the while praying to the
Ancestors that the men would not turn and look.  They hadn’t.  They spoke
softly, but the walls were thin even so.  And they were careful in what they
spoke of, but they could only be speaking of Fenris.
            He had to hurry, and hurry he did.  He made it to the The Seahorse
and roused Captain from his pallet with an almost frenzied shake.
            “What is it, Milon?” he demanded groggily, sitting up and rubbing
an eye with the back of his hairy hand.
            Milon looked on anxiously, and Captain’s anger faded at the worry
in the other’s eyes.  In a hushed whisper, he told Captain all that he had
heard.  Captain was not so much worried as enraged.
            “We will act as if nothing has changed,” he told him.  “You will
tell no one.  Not even Fenris.”  The Captain’s lips pressed into a thin line
beneath his fearsome beard.  “But we’ll make sure that elf is so tired that he
drops every night, and if he wants to go out alone…  Don’t let him.  Tell him
he needs to guard the warehouse or something, but I never want him alone.”
            Milon nodded fiercely and swore that he would do this.  If Fenris
knew, he would fall to one of two instincts, and Milon was not certain which
would be the worse of the two.  One, is that the elf would run—which meant that
the dwarves could not help him, and the elf might just end up running into a
trap.  Two, is that the elf would choose to attack, and, once more, the dwarves
could not help him.
            But if they waited, they could give him more help than he needed,
and ample more than he would ever ask for.  Moreover, it was safer to pretend,
and safer to simply reroute their course.
 
            Two days later, Milon breathed in relief to see the slavers’ ship
depart, but he knew there could be those watching all the same.  As a
precaution, he went to the local bounty office, and checked a list of
bounties.  Fenris had not made international level yet, but he was aware that
it was a possibility that he might one day.  It didn’t hurt to look.
            They had “accidentally” scheduled Fenris to work two shifts, one
after the other, while the slavers were in town, and the day they departed and
were on the docks all day, Fenris was safely asleep, and there were plenty of
the dwarven smugglers nearby.  Only Milon and Captain knew, of course, but it
was an easy enough task to arrange that Fenris was never left alone.  The elf
may have suspected something amiss, but there was never quite enough evidence
to question it.
            A few days before the ship was finished with repairs, Captain and
Milon both agreed that it must be safe for the moment.  They had both been
looking, and asking, and there was no sign of the slavers any longer—the
Tevinters had moved on.  They both breathed a little easier for the elven
hireling.  Let it never be said that they did not care for their own.
 
            Fenris was slightly annoyed at the “schedule errors” of late that
had left him exhausted and frustrated all week long, and after a long half-dead
sleep, he was feeling restless and confined in the rooms at the inn, so he
decided to walk along the pier.  He had no desire to stray far; he didn’t know
the local language.  Sometimes, he didn’t have to though.
            A pair of women he assumed were whores were looking at him—a
middle-aged dwarven woman and a pock-marked human.  They were whispering to one
another, and a part of him wondered what they said, and another part knew
instinctively that they were talking about the lyrium.  When he passed them by,
his suspicions were affirmed when they shrank away from him, rather than call
out to him as they did the sailors.
            The fishing ships would be docking in an hour—he could see some of
them in the bay.  If he wanted to avoid the horrid stench, he would do well to
leave.  He turned and walked up a narrow path that was only a street by
courtesy.  Laundry hung on lines, from window to window, high above his head. 
Two half-naked children ran laughing through the mud ahead of him, and
disappeared down a side passage.  He sidestepped the mud, and then a pile of
dung.  He continued to walk, mindful of where he stepped.
            He saw a half-starved dog, flea-bitten and so thin he could count
its ribs.  It was gnawing on an old scrap of leather, and had a wild look in
its drooling eyes.  He meant to pass by it, but it tried to bite him as he
passed.  He wondered if it was somehow sadder that the animal was too weak to
manage the act.  It made him wish he had food for the poor creature.
            He continued to walk, away from the pier and the smell of the sea
and the day’s catch.  The other smells of the city were often just as bad
though.  In Antiva, they did nothing to try to hide their putrid stench with
incense.  Rather, the tanneries, the midden heaps, the dead bird on the
street—all their stench coalesced into a fetid whole.
            Fenris came to a wider, more open street, and walked, and listened,
watching always.  A beggar with one arm cried for pennies.  No one even seemed
to notice him.  Fenris didn’t have to know the language to know what the man
said.  The language of begging was as universal as war.
            Maybe my life could have been worse, he admitted to himself.  Or
maybe it was worse.  The worst part was not knowing.  He had no point of
comparison.  Danarius had hinted that he had known Fenris’ mother.  That part
still made his heart drop into his stomach to think about it.  What had
happened to her?  He’d never know.  Danarius might have told him one day. 
Annalkylie had mentioned a possible relative—a “blood link”.  He did wonder…
            “Perhaps one day, if you are very well behaved, I’ll tell you about
your mother,” his master had said—years ago.  His tone had been something akin
to a person talking to a dog.  But it was all the elf had, and he had to know. 
He dare not ask, but he wanted to know so badly.
            It was plain to him that Danarius had owned him since his
childhood.  But had he been born into slavery?  If Danarius knew Fenris’
mother, that seemed likely enough, but it was still uncertain to him.  He
wondered what had happened to her, his mother.  Dead, probably, he thought
dryly.  Or sold.  Maybe even both—who could tell?
            Danarius had once commented that he had bought him, but that didn’t
mean he had been born free either, and there was no way to know if his master
had been lying to him.  If he had learned nothing as a slave, it was that
people lied.  If he hadn’t been born a slave, then what did that mean? 
Danarius had also told him that he was from Seheron.  Had he been a slave in
Seheron?  Or simply sold from there?  Had he and his mother been plucked from
the alienage there, and sold?
            He couldn’t recall ever having been to an alienage before, nor was
he inclined to see one.  He didn’t care.  The elves there were better off than
those in slavery.
            Fact of the matter, he didn’t even know where he had been before
the Ritual.  Had he lived in Minrathous?  Or Vinewood?  Neither?  Since he had
woken in Vinewood, that seemed to be the obvious place, but Danarius lived in
Minrathous.  He didn’t even know where the Ritual had been.  Probably in Ath
Velanis.  Most experiments were conducted there.
            I used him in my experiments.  He worked in Ath Velanis.
            Experiments… and it had made Vairin go mad.  Was it possible?
            A group of nervous, giggling children were looking at him.  Street
urchins, by the looks of them.  He continued on, but one of them was shoved
forward, and the boy trotted up to him, and said something in a language Fenris
didn’t know.  The elf shook his head, and didn’t know how to tell him that he
didn’t understand the Antivan tongue.
            The boy tried again, even walking in front of him, most urgently. 
Fenris sighed.  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he tried to tell him. 
Something dawned on the boy then, and he shouted something back at his
chortling friends.  A girl ran up to them.  Her knowledge of the King’s Speech
was rudimentary and halting, but it served.
            “Is real?” she translated, pointing at the tattoos.
            “It’s lyrium,” Fenris found himself answering, while trying to walk
past the pair, but they kept pace with him.  The girl translated to the boy
when he tugged at her dingy sleeve.
            “Tattoo?”  She made a vague gesture.  “A needle!”  He didn’t know
what she meant, or was trying to say.  She seemed frustrated.  “It… hurt?”
            He almost laughed.  “Yes,” he answered simply, and wished very much
that the two urchins would just go away.  He kept an eye on both their hands,
though.
            But with that, the pair bid him farewell, and went back to their
friends.  Some kind of childish dare, he supposed.  Go talk to the weird-
looking foreigner—why not?
            Fenris looked back at his surroundings, watching the people pass by
and go about their business.  He watched a dirty pickpocket cut someone’s
purse, and steal away into a dark alley.  He watched a woman selling
vegetables, and a man haggle over the price of a chain.
            He wondered about his father sometimes too.  And his grandfather,
mentioned once years ago.  Had he ever known the man?  For a slave, his master
had certainly kept track of his pedigree.  Of course—if he had been born and
bred for the coliseum or the fighting pits, that was often expected.  The more
detailed the records, the higher the price they could put on his head,
sometimes literally.
            Danarius had often brought Fenris with him to the coliseum, and
wagered on sweaty, bloodied slaves fighting in the sands below.  He hated the
coliseum.  It embodied everything that was wrong with the Imperium, all in one
place.  The magisters flocked there, the common people went to watch others die
for their amusement.  Criminals often met their execution in those sands.  One
of the worst things he had ever witnessed was a group of slave children being
thrown to a pack of wolves.  Each had been covered in a different sauce, and
wagers were made on which would be eaten first.
            A magister had said, “Seems an awful waste.  I could’ve used them
in the mines.”  He laughed.  The man had mines and a quarry, and was known as
being one of the major suppliers of coal and stone in half the Imperium.  He
was also known for making children do most of the work of mining, because they
had small nimble hands and could fit into the smaller tunnels.  Fenris had been
to a stone quarry once—when Danarius was looking at it as a potential
investor.  His master had looked at the eggshell stone brought from the earth,
but Fenris had looked at the hungry, sullen faces of the slaves working the
quarry, each of them with a look about them as if they had lost all trace of
hope for anything better.  If his heart were not already broken, he had thought
that day, it would break.
            Danarius had said, “They were plucked off the streets this
morning.”
            “Street urchins?”
            “Pickpockets and thieves, more like,” the man’s wife said, a slave
fanning her.
            Sometimes Fenris still felt like he could hear those children’s
screams, backed by the amused laughter of the crowd.  He had cried that day,
when he crawled desolately into bed, because no one else would cry for them. 
No one would mourn their young lives lost in the name of amusement, but he
did.  He cried for each of their lives gone, and he cried at his own
helplessness.  There had been nothing he could have hoped to do to save them. 
He couldn’t even save himself.
            Annalkylie had always helped the poor, and he had never seen her at
the coliseum.  He had really thought…
            But she had turned out just like all the rest of them, hadn’t she?
***** Autumn Storms *****
Chapter Summary
     A storm wrecks the smuggler's ship, and Fenris is captured by the
     slavers.
            “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Fereldon in the other
direction?” Fenris inquired of one of the sailors aboard the ship.  He had
noticed a few hours ago that they were going west instead of south and east.
            “We changed course,” he said with a shrug, and spat over the side. 
“Captain’s orders.”
            Odd, he thought.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  For all he knew, it was
quite ordinary.  None of the crew seemed to think much of it, but it seemed to
him that one place was like any other to them, so long as they could sell their
wares, they didn’t much care.
            Still, weeks later, when they docked in Orlais, they made Fenris
stay on the ship.  “No one cares about dwarves, but you speak like an
Imperial,” Captain had said, jabbing a finger at him.  “And no one in Orlais
likes Tevinters.  So stay here and guard the cargo.  We’ll only be here a day
or two before we head back up the coast.”
            So Fenris paced about the ship restlessly, bored and wanting to go
see the city, but unable to.  He looked out at it though, and watched what
people the harbor brought in.  The Trade Tongue was becoming more natural to
him, but he still thought mostly in Tevene.  Captain made sense but he really
could have just kept his mouth shut and no one would know the difference.  Or
would they?  He wondered if it wasn’t just because of the lyrium.  That could
be, too, he supposed.
            It still seemed unfair—especially when the fishing ships docked. 
He felt like he was suffocating from the stench.  He supposed there were worse
things.
 
            Two weeks at port, and the slavers began to grow suspicious that
something had leaked.  Lysander watched them, suspecting one another,
quarrelling.  They even questioned him, to which he had answered, “I can’t go
home without the elf.  Why do you think I’d let the bastard go?”
            And they had left him alone, and eyed one another, and watched. 
The slavers quarreled, and accused one another, and in due time a fight broke
out between Thief and Toad.  It started with yelling, then it broke out in a
brawl and Daggers kicked Toad in the back of the head.  When Toad came at
Daggers with a knife, Thief ran him through.  It wasn’t long before another
fight broke out, though—this time between Billy Goat and Fool—this one began
with drinking.  Billy Goat broke a chair over Fool’s back and, while no one
died that time, Fool may never walk again.
            Port was not a good place for the slavers, together.  By the third
week, and still no sight of the smugglers, they sat down together, and debated
over what to do, under the strict clause that no weapons would be drawn.
            Lysander wasn’t exactly listening.  Mostly, the debate was between
Billy Goat, Thief, Daggers, and Griffin.  Leader was silent as ever, watching,
and seemed to be in deep thought.  The others put in the occasional word, but
really only one thing was agreed upon:  They were running out of coin.  They
had sent word to the magister, and the reply was yet to come.
            They wondered if they should wait for word, but word may not reach
them for weeks yet.  They also considered taking what coin they had left and
abandoning the task.  Lysander argued against it with the best of them when
that opinion rose.  Some of the mercenaries, though, spat, and left, leaving
only the Imperial bounty hunters, and Lysander—even smelly old Billy Goat left
by the end of the fourth week.
            “You can’t trust slavers to be honorable enough to follow through
with a contract,” Thief had confided in Lysander over a bottle of port.
            “Then why are you?”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “It was either go on this venture, or be
removed of my right hand.  Time will tell if I have chosen poorly.”  It seemed
I named him properly, Lysander mused to himself.
            Daggers finally came back with a tip, and a letter from the
magister.  He was grinning from ear to pointy ear, and it was more malicious
than anything else.  The seal was broken, and the elf slammed the parchment
down on the table hard enough to make the remaining slavers jump.  “The
smugglers tricked us,” he announced.
            “No—really?” Thief demanded.
            Everyone ignored him.  Daggers raised an eyebrow.  Lysander found
himself wondering what Danarius was holding over his head, to make him do this
too.  “They changed course, and went to Orlais.  By now, they might be heading
back.  We can intercept them when they make port again.”
            “Where’s that?”  The elf frowned disapprovingly at Thief.  Thief
scowled.  “Am I not allowed to talk?”
            “No,” he said flatly.  Lysander wondered if they had been fighting
lately too, which seemed odd to him.  They were almost always together, and
usually went scouting together too.  Come to think of it, they hadn’t gone
together this time.  Thief grumbled, but no one paid him any heed, particularly
Daggers.  “They’ll be stopped in the Free Marches on the way back, but they’ll
have to dock once in Ferelden to resupply, and it’s bloody unlikely it’ll be
Denerim.  I, for one, am getting quite tired of their little ship.  I say
something tragic happens to it.”
            There was nothing else for it, and everyone else was quite tired of
the meddlesome smugglers as well.  With them out of the picture, nailing Fenris
down, at least, would be easy.  Caging him might be another story, but Melons
had a plan for that as well.  Lysander had even seen it, in the hold of the
ship.
            A cage with bars as thick as his wrist—heavy and iron, with a lead
core, but even that wouldn’t really defend against Fenris’ power.  It was
experimental, but the lyrium runes on the bars would be the real cage, and a
heavy dosage of medications to keep him sedated, just in case.
            “Does anyone know which city they’ll be resupplying in?” Melons
piped up.
            “Not yet,” Daggers admitted.  “Give me a day; I’ll find out.” 
Lysander had no idea where he was getting his information from—he imagined the
docks.  The commissioners maybe, clerks, other sailors, other smugglers, but
mostly perhaps the buyers.
            That was met with some disapproval, and complaints.  Daggers sighed
and got up, likely off to do more digging.
            “I’ll come with you,” Thief offered, rising.
            Daggers shot him a nasty look, and Thief slowly sat back down. 
“What’d you do to him, man?” Melons asked him, gesturing in the direction the
elf had gone with his clay cup.  Some of the liquid spilled onto his round
belly, for which he had earned the unspoken nickname.
            Thief looked sullen, and picked up the parchment left on the
table.  “I beat him at chess,” he said without feeling.  It was a terrible
lie.  “Can anyone here read?”
            Lysander said, “I can.”  Thief handed him the parchment, and
Lysander scanned it, before he read it aloud to the company.  It was from
Danarius, but he recognized it as being Hadriana’s handwriting.  He was giving
them a sum of money, which they could pick up from the bank.  There were five
names, and only five, that would be acceptable to go get the money and at least
two had to go to collect it.  Lysander was one of the five, and Thief was
another.
            The two quietly left to collect the sum, the leader of their troop
angrily leading them, for he had not been mentioned.  Leader was a quiet man,
barely speaking at all in fact—owing mostly to him missing a portion of his
tongue, which wasn’t something he spoke about, even when asked… and it was
unwise to ask.
            Lysander suspected that the reason Leader wasn’t mentioned was
because he wasn’t one of the people being forced into this.  Danarius had
written a nice list of those who were:  Lysander, Thief, Fool, Patches, and
Bird—roughly translated from their real names, respectively.  Well, Fool
couldn’t walk despite the mage’s best efforts, Patches was preoccupied with a
whore, and Bird had flown away a week ago.  But that made him wonder about
Daggers.  He was an elf—how could he be a slaver?  It was wrong, even more
wrong than a human doing it.
            When they collected the sum, Lysander handed it over to Leader
wordlessly, and he looked over it before he shoved it in his pack safely. 
Lysander did not worry if he would run off with it; the bounty hunting was the
man’s life, and he had signed a contract.  To break it meant he could not work
anymore, and to steal payment and break it meant to be hunted himself.
            It left Lysander to walk back with Thief alone.  “Why are you
here?” Thief asked him, out of the blue.  A mangy dog shat in the street. 
Barefoot boys hit each other with sticks playing at being knights in the
alley.  The autumn leaves littered the ground, and the locals said it would
snow soon.  The Tevinters, used to warm weather and perfumed streets, hated it
here.
            “I signed a contract.”
            “You hate it,” Thief told him flatly.  “You hate everything about
it.”
            Lysander was quiet for a moment, wondering if he could trust the
thief.  He had one of those faces that blended into a crowd, one of those
instantly likeable voices, and a smile that would charm a beggar from his
coin.  “The magister threatened me and my family.”
            Thief nodded appreciatively.  “I see.”
            The young man was silent for a moment, glancing at Thief.  Thief
had a kempt short beard, and eyes like two pools of chocolate, and looked more
Rivaini than Imperial, with his darkened skin.  He also spoke with a peasant’s
accent, slurring some of his words, and he was illiterate.  Probably grew up on
the streets as a pickpocket.  “So what’s really going on between you and—“ 
Lysander almost said “Daggers” but he had to stop and think of his real name,
and couldn’t remember it.  “The elf.”
            Thief frowned.  “Aramael?”
            Lysander nodded.  “What’s going on between you two?”
            Thief raised an eyebrow.  “I beat him at chess,” he said, the lie
coming out more smoothly this time.
            The lad scoffed.  “What are all the rules for the knight?  In
chess, I mean.”
            An awkward pause ensued.  “It… moves in a… particular pattern,” he
said haltingly.
            Lysander pursed his lips.  “I see.”  He glanced at him.  “Liar.”
            “It does though.”  It was almost a question, and the other laughed
aloud.  Thief was silent for a moment.  “It’s none of your business.”
            But Lysander heard all about it anyway.  Late at night in the
cabin, a day later when they set sail again.  He shared it with Thief, Daggers,
and Melons.  Melons had fallen asleep at the table, drunk, and he was so fat no
one was inclined to move him, so there they left him.
            Yesterday morning, Daggers had informed Leader of the ship’s
destination—a little place, barely a port, in western Fereldon.  Well, they had
decided that trying to catch it there was a waste of time, so they had opted
for its next destination, which was Nevarra, or the Free Marches, if the
weather was very poor.
            He woke without moving or opening his eyes, and first noticed the
two arguing in hushed tones.  He could only catch snatches of conversation here
and there.
            “… If you would just…”
            “It’s folly…”
            It became more and more heated, their whispers harder to discern,
but Lysander could sense the heat of them, before he heard a different sound
entirely.  Something familiar and…  One eye opened, and he glanced toward the
back of the cabin.  Daggers had pinned Thief to the wall, and at first Lysander
was alarmed, then just disturbed.
            Thief struggled at first, then he embraced the other, the kiss
deepening with the heat of their anger.  Lysander wished he hadn’t woken up,
and suddenly wished he hadn’t heard any of it.
            They broke from the kiss, and just resumed arguing again, like it
had never happened.  He rolled his eyes.  They were a little louder this time. 
“After this, just come away with me.”
            “Where would we go?”  That one was Daggers.  “You tell me.  Where
would we go where you wouldn’t be looked on with disgust for being with an
elf—and a man.  Tell me where.”
            The floorboards creaked when Thief stepped toward him.  “Anywhere. 
A… a fucking island—I don’t know.  Anywhere.  I’m sure we could find
somewhere—somewhere secluded.  Away.  Away from… from fucking everything.” 
Lysander wondered if the man were either delusional or simply desperate.  Or
very possibly in love—which meant both.
            A pause.  “So that when people do find us, and they will, I’ll have
nowhere to run, and they’ll kill me?”
            A shocked pause.  “You can’t…”
            “Oh?”  Daggers scoffed.  “When I was a teenager, I knew two
women—not personally, but I knew where they lived.  One was human, one an elf…”
            “But they were women,” Thief objected.
            Daggers made a noise of complaint, and he heard a muffled sound he
knew to be another kiss.  The argument simply resumed again.  “The human was a
Circle mage from Qarinus—First Enchanter, gave up her post,” he added.  That
seemed to settle the matter.  Lysander heard more noises he could associate
being made with a mouth against flesh, but Daggers was still talking.  “They
tried to go away too.  Mmm.”  A pause, some heavy breathing.  “They waited
until the mage was out of town.”  There was a loud clank when something metal
hit the floor—a belt buckle?  “They found the elf’s body nailed to a fence
post.”
            A stunned silence.  Lysander’s stomach clenched—either from the
additional noises he was hearing, or the story, he could not say.  “That won’t
happen,” Thief whispered.  His throat sounded dry.  “We’ll go farther…  No one
will ever find us.  No one will ever know where we are.”
            “You’re an idiot,” Daggers whispered in the most affectionate tone
possible to speak such words.  “Ah!”  He didn’t know what the yelp was about,
and distinctly did not want to.  Lysander wished he could just fall back asleep
instantly.  “Mmm…  But it’s not just humans that are the problem, my love.” 
Something about his accent…  It had changed.
            Thief made a low moaning sound.  “Elves too?  Maker, Ara, why can’t
we just be together?”
            “I am very pressured…”  There was a pause.  “… to have children,
you know.”
            “Because…?”
            “Yes.”  Lysander wondered what that meant.  Elves were pressured to
have children—their own kind pressured them to reproduce, and of course so did
their masters.  “And… when I free her, I’ll have to…  I mean, it’s the only
logical thing to do.  We’re the last…”
            “Ara…  You can’t,” Thief whispered, and sounded brokenhearted even
to Lysander’s ears.
            There was more noise like clothing rustling.  “I have to.”
            “Then…  Just let me come with you.  That’s all.  You can still…” 
He sighed.  “I’d be fine with it, really.  Just… come back to me when it’s
done.”  Yep, Lysander decided.  In love. “I’ll…  I’ll help raise your kid. 
Ara, I’d do anything for you…”
            “You’re so stupid.  So…”  More kissing.  “Fucking…”  A muffled
moan.  “Stupid.  Mmm.”  He heard the sound of clothing rustling again.
            Thief complained, “Lysander is right there.”
            “He sleeps like a dead man,” Daggers muttered.  “So just shut up
and fuck me.”
            Lysander’s eyes squeezed shut, listening to them argue again, this
time about sex.  A losing battle—by the sound of it, they were both naked
soon.  Lysander wished he could close his ears the same way he closed his eyes:
  Soft muffled moans, sucking kisses, the sound of flesh against flesh, the wet
sound of one of them fucking the other, the wooden posts on the cot creaking
against a backdrop of their heavy breathing, and a few whispered words Lysander
did not catch.  He imagined this was not the first time they had done this,
even with him in the room, if they knew how he normally slept.
            A thief, Lysander thought, bemused, needs a pair of daggers the way
a fine pair of blades beg for a hand to wield them.
            When it stopped—a quick traipse in the dark was all it
was—Lysander, vastly annoyed, muttered just loudly enough for them to hear,
“Next time fucking warn me—I’ll leave!”
            “Shit!”  Thief.
            “Fuck!”  Daggers.
            Lysander felt immensely pleased with himself, chuckling quietly. 
Decent revenge, he supposed.  He heard quick footsteps, and then Thief kneeling
by the bed, looking up at him.  Lysander stared at him, confused.  The man
looked genuinely concerned.  “You can’t tell anyone,” he whispered.
            Lysander looked aghast.  “Why would I…?”  He could only imagine
what would happen.  The racism was bad enough, and two men…  Good enough to
fuck, but not to love.  “Maker, I…”
            Daggers walked by, flipping something toward Lysander, and then
walked away.  “For your silence,” he whispered.
            Lysander sat partway up, and looked at the single silver coin lying
on his bed, a bright glinting circle on the linen sheets.  Thief looked at him
pleadingly.  Lysander noticed that both of them were still naked; Thief had a
tattoo of some kind of weird, skinny lizard on his chest.  Lysander looked from
him to Daggers, and back, and didn’t know what to say.  He had never intended
to tell anyone.  He had never intended to cause trouble for them, or anything
else.  He didn’t care if they wanted to be together; he really didn’t.  Such
things were not to his taste, but if it made them happy…   It would be less
awkward if they were both clothed.  Or if Daggers didn’t just stand there, very
casually, completely naked, glistening with sweat in the dim light.  At least
Thief had the decency to crouch and kind of hide himself.
            “I…” Lysander stammered, unsure of how to put his thoughts to
words.
            Daggers raked his hand through his hair.  “Do you need more?” he
whispered, pinching the bridge of his nose, then covered his eyes with his
hand.  Thief looked away, and even in the dark of the cabin, illuminated only
by a single taper, Lysander could see his face turning red.  Daggers’
complexion was pale with worry.
            Lysander picked up the coin, and didn’t know how to tell him he
didn’t need anything at all.  “It’s…”  He stopped, and tried again.  “I just…”
            Daggers made a face, and went to his pack, and began angrily
rifling through it.  Thief looked back at him, his eyes wide and pleading. 
Daggers was younger than Thief, but Thief seemed like the younger of the two in
the way he behaved—or maybe the elf was just more worldly.  Daggers heaved
something at Lysander, and it missed his face by a scant inch—and he knew if
Daggers had wanted to hit him, it would have hit.  The object landed on his cot
with a dull thump, and he turned and looked at it.  A small leather purse.
            Daggers was shaking with rage; Lysander could see it in his gray
alien eyes.  “Take it,” he hissed.  “Take all of it, human.  It’s all your kind
has ever done.”  And Lysander heard the elf’s accent clearly for the first
time—carefully concealed, and carefully hidden, but there when he was upset,
and heartbreaking for anyone to hear it:  Dalish.  What had happened to him to
make him end up here?
            Lysander looked at both of them, aghast.  What was his silence
costing him?  What was he doing?  He grabbed the purse, and rose, and shoved
the purse and the silver coin back into the elf’s hands.  Daggers stared at
him, watching him like an animal in a trap watched the hunter.  “Keep it,” he
whispered.  “All I ask is the same silence if I ever need it.”
            The elf’s fingers curled around the purse, and he looked away.
 
            Fereldon was damp, cold, and all the people there smelled strongly
of dog.  It took Fenris half a day to decide that he didn’t like it much at
all.  The dwarves insisted quite strongly that he needed to see the rest of
Fereldon before he judged it—the people and the big cities.  But even then,
when he inquired, they admitted that the cities were not grand places. 
Fereldon was a simple country, with simple people.  They ate simple food, and
lived simply.  To Fenris’ eyes, they ate stew that was so boiled it was nearly
flavorless, their clothes were as drab as the mud that seemed to perpetually
muck up the streets, and the people were as grim as he had ever seen.  The town
they were in seemed to have all the stink of a city with open sewers, but with
the added bonus of having streets as muddy as any country road after a spring
rain.
            He also was not seeing them at their best, what with all the talk
was about the Darkspawn in the south.  Some of the people were refugees,
fleeing from the creatures, and the towns they had come to were port towns
amassing refugees trying to escape the country, which owed to some of the
general filth he was sure.
            Minrathous had never really been… home exactly.  He had never
really thought of anywhere as “home” to his knowledge, but there were things he
missed—secretly.  Things he would be loathe admit, things he thought about late
at night when he shivered in the rain, guarding the ship from thieves.  Eight
hours of sleep most nights, hot baths (he couldn’t remember the last time he
had had a proper bath), three meals a day, and… the certainty of knowing he
never had to carve out his own future.  His life was utterly in someone else’s
hands, and there was a particular stress of it being in his hands that he had
never known before.  He was responsible for his actions, for his life.  No one
made his decisions for him or told him what to do—outside of some guard duty
and lugging cargo, and even then he didn’t have to do that; he could walk away
if he wanted to.  It was sometimes terrifying to think about, after years of it
never being his responsibility.
            They said that, when Andraste freed the elves and they left on foot
for the Dales, many turned back, choosing the certainty of slavery over the
rocky road to freedom.  He understood their choice.  Sometimes he wondered if
he would not have been one of the ones that turned back.  Danarius never would
have kept him out in the cold like this, and Minrathous stunk—any city smelled
foul, he learned—but the incense masked it and the streets were never befouled
with the shit and mud that was so plentiful in Fereldon.  Still, there were
other places besides Fereldon.  He didn’t mind Antiva, even if he didn’t speak
the language.  Rivain had been fascinating too, and maybe the Free Marches
would be better.
            It would be more familiar, anyway, down to the architecture: 
Cities that were now free from the yoke of the Imperium.  Yes, he wanted to go
there.
            Before the first snow, the dwarves sailed for the Free Marches. 
Fenris was on deck at the time, and he slowly began to grow suspicious that he
never would have known the why of anything, had he not been.
            They began to sail into port at one of the cities, and Captain
looked out on deck.  Fenris had happened to glance in his direction at the
time, or he never would have seen it.  The captain’s eyes went wide, and he saw
surprise, then anger, and finally a bit of fear, when he began roaring to turn
around.  Fenris had looked back at what the man was looking at.  Fenris could
not have told one ship from another, for they looked very much the same to him,
but this one looked familiar.  The figurehead, he could glimpse as the dwarves
worked to turn the ship around, grumbling all the while, and it was unique
enough to remember having seen it before.  The figure was a worm-holed maiden
with her arms outstretched, and turned into dragon’s wings that flanked the
ship.
            Where had he seen that ship before?
            Captain ordered him below decks to help with some menial chore, and
he wondered if he were not just getting him out of sight.  A few days later,
and Fenris could see another ship following them, and gaining on them.  Captain
was as skilled a sailor as they came, but the other one was a much faster
galley.  They would be upon them soon, and as it approached, he could see the
figurehead.
            What was going on?
            Captain and his first mate were in a heated debate inside the
cabin, and the other dwarves were anxious, but no one seemed to know exactly
what was going on.  The rumor was pirates, but who knew?
            The door opened, and Captain ordered Fenris inside.  The elf was
nothing short of confused, but he had a sinking feeling in his stomach about
it.  Could it be Imperial bounty hunters?
            His fears were confirmed shortly, and Captain was as frank about it
as ever.  “We’ve been avoiding them for a couple of months now,” he said,
glancing anxiously toward the door as if they would burst in at any moment. 
“Looks like they might catch us though.”
            Fenris was silent a long moment.  They had never told him.  He
supposed it was pointless to be angry about it now, but he would have liked to
have known.  “You should just turn me in to them,” he said quietly.  He didn’t
want anyone else to die.  These dwarves, for the most part, were tradesmen and
smugglers.  They were not warriors.  He looked at them.  “Why didn’t you tell
me?”
            The captain sighed.  “We didn’t want you to run, and we thought we
could lose them—we even did, for a while.”
            Fenris stared down at the floor.  They were right; he would have
run.  The moment they got into port, he would have run.  And then what?  He
didn’t know.  He would be on foot, have no idea where he was going, and just
run in any direction—which was a bad idea.  Furthermore, he would be abandoning
the only people willing to help him.  They were probably right not to tell him,
but that did not excuse the behaviour; he had a right to know if he were in
danger.  He looked up.  “You still should have told me.”
            Both the dwarves were quiet for a moment, and then began to argue
with him, though they all knew it was the best possible outcome for all of
them.  Captain was silent for a long time, though.  “When they catch us,” he
said slowly, and glanced toward Fenris.  “And they will, rest assured…  When
they do, perhaps we can work something out.”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  There was no where to run, and he
couldn’t hide.  The open sea had always made him nervous, because of that, but
he had thought they couldn’t catch him if he kept moving like this.  He had
been wrong.  “Yes,” he said bitterly.  “Give me to them, and they won’t kill
you.”
            Captain looked like he had half a mind to smack the elf upside the
head.  “This is a smuggling ship, after all.  And mercenaries are a fickle sort
of man.”  He meant to bribe them.  “I owe you a bit of coin.  The rest you will
have to work off, but I will be fair about it.”
            Fenris only shook his head in despair.  He didn’t know that they
could be reasoned with.  He didn’t know that they could be bribed, or anything
of the sort.  “I’ll be in the galley,” he muttered.  Outside, the sky was dark
and it had begun to rain.
            Below deck, Fenris had begun to drink, and drink.  He contemplated
throwing himself into the sea, and knew he couldn’t.  He thought about trying
to kill as many of the slavers as he could before they brought him down, but
that felt hollow too.  If he went with them, head low and sullen, he would
live.  He knew he wanted to live.  Beyond anything, he had always been certain
of that.
            He didn’t know who he was, didn’t know his name, his family, his
history, but he had always known he wanted to live, and he held on to that
desire, because when everything else was stripped away, that was all he had.
            The ship began to rock and sway, and even through the haze of
drink, he knew a late autumn storm was brewing.  Maybe it would keep the galley
away for a while longer at least.  He held out little hope for it, though.
            Truth be told, he held little hope for anything at all, least of
all his sobriety.  Some hours later, he knew the storm had escalated.  The
shouts from the sailors, the way the ship swayed.  He could hear lightning as
the storm raged, and he hoped the galley would sink and end his current
problems.  And if the smuggler’s ship sank, well…
            He drank.
            The boards rocked and creaked, and the wind howled, and men cried
out.  He kept himself in a corner, and kept himself from being propelled about
the room by the force of the ship by pushing his feet against one of the bolted
down benches.
            He drank himself into a stupor, and only continued to drink.
            Fenris must have passed out, because he woke, surprisingly intact
but bruised, on the floor of the galley, and thought it was vaguely amusing
that that was what the slaver’s ship was.  Why call the different things by the
same name, anyway?  Possibly, he was still a little drunk.
            He thought it best if he get an update on that (the whereabouts of
the galley, not how sober he wasn’t), but decided it may be wiser to stay put,
when he noticed the storm still raged.  He found more drink, and went back to
it, hoping it would chase away his headache.
            He drank himself through the storm, and listened to the cries, the
water, the howling wind.  He heard a terrible cracking sound and instinct alone
told him it was bad.  One of the dwarves came down, and Fenris asked him what
it was.  The dwarf was pale and shaking, and drank a lot before he confessed,
“The mast is broken.”
            Fenris drank more, and shivered, and wondered if he were going to
die.
            By the evening of the following day, the storm’s rage had ebbed to
a gentle annoyance, and Fenris, still a bit intoxicated, went on the deck to
look at the damage it had wrought.  Three men overboard, nearly everyone with
injuries, but the galley was nowhere in sight.  The Waking Sea was narrow, but
they had been blown so far off course that they were not certain of which
direction to go, and the skies had been black for so long, who could tell where
they were?  There were no stars out to navigate, no sun to light their way. 
They could only wait for morning, and hope for the best.  In the meantime,
Fenris tried to shake off the drink guiltily, and helped as best he knew how to
bandage wounds, and pick up slack around the wreckage of a ship.
            The dwarves were in poor spirits, and everyone was worried.  Little
was said, and much was done.  For the moment, there was food, and drink, and
Fenris was kept busy enough helping to tend to those that were worse off than
he.  He knew little of caring for wounds, but he could follow instructions well
enough, and that was all it came down to.  Tensions were high, and by sunrise,
they at least had some idea of where to go.
            They sent out the longboats, and tugged the ship with them, which
seemed to accomplish nothing when it came right down to it.  Everyone hated it
but without the stars to guide them, they had no way of knowing if they could
even make it to shore in the boats, and that was the worst part.  And they had
to try.
            When the sun rose, they headed due north, hoping it was to the Free
Marches again, but it was impossible to say if Fereldon would not have been
closer.  It was three days before the frigid rain let up enough for them to
tell their location by the stars, and even then, they had to wait for
nightfall, and when the dwarves swore, Fenris again wondered if they were going
to die here.
            When the hunters came, it was almost a relief.  An end was always a
relief after a struggle of any kind.  Fenris waited in the galley, drinking
again, and sullen as ever.  All was very quiet when they boarded the wrecked
ship, and he could hear the Captain talking to the slavers.  No, not slavers
exactly, from the sounds of it.  Just bounty hunters, willing to take the crew
and captain and the cargo, for a very high price.  They found Fenris in the
galley, too drunk to stand.  Two of them had to carry him out.  He didn’t
struggle, didn’t say a word, but they put him in a cage regardless, and he sat
in the corner, and somehow it all felt very nostalgic, and he could not say why
exactly.
            There was a pile of rags in one corner, a chamber pot in another. 
He could see his sword in the hold, through the bars, with the rest of the
smuggler’s cargo.  The smugglers themselves avoided him, and when one did
venture near him, they avoided eye contact.  Perhaps it was guilt, he couldn’t
say.  He sat, and stared at his hands, watching the glow of the lyrium through
the gloom of the hold.  He studied the bars, and wondered if he could put his
fist through them.  They had lyrium etched into them too.  It had to be an
expensive cage.
            The ship docked a week later.  The dwarves, ever smugglers, had
been giving him liquor upon request, and he was too drunk to care about
anything, but Captain had whispered, “If you can escape, we will help you.” 
The hunters dropped the dwarves and what they did not take of their cargo in a
Free Marches city, and then were quickly on their way.
            But Fenris had been too downhearted to care.  He was going back to
Tevinter, back to Minrathous, back to his master.  Maybe it was where he
belonged.  He didn’t know.  He felt like he didn’t belong anywhere.  How can
you belong anywhere when you don’t know who you are?
            He found solace at the bottom of a bottle, and a couple of the
hunters were even sympathetic, and didn’t at all mind bringing him rum.  A
young boy in particular looked nothing but guilty whenever he came down to
bring him meals.  The hunters took turns of it, and the sailors flatly refused
to come near someone “etched with such a dangerous material”.  There were
slaves somewhere on the ship, but for the most part he didn’t see them either.
            Fenris didn’t care.  He was miserable, and missed his sword.  He
slept most of the time.  There was nothing else to do.
 
            Fenris lifted his head when the door opened.  He blinked against
the dim light of the lantern, watched the light fall across the floorboards. 
He couldn’t see who it was past the rows and stacks of boxes and goods, but he
listened to their footfalls.
            Whoever it was, they tripped on the last step, the slaver letting
out a cry of alarm, and nearly fell.  There was some amount of swearing and his
current guard, a large man with a big belly, sat up.  “Asher?” he demanded. 
“You’re late.”
            “Damnit—ow,” Asher complained.  “I think I stubbed my toe.”
            The larger man rolled his eyes and picked up his axe.  “Just don’t
let it get in the way of guarding our… troublesome prisoner.”  The term was a
slight, because Fenris had not been even the slightest bit of trouble.  He had
been perfectly mellow and compliant throughout the entire voyage—and drunk.
            The man walked past the other slaver, and Asher limped over to the
cage.  He plopped down on a crate, grimacing.  “Why does a stubbed toe hurt so
much?” he whined.  Fenris looked up at him briefly.  It was that Rivaini-
looking bounty hunter.  So, his name was Asher.  When Asher grew bored, he
paced restlessly, and tinkered around with the stuff in the hold.  Fenris had
seen him steal things before, and assumed that he must be a thief by trade, and
the habit was hard to drop. 
            Presently, Asher was going through the collection of pickled
foods.  “Pickled herring, pickled trout, pickled bass, pickled surprise fish,
pickled—Is that a fish eye?  That’s disgusting.”  Fenris wanted to gag at the
thought.  Please, he pleaded silently.  Don’t open those.  “I’ve heard the best
meat in a fish is around their eye sockets though…  But ew.”  Asher was always
talking to himself, and frequently joked about it with the others, that Fenris
could see.  “What else is here?  Pickled pickles, pickled tomato, pickled eggs,
pickled radish—pickled plums!”  He grabbed the jar and hopped back onto the
crate.  “I fucking hate sailing, and I am never eating anything pickled ever
again after this.”
            He reached into the jar and popped a plum into his mouth.  He ate
about five of them before he glanced at Fenris.  “Want one?” he asked him. 
Fenris didn’t even look at him.  Asher shrugged and continued eating them,
before he once again grew bored.  When Fenris looked up again, the slaver had
set the jar down and had two of the plums between his fingers, one in each
hand.  “Andraste, we find you guilty of insurrection and heresy, and we
sentence you to death!” he cried in a fake hissing voice.  Fenris stared at him
as if he were insane.  This one in a high pitched, squealing voice, “We will
never be silenced!”
            The right plum, “We sentence you to death, now you have a
choice—leap into the pit, or be pushed!”
            Asher happened to look up to see Fenris staring at him.  Fenris was
drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough to accept Asher’s ridiculous behaviour as
normal.  “I am an adult,” Asher insisted with all due seriousness.  Fenris
nodded slowly in a way that not at all accepted this fact.  “Don’t you judge
me.”
            The elf raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.  This was one of his
jailers.  He wanted to slam his head against the bars.  He had let himself be
caught by someone who talked to pickled plums.  The door opened, and Asher’s
eyes widened.  He popped both plums in his mouth, and screwed the jar closed. 
He shoved the jar down between two crates, and lounged on the crate as if he
had not just been eating and playing with plums.
            The stairs creaked as the new person walked down them, and Asher
rose when he saw who it was.  “Something wrong?”
            “I missed you,” the other confessed, a male voice.  The other man
walked toward him.  In the light, Fenris saw that it was an elf, but obviously
not a slave.  The elf was too confident and comfortable to be a slave.  That
made him angry.  Elves being slavers just seemed wrong to him.  How could
they?  It betrayed everything they were, everything their sad history was.
            Asher walked away, following the elf around a row of boxes, and
Fenris could tell what was going on by the sounds he heard.  He leaned his head
back against the bars, and his eyes closed.  He wondered what it was like to
have sex, to want someone and have them want you back the same way.
            “Mmm.  And the Imperials, once again, conquer the elven nation,”
Asher murmured with a laugh, but Fenris had sharp hearing.  And wished he did
not.
            “I’m going to hurt you,” the elf hissed back.
            “Then I’m just going to keep you pinned like this until I’m hard
again…”
            After that, the elf came down frequently on Asher’s shifts, and he
eventually learned the elf’s name was Aramael, and they would fuck like
rabbits.  If Fenris did have any interest in trying to escape, it would be in
their routine sexual escapades.
            On one such time, they were in the act, and the door upstairs
opened.  Fenris smirked to himself, wondering what kind of trouble they would
get into.  He heard the pair scramble to get their clothing back in order. 
Aramael hid while Asher rounded the corner, his hair in disarray and his
clothing slightly askew, but it was just that blonde boy, and Aramael came out
of hiding.
            The boy looked at both of them and sighed.  “You two are going to
get in trouble one day,” he muttered, lifting a sack of flour from the floor. 
“Be more careful.”
            The pair flushed, but of course went right back to where they were
once the boy had gone.  Fenris hoped that they did get in trouble one day—the
elf in particular, who would not even look at him, which told him that Aramael
was guilty about it.
 
            On the voyage, Lysander eventually got both Thief’s and Daggers’
stories.  Melons frequently drank himself unconscious, and it left the other
three to talk, so they talked.  There was little else to do on the ship.
            Thief had, in fact, been a thief.  His father was an ex-Rivaini
pirate, his mother a Tevinter whore.  One day, his father had pulled up his
pants and realized he was in love.  Thief admitted that he might be another
man’s son—bloody unlikely, considering his looks, but it was hard to say with a
whore.  When he was three, his father simply disappeared one day—might be
bounty hunters, might have simply felt the call of the sea again, but he
disappeared soon enough.  Later, his mother contracted a disease and passed
away, leaving him penniless on the streets, so of course he learned the arts of
a cutpurse and petty thievery.
            He was here because of the higher rate of pay, and a contact of his
had set him up with the position, saying that they needed someone of his
profession, just in case.  It was either take the contract, or have his hand
removed.
            Daggers had been more hesitant, only giving his past once Lysander
reluctantly shared his own.  He had been born Dalish, raised Dalish, and
thought he would always be Dalish, but his Keeper was taken away by Templars
when he was very young (he admitted that that had been a nasty business, but
refused to comment further, mostly because he had been so small at the time
that he didn’t remember it).  His mother and he escaped the slavers that
descended upon him, and he lived for a while, but the Keeper’s First had been
killed in the struggle (he had to explain all the terminology to the lad). 
Without a mage, it was hard, he had said, but they survived, until the slavers
came again.  Lysander had thought for certain that Daggers had simply been
caught by them, but he said that wasn’t the case.
            “I was out hunting,” he admitted.  “Trying to, anyway.  Like a
coward, I saw what was going on from the bluffs, and I watched, and did
nothing.”  He was silent for a moment, before going on.  “I felt like I
couldn’t go to the other clans, knowing what I had done—or hadn’t done.”  He
looked away.  “So I learned to hide my accent, and somehow…”  He stopped
speaking, unable to go on.  He looked away.  Somehow he had ended up taking
Imperial bounties to get by, and hating himself for it.
            “Don’t Dalish have tattoos?” Lysander asked foolishly.
            “It’s a sign of adulthood,” he told him, his accent for once quite
plain.  Thief touched his arm gently, and Daggers leaned into his touch.  “I
was fifteen when my clan was destroyed a final time.  I wasn’t… ready.”  He
shook his head, and seemed like he might say more, but stopped, and he didn’t
need to say any more.  Lysander could guess the end:  He didn’t deserve the
markings any longer.
            Daggers also blatantly refused to guard their Fenris wolf, so Thief
always took his turns to avoid conflict, which over a time only made the other
hunters annoyed with the both of them.  Daggers had confided in Lysander,
privately, that he was afraid of what he would do if he and Fenris were ever
alone—namely, free him.  Thief and Daggers’ relationship, Lysander noticed,
only grew more strained the closer they became to their destination.  They
passed by the peninsula, and stopped to resupply.
            Thief and Daggers would argue from time to time, yet they always
found their way back into one another’s beds.  It was sad, really, the more
Lysander thought about it.  Once they sailed into port, their relationship
would be over, and he knew they cared about one another—maybe even loved each
other.  But their relationship was a social faux pas at the best of times, and
they both knew it.
            Lysander knew in his heart this was wrong—bringing the elf back to
Minrathous.  No one deserved to be treated like that.  No one.  He went down in
the gloom of the hold, and looked at the elf through the bars.  “We would be in
Minrathous in four days,” he said quietly.  “But that last storm blew the ship
off course--and against a reef.”  Another pause as he pushed the tray through
the slot in the cage.  Fenris never responded.  He never said a damned word,
not in all this time.  He would look at him sometimes, and he had the sad,
soulless look of a man who had lost everything precious to them.  It would be
easier if he didn’t try to speak to Fenris.  Easier if he had never looked at
his face, never stared into his sage eyes.  But, he owed it to Fenris to look
at him, to memorize him, to remember his face and what he was doing to him.  If
you were going to take a person’s freedom away from them, you owed it to them
to watch it happen.  You owed it to them to not look away, and you owed it to
them to remember them.
            He would remember the colour of the elf’s eyes when he could no
longer remember his parents’ faces.
            Lysander didn’t know how he could ever live with himself.  He went
back to his room, and read Hadriana’s letters.  She was pregnant, she had said
in the last one.  He had been gone so long, he expected to see the child by the
time he got back.  She cared about him.  Maybe she would take care of his
sisters if anything happened to him.  He was almost home, but still…  He had
seen the wreckage of the smuggler’s ship.  It could have just as easily been
them, and during the storm, he had believed it would be.
***** Fine Lines *****
Chapter Summary
     The slavers are attacked by pirates, and Fenris finds an opportunity
     to escape, and get some information while he is at it.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Fenris woke with a start, blinking away the water in his eyes. 
Someone had thrown a bucket of seawater on him.  The big man with the rotten
tooth was grumbling about how Fenris stank.  The elf frowned at him, and
nothing more.  He had been sitting in this cage for weeks, unable to bathe.  Of
course he stank of sweat and dirty leather.
            “Your master sent something for you,” the man said, and dropped a
box with a loud clatter outside the cage.  Fenris said nothing, as usual, and
only looked on.  There were two other slavers—that was what they were to his
mind but he thought bounty hunter was technically more accurate—and they all
looked nervous.  They always looked nervous when they had to open the cage door
for any reason.  But Fenris was too sullen, too drunk, and too tired to do
anything.  The one that did not speak had the keys.  The elf sat in the corner,
on top of the dirty rags, and watched them do the minor cleaning they did.  One
of the others plopped a bucket of cold soapy water down, and told him to wash. 
            “I can’t do this with my wrists in shackles,” he said, his voice
hollow.  They argued to themselves in low whispers, then one of them bade him
to put his wrists through the bars.  The men talked amongst themselves as he
did, and he watched them idly.  The shackles clicked open and the man held them
while Fenris undressed, slowly.  He rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had
chafed.  The water was cold, the soap abrasive, but given the circumstances, he
couldn’t complain.  When he finished, they opened the box, and dropped a pile
of cloth and leather on the floor of the cage.  It clanged shut and locked, and
the elf sighed.  He dressed but slowly, and he had an idea they would take his
old clothes and dispose of them, and there was one thing he wanted from them. 
Before he had quite put on all the new garments, he knelt by the pile of old
clothes and searched, and finally removed the little carving.  He looked at it
in silence for a moment.  He had been staring at it a lot lately, as if willing
it to unravel its secrets to him.  It never did though.  The carving was as
silent as his lost memories.  All the same, he would lament its loss.  It fit
into one of the bags on his belt, which all seemed to be empty for the moment.
            When he finished, he obediently put his wrists back through the
bars, and waited for the shackles to snap shut again—a good, obedient,
perfectly tame slave.  No reason at all for them to be as afraid of him as they
seemed to be.  His armor had been stripped from him weeks ago, and they had
stashed it beside his sword.  Sometimes, he would stare at where he knew it was
hidden, longing just to hold the weapon again, to touch its familiar,
comforting hilt.  It was his, very much a part of him and who he was.
            That night, he poured the alcohol onto the floorboards when the
blonde boy had gone.  It was good to be sober, he reflected, even if it meant
little.  The boy was, recently, the only one to come down regularly, and he did
so sometimes up to three times a day, and chatted, not freely exactly, but more
as if he were nervous to be there, and guilty as ever.
            “The ship is being repaired right now.”  A pause.  “Not in a town
or anything.  We dropped anchor near the Arlathan Forest—had to.  There were
Qunari, so we had to run…”
            That was interesting.  Fenris blinked.  “A second reef in the same
fortnight,” he said quietly, and the boy blinked in surprise when he said
anything.  Last night, the ship had made a horrible grating sound amidst the
howling of the night winds, and some of the sailors had been rushing back and
forth in a panic.
            The boy gave the most forced smile Fenris had ever seen.  “Yeah. 
We were running from a Qunari ship—better the reef than the Qunari, I guess. 
It scared everyone pretty bad, but I guess we’ll be okay—just need to repair
it.  I don’t know what that entails.”  The way he spoke was curious—sometimes,
he would slur his words like a lowborn peasant, and other times, he pronounced
things as clearly as any highborn noble’s brat.
            The repairs entailed quite a bit, apparently.  The blonde whelp
occasionally mentioned some work going on on-shore—some contraption they
slapped together to hold the boat, and Fenris was left on board in the cage
while they hauled it to shore, which was mostly the work of the slaves on the
boat, Fenris excluded.  With so much going on, no one could be spared to guard
him at all times, particularly not when he had put up no reason for them to be
so watchful.
            Being on the ship while this was happening, and being unable to see
the goings-on was mildly terrifying; he could hear it grating on the sand, feel
it being hauled upward, and it was not at all comforting to not feel it rocking
slightly in the waves.
            He could hear the work being done, though, and the boy said that it
looked pretty nasty; they could not get to all of it before they hauled it out
of the water, and the sailors refused to take it any farther before it was
repaired.  He commented that he spent most days sawing planks now.  Fenris
wondered how long the delay would be.  And if there would be any chance to
escape in the meantime.
 
            Fenris watched Asher pace back and forth restlessly, which he had
been doing for over twenty minutes, approximately.  He stopped after a while
and wandered back to where the cheap ale was kept.  He found a cracked pewter
mug and poured some of it in.  He glanced back at Fenris.  “Want any?” he asked
him.  Fenris, as usual, did not reply.  “Suit yourself.”
            Asher sat down on a crate, sipping at the contents, and no doubt
waiting for Aramael, who seemed to be late.  An hour into Asher’s shift, and
Aramael was usually here by now.  The only reason Fenris knew their names, and
none of the others, was because they talked to one another often, usually while
they were being intimate.
            Asher had finished his mug and resumed pacing when Aramael came
down.  They embraced, and whispered for a while, and, Fenris was surprised, did
not have sex.  Rather, Asher flopped down on the floor, his back against a
stack of crates, and Aramael laid down with his head on his thigh.  Asher idly
played with his hair, and they talked for a while, and Aramael fell asleep for
a brief time.
            Fenris wondered what was going on that Aramael didn’t want to have
sex.  It was out of character, and most out of the norm.  Had something
happened?  He wasn’t too keen on getting back to Minrathous as soon as
possible, but he disliked them being marooned as much as the sailors did, if
for different reasons.  Shipwrecked was bad enough, shipwrecked in a foreign
country with pirates nearby worse still, but all of those things, with himself
shackled and trapped in a cage, was even worse.  He stared at his sword, well
out of reach but tauntingly within his range of sight.
            In the past, he might have simply phased through the bars, but when
he tried and the lyrium blazed like a second sun, the shackles on his hands
glowed too, the lyrium etchings on them reflecting his own, and they did not
fall off of him.  When he touched the bars, they would glow the same, and were
just as real to him as when he was relaxed.  He did not try that again, but it
did alarm his guard.  He would need to find a more conventional way to escape.
            Aramael and Asher were talking, and he had ignored most of their
conversation, as it was usually just drivel and teasing, but sometimes they
would play cards, and Aramael would occasionally teach Asher how to play
chess.  Aramael had gotten up, and the two were facing one another.  “… C’mon,
where are you from?” Asher said, smiling.
            Aramael smiled back.  “Minrathous.”
            “Liar.”
            “I’ve lived there most of my life,” the elf countered evasively.
            Asher sighed.  “I mean, where were you born?”
            “Middle of nowhere,” he said with a smirk.
            Asher rolled his eyes.  “I was born in Carastes.”
            “Never been there.”
            “Don’t.”  They both laughed.  “You ever been to the Arlathan
forest?”
            Fenris looked up to see Aramael’s sun-kissed cheeks pale.  His
silver eyes looked ghostly, even from this distance.  “I know the forest… very
well,” he whispered.  It was dark, but he could see his breath frosting.  It
was definitely winter, and it was getting cold.
            Asher looked concerned, and placed his hand on his lover’s
shoulder.  “Hey, you okay?”
            Aramael blinked, and shook his head.  “Fine.”
            “So, there are Dalish in the forest?” Asher inquired.
            The elf looked at him, and laughed.  It was the most gloomy laugh
Fenris could imagine—a sound that was more sorrow than joy, a laugh meant to
keep one from crying.  It was tinged with desperation, laughing harder when the
sorrow could not be masked, and the laughter gave way to tears as the sadness
swallowed him.  Asher pulled the elf close, and Aramael fell against him,
sobbing into his shoulder.
            “There’s Dalish in the forest,” he sobbed, his voice barely
audible, and gave an anguished cry against him.  Something personal, Fenris
assumed.  It was so hard to see all the slavers as people, but they were. 
Individuals with lives, families, interests, and thoughts.  It was so much
easier to think of them as a mass whole, a hive mind creature existing only to
imprison and enslave him.  The raw display of emotion made him uncomfortable,
both as a witness, and because it shattered the illusion that the slavers were
not really people.
 
            The captain squinted off into the distance, along the coast.  She
shaded her eyes, and frowned at what she saw.  She snickered.  From the flags,
an Imperial vessel, getting emergency repairs.
            Isabela was half-tempted to leave it, but she wondered if they had
slaves onboard.  Just the thought of it made her stomach clench.  Disgusting.
 The Dalish in the Arlathan Forest would not take kindly to them if they found
them either.  She had heard a rumor some years back that the Dalish were never
sighted in or near the forest any more.  She wondered if they had moved on, or
just became more evasive.
            It was a galley—it could actually be a slaving vessel.  She had her
First Mate change course, but hug the coast, and make as if to pass it by.  It
was dangerous venturing into the Imperial-Qunari war zone, but sometimes it was
well-worth the risks.  Her ship was currently laden with a healthy amount of
plunder from their most recent expeditions.  Even if the slaving vessel had
nothing but flesh on board, it would not be a worthless pursuit.
            So they went ‘round the coast, and waited for the cover of night.
 
            The sailors watched the vessel sail by, and there seemed to be a
pregnant silence as it passed.  Lysander quietly asked if there was anything
significant about the ship, to which they only replied, “Pirates.”
            But the ship had passed them by.  It must be obvious they didn’t
have anything to steal, right?  The sailors still posted a watch that night,
and Lysander could not sleep.  He got up in the empty room.  Melons was asleep
on the deck saying he liked the cold—it was a clear night—and Daggers and Thief
had slipped off somewhere; Lysander had not seen either of them in hours, come
to think of it.
            He pulled on his clothes, and carried his sword, the leather belt
wrapped around the sheath.  The watch stopped him at the rope ladder.
            “Where you going?” the sailor challenged him, his breath frosting
in the cold air.
            “To take a piss.  Shove off,” Lysander said, his lips pressing into
a thin, grim line.  The sailor studied him a moment.
            “Watch out for Dalish—we heard there’s a clan somewhere in the
forest,” he said.  It was good advice.  Lysander climbed down the ladder.  His
boots had barely hit the sand when the alarm sounded—a loud, pealing bell.  He
turned around, and looked out around the forest, expecting the elven hunters to
come melting out of the darkness like phantoms, but the forest was still.  He
looked to the sea, and saw nothing from this side.  He peered around the other
side, and paled when he saw it.  The ship the sailor had identified as a pirate
ship hours ago… it was sailing right toward them.
 
            Sweat beaded on their hot skin, their bodies desperately trying to
get as close to one another as possible.  Theirs was a desperate, doomed
passion that they clung to with the fierce tenacity of a starving wolf that had
tasted blood.  The embrace was all the more heartfelt because they both knew
their time together would be short, and grew shorter still with every passing
day.
            Aramael turned his head.  “Wait,” he said, his moan dying on his
lips.  His lover peered at him curiously.  “Do you hear that?”
            He kissed his bare neck, and his tongue trailed along his pointed
ear—something that normally made the elf’s toes curl, or at least elicit some
kind of noise of approval.  “I hear you not screaming.  You promised you
wouldn’t muffle it tonight—I’d say you’re getting self-conscious.”  And he
hadn’t.  Oh, when he had promised him that he was a screamer, for the longest
time, Asher had not believed him.  He did now.
            The elf glanced back at him and scowled, then paused again, a
finger to his lover’s lips to silence him.  “Listen, you idiot.”
            “I’m tired of you always calling me names,” Asher mumbled.  As
ever, the elf ignored him utterly.  “I don’t hear…”  He froze, eyes widening. 
“The alarm.  Shit!”  Had Fenris escaped somehow?  Bloody hell.
            Aramael cursed in elvish with feeling, then added, “Get off me.”
            “I want to come first.”  Aramael glared at him, and Asher climbed
off of him sullenly.  “Someone else will catch him before we make it back,” he
muttered, but Aramael was already getting dressed.  Asher watched him, his eyes
roving far below his face.  Sweat made his skin glisten in the moonlight, and
it was the best perfume he had ever smelled.  Aramael’s body was lean muscle,
sculpted and acrobatic, limber, and… absolutely gorgeous.  He had been half in
love with him from the moment he saw him, and when he first saw the man naked
and wanting him, his heart had been a lost cause:  It had belonged wholly to
Aramael.
            “I love you,” he told him, staring up at him.
            The elf paused, and looked back at him, his steel-coloured eyes
softening into a liquid silver with the heat of his emotions.  “You mean
everything to me,” he whispered, and they kissed—briefly—before resuming
getting dressed.  The elf was still buckling on his twin daggers when they
started walking briskly back to camp.  When they heard shouting, the pair
hurried, and when they heard the clash of metal on metal, they started
running.  Aramael was faster, and got ahead of him, but the elf had stopped
once his feet hit the sand.  Asher nearly knocked him over.
            “What…”  Then he saw the pirate ship, his mouth dropping.  “No.”
            The elf looked at his lover, torn in indecision.  The pirates, they
could both see, had already stormed the ship.  Theirs was still out in the
deeper waters, their longboats having been what had taken the ship on the
shore.  Some fighting was going on in the sand, but most of it was on deck. 
Aramael shook his head in disbelief.
            Asher started to go past him, to help, but his lover clenched onto
his arm.  “No,” he whispered.  “We’ll both die, and… I can’t lose you.”
           Asher looked from his lover to the ship, torn between his heart and
the contract he knew he had signed—that they had both signed.  But if the ship
burned, who would ever know they had fled?  Who would ever tell a different
tale, that they had not simply survived the pirates somehow?  Who could ever
say otherwise?
            “The ship is burning,” the elf said, unnecessarily.  “The pirates
will kill everyone.”  He looked at him, and shook his head, as if he couldn’t
bear to say the rest, but it was clear they were both thinking the same thing.
            Asher touched his shoulder.  “Do you mean—“
            The elf pointed, the motion knocking his lover’s arm away without
thought.  To Asher’s surprise, that motion hurt more than most sword wounds he
had taken.  “Look!” he cried.  The pirates had spotted it before those on shore
had—and they were ringing their own bell to call them home.  Tevinter sails
were on the shore, attracted by the fire when the sail had caught in the
fighting.
            The pirates were fleeing now—carrying whatever they could carry. 
The pair melted back, into the gloom of the forest, but no farther.  Asher felt
Aramael’s fingertips lightly touch his arm before the elf walked quickly away,
back toward the ship.  Asher watched him go, and watched all of his dreams fall
to ruins.  In that one moment, before the sails were in view, Aramael had been
willing to believe in Asher’s dreams.  In that one moment, he had insisted they
were a possibility, and then once reality hit again, he had abandoned them.
            The man felt his heart breaking.
 
            Fenris heard the sharp peal of the iron bell, and woke with a
start, and wondered what it could be.  What danger did they face, and he
unarmed should it come to him?  No, he thought, staring at the lyrium.  I will
never be unarmed.  And then, a thought unbidden, Like a mage.  Is that what
Danarius had been trying to create?  He had been trying to breathe magic into a
non-mage, and…
            He lost the thought when he heard the shouting, and he rose to his
feet.  The chains about his wrists clinked as he wrapped his fingers around the
heavy iron bars, straining to see through the darkness, and struggling to hear
through the timber of the ship.  Men were yelling, probably dying, the sound of
steel against steel, and he smelled burning , and that was more frightening
than anything else.  If the ship burned…
            He had witnessed burnings before.  The Imperium still used it as a
capital punishment, and Danarius had stood present over more than one of them. 
He remembered how the greasy prisoner had been lashed to the post.  He
remembered the flames licking his legs, and the sound of his screams, the scent
of burning flesh and hair.  Dimly, he could even hear the pop of fat as it
boiled in his living flesh.  Eventually, the flames consumed his screams, and
the silence only seemed to make it worse to witness.  The body had been a
charred, blackened husk of a thing, barely recognizable as a human.
            The lock on the hatch above snapped and he backed away from the
bars, willing the lyrium to be as dim as possible.  He crouched low, knowing
there were walls of cargo between him and the hatch, but he also knew if they
were looting, it was only a matter of time.  He listened to their voices and
shouts—much of it in a language he recognized only after hearing some of
it—Rivain.  They found the casks of wine, and started hauling that out.  One of
them came back farther; Fenris could hear him.  His heart pounded in his chest,
and the man just came into view when the other men gave cries of alarm, and the
pirate turned and ran back.
            There was fighting, a clash of steel.  Fenris wished he could see
it, could be in it.  Battle was where he felt like he belonged.  It was… what
felt right to him.  He missed his sword.  The skirmish was a lively one—he
could tell.  From the sounds, it was two against three, and he could count when
someone died.  The fighting went ‘round, and back beyond the walls of cargo. 
The fighting stopped, and Fenris could smell blood and viscera, the stink of
shit, which was unavoidable.  One of his captors stumbled forward, barely into
view, then leaned against the cargo, breathing hard.
            Fenris looked up.  “I can fight,” he insisted.
            The man eyed him warily, hefting his big axe.  It had bits of brain
and blood on it.  “Yeah, but for who?” he said, looking at him with disdain. 
The elf fell silent.  The man took a long breath and heaved himself back up,
charging back up the stairs.
 
            Lysander had climbed immediately back up the ladder, and been just
as immediately ordered below decks.  He had protested at first, and then told
he needed to guard the captain’s daughter.  Understanding immediately occurred
to him.  She would be a prize for the pirates.  They would use her, and then
kill her.  So, he sat in the least assuming quarters, the door locked, all the
furniture pressed against it.  The two sat in silence on the floor, watching
the door, and one another, and sometimes the tall tallow candle.  Once or
twice, the door was tried, and then the raiders passed it by.
            He heard a man scream just outside the door, and leapt to his feet,
but knew he could do nothing.  He waited, and the screaming stopped.  The door
jiggled, and then the lock turned.  His eyes opened wide, but the door didn’t
budge when the person tried to open it.  He heard a woman’s swearing, and then
some shouting.  It was an impressive feat of strength:  The door and all the
room’s furniture were simply swept aside.  The Tal-Vashoth glanced inside to
Lysander, snorted dismissively, and eyed the captain’s daughter, then said
something to the person next to him.  An attractive Rivaini woman sauntered in,
confident and in control, even spattered in blood.
            She eyed both of them, and raised a blade in Lysander’s direction. 
“Gold and jewels—now, or your life, boy.”
            “I don’t…” he stammered, wondering what the best course of action
would be.
            She looked to him again.  “No, you wouldn’t have anything.”  She
glanced at the girl, and passed her over.  No prisoners, then?  If the woman
was the captain, he doubted she would abide rape, though.  Or maybe she was
just the sort of vile woman who would.  Lysander stepped toward the one he
needed to protect.  The woman captain raised an eyebrow, and her gaze caught on
his sword.  She held her free hand out.  “I’ll take that.”  She pointed to his
sword.
            His eyes widened.  It was the last and only thing he had left of
his family, what should have been his inheritance, and his past.  He could have
sold it years ago, if he had had the heart to.  It was fine steel, expensive,
perfectly balanced.  It had been crafted with love and care by a master smith,
and made for his great-grandfather.  It was all that was left of his family’s
history.  His hand went to the hilt, clenching it so tightly his knuckles
turned white.  “No,” he said, his voice half in panic from it.
            She nodded, and shrugged, and as she walked away, jerked a thumb in
his direction to the big Qunari.  She breezed past her fellow pirate, and
Lysander watched in silent horror as the giant hefted a great axe that had to
weigh as much as the young boy did.  The girl let out a wail of terror, and
cringed against the wall.  Lysander drew his sword, his stomach tightening in
anticipation of his own demise.
            The Qunari came toward him, and swung.  The blow would have cleaved
the lad in two, but he leaped backward at the last moment, his back thumping
against the wall.  The giant swung again, and that time, Lysander ducked.  The
blade whistled above his head, and he could feel the wind from its passing. 
The room was too small for such a weapon, though, and it sunk deep into the
wood.  The Qunari swore in his mother tongue—or that was what it sounded like--
and Lysander raised his sword, and prepared to strike, but the Qunari jerked to
the side just as quickly as Lysander had.  The Qunari abandoned trying to free
his axe, and deftly avoided the blade.  They danced about the room, and
Lysander saw the girl run.
            The Qunari unarmed, it would seem that the giant was at a
disadvantage, but he was more experienced and better trained.  He wove around
Lysander like a dance, and the boy only grew more and more tired.  Sweat beaded
on his skin, his palms sweaty with it.  Every swing tired him more, yet he dare
not stop.  To stop would be to die, or surrender everything he had left of the
future he should have had.  He couldn’t do that.
            Something flew through the air, striking the Qunari on one of its
long pale horns.  Both the combatants stopped for a moment.  It was the stupid
girl—she had run, but she had run to grab something to help.
            She had lobbed a plate at its head with surprising accuracy, and
she held a heavy iron pot in her other hand, ready to throw that too.  Lysander
prayed she wouldn’t miss, and swung his sword again.  The Qunari backed away
from it, his fingers wrapping around his axe.  He turned, and the big weapon
came out of the wall with a terrible groan.  The girl shrieked, and the pot
flew through the air.  She vanished before it struck the Qunari in the back of
the head.  Nice shot, Lysander thought.  The Qunari stumbled, clearly dazed. 
Lysander brought the sword down.  The Qunari spun to the side, dropping his
weapon.  The blade missed anything vital by a hair’s breath, cleaving into his
shoulder.  With all his strength, Lysander yanked the blade back.  Without it,
he was lost in more ways than one.
            Blooded, the Qunari bellowed angrily, and came toward him. 
Lysander struck, and dare not let the giant gain a hold of the axe again.
            But he was tired, and scared, and not as well trained.  The Qunari
kept coming, and Lysander tired with every swing, every dodge, every heft of
the sword.  And still he kept going.  The Minrathous boy lost ground, and
stumbled backwards, falling against the wall.  I’m going to die, he thought
placidly, and wondered why he wasn’t in hysterics at the thought.  But there
was simply no time left for hysterics—the panic had yet to settle in his mind. 
            The Qunari spun back toward him, great axe hefted and ready to
strike.
            So, he thought.  This is how I die.
            The Qunari’s legs buckled, and he fell.  Heart pounding furiously
in his chest, Lysander watched him fall lifelessly to the floor, and looked up
to see Daggers, very casually inspecting his blades, as if killing a man meant
nothing to him—which it likely didn’t.  The elf glanced at him, and then moved
on, never a word passing between them.
            Lysander looked back to his fallen foe.  He had seemed so ferocious
and frightening just moments ago.  Now, the Qunari just looked sad and broken,
two deep wounds in his back where Daggers had plunged his blades in—he had gone
for the kidneys, it looked like.  Lysander had heard that it caused so much
pain that the victim could not even scream.  He escaped the scene of death
before him with little more dignity than the frightened girl who had fled
before.
 
            Fenris heard more shouting, and wished he knew what was going on. 
The fire had evidently been put out, because he didn’t smell it anymore, which
was a relief at least, but the fighting was still going on.
            Someone fell with a cry down the stairs.  There was more fighting,
and he heard someone dying.  Someone hurried around the corner, and Fenris
recognized the blonde boy with the odd speech patterns.  The boy seemed visibly
relieved to see him—still in his cage.  He swallowed, swiped sweat from his
brow, and turned around, then gave a cry when more of the pirates came down and
spotted him.  In a small area, he kept them at bay, until more of the sailors
arrived to beat them back.  No one died in that round, but they chased the
pirates out of the hold.  Some things were not worth dying for, after all, and
that was what it came down to.
            One of the slavers, though, did not chase after the pirates with
the blonde boy and the others.  It was the axeman from before, who knelt on the
floor not far from Fenris’ cage.  The elf watched him, and wondered.
            The man leaned his head back, and bit his lip as he tried to
breathe.  Fenris saw blood on his lips, and when he looked, he saw what could
be a deep slash across his beer belly, but it was dark even to an elf’s eyes. 
He dropped the axe.  It clattered to the floor, and the man wheeled backwards,
as if terrified of something Fenris did not see.  Then he did.
            Lured by the violence of the night and the blood, and possibly the
mage as well, a shade had come—all hunger and intent to devour.  If the mage
had been the one to summon it, it could still not tell friend from foe.  The
shade loomed toward the man, and struck.  The man’s life was snuffed out
instantly—all he was gone in a freakish instant—and the creature did not even
seem to see Fenris, so intent was it on its prey.  It fell upon the big man
ravenously, its teeth shredding flesh and leather alike with no knowledge as to
the difference.  It gnawed its way through a fleshy arm, and snapped at the
bones.  They popped like dried twigs.  Fenris saw every detail, in the dark,
his eyes wide with terror.  Every instinct he had screamed through him to
run—but he was trapped.
            There was nowhere for the elf to run to.  Nowhere to go, and how
could he defend himself against something like that, trapped in this cage as he
was?  He must have made some small noise of terror, for the creature stopped,
blood covering what passed for its face, a long strip of meaty flesh dangling
from its jaws like a kitten with a mouse.  Its hungry eyes fixed on him, and it
seemed to have forgotten its meal as it spied fresher meat.
            Fenris felt the icy hand of panic grip his heart.  No weapons, and
the demon had killed the man as if it were nothing.  It was less than three
paces away from him, hesitating only because of the lyrium on the bars, which
seemed to be the only thing it really understood.  It moved around the bars,
watching Fenris all the while.  If the creature had a scent, he could have
smelled it--it came so close.  Fenris did not realize he had backed
instinctively away from it until his back thumped against the lyrium-etched
bars.
            The lyrium in his skin was glowing in response to the threat he
felt, and his bare skin brushed against the iron bars, against the lyrium.  The
cage lit up instantly, and the demon shied away.  Fenris’ fingers curled around
the bars, willing it to glow brighter.  The demon whispered—tantalizing and
seductive things—but the voice was always just a fraction too low for him to
understand beyond the chorus of the lyrium’s song.
            Unmoved as Fenris was by its seduction and dark promises, it howled
in fury.  The cage bars shattered in the rage of its passing, and it moved as
if to devour him.  Fenris reached both his hands toward it as it came at him,
the lyrium bright enough to light up the entire room.  His hands reached into
it, and he felt instant cold, an unreal feeling, and something… familiar.  Then
it shrieked, and was gone.
            He sagged to his knees, breathing hard as if he had been running. 
He had thought…
            I’m tired of being terrified, he thought.  I’m tired of not knowing
if I am going to live or die.  I am tired of feeling like any moment could be
my last.  And if someone had asked him in that moment if he wanted go back to
Minrathous, he would have said yes, and gladly.
 
            The sound of her own ship’s warning bell pealed, and Isabela called
off the raid.  Some of her men and herself ran into the hold to take what they
could before they made good on their escape.
            She gave a quick glance-about for anything of value and gave the
order to take the wine and rum.  There was a case of lyrium behind one of the
barrels, and she grinned at her luck.  The men hurried out, and she was quick
at their heels, barking orders.
            She fought her way through the sailors and slavers alike—even the
slaves, she was disappointed to note.  Too well brainwashed and subdued to
grasp freedom when it beckoned.  Those people both sickened her and saddened
her all at once.
            She saw that the cargo was loaded, and took a quick tally of her
own dead before they escaped quickly back into the sea.  They hauled the ships
on deck, and all the while, the Imperial ship came closer, its oars bent into
the water.
            Her own ship was moving before the longboats were fully secured,
but it was close.  Her quick ship skipped past them, stealing away into the
night.  There was a heartbeat or two where she held her breath, wondering if
they would pursue, or see to their slaving comrades.  The Tevinter turned, and
gave chase.  Isabela grinned to herself.  This was what life was all
about—risks.
            They could outrun them, she knew.  She had outrun Imperial ships
before—even their mage’s fire.  They chased them well into the sea, but her
vessel had lost them by dawn, and only then did she see about the cargo.
            Not a bad night, she thought, eying the heavy crate of lyrium.  She
pried off the lid with a crowbar, peering at the softly glowing liquid metal. 
She lifted one of the small bottles.  These were highly illegal.  She was
almost doing the slavers a favor by confiscating them.  They would sell well on
the black market—mages and Templars alike.  They had lost some good men,
though, and she lamented that.  Still, not a bad night and the thing about
pirates was that they were easy enough to replace.  The Qunari, not as much,
and Isabela certainly felt the void of the giant’s loss, but this was why they
were pirates, after all.
 
            The cage was ruined, and the other hunters had considered it a
bloody strange occurrence that Fenris had not ran, but the elf seemed oddly
reluctant to pass by a particular spot right in front of the cage door where
the bars had shattered, even after the bodies and the mess had been cleaned
up.  An iron ring secured the shackles, though, and Fenris sat strung up to a
post in the hold, his arms above his head, and would be miserable if he wasn’t
so numb.
            They had taken heavy losses the night before.  Melons had died—it
had taken four sailors to heft the big man out of the hold.  Lysander was doing
many of the sailor’s chores too—there was little choice.  The mage had been so
badly injured that no one dared to make her heal anyone, so they had to make do
with bandages and herbs until further notice.  So it fell to him to mop up the
hold of the blood and shit, and the elf watched him as if studying him.
            It had been a long night, and all Lysander really wanted to do was
collapse in bed, but there was too much work to be done.
            He yawned, and went to fetch another pail of water.  He dumped the
bad water, and got fresh water—sea water would do—and went back.  Everyone was
hoping the Tevinter ship would be back to lend them aid, and it seemed likely
enough, given the circumstances.  They needed it.  If the Dalish ever wanted to
attack them, this would be the time.
            A sailor died of his wounds by morning.  The mage went two hours
later.  When the captain of the ship died by mid morning, the sailors fought
amongst themselves for half the day.  The hunters tried to stay out of it, and
the sailors took the last surviving longboat, claiming they would be back with
supplies.  Lysander didn’t think anyone believed them though.
            The ship that had saved them from the pirates still had not come
back.
            He stayed in the hold the rest of the evening, pacing back and
forth, conscious of the elf watching him as he did it.  Then he heard the clash
of steel, some shouting, and he heard the elf chuckle as if amused.
            Lysander was half-tempted to walk over to him and kick him.  The
door burst open, and he jumped, hand going to his sword.  It was Leader,
bloodied and angry as hell.  “Boy!” he shouted, pointing at Lysander.  The boy
cringed.  “You’ve been hiding down here.  Did you know about the mutiny?”  His
words came out slurred, for the piece of tongue he was missing.
            He paled.  “I…”
            Leader drew his sword, and Lysander’s jaw dropped.  The big, tall
man came toward him with the intent of his death.  The blade was in his hand
before he had made the decision to fight back.  And he fought, and remembered
all he had learned fighting the Qunari.  The blades sang their sweet song of
steel as the duelists danced about one another, each looking for an opening,
and each just as determined that there would be none.
            They pushed back and forth, they spun around one another.  Blades
clashed and echoed.  Teeth gritted, muscles taut and coiled.  They sprang and
lunged, ducked and wove, and still one did not gain the upper hand.  Lysander
pushed Leader back suddenly with a hard swing, which he blocked, but the force
of it knocked him back a pace.  The elf struck his leg out, sending Leader
toppling.  He did not drop his sword, but Lysander sprang forward with a cry,
and brought the blade down into the man’s  throat before the other could
react.  When everything stopped, and he realized what he had done, he shook his
head in horror.  He had never meant…
            He didn’t want this.
            He had never wanted any of it.  He took his sword, and stared at
the body, then fled.
 
            Fenris studied the body with cold indifference.  Once he had been
led out of the cage and shackled, he had begun to think more clearly.
            The last thing he wanted was to be a slave again.  And if he did
not act, that was all he could ever be.  It would be easier to stay where he
was, go back to Danarius.  Easier, but not what he wanted.  Not at all what he
wanted.  He had tasted freedom, and he would not give it away for slavery.  He
knew it would be hard, and he knew he might regret his decisions one day, but
it was his decision to make.  And not someone else’s, and that made all the
difference.
            He could have kicked the blonde boy instead of their leader.  The
blow had been calculated, and he only made the decision to do it after he had
spied the keys on the man’s belt, keys he knew would open the shackles. 
Furthermore, if he were going to free himself, he would rather go up against
the boy in the fight instead of the slaver leader; the boy was just that—a boy,
half-trained and ignorant.  Better to let the more experienced man, with the
keys, die now.
            He pushed the corpse with his feet, rolling it onto its side.  The
man had pissed himself when he died, so he was careful about it.  There, the
keys.  Arms locked as they were, he could never hope to reach them though.  He
frowned, wondering how he could work that out.  It was hard to do, but he
managed to pull the corpse a bit closer with his feet.  He cursed often and
with feeling as he worked his toes into the man’s belt buckle, slowly feeding
it out of it.  He pushed it apart and pulled out the belt.  The keys fell to
the floor as he did.  He dropped the belt with a thunk, listened, and pulled
the keys closer, then wondered how he was going to get them into his hand.
            He sighed deeply, and spent about ten minutes trying to get the
ring between his toes, and then to one of his hands.  He succeeded once only to
drop them while he was finding the right key, then had to begin again.  The
body was beginning to stink too.
            He was rewarded for his efforts with a satisfying clicking noise as
one cuff opened.  He hurried with the other, and listened again.  He went back
to where he knew his sword to be, rummaged around a bit, and removed it.  He
took the time to put on his armor too, deciding that he might need it.  Feeling
whole again, his jaw set.  He felt like he owed a thing or two to those
hunters.
            The first of the hunters he saw he killed systematically, angrily. 
He followed sounds, and looked on deck.  There was a group of about five of
them left, all arguing and bickering.  There was that blonde boy, and the
elf—both of them were apart from the main group on opposite sides.  Fenris
stood in the shadow and debated what he should do, which was precisely when the
elf, Aramael, turned and saw him.  “Oh, shit,” the elf exclaimed.
            The others were quick to arms, but Fenris was faster.  The first
one had a spear, which his sword cut in two, and then he cut him in two. 
Another man had a mace and shield, and they spun and danced for a while, and a
third man approached him—Asher, he recognized--and he met both of them.  The
blonde boy came too.  The first to go down was the man with the mace—Fenris
knocked him backwards, and he fell over the railing.  That left…  For a moment,
he only remembered the two, then as he twisted to one side, he felt a blade
slice shallowly across his bicep.  The lyrium brightened, and powered his
swings.  Aramael was quick—quick enough that it was near-impossible to hit him,
but he was lightly armored and hadn’t been expecting to deal with anything like
what Fenris had to offer.
            Fenris swung, and the blade slashed downwards.  If the elf were any
slower, it would have cleaved him neatly in two from shoulder to opposite hip. 
Instead, it sliced into him, and the elf’s legs buckled, and he fell.  The
Rivaini-looking man gave a horrible cry of anguish, and instead of facing
Fenris, ran to the elf.  Fenris was confused for a moment before he remembered
that the pair were lovers, and then turned back to the blonde boy.  He struck
him with the pommel of his sword, and the flat of it as he brought it down. 
The boy lost his sword and fell.  Fenris glanced at his blade and picked it up,
then slammed the blade down through the boy’s left arm, grating it into the
wooden planks below him.  The boy screamed, and then sobbed.
            Fenris looked back at the pair.  The man looked up, but as if he
didn’t see anything.  His eyes were wet with tears, and he was cradling the
elf, who seemed to be shallowly breathing, blood trickling from his mouth.  He
was whispering something to the other, and the man turned to him, holding him
tighter, begging him not to die, and then kissing him as if it were a fairy
tale and it would make him recover.
            Fenris had seen so much tragedy and death that he was unmoved by
the scene.  He pulled the blade to the man’s neck.  “What does Danarius want
with me?” he demanded.  How could he do all this just for one escaped slave? 
How?
            The man looked at him, then back at his dying lover, and Fenris
knew he would get no answers from him while he held the dying elf.  He gripped
his hair in his fist, and threw him backwards.  The elf gave a gasp when he
fell, the human a cry of pain.  He looked at the silver-eyed elf, his face
lanced with anguish.  Fenris stepped between them, eyes narrowing.  “Answer
me.”  He was dimly aware of the human boy whimpering where he had left him. 
They have names; they’re people, a tiny voice inside him insisted.  Histories,
a past, families—His name is Asher.  And Aramael.  Lysander.  They never even
wanted to be here. Fenris ignored the thought.
            “I don’t know!” he cried.  “Do you think he tells me?”
            Fenris stared at him, wondering how far he could believe him. 
“Tell me.”  He took a step closer.
            The man shook his head.  “I don’t…”  He tried to think, but didn’t
seem to remember anything.  He couldn’t think of anything.  His life began and
ended with Aramael, and everything else was a blur.
            “Think harder,” the escaped slave hissed.  “Your lover is dying, so
think very hard.”
            The man only shook his head again.  “This was supposed to be the
last time I did this.  I wanted to leave.”  A tear rolled down his face.  “I
wanted to leave with Aramael…  I wanted…”
            Fenris reached down, his fingers almost lovingly against the man’s
throat.  “What.  Did.  Danarius.  Say.”
            The man stuttered.  “He said…  He said…  I can’t… remember… what he
said exactly.”  And Fenris’ fingers trailed down to his chest, the gauntlets
breaking the first layer of skin, making the human flinch.  The sun glared
coldly down upon them, the sea breeze was chilly.
            “Are you certain?”
            The man looked at him.  “I…  He just said… to bring you back... 
That’s all I remember, I swear.”
            Fenris ripped his heart open, and the two lovers died within feet
of each other, nearly in the same handful of seconds, but eternally out of one
another’s arms.
            He went back to the whimpering boy.  “Why are you on this
expedition?  You’re no bounty hunter.  I’ve seen you before.”  Fenris stalked
around him, and knelt in front of him.  The boy made a whining noise that ended
in pained whimpering.  Fenris was unmoved.  “Do you remember more than he did?”
            The boy thought desperately for a moment, biting his lip.  “Just to
bring you back.”  He blinked away the tears in his eyes.  “I swear.”
            Fenris searched his eyes, but knew that could not be true.  He was
lying about something.  He needed to find out what.  He nodded, as if he
believed him.  Casually, he reached forward and pulled out the knife at the
boy’s belt.  He inspected the blade briefly, and went to his pinned arm.  He
held the blade over his smallest finger.  “Do you remember anything more?”
            His eyes widened in horror.  “No…  He really just said to bring you
back—“  His words ended in an ear-piercing scream.  Fenris barely glanced at
the severed digit.  He moved to the next finger systematically, and asked
again.  The boy was whimpering anew, begging him to stop. 
            Fenris remembered all the times he had watched a slave raped.  He
remembered all the times he had seen them whipped.  He asked again, his voice
as gentle as a mother to her babe, “What did he say?”
            The blonde boy thought again, sweat beading on his skin.  “Bring
you back…  Something about how much money he spent on you…”
            Fenris made the smallest cut on his finger.  “Oh?”
            The boy grimaced, a bit more whimpering.  “He said the lyrium was
expensive, I think…”
            “Why do you look familiar?  Who are you?”  It was bothering him. 
Where had he seen him before?
            The boy looked at Fenris desperately.  “Danarius killed my father
in a duel.  You killed my father in a duel,” he reiterated, tears dripping anew
with an old hurt.  “We lost everything.  Please don’t kill me…  I have two
sisters.  Without me…  I don’t know what they’ll do.”
            Fenris remembered him—vaguely, but he remembered him.  It had been
years ago, but he did remember the tallow-haired youth with nothing left but
his father’s sword and two sisters, asking what he should do.  It sickened
Fenris to think that the boy, who should by all rights despise Danarius as much
as Fenris did for destroying his life, had instead opted to work for him.  “You
never should have left them,” Fenris told him, and sliced off another finger. 
The boy screamed, and Fenris waited until he was finished whimpering.  He was
very patient about it.  At least that answered that question, but the elf had
heard enough sob stories.  He had seen worse.  He had seen slaves at the
auction block.  He had seen slaves killed for amusement of the crowds.  Just
because the boy had suffered some hardships was no excuse to go slaving.  It
was sickening.  “What else did Danarius say?”
            He sobbed.  “He… wants…”  He was sobbing so hard that it was hard
to understand him.  “Please, I just need to go home to my sisters…”
            A moment of silence.  “You can go home to your sisters.  Just
answer me.”
            He looked back at him, and hope glimmered in his eyes.  He bit his
lip, his hand bleeding from the stumps of his fingers, blood dripping down his
arm.  Danarius had cut Fenris when he used blood magic.  So had Hadriana.  “He
said…”  He tried desperately to recall the conversation.  “Something about
bringing back your corpse—all of it.”
            The elf blinked, uncertain that he had understood him correctly. 
He had not been expecting that.  “You’re… certain?”
            Lysander flinched, and whimpered.  “…  Something about skinning
you…”
            Fenris paled.  He wanted… to kill him?  He had always thought…  He
had been his personal pet, his favourite, for so many years…  How could he want
him dead?  Had he displeased him so much?  Humiliated him and wounded his pride
by running away?  Now he would rather his pet wolf dead than back with him. 
The slavers had only kept him alive because a body rots and he wanted the
lyrium back.  It was like a slap in the face, like learning that someone you
had truly believed wanted you, in truth wanted you dead.
            And once they got to Minrathous, Danarius would have killed him? 
The elf looked out at the sea.  He had thought…  Going back to Minrathous and
being a slave was one thing, but going back to be executed, possibly tortured…
            The silence had lasted longer than Fenris realized:  The boy
whispered, “Why do you hate me for what I did?  What makes you better than me? 
You killed my father.  You killed…”  So many people.
            Fenris felt angry.  “At the behest of my master.  You chose to go
slaving.”
            The boy closed his eyes, and whimpered again in agony.  But agony
was a familiar feeling to Fenris, and he held no sympathy for such temporary
woes.  “May all your sins be justified,” the boy gasped.
            He looked back at the boy, and watched his suffering.  He ended it
quickly, and left the bodies where they lay.  He went down to the galley, but
ignored the liquors and wines; they had done no good for him on the voyage and
would do no good right now either.  He ate, and made a pack with as much food
as he could carry, then walked around pilfering gold from dead men, and climbed
down the rope ladder on to the cool sand.
Chapter End Notes
     My sincerest wish is that at least one person reading this is
     appalled and speechless.
     I did really like Asher and Aramael... Their bitter end was hard to
     write, but worth it. Lysander had some pretty epic last words, too.
     In my defense, it is in the game: Fenris is very blunt when he admits
     to torturing slavers for information. It had to happen.
***** Ghosts *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris struggles through the Arlathan Forest in the winter.
           If there were truly Dalish in the forest, Fenris had yet to see
them, and he had lost track of how many days it had been since he had gotten
lost in it.  He could not tell one tree from another, and they all looked so
similar…  He half-swore he was going in circles, but the only thing he really
knew was that he was lost since he had walked away from the shore.  That had
been a bad move, and now he didn’t know if he could ever find it again.
            It had been getting colder too, especially at night as the autumn
wore on into early winter.  He was frequently cold, and half-starved, and
doubted himself more and more often.  Was everyone who wasn’t a slave this full
of self-doubt?
            More than once, he had stumbled into a hunting shade—ravenous and
half-insane.  It was becoming less terrifying, and more routine really.  He
could hit them until they faded away—he wasn’t certain “died” was an accurate
term.  He knew that the Hundred Pillars were to the west and south of where he
was—that would mean Tevinter—and the White Spire was supposed to be somewhere
along the coast, if he traveled eastward—which would mean Antiva--but the
forest was high and thick enough that he could not see the mountains.  He had
no idea which direction he went, or where to go, so he simply wandered, and
hoped he was going the right way.
He wondered if he really were going around in circles.  Sometimes, he felt like
a particular tree might look familiar, or a stone, but in the end he knew that
he could not tell one tree from another really.  He knew fruit trees because
his master had some.  He knew magnolia trees because he had one of those too,
walnut, and a couple of weeping willows, but that bit of knowledge exhausted
his forestry skills.  Oftentimes, in the night, he would simply give up, wonder
if he wouldn’t just become a hermit, lost in the woods for all time, and die. 
In the morning, he was hungry and miserable, but really didn’t want to die in
the forest alone like this.  To someone else, perhaps the forest was not the
bleak, desolate place he took it for.  Maybe there was food to be found and a
life to be lived, but for the life of him, he did not see it amidst the trees.
            If it were up to him, he would avoid such places forever.
            Fortunately, he had paid some attention when Ashaad or Zekiel had
been lecturing to Shaislyn about edible fruits, nuts, and berries.  He should
have sat in on more of those lectures, come to think of it.  He had never even
imagined though…
            Hungry, tired, and cold, he pressed on.  Sometimes, when he saw
demons, he was only half-certain they truly were, and not some trick of his
feverish mind.  It could be the hunger, or the thirst.  Maybe it was the cold? 
He couldn’t tell.  Over time, his toes became numb with the cold.  In the
morning, there was frost, and his breath misted in the morning air.  It warmed
slightly by noon, but the chill never left the air.  The evening was only
colder still, and he woke still exhausted, shaking and weak.  He found a
stream, and drank, and quenching his thirst only awoke his belly, reminding him
that he couldn’t remember his last proper meal.  He only grew truly concerned,
though, when he started to feel warm, despite that he could see his breath. 
That evening, it began to snow.
            He didn’t dare to stop, even when the snow fell as if it would
never stop.  Not when it piled up around him, coating the trees and the earth. 
It would have been beautiful—no, it was beautiful—except that it would be the
death of him.  He was so tired.  If he just slept…  Just for a few minutes.  He
could curl up under one of the evergreen trees—their branches caught most of
the snow.  It wouldn’t be for very long—just a few minutes.  Or maybe, if he
were to just sit down for a few minutes...  His legs ached, and it was just so
cold…  But he worried that if he rested, he would fall asleep, and to sleep
would be to die.  He worried about frostbite, about dying of hunger or any
number of other things.  He was not fit to fight wolves if they came, let alone
demons.
            He felt fevered, his throat sore, his limbs lead with the cold. 
The snow looked soft and cushioned.  If he could just lie down…  Not sleep,
just lie down for a moment…
            He stepped on a sharp rock, flinched, and shook the thought of
lying down away.  If he were to rest, he would die.  If he had been taken back
to Minrathous, he would die.
            Maybe not?  What if Danarius had just been angry when he said
that?  Surely…  Maybe… if he had begged enough…  If I sucked his cock enough…
            It was strange.  He had always been his master’s prized
possession—always.  He had known he was a slave, but he had been… different. 
Or he had thought he had been.  But in the end, he was just a slave after all. 
He could be replaced, just like all of his other slaves.  To learn that
Danarius had intended to kill him…  The thought made him uneasy.  It left him
with no choice except to go forward.  He could never go back, never.  To go
back was to die.  To be captured was to die.  He had not realized that before,
and so it had not frightened him in quite the same way.  What if he hadn’t run
all those months ago?  What if he had stayed?  He wouldn’t have killed him if
that were the case, would he?
            But why?  Master, why do you want me dead?  What… have I done?
            He shook his head, trying to will away the impulse to please his
master.  He wants me dead.  If I really wanted to please him, I would kill
myself and make sure he got the corpse.
            The thought was enough to keep him going, but not enough to steady
his worries.  Danarius wanted him dead.  He had never felt so lost and
abandoned.
            Soon, all thoughts of whatever Danarius wanted, or even what Fenris
wanted, fell to the wayside, replaced by thoughts of the cold, or in no
thoughts at all.  It took all his will just to keep walking, putting one foot
in front of the other.  He could not remember ever being so cold.  The ache of
the lyrium he barely noticed at all past the cold—too numb to really feel it. 
But the ache was probably what saved him time and again, when he stopped, when
he stumbled, and fell in the snow.  The ache was enough to keep him awake, to
remind him that he was alive and had to keep going.  It was the only time he
was grateful for the pain, because without it, he would have stopped.
            Winter in Minrathous meant a warm sun with a cool, ocean-kissed
breeze blowing in from the north.  There would be plans for Wintersend, his
master would want to attend the tourneys.  In winter, the slaves did not have
to work as hard; there was no planting, no plowing, no tilling of the soil. 
There was some basic tending to the fields, but that was all.  The household
slaves’ chores never ended, but that was to be expected.  Fenris’ role never
changed day to day.  It was monotonous.  Boring.  But he had never been
hungry—Hadriana’s pettiness aside—never been so exhausted he thought he may
drop, never cold, scared—yes, but not often and almost never for his own well
being.  What he would give for a hot bath right now, a cup of hot tea, stew…
            But the night wore on, and the snow deepened.  He had been walking
through an endless snow for what felt forever.  He was numb and frozen,
snowflakes on his clothes, his hair, and eyelashes.  Lips were blue, skin was
like death itself, and all around would be dark, except for the glow of the
lyrium, which reflected in the snow around him, and seemed to light his
immediate path.  Without the lyrium, I’d still be a slave, he thought numbly,
and thought of all the things he had accomplished only because of the lyrium in
his skin.  Then his thoughts settled again, and he could only think of the
cold.
            He stumbled, and leaned heavily against a tree.  He couldn’t say
what kind of tree, even if he could tell through the storm.  The grove was neat
and orderly, or had been years ago.  Each tree planted evenly apart, each the
same breed of tree, as if someone had done it deliberately.  What he didn’t
know was that, years ago, that was exactly what had happened.  When he looked
around him, he saw something move in the snow, and he turned to look.  It
wasn’t there.  He turned again, wondering which way he should go.  He trudged
forward, his fingertips brushing snow off of a tree’s low-hanging branch as he
grappled for a handhold, something to hold him upright.  He saw movement again,
and his heart pounded.  Wolves?  Demons?
            He saw nothing.  He looked around, and all he could see was the
forest and the snow.
            He fell in the snow, and barely remembered the fall.  It was so
cold, and he was too tired and hungry to go on.  It was too hard.  He couldn’t
do this alone.  He couldn’t…
            It was so cold.
            Cold…
 
            Through the snow, the old halla came, knowing it was needed.  The
old creature walked, and came upon the Dalish graves, a place it visited
often.  Its coat was no longer the careless alabaster of its youth, but had
grayed and yellowed with age, its blind eye and limping gait telling the story
of the tragedy that had befell this place, all those years ago.
            The animal walked, despite its limp, with a purpose and a grace. 
The halla’s one good eye spoke untold volumes of intelligence, of knowledge
beyond what a mere animal should know.  It looked through the grove, visiting
each gravesite in kind, touching its long horns to the trees.  It had known
each elf by name, and it knew each tree by name.  Trees were long-lived, some
almost immortal, and in that way, these elves would live forever.
            It strode forward, unhurriedly, knowing it would not be late.  It
saw the body, laying in the snow.  It was unconscious, and cold.  The elf was
dying of the elements and exhaustion, and his frail mortal body had simply
given out.
            The halla moved toward him, through the storm.  It lowered its
neck, nudging the elf’s face with his nose.  He breathed, though shallowly.
            The halla nudged his hand, his shoulder, hoping to rouse him, but
the elf was unconscious.  The halla nuzzled against his face, trying to give
what comfort the animal knew how to.
            It lay beside the elf, laying its long neck over his body, his head
nestled against his chin, and waited.  The halla closed its eyes against the
wind.  It was too cold for the halla too, but he had a thick winter coat, and
this elf had nothing.
            She had said that he was important, that he had unspoken
potential.  She had said that he held a hope for elves, and she did not want
him to fade, not yet.  She had spoken to the old halla, and beseeched him to go
to the elf.  The halla had responded, He does not know you, my lady.
            And she had looked sad, But I know him, and I cannot go myself any
longer.
            So of course the halla had bowed low to Ghilan’nain, and went to
help him, knowing that the act would cost him his life.
 
            The wind howled, and when his sage eyes opened, all he could see
was snow, and he wondered how it was that he was still alive.  Something
touched his arm, and he thought it must be an animal.  He tried to move it
away, and only fumbled.  His hands were cold and icy, and he thought he must be
dying.  Would it be the fever that killed him, though, or the cold?  He
wondered…  Or maybe an animal would eat him first.  He was so numb, would he
even feel it when it started to bite?  Absurdly, he wondered if the animal
would die from eating the lyrium.
            The thing that had been nudging him came into view.  The snow
distorted the features, but he saw a freckled girl with stringy ginger hair
pull his arm up around her shoulders.  She was speaking to him gently, but he
could not make sense of the words.  She pulled him to his feet, chatting
amiably all the way.  He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the
other, leaning into her warmth.  She walked with him, and half-carried him
until finally she set him down.  He peered numbly around the shallow cave. 
There was a small fire burning merrily within, and the girl helped him remove
the gauntlets.  He caught a glimpse of her mismatched eyes, her pointed ears. 
Was she Dalish?  He was so fevered that he did not see her tattoos until she
laid him down, speaking soothingly to him all the while, with the sort of
familiarity that suggested she might have known him.  He felt a weight over
him, and saw her pulling a heavy skin up to his shoulders.
            He wanted to ask her name, but he was so tired…
            He woke sometime in the night.  The wind was still howling, but the
fire was warm.  He saw a man this time—an elf with auburn hair, tending the
fire.  There was a bow and quiver on his back that he wore with a comfortable
familiarity.  He wondered where the girl had gone, and wanted to ask.  He tried
to rise, but the man reached out, a hand against his chest.  With surprising
strength, he pushed him back down, firmly but gently.  “Rest now, my son,” he
said.  Fenris assumed that it was just some generic term, but still he wanted
to ask the man questions.  Where was he, for one.  Why were they helping him,
for another.  And, were they really Dalish?  The man didn’t have the tattoos,
though, so that was curious.  But the unknown elf smiled down at him with all
the love and adoration of a parent, before Fenris slipped back into
unconsciousness.
            He woke once more to the sound of a falling tree, jumping in
surprise.  He felt someone comb his pale hair back off his brow with soft
hands.  He opened his eyes, and looked into elven hazel eyes—not the mismatched
ones of the girl before, or the grass green of the man.  Who was this then? 
Her dark hair framed her face, and she hummed to herself as she gazed down at
him, like a mother tending her child.  “Shh,” she hushed him, stilling him, and
he found himself wanting to listen to her.  He was so tired, and his eyes slid
closed again.  “Sleep, my baby.  You’re safe now.”  He listened to her gentle
humming as he drifted off to sleep.  It felt like he had heard the tune
somewhere before…
            The darkest part of night came, and someone held his hand.  The
fire still burned, and he turned to look.  The elven girl smiled shyly, her
eyes two drops of golden honey.  She looked familiar…  Where had he seen her
before?  “You are sick,” she told him.  “You need to sleep.  I’ll be here.”
            But she wasn’t there when he woke again.  None of them were.  Where
had they gone?  He looked around the small cave.  The fire had burned itself
out.  He walked to the entrance, finding that his fever had broken sometime in
the night, but it had left him hungry.
            He didn’t see anyone outside either.  Frowning, he went back in,
shivering.  There was a bit more firewood in the cave, and he started a fire
again.  The light revealed a skinned rabbit on a spit, waiting to be cooked. 
His stomach growled, and he figured out the spit quickly.  It was all he could
do to keep from eating it half-raw.
            Still none of his strange rescuers appeared, and he wondered why
that could be.  He wondered if they were really Dalish.  It seemed likely
enough, given everything, and they had all been elves too.
            Fenris fell upon the rabbit with a vengeance the moment he felt it
was done enough to eat.  Feeling better for the first time in ages, he walked
back to the mouth of the cave, and looked at the fallen snow.  A chill ran up
his spine as he did, for partly covered in fresh snow, were but two sets of
tracks—both leading into the cave, and none leading out.  He searched the cave
again, but found it too shallow to have any hiding places.  Had he hallucinated
all of that?  And somehow, in his delirious and fevered state, he had somehow
managed to get himself here, skewer a rabbit, and collect firewood?  Then how
did that explain twosets of tracks into the cave?  And what about the four
elves he had seen?
            There were no answers forthcoming, and the entire event was too
strange, possibly even frightening, to contemplate.  Had those visions…  Had
they been hallucinations?  Or demons?  Had helping him been a way of trying to
seduce him?  He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be away from this place.
            As he walked, he found prints in the snow and recognized them as a
shod horse’s, and decided to take a chance and follow them on the assumption
that someone else might have a better idea than he of where they were going. 
He saw a man in armor, carrying a sword and shield, astride a large destrier. 
A human man—a mercenary maybe?  Out here?  He was wearing heavy plate and he
recognized the style of armor as Imperial, and he could be a knight.  What was
he doing all the way out here, alone?
            “Do you know the way out of the forest?” Fenris asked him, walking
up to him.
            The man’s sun-darkened complexion seemed out of place in the snow,
his hair the golden color of fall leaves.  Despite the strangeness of his
appearance, he was amiable enough.  He smiled pleasantly, and pointed off down
a path Fenris had not seen before.  “Follow that path.  You’ll be free of the
forest by sunset.”  The sun was out, and the snow was quickly melting away.
            Fenris looked down the path, then turned back to the man to thank
him, but it died on his lips.  The man had simply… vanished.  Fenris looked
down at the footprints in the snow, and shivered; it wasn’t from the cold.
            The man and the horse had vanished, but the prints in the snow had
not.
***** Vindicated *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris stops over in Brynnlaw, and then heads south through the
     Drylands on a caravan.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Two weeks since he had escaped, and Fenris had finally made it
to a town, exhausted—physically and emotionally.  Even days later, he found it
difficult to imagine that he had seen…
                Ghosts, he thought.  Or demons.  Was there a difference?  He
wasn’t sure, and he was certain he didn’t care.  He supposed that, in a light,
they had helped him, as far as he could tell anyway.  What did that mean?  That
they were planning something worse?  Or…  Had the demons looked at him and
measured his soul, and found it broken and bound, and wanted nothing to do with
it so had sent him on his way?  Or, worse, was he, in reality, still trapped
somewhere in that forest, freezing to death, and he would never know?  Or was
he lost somewhere in the Fade and didn’t even know he had died?
                He found a shabby inn, and fell into a creaky cot in a small
closet of a room.  He slept like the dead, and woke considerably more sobered. 
No, he wasn’t lost in the Fade, and this was reality and not some demonic
trick.  He was really here—wherever “here” was.  He assumed he must be
somewhere near or in Antiva, judging by the accents, but close enough to the
Imperium to mirror some of the architecture, especially in the older buildings.
                A quick peruse around the inn, and a glance outside, told him
that he was in Brynnlaw, just south of White Spire, which he could see from the
town.  Their close proximity to Tevinter meant that many of the locals knew
enough Tevene to communicate, but he decided to stick to the Trade tongue
anyway—it was easier.
                He ate like he had survived a famine, and to be fair, he was
famished.  He had made it out of the forest like the specter had said, sure,
but he had to abandon the road the next afternoon when he spotted what could
only be a slave caravan traveling up it.  He was in no condition to challenge
them, no matter how desperately he wanted to, no matter the sorrow he felt for
the people chained up and in cages.  The slaves born in the Imperium and the
free citizens who sold themselves were treated the best; they were slaves who
worked in households, tended gardens, raised children, fought for the Imperium,
and any number of other common tasks.  It was the freeborn, captured slaves
from outside Imperial territory that were sent to mines in chains or to the
fields, shackled to a plow and carefully watched.  They didn’t live long.
                Fenris had only gotten lost again once he left the road, and it
had taken him far longer than he cared to admit to find it again.
                The elf considered his next course of action.  Antiva was all
well and good, but he was a bit nervous about Brynnlaw being so dangerously
close to the Imperium.  A forest and a mountain range just wasn’t enough
distance for Fenris.  He felt like he should move farther away.  Logically
speaking, there would be fewer Imperial hunters the farther he was from the
Imperium.
                Every glance his way made him nervous.  How unassuming had the
hunters been?  He couldn’t even trust elves—Aramael’s presence had stung worse
than the others.  Anyone might point a hunter his way, and anyone might be a
hunter, watching him.
                He found himself looking around him constantly, using what he
had learned as a bodyguard to observe those around him, watching for anything
out of place.  If he wanted to travel further, he supposed he must walk.  But
walk where, exactly?  South, he supposed, obviously.  He was not exactly
pleased with this notion.  Even with just the coast as a destination, it was a
long way to walk, and a fair portion of that path was through desert. 
Perhaps…  If he could book passage around the coast…  But he was in no hurry to
get on another ship again, and he was certain he did not have the coin for it
anyway.
                Which, again, left him with walking.  He was tired enough,
however, to judge it prudent to stay for at least a couple of days to try to
rest and recuperate from his ordeal.  As misfortunate would have it though, a
sudden storm kept him trapped for an additional three days, as the roads were
flooded.
                Fenris heard himself sigh on the third day of straight rain,
watching it fill and overflow the gutters from a dusty window in the common
room of the inn.
                “You’ll miss the rain when you go through the Drylands,” a
grizzled old man commented.  Fenris glanced toward him.
                “What makes you think I’m not going east?” he said, eyes
narrowing suspiciously.
                The man paid him no heed.  “More money if you go south,” the
man said with a brusque nod.  “If your master is a smart man, he’ll go south.”
                The elf bristled, then calmed.  At least the man wasn’t one of
the hunters, he didn’t think.  “I’m not a slave,” Fenris said, rather than take
offense.  It felt… freeing… to say aloud.  Alien, though, and how strange it
sounded to him must have showed.  He wanted to scream it, suddenly.  To laugh
and sing it, to proclaim to the world that he wasn’t a slave--not anymore.  It
would take some getting used to.
                The man blinked.  “Oh, I’m sorry—I just thought…”  He looked at
him, and shrugged.  Fenris wondered what that could mean.  Did he… look like an
Imperial slave?  Did they have a particular look to them?  I have no idea—I’ve
never been out of the Imperium, not truly. Disregarding the previous travel; he
had never lingered long in one place. He supposed his clothes were Imperial
make, perhaps—the lyrium for another.
                Fenris shook his head.  “No offense taken.”
                The man shook his head a little.  “You’ll die out in the
Drylands alone, mark my words, elf.  Suppose you could always get onboard a
caravan.”
                “Slavers,” he said with obvious distaste.
                The man gave another shrug.  “For the Crows mostly, but it goes
both ways.”  He nursed his mug of ale.  “Of course, there are other caravans
too.”  He glanced at Fenris’ sword.  “Assuming you can make yourself useful.”
                Fenris considered this bit of advice.  He hadn’t even thought
of trying to get a job to get southward, but it was a good idea.  “Thank
you—I’ll look into that.”
                When the rain finally let up to a light drizzle, he wandered
out of the inn, carefully avoiding the larger puddles, and walking primly on
his toes through the wet.  Barrels were being covered, now filled with
rainwater.  He supposed this city was dry for much of the year.
                It had been nearly two years since he had been in Minrathous. 
He thought about all of his travels, the places he had been, the people he had
seen.
                Now that he thought about it…  The elves in the Imperium were
all inherently good-looking.  He supposed centuries of selective breeding did
that to them.  Most elves in general, he had found, were not as ugly as a human
could be, but the Imperial elves were… well, attractive.  Bred to be
attractive, he guessed was more accurate.  Bred to be fair of feature, have
rarer hair colours, pretty eyes, good skin, well-formed—and stronger.  They
needed to be, to work the mines and fields, and fight.  In Tevinter, one could
guess an elf’s general birthplace based on the way they looked.  The ones of
finer features were often descendents of household slaves, the types used for
serving, basic chores, bleeding for blood magic, whoring, things like that. 
The ones who were taller, who were bred more for their physique, were generally
from the countryside.  What did that say about him, he wondered?  He had never
thought very much about it, but there was a clue in there somewhere.  Well, his
hair colour was… odd.  Maybe that was part of the selective breeding, but there
was his height to consider…  Danarius had hinted that he might have been a
gladiator.  If that were so, perhaps his lineage was…
                But who could say?
                He was lost in his thoughts, and when someone grabbed his arm
roughly, he jumped in surprise as he was pulled around.  He mentally cursed
himself for not paying attention to his surroundings.
                “There’s a bounty on your head,” the man said with a superior
smirk.  “Come with us, and there’ll be no reason to hurt you, slave.”
                He wants me dead.  “How much is it?” he inquired, curiosity
getting the better of him.
                “100 sovereigns alive,” someone behind him said.
                “Don’t tell him,” the first man snapped.
                “What?” the other demanded.
                Fenris scoffed.  Only 100?  He felt offended.  “How much dead?”
                “50,” the second man answered automatically.  The first shot
him a nasty scowl.
                The elf made a face.  Danarius wanted the pleasure of killing
him himself.  Torture, he imagined.  “How much does my bounty go up if the
hunters keep dying?” he inquired, before he ripped out the first man’s throat. 
His sword was in his hands in moments, and the melee was a brief flurry of
weapons.  He stepped in an ankle-deep puddle, and groaned inwardly as he
deflected a slash.  He dodged a blow from a shield, only to be struck by the
pommel of a sword.  There were four other hunters in total.  There weren’t
enough of them.
                He cleaved his way through them like a dancer on a stage,
stepping gingerly over a body on his way back to the inn.  He had better be
leaving before someone complained about this.
                He heard a clapping sound from a nearby ally.  He frowned,
turning to look.  The grizzled old man from before was applauding him.  “Good
show, lad.  Fancy a job?”
                The man was a certain Mesere Anastas, an Imperial by blood and
a merchant by nature.  He told him, matter-of-factly, that he was happy to
conveniently overlook Fenris’ fugitive status, and the bounty, if he would
guard his caravans through the Drylands.  It was too good of an opportunity to
pass up, and when Anastas told him he would pay him too, he happily accepted.
 
                Mahkerin came to a stop—like a doe in the forest--and
listened.  A twig snapped, a small thing and not uncommon in a forest.  A
nearby grouse gave a raucous cry of alarm to alert its fellows as it tore away
from the underbrush.  The elf watched it go, and pretended not to take any more
note of it than a startled bird that had in turn startled still other birds. 
Birds were easily startled creatures, and it was not the first time Mahkerin
would thank the feathered folk for it.  He walked on, but slowly, aware that he
was being followed.  He moved expertly through the thicket, barely making a
sound and leaving scarcely a trail to follow, so light were his steps and so
expertly placed.
                He heard a rustle of foliage, and spun toward the assailant. 
He dodged and struck with his staff—giving the canine a sharp smack with the
hardened wood.  The wolf whined and backed away, shaking its head as if dazed. 
He raised an eyebrow at the animal.  “I could hear you,” he said amiably, his
tone that of a teacher admonishing his student.  “It’s a wonder you come back
with anything at all.”  The wolf lowered its head, whining.  The elf sighed,
and inclined his head back toward the camp.  “C’mon, then.”  The wolf padded
along beside him.  “Did you catch anything?”  That part was in elvish, curious
to see how much the wolf would understand.
                It glanced at him, and seemed to be piecing through his words
carefully, then gave a very un-canine nod of the head, then sniffed the air,
and dashed forward high-spiritedly, leaving tracks and crushed flora in its
wake.
                When Mahkerin arrived at camp, he was greeted with the half-
elvhen boy rather than the wolf.  It was impossible for him to think of
Shaislyn as being both.  He thought of all of the boy’s several different forms
as being separate entities from himself, and could simply not grasp how
Shaislyn insisted they were all him.  Shaislyn the half-elf did not go about
devouring raw rabbit or marking his territory with urine, but the wolf did. 
The half-elf did not eat worms but the sparrow did, and so on.  Shaislyn had
insisted, over and over again, that this sort of thinking was exactly why
Mahkerin could not shapeshift.  Shaislyn had tried to explain that the greatest
fear in shapeshifting was not in turning into the creature or being able to
turn back, but overcoming the desire to never go back.  Mahkerin could not
understand that concept in the least, and they had gone ‘round about it for
hours before. 
The boy repeatedly would say, “Being a sparrow or a dog is no worse than being
a person.  It’s just different. If I could shapeshift into a tree, I would feel
the same way.”  It was the boy’s beginnings of wisdom, and Mahkerin bordered on
the brink of understanding such wisdom, but often was too attached to being an
elf—a person—to really believe in it.
                But perhaps it was simply difficult for an oldster like himself
to take instructions from someone who was barely ten years old.  He had found
the boy…  Well, no.  More accurately, he had found the wolf.  He had found a
wolf, a year back, stuck in a hunter’s trap.  It had been in obvious pain,
bleeding and hurt.  Ordinarily, it would not be right to approach such a
dangerous beast when it was in pain, but the creature had stilled at his
approach, sniffing him, and when Mahkerin had come as close as he dared, the
creature had looked at him pleadingly, and knelt down submissively.  Mahkerin
had freed it, and it had limped out of the trap, and Shaislyn’s spell had
immediately fallen apart.
                The boy had been bleeding just as the wolf had, but somehow not
as much.  He had explained that he had tried to change back, but his wrist was
considerably more tender than the wolf’s, and that had been a very bad idea. 
Mahkerin had healed him, and somehow Shaislyn had ended up being his constant
companion for the past year.  Dare he say it, he liked the boy, even if he were
half-human.
                It shamed him to admit it now, but he had disliked him on
principle at first, because of his questionable heritage.  But Shaislyn had a
charming smile, was starved for affection and attention, and tried hard to
please, and the older mage had relented.
                But he had still not answered all of Shaislyn’s questions. 
“It’s been over a year,” he said, in the King’s Speech.  At the elf’s flat
look, Shaislyn switched to the more musical notes of the elvhen, even if it
were harshly accented by his oh-so very Seheron-Imperial voice.  “It’s been a
year.  We have evaded or killedTemplars—“  There was no proper elvhen
equivalent of the word.  “--in that time, and I understand that we are both
mages, but you are Dalish and have no clan.”
               Mahkerin nodded sagely, and sighed.  Perhaps it was time.  “I
will tell you.  Help me with supper first.”  Shaislyn did not pry, but went
about his chores, even if a bit quickly.  The boy kneaded the travel dough and
shaped it, then placed it on a flat stone slab by the fire so it could rise—not
as nice as a real oven, but he could not carry around as much with him as he
would like.  Shaislyn was always bugging him to buy a mule or something, but he
was more than reluctant about that.  He sometimes joked that Shaislyn
could—perhaps—shapeshift into a mule, if he liked, and carry such things.  That
had always ended the argument.
                When the soup was warming, the pair sat down, and Mahkerin
turned to the half-human.  “A long time ago, my clan came across a group
ofTemplars.  They seemed… while not pleasant, at least tolerant.  But they
returned some days later, and if I did not go with them, they would kill us. 
So I left.”
               Shaislyn blinked slowly as he processed this.  “What were
theTemplarslike?  And the tower?”
               Mahkerin shook his head a little bit in despair.  “Awful. 
Unbearable.  The mages are abused during the best of times and never allowed to
leave.”
               Shaislyn’s fingers tightened.  “I would leave,” he insisted.
                Mahkerin looked at him for a long while.  “They create
phylacteries, and will find you—always.”
               Shaislyn laughed then.  “No one can cage ashapeshifter.”  The
last word was in the Trade tongue—there was not a proper elvhen equivalent to
that word either.
                “But they can leash one.  And they will always find you.” A
pause.  “And they will kill you when they find you without even a thought.”
               The boy’s eyes shifted away, and he seemed more solemn than
usual.  Of course, the older elf had spent a lot of time with the boy, and
Shaislyn…  Shaislyn was almost always solemn in one way or another—even if he
actively pretended to be happy—all the anger, bitterness, and grief were really
only just buried under the surface.  In more ways than one, the pair were
equally matched:  Mages, vagabonds, and everything they had ever known and
loved had been taken from them.
                “They are hunting you.”  Shaislyn tilted his head.  “When they
find you, they will kill you.”
                “And you, most likely—given your abilities.”
                Shaislyn seemed thoughtful, but fell silent.  The next morning,
they moved on.  Mahkerin sent Shaislyn to scout, and the crow winged away and
returned some hours later, advising Mahkerin to turn south, which they did.
 There were Templars in the west—or people that Shaislyn said were “most
likely” Templars; they were wearing cloaks and he couldn’t see the armor.
                “How has it taken so long for them to find you?” Shaislyn
inquired.
                “Before I fled the tower, I cast a…  Well, a misdirection spell
on my phylactery.”
                “How did you manage that?” Shaislyn asked, ever curious about
strange spells.
                “Blood is just a piece of a body, when it comes down to it. 
And misdirection is a simple enough thing.  I just made this one… last a bit
longer.”
                “Is that blood magic?”
                Mahkerin did not answer, which was answer enough for Shaislyn. 
It was one of the reasons the Templars would kill him.  But he had given them
many reasons over the years.  The spell had worn off just over a year ago, and
luckily he had Shaislyn with him now, and the boy was more than useful for
finding Templars.  It was good to have a companion anyway.
                Shaislyn laughed suddenly.  “Is that why you got lost so
easily, too?”
                “I relied very heavily on the position of the stars and the
sun,” Mahkerin answered, and the boy laughed again.  The spell had to go both
ways, or it would not have worked.  Besides, that was why Mahkerin knew that
the spell had finally failed.
                “Why don’t you just rejoin the other Dalish?”
               A pause.  “I would not bring the Templars down upon them, given
a choice.”
               Shaislyn stretched.  “Where is your phylactery?”  He dropped
into the King’s Speech once he had stopped thinking about what he was saying.
                The Dalish gave a small sigh, feeding a twig into the fire. 
“Orlais.  In Val Royoux.”
                Shaislyn gave a slight nod of his head, as if not really
listening.
                Two weeks later, the pair picked off the Templars—there was no
other option any more at that point and they could not outrun them.  They had
no grand battle over it—nothing so stupid as to challenge a Templar to a proper
fight.  No, the pair simply killed them.  They killed them in their sleep, they
killed them when they squat, when they ate, and disappeared into the wood when
the alarm sounded until the last of them fled from him.  The wolf ran the last
Templar to the ground, jaws clenched around his face, and with a growl, crushed
it.  The wolf lapped the blood, as if considering the taste, and nosed at the
man’s pocket.
                Mahkerin found the gold and silver with ease, and took the
man’s knife as well.
                The wolf stalked around the clearing, growling nervously. 
Mahkerin looked at him inquiringly.  What was going on?  The wolf’s ears laid
back, and the elf reached for his staff.  Mahkerin heard the horses before he
saw them.  Bandits, soldiers, Templars?  The wolf disappeared into the wood to
check, and Mahkerin melted into the shadow of the trees, and moved away.
 
                Mesere Anastas had decided to wait for the rain to stop, and
they were stuck another couple of days.  Of course, those initial “couple of
days” had turned into weeks.  Anastas always had some business to attend to,
some minor crisis to divert, so things were stalled, seemingly indefinitely. 
Fenris was bored.
                Anastas kept busy most of the day, but let him know that he
wouldn’t forget about him, leaving Fenris to sulk about the inn.  Something
about the way the rain kept falling was depressing, as if the sky were
weeping.  He usually thought that rain—water in general—was soothing, but this
rain never seemed to stop.
                He looked out at the muddy roads, listening to the noisy inn. 
A woman walked by on the street carrying a toddler.  She took care to skirt
around the puddles, carrying the hem of her dress to keep it out of the muck,
but in places, she would sink to her ankles.  A flash of an image—holding
someone’s hand, the sound of horses and armor, rain pouring down, the mud over
his ankles…  He blinked, jerking away from the window, then stared harder at
the woman, willing more of the image to come, but it didn’t.  And, as is the
way of half-remembered things, he struggled to recall the details.  Who’s hand
had it been?  What kind of armor, or what were their banners?
                He sighed, and moved away from the window.  He wandered away
through the common room.  A group of men were playing at dice rather loudly.  A
robust woman carried a tray of drinks.  A bard was singing a bawdy tune in her
honour in a well-practiced baritone.
                The group of men all let out a shout, and one of them laughed. 
It was sudden enough that he looked toward them, only to ascertain that it was
only about their game.  When he looked back, he nearly ran into Sasha, the
innkeep’s clumsy 20-year old son.  The young man jumped back, face flushed with
embarrassment.  He had a ruggedly handsome face, and the beginning of what
promised to be a beard one day.  His hair came down to his chin in dark locks,
and his skin spoke of some Rivaini blood farther back in his family line, mixed
in with the Antivan.
                “Sorry!” he exclaimed.  “I’m always running into you.”  He
sighed, flustered.
                Fenris actually laughed, because it was true.  He nearly ran
into him at least twice a day, actually.  And Fenris wasn’t so sure he would
entirely mind if he ran into him a little more often.  “And everyone else,” he
added.
                Sasha’s face heated.  The way he hunched made him look smaller
than he was, but he was a big man; easily head and shoulders over Fenris, with
a broad back and muscular arms.  “And doorways, and every piece of furniture,
and walls—poles too,” he agreed.  I’d like to run you into every piece of
furniture, Fenris thought, almost against his will.  “You should see all the
bruises.  My legs especially are always so banged up—you wouldn’t believe it.”
                I’d love to see your bruises too… “Try not to hurt yourself,”
he told him, stepping aside to let him pass.
                Sasha muttered a quick promise that he would try, and started
to walk by him, then paused.  “How long’ll you be here?”
                Fenris blinked, and assumed he was only asking because he was,
well, the innkeep’s son.  “Until the rain stops, I suppose.”
                Sasha nodded, but as if he were only halfway listening.  “First
Day is next week—if you’re still around…  Will you be going to the festival?”
                Fenris hadn’t even really thought too much about holidays in… 
He had never thought very much about holidays.  With the dwarves, they had been
traveling so much, he had not thought too much about it.  Danarius had usually
attended the Wintersend tourneys, and of course Minrathous had always
celebrated the holidays, but Fenris had nothing to do with such things
personally.  Holidays were things for friends and family—he had neither.  “I’m
not sure.”
                Sasha made a face.  “Well…”  He flushed again.  It was kind of
endearing.  “If you’re still around…  Maybe I’ll see you?”
                He actually smiled up at him.  “Sure.”
                Sasha smiled back, and quickly moved away.  Fenris started
walking again, and stopped, glancing back at the man as he bumped into a
table.  The corners of his lips tugged into a smile at his clumsiness.  Had he
been… hitting on him?  It was kind of reassuring to know that some people could
look past the lyrium, if so.  Nicer still, because Fenris thought he was
attractive.
                Fenris, still bored, went up to his small room, and spent over
an hour meticulously polishing his sword.  He had taken it to a blacksmith the
day before for sharpening, so was careful around the edges.  It was a simple,
fairly mindless task that kept him occupied, and it was at least useful.
                When he finished, he set it aside, and flopped over onto the
bed.  He listened to the rain, and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.  He could
smell the wood fire from below, and he heard the music too.  The patrons
downstairs erupted in laughter suddenly, and some clapping, so he assumed the
bard had sang something funny. 
Sometimes, he could find an odd job doing this or that—hired muscle or
whatever.  Sometimes, Anastas asked him to guard something while it was moved
about, but most of the time, he just waited for his new employer to leave.
                He shrugged out of his tunic, thinking maybe he would take a
nap.  He kicked off his pants eventually too, and flopped back onto the cot. 
He preferred to sleep naked, even if he had a change of clothes, which he did
not.  Without, it just made sense not to wear anything to bed.  And who in
their right mind slept in leathers anyway?
                He stretched, and closed his eyes.  It was relaxing, but he did
not sleep.  Rather, he listened to the sounds of the inn, and felt his body
relax.  He thought about Mesere Anastas, and wondered what kind of person he
was.  He thought about the innkeep, who no doubt suspected Fenris’ runaway
status, but said nothing at all about it.  He thought about the cook with the
missing finger, and the serving woman down below with breasts as large as his
head.  He thought about Sasha, and his eyes opened, then closed.
                His hand on his chest wandered, a will of its own, downwards. 
He took a deep breath, and shifted, hands running over himself.  He hadn’t done
this in a long time.  There was just no time for it, he supposed.  His tongue
wet his lips, fingers ran along the length of him.  He shivered, one eye
opening, and listened again.  Had he locked the door?  He looked—yes, he had. 
He rolled, biting his lower lip as his hand moved a little faster.  He started
to moan, and covered his mouth with his other hand.  He spread his legs, and
licked along one of his fingers, pushing both of them into his mouth.  He could
imagine what it was like to have someone suck him off when he did that,
imagining the sensation of his tongue on his fingers somewhere else.
                He breathed a moan, and moved the hand at his mouth down to the
other one, both running over him, the dampness of his saliva coating him.  He
wished he had some lotion or oil or something, but this was fine, he supposed,
so long as he didn’t make a habit of it.  He used his own juices to coat
himself, breathing deeply.  He ran his damp fingers over his testicles, against
the cluster of nerves.  He took a deep breath, and relaxed, his fingers
trailing down just a little farther, running against himself first, then he
pushed inward.  He bit his lip again, and leaned forward.  The angle was
awkward, but worth it when he found what he sought.  His toes curled, and he
rose to his knees, forehead breaking out in a sweat.
                He never would have thought to try it, except he already knew
it felt good when done right, and Danarius had done it to him enough times that
he knew what to do to make it feel good.  But he didn’t really associate the
feeling with his master.  No, he associated rape with his master.  He
associated unwillingness, pain, and the shame of it happening.  And he was
doing this to himself, more than willingly, and it had nothing to do with that.
                He wanted someone else to do this with him, to him.  He wanted
a person’s mouth around his cock, someone who would caress him, hold him, make
him feel wanted.  Another person’s fingers inside him, and eventually—be that
person male—their penis in him.  He wanted a man, hungrily, right now a
particular one.  A woman, he thought, would be just as nice.  A warm, wet
orifice, heavy breathing and a creaking bed either way.
                He came suddenly, with a shuddering sigh, and collapsed
backwards, breathing hard, hands falling away.  He laid there, staring at the
ceiling, suddenly embarrassed that he had been doing it at all.  He swore,
wondering if anyone had heard it.  He cleaned up the mess he had made, and
snuggled under the blanket, face red at the idea of anyone having heard him. 
The walls here were not all that thick, were they?
 
                The pair waited until the horsemen had gone—just common
soldiers, but they had found the body anyway.  Fortunately, they were far away
enough from Orlais that these were actually Imperial scouts, and they cared not
for what happened to Orlesian Templars.  After all, though he may be a Templar,
he was Orlesian in their minds first.
                Shaislyn commented off-handedly that he was going scouting, and
hunting, and would meet up with Mahkerin in a couple of days.  It wasn’t odd at
all to the elf, for sometimes Shaislyn simply wanted to be alone.  He was a
strange child.
                Shaislyn flew away in a flutter of feathers, and swooped wide
to the north and once he judged that Mahkerin could no longer see him for the
canopy of the trees, he changed course and headed west and south.  A crow flies
faster than a horse could run and he made it to Val Rouyaux before sunrise.  He
snuck into an inn in another form, barred the door, and slept in a stolen bed
for a couple of hours, before he slipped away.  He spent some time circling the
place, watching it, and watching the Templars come and go.  The thrill of the
hunt chased through him, and dare he say, he liked it.  The crow watched, and
learned, and later on a sparrow slipped into the tower.  He observed the
Templars and mages alike, interested in the goings-on, and enraged when a
Templar, very casually, threw an apprentice to the floor, and spit on him.  He
called him a mage as if it were the vilest of insults, and sneered as he kept
walking.  Reminded him of the way Fenris had sneered at him all that time ago,
actually.
                Odd, he hadn’t thought about Fenris in months, but when he did,
it made him angry.
                Shaislyn sat quietly, and let the rage run its course.  He
witnessed other things just as awful, and some more so.  He watched a young
mage girl cringe when the Templars came close, saw one backhand her, adding
another bruise to her homely face.  Shaislyn watched and followed, anger
seething through him.  How could anyone treat another person like this?  He
wanted everyone to enjoy the freedoms he had learned.
                He found the place they stored the phylacteries, but the bird
could not get inside.  It would need hands to open it, and there was an
inscription that a bird did not understand.  He buzzed around it for a while,
and, frustrated, sat on a rafter outside it, glaring as much as a bird could
glare at it.  He judged he was alone, and slipped back into his normal form,
balancing precariously on the beam, thinking he could at least read the
inscription in relative secrecy.  His stomach tightened when he heard
footsteps, but they were not the heavy armored footsteps of the Templars.
                He leaned on the beam, and watched down below, aware that any
sound could make someone look up, and then they would see him—a ten-year old
apostate in the nest of the dragon, as it were.  So he was silent as a wolf
stalking prey, as still as a frightened rabbit.  He waited, and watched,
controlling his breathing to the shallowest, quietest, of breaths.
                The man walked purposefully but somehow as if he did not
exactly care.  Shaislyn knew instinctively that there was something wrong with
him, and he adjusted his vision to see him better.  The world abruptly changed
perspectives, as always, and for an instant he saw from every angle, before he
adjusted it, narrowing it so that his mind could make sense of it.  The man’s
face was also curiously blank, and he had a strange mark on his forehead—a
brand, it looked like.  Which meant…  Mahkerin had described the Tranquil to
him before, but he had never seen one.  Tevinter considered the practice
barbaric.
                It was.  Just looking at him made Shaislyn want to retch.  A
mind, twisted apart from what it had been, warped and gone.  It was worse than
slavery—that was a physical thing.  This was a thing of the mind.  It took
everything a person was and ripped it so far away from them that they could not
even feel what they had once been any longer.  They could not even mourn its
passing—and that was the worst part of it.  Shaislyn felt his heart cry out for
this man.
                Shaislyn wondered what it would be like to be so blank and
uncaring, what it would be like to be so cruelly separated from his gift. 
Shaislyn would rather die.  He would rather go down fighting than submit to a
life like that, even if it were life.  A life like that would never be worth
living.  A slave’s life would be more worth living—at least their thoughts and
emotions were their own.
                The Tranquil walked up the steps, and keys jangled on his
belt.  Shaislyn watched with interest as a particular key turned the lock. 
Sensing no one else near, his being pulsed once with an unnatural light that
was gone by the time the Tranquil looked up.  Only a sparrow sat where he had,
and the man looked away.  It was not unheard of for a bird to become trapped
inside a building, particularly a small one.
                He pulled the heavy door open, straining against it.  It opened
as if grudgingly, inch by inch.  Shaislyn darted through it.  The Tranquil
slipped through after him, and Shaislyn flew up to the top of the room.  The
door, he could see now, was of dwarven make, and just as heavy as it looked. 
There were shelves and shelves of vials of blood, and some of them were
glowing, others were dim.  The Tranquil carried a heavy book, and set it down
on a table.  He ran through the figures, and came to a particular one.  He made
a mark in the volume, and then set a new, gently glowing vial down.  They must
be alphabetical or something, or maybe by year, or perhaps it was even more
complicated.
                I need that book.
                Shaislyn swept back down, landing on the floor.  He pretended
to search for crumbs, and the Tranquil paid him no heed.  He had another vial
to place, and seemed to be having more trouble with that one.  There was a
flash of light, and Shaislyn cast in an instant—a simple spell of sleeping.  It
would wear off in a few minutes, but he could always cast it again.  Mahkerin
had taught it to him out of necessity.  Hexes were a specialty of his, and they
were indescribably useful for the cloak and dagger style of fighting he
preferred.
                Shaislyn flipped to the appropriate page, hunting for a name,
and realized there were dates in there too.  He did not know when Mahkerin had
been taken, but he had an approximate date, and looked through them.  There
were so many pages of names, and so many different hands to write them.  The
Tranquil was stirring again.  Shaislyn cast a hand out without turning his
head, and the spell floated down again, dragging him deeper into the sleep. 
Shaislyn grinned as he found it, and hurried up the ladder to the appropriate
tier.  He selected a dim vial, checked the label, and smashed it.  Now he had
to get out of there.  The hard part, he reasoned, was finished.  Now he just
had to get back out the same way he had come.  That should be easy enough.
                He fiddled with the door, and got it open just enough to slip
out.  As he shut it, he came face-to-face with a Templar.  All the colour
immediately drained from Shaislyn’s tanned skin.
                His jaw dropped, eyes widening.  The man’s eyes narrowed
dangerously, perhaps recognizing him for what he was—an apostate in a lot of
trouble.
                His hand went to his sword, but Shaislyn was faster.  He leaped
at him, changing in the same instant and the heavy body of the wolf rather than
the young boy landed hard on the Templar’s shoulders, bringing them both down
the stairs, tumbling one over the other.  Every effort on Shaislyn’s part was
in keeping the Templar from drawing his sword.  They hit the first landing, and
the Templar slammed into the wall, and Shaislyn came up on top snarling.  The
mage scrabbled with him briefly, slashed across his face.  A sharp pain made
him wince, and stagger away.  The dagger was buried hilt-deep in his shoulder,
but it had caught on the bone, preventing the Templar from pulling it out and
plunging it in again.  He growled, a low, dark sound.  The Templar opened his
mouth to call for help, but Shaislyn darted in again, jaws clamping down hard
around his throat.  The armor got in the way, and Shaislyn had a mouthful of
the man’s beard and jaw too, but he crunched down all the same, and ripped away
flesh and muscle.  The man was screaming now, which was just as bad as raising
the alarm.  A quick slash to the throat ended the struggle.  Shaislyn looked
up, listening.  He could hear running footsteps.  He needed to get out of here.
                Back into his birth form, he ripped out the dagger, and then
quickly back into a sparrow.  He flew upwards, and, heart racing, could only
watch as two more Templars came charging up the steps, swords drawn and shields
raised.
                What they were confronted with was baffling.  It would look
just like a wild animal attack, inside Val Rouyoux of all places.  The door
would be shut and locked, and there was no sign of the attacker.  But the
Templars acted quickly.  One of them barked orders.  The second one ran down
the stairs to alert the tower, and the other peered amongst the shadows in
suspicion before he produced another key, and opened the door.  He pulled it
open only enough to converse with the Tranquil, and surveyed the meager amount
of damage, then commanded the Tranquil to stay put.  Shaislyn wondered if it
would be best if he flew away, or if the act would draw attention to himself,
and he should stay put until they passed.  His fear and racing heart won out,
and he hid on the beam, and listened and watched.
                The door closed again, and the Templar’s gaze swept the
shadows, but a sparrow was a small creature.  The Templar’s jaw set, as if in
anger, then…
                It was like having his soul wrenched away from his grasp, like
his mind was being dragged screaming from his skull.  Shaislyn felt himself
dumped back into his body, and he could not activate the spell of his vision. 
The seconds ticked by, and he knew by instinct that it was only a matter of
time before the Templar looked up.
                What could he do?
                His fingers tightened around the hilt of the dagger, still in
his hand just as before he had changed.  Just one of the mysteries of
shapeshifting lay in what happened to his body when he became a sparrow or a
wolf.  For example, why was he still holding the dagger, and what had happened
to it in the interim?  For that matter, what happened to his clothes?
                But he had it, and he knew the Templar had not moved either. 
Shaislyn could hunt blind.  He could move blind, run blind, and losing his
sight was not the handicap to him that it would be to someone else.
                He moved silently—Mahkerin would have been proud.  He tensed
himself, and leaped.  The Templar had not been expecting something to fall on
him, but his training had been thorough too, and he had a good two hundred
pounds—including the armor--on Shaislyn.  There was a loud crashing noise as
the heavily armored man hit the floor, the lighter boy on top of him.  He lost
his sword in the initial impact, but he brought his armored fist between the
dagger and his neck, and just in time.  Shaislyn jerked the dagger upwards,
feeling the Templar trying to get a hold on him.  The human brought his shield
up, and struck at the mage.  Shaislyn sensed it coming—and all that armor was
not silent either--and rolled to the side.  His fingers found the hilt of the
sword, and he brought it into his hand.  He struck against the shield, and
heard it dent.  He struck again, but the Templar brought the shield up.  A few
more parries, and the shield splintered under the heavy assault.  The Templar’s
training had prepared him for much, but he had never expected to encounter a
sword-wielding mage that had attacked him from above.  And, perhaps, he was
confused as to why a ten-year old was attacking him suddenly.
                Shaislyn thought about all the things he had seen that had made
him angry—the Tranquil, the mage that had been spit on, the mage who had been
hit, the Templars who hunted Mahkerin.  Why can’t they just leave them be?  It
wasn’t a sin to be born who they were, and how they were.  If it were a sin,
then this “Maker” that they believed in would not have condemned them from
infancy.  Sins were conscious, learned things.  Magic was a gift, a gift to a
selected few.  And if the Templars said that some mages were not strong enough
to handle their power, it was not the student’s fault—it was the teacher’s. 
They just needed to learn different spells, a different path.  That was all. 
So what if their ability lay not in elements or healing?  What if their ability
was shapeshifting?  Or something new?
                One flower could not be cared for exactly the same as another
breed of flower, after all.
                The Templar swore inwardly.  Shaislyn was right in that the
Templar had never encountered anything like this before.  He was also right in
that he had been unprepared for it—in more ways than one.  Yesterday morning,
he had badly sprained his ankle falling down some stairs, and while a mage had
healed it, it was still tender and the proper thing to do was to treat it as if
it were still injured.  He put weight on the sprained ankle as he stepped.  He
didn’t want to kill the whelp—just debilitate him.  They would need to capture
him for questioning—if they had a security breech a child could sneak into,
they needed to know about it.  The Templar’s leg gave out, and he stumbled.
                Shaislyn brought the sword down again, and the shield broke,
the blade plunging into a rivet in the armor, and pierced flesh.  In the
instant of shock, Shaislyn drove the dagger with his left hand under the
Templar’s chin, burying it fast.  He heard men running and shouting, but they
found only two dead men, and never even looked up to see the sparrow fluttering
away.
 
                Initially, Fenris had hated the Drylands, for it was so vastly
different from anything he had ever encountered.  As the name implied, it was
dry and dusty, the wagon wheels constantly raising plumes of sand.  It was hot,
and he had never really worn real shoes or sandals, but his new employer
insisted, and Fenris was not against the idea of not burning his feet in the
afternoon heat.
                They had left several days before the First Day festival, and
Sasha had made faces, but had gotten to say goodbye to him, haltingly and like
he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.  Fenris supposed it was just as
well.
                Water was rationed carefully out in the Drylands, and he just
as much had to guard the precious liquid from his fellows as he guarded from
bandits and other hazards.  Anastas had no horses, but mules—stronger and
sturdier by nature—pulled the wagons.  Anastas himself either rode in his
covered wagon, or atop what he called a camel, which was a strange-looking and
somewhat vile creature that seemed to do quite well in this environment.  The
other animals in the train were chickens, an obnoxious rooster, two dogs, and
an assortment of donkeys.
                Fenris had to tolerate that his employer was a slave owner, but
was somewhat satisfied that all of his slaves were treated well.  He had asked
a couple of them, and they all agreed that if given their freedom, they would
probably stay anyway, and several Liberati had.  And Anastas wasn’t in the
slave trade, anyway.  No, what he brought to Antiva were silks, furs,
tapestries, tusks of ivory, and precious stones and works of metal.  He was a
collector of art, first and foremost.
                “Come back with me to Vyrantium,” Anastas had said.  “I’ll show
you my art collection.”  He boasted that he had statues dating back past the
fall of Amaranthine, paintings older than some countries, trinkets worn by
queens.  Fenris suspected that he could count himself as part of that vast
collection, if he let himself stay employed by Anastas.
                “I cannot return to the Imperium so long as my master lives,”
Fenris said gently.  Anastas had asked him many questions since his employment,
so the man knew the situation well enough.
                Anastas had waved the matter off.  “Everyone has their
price—I’ll bet I can settle your debt.”
                Fenris had shrugged noncommittally.  “He wants to kill me.”
                Anastas actually seemed pleased by this.  “If he wants you
dead, I bet absent will suffice.”  He grinned.  “I’ll pay him off, you can work
off the debt.”
                “I’ll… think about it.”  Fenris had no intention of thinking
about it; the entire thing was too risky, and he did not think Danarius would
just let the matter go for a pile of gold, or even some of Anastas’ artwork. 
Danarius had more gold than he would ever spend in his lifetime, and he was
more interested in collecting weaponry and old books than artwork.
He liked Anastas; it was hard not to.  He would joke with his slaves, tease the
pretty girls, helped one of them struggling with something heavy.  He was not
shy about work, and when Fenris asked, Anastas had confided in him, with a
wink, that he was Liberati himself.  Fenris had assumed he was Soporati, so
this was a bit of a surprise to him.
                “How were you liberated?”
                Anastas laughed.  “My master dabbled in art forging, and I was
damn good at it.  He was so pleased with my last painting that he made me an
offer.”  He shrugged.  “Nothing spectacular.  Lot of paperwork.”
                Fenris wished it could be so easy for him.  One thing, though,
bothered him.  How was it that Anastas could be a slave owner himself, if he
was once a slave?  It seemed so perverse to him.  He tried to hold his tongue,
but his own temper eventually got the better of him later in the day, as it was
wont to do.
                “How can you own slaves?” he demanded, walking beside Anastas. 
He was so angry the lyrium pulsed once.  He took a deep breath, and calmed. 
“You were a slave once.”  He would never be able to live with himself if he
ever became a slave owner.  The very idea was almost a nightmare—becoming
something he hated the most.
                Anastas shrugged.  “Wasn’t so bad,” he told him matter-of-
factly.  “I got fed, clothed, learned to paint, read—I had nothing to complain
about truly.”
                Fenris fumed.  “You just didn’t know any better!”
                He raised an eyebrow.  “I still don’t think it was all that
bad—my master found me making charcoal drawings in the street; I was sick and
starving, and would have died otherwise.”
                The elf narrowed his eyes.  “And that justifies slavery?” he
demanded.  True, his slaves seemed happy enough, and he even freed them
sometimes, even the slaves said.  There were Liberati who were once his slaves
amongst the train.  But that just didn’t justify it.
                Anastas sighed and considered for a moment.  “Freeing slaves is
all well and good, Fenris, but are you suggesting that all the slaves in
Tevinter should be freed?”
                Fenris was aghast that he was even insinuating that they
shouldn’t be freed.  “Slavery is immoral.”
                The painter made a face.  “Fenris.  It isn't about the morality
of the decision, it is simple economics:  If they were workers instead, we
would have to pay them.  Of course, each company or private owner is going to
pay the bare minimum for the work done.  Furthermore, many of them won't be
‘re-hired’, as it were--and let go with nothing.  Dealing with one problem at a
time, we are still faced with the ones who are ‘hired’ on, working for pennies
a day.  You can't survive on those wages, and this will only drive them into
debt, except they don't have the ability to fall back on selling themselves or
their children to get out of it.  And then we have all of the unemployed
workers with no useful skills, money, or resources.”  He counted those out on
his fingers, and looked at Fenris to make certain that he was listening.  He
was, but he only looked on with disgust.  “Now we have a massive amount of
poverty in the country, because of all the unemployed workers.  Tevinter is
fairly self-supporting, but we cannot logically support this, and it only
escalates from there:  High levels of poverty and poor education equate to high
levels of crime.  With the problem of theft, possibly even murder, there would
be a dramatic call for city guard and defense.  Arrests would be made.  People
would go to prison.  Those same people might be stealing food to feed their
children, but that doesn't excuse crime; those children will be orphans on the
streets and it just perpetuates the cycle.  Then we have massive overcrowding
in prisons with the only possible solution to be to either let the criminals go
free early or execute them for more petty crimes.  And, believe me, it only
gets more complicated from there.”
                Fenris interjected, “But many of them would leave Tevinter—they
wouldn’t just be deadweight.”
                Anastas scowled.  “I wasn’t finished, and anyway, that just
spreads the problem to other countries, and most of them will be too poor to
leave, and won’t speak the language anyway.”
                “That wasn’t what happened when Andraste freed the slaves,” the
elf said, but sounded uncertain even as he said it.
                Anastas stared at him, daring him to continue.  Fenris fell
silent.  “Will you let me go on now?”
                The elf made a face, and relented.  “Fine.”  He paused.  “But
was that what happened?”
                “No, but only because the ones that stayed chose to remain
slaves.  We’re talking about if it were suddenly made illegal in the
Imperium.”  Anastas leaned back in his saddle, shifting his weight in the
stirrups.  “Now, going back to those few who were hired on, we presently shell
out coin for basic necessities--shelter and food, namely--sometimes clothing. 
Some of us even provide health care.  But what happens to those benefits if we
have to pay them?  They have to afford rent.  They have to make it to work
every day, pay for their own food, clothing, medical care.  Even only paying
them a bare minimum, it will often cost more than it is presently.  This means
that when we used to pay a sovereign for a tree, we might have to pay a
sovereign and a few silvers over the course of a year.  Add all of that
together, all around the country, and we all lose money due to this.  With the
additional cost of the tree, the price of its fruit will go up.  Some farmers
might have to stop caring for all of their trees, making fewer of the fruits
available.  With less availability, the prices continue to go up.  When the
price of one item goes up, it often affects every other product on the market--
ranging from wool to wine.  Why, the cost of paint will go up too, Fenris. 
This goes back to the same problem we face with wages; it won't be enough for
them to live off of.  Having no other alternative, crime is often their only
option.  What, then, would you have us do?”
                Fenris had no answer to give him, and only angrily walked
away.  The way Anastas explained it to him, it made sense, and that was what he
hated the most about it.  It was perfectly logical, even sensible.  The
Imperium’s economy would collapse without slavery.  But… that didn’t excuse
it.  No matter how logical it was, it just didn’t excuse the immoral act of
enslaving another person.  There just was no excuse for that.
                They stopped for a rest at what Anastas said was an “oasis”. 
There were other caravans here, and they set up camp.  Fenris patrolled the
perimeter with other guards, and when he was done with his shift, he wandered
down to the desert lake.  At first, he had thought the Drylands a harsh, cruel
place, devoid of life.  It was hot in the day, and cold at night.  They would
rest during the hottest part of the day, everyone including the slaves taking
shelter from the harsh sun and sleeping.  They drank hot drinks, which Fenris
at first found to be odd, then only refreshing.  He shed his armor for the
trip; the metal heating was unbearable, and the leathers uncomfortable as
well.  Anastas had gifted him a pile of linens that was more suitable to the
environment.
                Day after day, he learned that the desert was not the barren
place he had at first assumed.  There was life there, and a life to be lived
there.  A couple of the slaves, who had made this trip many times, were happy
to tell him all about it.  The human man would tell him about ways to watch for
the weather, and was also a good bird watcher, explaining what the signs from
the animals meant.  The other, an elven woman, told him about the plant life,
and it was like seeing the desert for the first time.  The entire place was
beautifully alive, its secrets revealed.  The warm sands were crawling with
life here, and he had not seen it before.  He had not believed there was
anything here.
                The sun was grueling, its light glaring off of the sun and
hurting his eyes, but he learned where to look, and grew accustomed to the
afternoon naps, and the hot drinks were revitalizing and made sense.  Sunrise
was always an event—beautiful and glorious, and like it was the first sunrise
ever to touch the earth.  And when the sun set, the golden orb kneeling to kiss
the dry earth with fire, the sands seemed to light, and there was more colour
in the glittering sand than the sea.
                Anastas was sitting near the water, his easel in front of him,
a paintbrush in his hand.  He had been painting since his childhood, and the
strokes were confident and even, but what Fenris liked about his paintings were
that he left the people in them.  He chose his compositions well, and
everything was always off-center.  Anastas explained, “It makes it feel like
you’re there with them.”  Anastas was presently carefully painting in the
campfires and the people around the lake.
                Fenris watched him for a while, fascinated.  Anastas glanced
back at him briefly, then resumed.  “How do you like the desert, Fenris?”
                “It’s… not as awful as I was expecting,” he admitted.  He was
still a bit sore about their little chat the other day, but the painter was
such a likeable man that it was hard to remain angry with him—and he had only
been trying to explain the problem to him, not justify it.  It was unfair to be
angry with someone who was only trying to make him understand another view.
                Anastas snorted.  “It’s beautiful,” he reprimanded him.  “The
whole damn world is beautiful.”  Anastas painted every time he visited a new
place, and sometimes had several compositions of the same place at different
times of day, he said, in his gallery. 
Fenris wondered at that phrase, though.  Was the entire world beautiful?
                Seheron, with its fogs, the sun glinting almost pink off of the
mist rolling in from the sea, its lush forests rising serenely from the fog,
the crumbling ruins of a moss-covered city.  He thought of the Arlathan forest,
covered in snow—dangerous and wild, the pure white of the snow and the deep
evergreens.  He thought of the deep blues and greens of the sea, the white of
the sea foam crashing against the sides of the creaking ship as the sun boiled
into the ocean.  He thought of the mountains, the snow on their peaks, standing
majestically as if to touch the crystalline sky.  He thought of Minrathous, the
way the shadows of the larger buildings fell over the smaller ones, the
sunlight framing the darkness.  And, he thought of a young apprentice, tears in
her clear blue eyes, as she stood amidst the ruins of a burned building in
knee-high weeds, a young girl lost in the ruins of what had been a life.
                Yes, there was beauty in the world.  There was great sadness,
and great ugliness too.  All his life that he could remember, he had only ever
seen the ugliness and the sadness.  It was good to finally see the beauty in
the world, and that was why he liked Anastas, who would paint something
beautiful in an effort to make those who do not naturally see beauty finally
see the beauty.
Chapter End Notes
     This chapter is really a lot of about Lysander's last words:
     Justified sins. Shaislyn killed two people. Murder is a sin, but he
     felt it was justified. Anastas explains the importance of slavery in
     Tevinter to Fenris, which Anastas describes as a necessary evil, and
     because it is necessary, it is justified.
     Updates: I did some editing to some previous chapters, and I plan on
     adding a bit more later on. Nothing you'll be missing for plot
     really, but some grammar here and there, and a couple paragraphs in
     part 4, mostly about Fenris learning about his abilities and Danarius
     studying it.
***** A Book of the Past *****
Chapter Summary
     Shaislyn unknowingly steals an important key to uncovering Fenris'
     shadowed past.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Mahkerin sat in silence while Shaislyn excitedly told him what
he had done.  Shaislyn recounted the details, explained everything, and the
older elf had nodded when he finished, and rose, and looked at him.  The boy
looked back at him expectantly.  Mahkerin, though, was only sad.
                “I can’t take care of you any longer,” he told him, though the
words came at great difficulty for him; he had grown fond of the half-human
boy.
                Shaislyn stared at him in shock.  “But… I can’t…”
                Mahkerin shook his head firmly.  “No.  I won’t take care of you
any longer.”
                This time, the boy was angry.  “I killed two people—that’s a
lot less than we’ve killed before—and I broke your phylactery so we won’t have
to continue!”
                The older mage looked pained, and felt only sadness.  Two
people dead.  Two people who had thought themselves safe in their own home,
murdered in their home.  Killing people hunting him was one thing—they were
after his life and it was simple protection—a small-scale war as it were.  But
what Shaislyn had done was nothing short of murder, and he could not abide it. 
If Shaislyn had such few compunctions about the sanctity of life, Mahkerin knew
that he could not shelter him any longer.  He was not learning the lessons that
Mahkerin wanted him to learn.  He was only learning how to kill.
                “You’re a murderer,” Mahkerin told him, his voice gentle.
                Shaislyn shook his head, eyebrows drawn together in dismay. 
“But I never…  It was just to make it stop…  I thought…  You’d be safe, and we
would be killing fewer people…”
                “There are always more Templars,” he said, voice clipped. 
“They follow rumors and trails just as easily.  And they’ll know which vial
broke, and who I am.”
                Shaislyn looked down, then back up.  “But… I was just…  I just
wanted to help.”
                “You’ve helped enough,” Mahkerin told him.  “You need to go.”
                Slowly, the boy rose to his feet, and looked away.  “But…  I
have nowhere else… to go.”
                Mahkerin looked at him for a long time, and the boy shifted
uncomfortably under his silent gaze.  “You’re a murderer.  I will not harbor a
murderer, no matter the reason.”
                Shaislyn raised his head, his eyes full of the pain of
rejection and scorn, then he turned, for he had always known rejection and
scorn.  He made the motions as if he were going to run, then his magic engulfed
him, and he flew away.  Mahkerin sat back down with a heavy heart.  He had not
wanted to do that, but…  Well, he could not let Shaislyn do such a thing.  He
could not abide it, he could not condone it, even if he were a child.  No,
especially if he were a child.  He wondered how well the boy would do on his
own, though.
 
                Danarius had put a lot of thought into this trap.  Trapping
Fenris was becoming more and more difficult.  The closest he had come so far
was quite some time ago, and if not for a shipwreck and a mutiny, he would have
his pet back now.  It was an irritation, to be certain, and if the men were not
all dead, he would have them killed anyway.  But between the shipwreck, the
pirates, and the mutiny, it had not left very many to guard Fenris.  The elf
had made short work of the remains, and it looked like the elf had lost all
compunctions about torture.  Danarius wondered, idly, if he himself might be to
blame for that.
                Had he made Fenris too much a party to the casual killings and
bloodshed?  He had never had Fenris torture someone outright, but Hadriana had
made Fenris chop off hands and fingers before, and that was certainly what the
elf had done.
                He disliked the entire thing rather a lot, actually.  Perhaps
when he finally caged the unruly lad, he would be forced to erase his memory
again to keep him better behaved.  He had been such a perfect pet for so long
too…  Loyal to a fault, perfectly obedient, behaved, well-tempered, and well-
mannered.  Even affectionate, in his own half-starved-for-attention-and-
desperate-to-please kind of way.
                He should have tested Fenris more, he lamented.  Scholars had
paid to study him.  Danarius had written a book about the process, and there
were books and studies about its effects.  The Chantry had paid for exclusive
rights to him for three years, to study him.  They had been doing the wrong
kinds of testing, he knew now.  They should have tried to find ways to trap
Fenris, not just to see what he could escape.  So many people had wanted to buy
him off of him, and the Magisterium had only regretted that the elf had been so
costly, because more like him could turn the tide of the battle with the
Qunari.  Because of the rarity, and also because Danarius refused to sell, an
ambitious Altus man had once tried to kidnap Fenris.  That had been laughable
at best; Fenris was loyal to a fault, and unspeakably skilled in combat—walking
through walls had helped the matter, and the lad had only gone straight to
Danarius with the incident.  Of course Danarius knew his favourite pet would
tell him the truth.  That had been a mess, though—the man claiming none of it
ever happened, that he had never made the attempt.  Blood magic was useful for
driving the truth from a person, though, and Danarius had the truth in the
end.  He had imagined that, when it came down to it, collecting the elf from
the Fog Warriors would be much like that. 
                He had been wrong.
Hadriana had wept, he recalled, and held her bastard son close to her. 
Something had changed in her the day her lover’s bones were brought back.  The
woman had never been kind exactly.  She had always been a bitter creature, full
of spite and anger, but now she dreamed of petty revenge.  She wanted to dangle
everything that Fenris had ever wanted in front of him, and then tear it from
his fingers and destroy it before he could ever hope to learn to cherish it. 
It was a dangerous path—one did not taunt wolves, even small ones—but she was
angry and hateful enough to do it.  She had never particularly liked Fenris,
but now…
                This latest plan had been her own.
                “Let’s use what he wants the most against him,” she had
advised, in the pleasant manner one usually held for discussing tea.
                Danarius had smiled back in kind—he did so appreciate his
apprentice’s mind.  “And what do you suppose that my pet wants the most?”
                She had smiled sweetly, but in her eyes was the cold glint of
murderous intent.  “One of two things.  The first, to know who he used to be. 
The second… to remove those lyrium markings.  But which one do you think would
interest him more?”
                And so he had painstakingly had planted whispered words,
rumors.  He took particular measures and cares, and all of it added up to one
thing:  A simply registry.  Hadriana had a copy of the book made, with a few
select pages altered—things that could be glimpsed and known.  It helped that
Fenris already knew the book existed:  His slave record book that he kept
primarily for the coliseum, and breeding purposes.  He could put a higher price
on their heads if he could name their lineage.  Boasting that one of them had a
famous fighting sire often raised the price on the child’s head, if he could
but prove it.  He really should have had Fenris bred. 
                Well, that was something he would be amending soon enough.  He
had found a pair of elves—perfect twins—just in flower, and exactly what he had
in mind.  While he waited for the hunters to cage Fenris, they worked but the
others were given strict orders not to touch them.  He had each of them in
chastity belts even so.  He knew it would be… difficult… for his pet to come
back to slavery after three years.  Making a gift of the twins to him might
ease that, just a bit, and they had been trained.
                However, if Fenris ever managed to get his hands on that book
(and find someone who could read it), it would give him his real name, his
mother’s name (and where she was buried), his sister… and his nephew, for that
matter, as well as his deceased niece.  He could have had the names altered,
just not include the information, but then the truth wasn’t real; it would just
be a forgery and then he couldn’t technically market it to the slavers as
real—there were a lot of legal complications involved, as such things were
attempted all the time.  However, he could remove Fenris’ name from the
registry as well as the small symbol that would lead anyone back to Fenris’
family.  He also had it translated to the Trade Tongue rather than Tevene, just
to make his plan progress faster.
                And so the book was sent out, under the cover of sending the
book to slavers to look for likely “breeding pairs”, which is what they
pretended to do, all the while letting just the right people glimpse its
contents.  And just the right people see the magister’s name on the inside
cover…
                All Danarius had to do was wait, and wait he did.  Others went
after Fenris, but he refused to personally fund any more of these expeditions. 
The bounty would do, and this current bait.
                And even if this latest plan backfired, he really didn’t have
the time to devote to a proper retrieval of his lost property.  There were too
many affairs of state—riots and political problems, for just the one.
                He stared at the pyre, feeling the heat of it wash over him. 
The others stood in silence.  The widow wept.  At least this death he could
never be blamed for, for he had been halfway across the country at the time
when his horse threw him and he cracked his skull—a tragic and familiar
accident.  Still…  It was a sad day when the older brother had to bury the
younger.  It had been an even sadder day when they held Annalkylie’s funeral,
and the parents had to bury the child.
                Agasius would hold his side of the family’s title now, and it
was only a matter of time before he started to want all of Danarius’ side as
well.  He had willed it to Hadriana already, with Annalkylie being gone, but
that wouldn’t stop an ambitious family member from challenging it.  Hadriana’s
claim would weaken if Agasius managed to father a mage too.
                Danarius did not look forward to that, but he knew he would
have a brief reprieve at least before that was even a question.  And it would
give him some time to think of something.
 
                With nowhere to turn to, Shaislyn had begun to look to his
past.  He hunted for names, trying to learn of his mother, his uncle, his
father, Vanessa, Lura—anyone.  He hunted and sought and eventually found
something.  Or, more accurately, he heard something:  An elven mage, a refugee
from Seheron, working as a tailor in Qarinus.  He felt like it was a long shot,
but worth it if it could be his mother.  He tried to tell himself that it was
likely enough.  How many elven mages had really been in Seheron?  Couldn’t have
been many.
He flew there, and searched, and hunted.  He looked with the eyes of animals,
and with his magic.  He asked questions, and people would point him one way or
another, or tell him they didn’t know or that they did and it would cost him. 
Those he always turned away.  He could always find the information some other
way, and if he got desperate enough, he could go back to them, though he knew
they would raise the price if he did.  He was almost ready to give up on the
quest when he found someone of his mother’s description—an elven mage of red
hair--in the employ of a magister.
He approached her in his birth body, timidly as he had never been.  He did not
know if she would rejoice to see him, or be reproachful, yet still he came.
                “Mother?” he inquired.
                She dropped the bucket she had been hauling back into the well,
and spun around.  Her jaw dropped in open astonishment, and for a moment the
pair did not move.  Then she strode toward him, and hugged him fiercely to her
chest, and he realized that she was weeping.  Why?  She had never cried for him
before, had she?  He had never meant very much to her…
                “Oh, Maker, you’re alive,” she whispered, her face pressed into
his dark hair.  “Oh, Shai.”
                Tentative at first, he returned the embrace, then held on
tighter, his fists clutching her dress tightly, and he knew he was trembling. 
He wasn’t alone any more, was he?  She pulled back, holding him out at arm’s
length.  “I thought you were dead,” she whispered, swiping at her tears with
her sleeve.
                He looked up at her.  “I thought you were.”  He hesitated. 
“But I had to know…”
                “How did you make it?”
                He shrugged.  “I don’t really… remember it.  It was over two
years ago,” he said, turning his head away, more to hide his expression than
anything else.  He didn’t want to talk about it, to anyone.
                She was silent for a long moment.  “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
                But, he learned, it was too difficult for her to keep him
clothed and fed, so he did those things himself.  Animals could go all kinds of
places and people either never noticed or could do nothing.  Animals could
steal all kinds of things—coins and valuables, clothes, and food.  All he had
to do was fly to another town and sell the valuables, then fly back.  And he
stole things while he was abroad too.  He would thieve and cheat, and sometimes
lie, all to support himself.  A man at the docks in Carastes taught him how to
cut purses, and he cut purses for him for a while, and split profits, until the
city watch caught him.
                He gave a false name, under a false accent, and they gave him
three months in prison.  He spent two days there before escaping, found his
confiscated things, and left, making a note not to return to Carastes for at
least a year or so.
                In Marothius, he paid for sword fighting lessons with the
stolen coin, though he never stole anything from Marothius, just in case.  His
mother never questioned where he was all the time, nor did she question what he
was doing, or where his clothes came from, or anything else.
                He asked her about her life before he was born, as a slave. 
Sometimes, she would tell him, other times not.  More often these days, she
would tell him though.  He eventually got names out of her, slipped by accident
and he never called attention to them, but names nonetheless:  Raith, Danarius,
Jadia, Ginger, Raenya, Marlance,and a half a dozen others.
                He began to look for news of his uncle, and all the paths he
might take seemed to lead back to his mother’s master, Danarius.  So he began
to stalk around the capital, listening, and watching, and asking questions. 
His uncle’s master had a lineage book of his slaves, and he was in the market
for breeding pairs, for the coliseum, he claimed.
                The book was being passed around the slave merchants right now,
but was jealously guarded.  That book would have Shaislyn’slineage in it. 
Maybe his father?  Maybe his uncle?
                All he had to do was get his hands on that book.  How hard
could it be?  He just had to find out where it was right now.
 
                “Kirkwall,” the dwarf answered with surety.  “They moved the
book to Kirkwall.”
                Fenris was silent for a moment, heart pounding.  That book had
everything in it.  If he had a name—a location…  There was a possibility that
he wouldn’t be alone.  There was a possibility that he had a real name, a
family.  He couldn’t let it slip through his fingers.  He had to know if it
were real.
                He paced for a moment in thought.  “I have to go,” he answered
with surety.
                The dwarf nodded amiably.  “By the time you get to Kirkwall,
I’ll have a contact there.  I’ll set you up with him, but that’s the most I can
do for you, Fenris,” he said with some regret.  After the last incident at sea,
the lyrium smugglers were reluctant to go so far out of their way and risk
getting involved with the Imperials.  Fenris did not blame them exactly, but
still felt a bit put out by it.  Still, they had been more welcoming than he
had been truly expecting when he came across them in Antiva City after he had
parted ways with Anastas.  He had been hearing rumors about the book for a
while now.  People saying that a magister by the name of “Danarius” was looking
for slaves, and that the slavers carried a sort of breeding book, listing every
one of his past and present slaves and their lineage.  Somewhere in there would
be his name, maybe even the real one.  Danarius had told him that it was in
there, in fact.
                “I’d appreciate it,” he said.
                The dwarf nodded.  “’Anso’ is his name, and he is as good as
it,” he said with a wry smile.  “But you had better hurry—the slavers won’t be
there for long.”
                Fenris wondered at that.  “It could just as easily be a trap.”
                “Would you go even if you knew it were?”
                The elf glanced at the dingy floor of the tavern.  “Yes,” he
said with a sigh.  There wasn’t any alternative.  It was go or don’t, and when
it came down to it… He had to know.
                Fenris first glimpsed Kirkwall nearly three years after his
daring escape—or so he thought of the venture with the utmost sarcasm.  It
wasn’t so much an escape as a child running away from what scared them.  And he
hadn’t been able to outrun it anyway.  How can one run from oneself?  Or, more
accurately, what one had become?
                He stole into the city in the dark, and stayed in the shadows. 
He found the dwarf—a kindly fellow who didn’t even seem suitable for a
smuggler, with an overall pleasant demeanor.  That may be an act, but Fenris
did have cause to wonder.
                “I’ve looked into it a little,” the dwarf admitted under the
sanctity of a roof.  He was still halfway convinced that he was going to fall
into the sky, and just keep falling forever.
                Fenris said nothing, but raised an eyebrow inquiringly,
inviting him to go on.
                “There are Imperials in the city—a lot of them.  Probably
bounty hunters—they’re too armed for slavers,” Anso went on, wide innocent-
looking eyes peering out at him.  “You should just let it go.”
                Fenris considered that, biting his lip in indecision.  He had
been teetering on the edge of this knife for a long time.  It was
dangerous—terribly dangerous—for him to go alone.  “Hire a mercenary,” he
said.  He had done it often enough on the road—when he thought he couldn’t
stand alone, when he needed someone else to guard his back for a few days, even
just so he could sleep.  Hirelings and sellswords, and he barely trusted them
that much, but they would do in a pinch, and that seemed to be his current
state of being—for a few years now.
                Anso seemed thoughtful.  “Maybe my contact has an idea.  We’ll
have to lie about what we’re doing though.”
                “Thanks,” the elf said blandly, in his mind already setting the
idea aside and focusing on the current problem—getting the book.
 
                Which happened to be exactly what a particular half-elf was
also wondering.  He had ultimately tracked the book to an old shack in the
alienage, which was actually not as foul as the one he had grown up in.  He
perched in the tree, and watched, and when it was clear, the sparrow flew down,
and landed on the windowsill.  He peered through the broken slat, and stole
inside.  The light was dim, but he sensed more than saw the people inside. 
There were three doors, and three rooms.  The first room was plain, one was
trapped, and another simply held people.  He waited, quite patiently, for an
opportunity.  So did the men in the room.
                He watched through the gloom as they shifted, and whispered to
one another.  In the dark of the night, they grew restless, and then the door
opened.  The men tensed, all of them crowding toward the door.  Shaislyn
fluttered down beside the box in the room, and waited.  Outside, there was the
sound of yelling, a clash of swords, and explosions of magic.  The door burst
open, and suddenly it was chaos.  Shaislyn changed back to himself, reached
into the box, and removed the thick volume.  He tucked it into his tunic, and,
before anyone knew the difference, a sparrow flitted back out through the
window.  He flew up to Hightown, and landed on the roof of the Chantry.  He
changed back, and looked out at the world—a dark, unwelcoming and yet beautiful
place.  The boy had seen so much suffering and death in his short eleven years
of life.
                He held the bound book in his hands, and watched the stars, and
the moons.  He watched the city, and listened, and breathed in its scents.  It
was foreign to him, almost exotic, but so like home that he wasn’t at all
homesick.  He didn’t really associate any specific place with “home” come to
think of it—mostly just Tevinter in general as home.  Speaking of which, he
needed to head back soon; Mother would be wondering where he went for so
long—it had been weeks!
                He flipped the book open and began to look.  Reading it would
be boring.  It was nothing but a list of names, sometimes location, and dates. 
But he skimmed it carefully, reading each name and looking for particular
ones—Varania, Mieta, Lura, Shaislyn.
                He was yawning by the time he put the book away.  He rubbed his
eyes, and decided to try to find a bed for the night.  He grinned wryly at
that.  Should he risk a guest room?  He saw no reason why not.  A sparrow flew
about Hightown, looking for a likely roost.
                He found a well-to-do mansion, its masters asleep.  He flew in
through an open window, back to his normal form, and snuck about until he found
an unlocked guest room.  It was empty, and he locked the door.  Just in case,
he moved the dresser—quietly—in front of it.  The noise would give him enough
time to make an escape.  He did one last sweep of the room, looking for a
servant’s doorway, or anything of the sort.  It was blessedly free of such
things, and he shrugged out of his dirty clothes and crawled into bed.
                He woke to the sounds of the house, and a grumbling stomach. 
He stretched in the fine linen sheets, and crawled out of bed.  Best to be gone
before anyone noticed.  He dressed and looked for any likely thing to steal in
the room.  There was a small box of carved ivory on a stand—a jewelry box of
some sort.  He opened it, finding nothing but costume jewelry.  He made a face,
and dumped the jewelry into the linen closet, but took the box.
                Where a sparrow had flown in, a crow flew back out.  He circled
the city a couple of times, watching the streets, and winged away, north and
slightly west.
 
                It was all just a lie, Fenris thought, but wondered at that
too.  How could it have been some formulated lie all this time?  He had spoken
to people who had seen the book, looked at it, made offers based on the
findings.  And then killed the slavers in question, because he hated slavers.
                Point being, none of it really made much sense.  Sure, a ruse
to try to trap him.  There had been so many…  They would have.  It was even a
good ruse, good bait.  He had done so much research before he had made the risk
too.  He had been certain…  Had the chest really been empty?  He didn’t think
that Hawke would lie to him, but what did he know?  He had just met the man,
and he was a mage besides.  How much could he really trust him anyway?  For all
he knew, Hawke did have the book and just opted not to tell him, for whatever
reason.
                What did it matter?  He almost laughed aloud.  He couldn’t read
it anyway.  He would have to pay someone else to do it, someone else to
research it and try to find another slave at about his age range, and all he
knew was that Danarius had owned his mother, and that he had possibly grown up
at the manor.  It narrowed it down a little—a slave with lineage as far back as
the parent belonging to one master, of his age, at that location.  It might
even have been enough to figure out his real name.  He’d never know now, would
he?
                Then again, he could always go ask Isabela or Aveline—they had
been with him when he got to the chest, and he would get an honest answer from
the guard, and a cryptic answer from the pirate.  Carver had been there too,
but Fenris found him difficult to talk to at best—the man was too much wrapped
up in himself for anything else.  That sounded uncomfortably familiar to him. 
But I have to be, he tried to reason.  There’s no one else for me to care for,
protect—it’s just about me now.
                Truth be told, that last venture had left him bone-weary and
exhausted, not physically so much as mentally.  He had been prepared to
confront his master, and when he hadn’t been able to…  He couldn’t go back to
running.  He wouldn’t go to Minrathous on his own, but he didn’t want to run
any more.  It was harrowing, and he was too down-spirited at the moment to try.
                And then days passed, and he just didn’t want to keep going. 
Kirkwall seemed as good a place as any to stay, and anyway, he was certain now
that Danarius could find him anywhere that he could go.  Why keep moving?  It
wasn’t doing him any favors.  He had found him, somehow, every place he had
gone—and he had gone everywhere!  When Fenris had ended up in Brynnlaw, the
bounty hunters had found him, but he had not been all that far from the
Imperium.  Crossing the Drylands by itself had actually been rather pleasant,
aside from the sunburn combined with the lyrium burn—that had been awful.
                When the caravan reached Seleny, he had originally been
planning to leave, but Anastas bade him to stay and rest, and he could think of
no real reason not to, so he had, but not for long.  He did not linger there,
because there were more bounty hunters there—though he suspected just regular
bounty hunters, and not Danarius’ hunters per se.  All the same, they had
recognized him, and an effort was made.  He had stayed one more night, to rest,
and left early in the morning with a hired man, on a barge to Antiva City. 
Anastas was sad to see him go, and had given him a parting gift of gold. 
Fenris would have liked to have stayed and worked for the old man; he wanted to
see his artwork and the beauty that so inspired his paintings, but he was also
afraid that Danarius’ wrath would come down on the merchant painter if he did. 
So, though he cherished the beauty that Anastas brought to the world, he could
not keep it, and so he abandoned that which was beautiful and the shred of
happiness he had found there.
                In Antiva City, he arrived only to leave quickly again, as
there were slavers there.  His hired man left—some private venture—and Fenris
hired a mercenary.  The mercenary stayed with him until Rialto, and he had
barely enough coin to hire another one, who he trusted even less, and the woman
stayed with him until Bastian.  True, the hirelings were useful; he could trust
them enough to sleep at night, but that was all.
                Fenris stayed in Bastian for a while, doing mercenary work for
the most part until he had scraped together enough coin to leave again, this
time going up the river to Starkhaven before he had headed to Kirkwall.  The
hunters always found him so quickly, he had not wanted to stay in one place too
long.
But, it was easier to stay, and wait, and bide his time and see what his master
would do next.
                So Fenris stayed.
Chapter End Notes
     And we finally made it to Kirkwall! Yay!
     Oh, Maker--did I just fill up a plot hole in the game!?
***** Truth *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris learns a sad truth about his former master. Shaislyn, in turn,
     learns the truth about his father.
                Roschelle had all the windows open to let in the sunlight and
the breeze.  She had filled the room with daffodils, which were her favourite. 
Her favourite colour was yellow—like the daffodils.
                “Why yellow?” Cillian muttered, scowling at the glaring yellow
flowers.
                She laughed, plucking one from its vase.  “Yellow is
sunshine—it’s the colour of laughter and song.  It’sspring—and that meanslife.”
                He was unmoved.  “Most would say ‘green’ is the colour of
life.”
                She tsked.  “Nonsense; it’s yellow.  Just look at the sun.”
                He smiled then.  “Fine.  It’s yellow.”
                She nodded.  “It’s true.”  She plucked the largest book she
could find from the shelf.  It was a completely worthless edition of the Chant
of Light, unabridged.  He didn’t even know why it was here.  She set the
daffodil between pages two and three, and closed it.  “I’m sending this to our
home in Kirkwall.”
                He scowled.  “Why?”
                She smiled, whirling back to face him.  “When we go visit, I’ll
put our baby on my lap, and I’ll open the book, and tell him, ‘when you were
still in Mommy’s tummy, we put this flower in this book, and I wished and
prayed to the Maker that you would be just as lovely and full of life as
Mommy’s favourite flower.’  And then I’d like to take another flower, and put
it in the book, and we’ll come back to it the year after.”
 
                Varania brushed out her coppery hair on a simple three-legged
stool while her twelve-year-old son sat with his back against a wall in a patch
of moonlight on the floor—more by coincidence than a need for the light.  He
kept a long scrap of ribbon as a marker and read more and more of the book
every day, always hunting for familiar names.  Frequently, though, he put it
down for days or even weeks at a time, when he would disappear.
                “Tell me more about this spell that allows you to see,” his
mother said in a way that was almost a question, almost an order—the way a
mother would naturally give direction to their children.
                He frowned.  “Can’t.  I’ve tried to explain it to people, but
people who can see…”  He struggled for a moment.  “You rely too much on your
eyes.  You have to stop, or it won’t ever work.”
                She frowned.  “How’d you learn to read anyway?” she asked after
a short pause.  “No one ever taught you.”
                “No one ever stopped me either,” he countered, not looking up
from the volume.  He was silent a moment.  “Jameson—the mage that taught me the
spell—he taught me to read.”
                “What are you reading now?” she inquired.
                He hesitated then, wondering if she would try to take the book
from him.  He wouldn’t allow it, but he disliked disobeying his mother.  “It’s…
a list of names,” he said with some reluctance.
                “That sounds dreadfully boring,” she confessed.  “Why?”
                “Because no one will tell me anything,” he grumbled, partway to
himself.
                She paused, and fell silent.  He went back to reading, the
sorrow of it enveloping him.  It was unspeakably sad, how many slaves Danarius
had.  How many lives he owned, how many souls condemned.  It often listed
dates—their birth and death date, he imagined.  Sometimes, the dates were
marked and another name was written in a small print near it.  It took Shaislyn
a while to puzzle that out, when he realized, his stomach twisting, that it was
the name of the man or woman who had bought them, in the marked year.
                There were children purchased and sold.  Children died.  There
were men and women.  Some of them had little symbols next to their names that
whoever was reading the book was obviously supposed to know.  Shaislyn actually
had to, grudgingly, do some research about the slave trade to decipher the
meanings of the symbols—then wished he hadn’t.  They marked skills and trades
of the individual slaves:  bow makers, glassmakers, laborers, tailors, whores,
dancers, gladiators, and an assortment of other trades.
Sometimes he cried himself to sleep for reading it, thinking about each
individual that deserved so much more than a name and a mark in a book.  All
those people...  It was unspeakable.
                With each name, he hated the magister a little bit more.  For
every child born into slavery, for every child bought and sold, for every
single soul—he hated just a little bit more.  In the late hours of the night
sometimes, when his mother slept, he would hold the book close to his chest,
and sob quietly for all the people he did not have the power to help.  Tevinter
was his home, but his soul still cried out in agony when he saw a slave.  And
it was so much worse when they didn’t understand why it was awful.  Slaves made
up so much of the Imperium’s population too; it was tragic.
                He found Fenris’ name in the book, alone.  There were no dates
attached to it, just a symbol, all alone with no branching familial past, no
master he had purchased him from, no city he had plucked him from—Fenris’ past
was blank even in the book.  The name, he did not think, was coincidental. 
“Fenris” was too unusual a name, and the lack of history to it was also too
coincidental.  He was almost completely certain that Fenris was actually Leto,
which was disturbing.  He couldn’t be sure though, but it seemed…  Well, more
than likely.  Leto had won the tourney, had undergone the Ritual; Fenris had
been the end result.  Fenris was his uncle.  Shaislyn made a face at that
thought.  He was as much his uncle as the man that raped his mother was his
father.
                Another unsettling thing he found about the book was how
manyslaves—household slaves from the Minrathous manor—died in one particular
year, in the spring.  He wasn’t through the book yet, but he noticed it—old,
young, they all died.  The book never stated why or how of the deaths, just
that they died and it was almost worse that way, because it left the half-elf
to wonder.  It was the year and season he had been born, and it made him very
uneasy.  The sheer number of slaves that had died…  It was either a sudden and
dreadful disease or…  He dared not think of what else it could be.
                When he had told Lura to sell him, back then, he had not
understood what he had risked.  He had been very fortunate that Vanessa had
been a kind-hearted woman that had cared for him, and not a cruel mistress that
would beat him.  There were masters like that.  And there was not enough magic
in the world to help everyone—or, sometimes he felt, anyone.
                He left the book in his mother’s quarters—he put it behind her
dresser when she had gone in the morning.  Shaislyn usually slept on the floor
when he wasn’t somewhere else.
                This morning, he needed to go to his lessons, so he left town,
stayed for a couple of days with his sword master, and, as was his custom, left
for a few more days—an agreement the two had worked out.
                When he came back, his mother had the book in her lap, and
tears in her eyes.
                He stopped in the doorway, staring at her.  A part of him was
frightened by what she might say, another part anxious for it.  And he still
feared she might destroy it.
                “Where did you get this?” she whispered.
                “I stole it,” he confessed.
                She looked up at him as he shut the door behind him.  “You
steal a great many things, don’t you, Shai?”
                The half-elf was silent on the matter.  Rather, he said, “I
wouldn’t have had to steal that if you would just tell me when I’d ask, but you
never did.”
                She stared at him.  “Why do you want to know so badly?”
                He looked at her, aghast.  “Why wouldn’t I want to know who my
own father is?”  His voice sounded hurt.  “Why wouldn’t I want to know about
any family I might have left?”
                “Your uncle, I presume,” she said with a sigh, and looked back
at the book.
                Shaislyn shrugged a shoulder.  “And my twin.  Did you even give
her a name?”  He swallowed hard.  “How did she die?”
                The mage looked down.  “Viscaria.  My brother and I decided on
it.”  Varania looked at him, and shook her head.  “It was a long time ago.  You
were infants, and you were born in a dirty little shack.”  She looked down at
the book in her lap.  “She just didn’t make it—you did.”
                His jaw set.  “She got sick.”  He didn’t know why he couldn’t
believe it was as simple as that.  Maybe because his mother was a mage.  Maybe
because she avoided eye contact when she said it.
                “Yeah,” she said bluntly.  She paused.  “She was born deaf, you
know.”
                Shaislyn blinked.  “Deaf?” he inquired, pronouncing the word as
if he had never uttered it before.  He blind and she deaf?  That was… so sad.
                “I wouldn’t have known what to do with her anyway,” she said
simply, as if that were that.
                The boy was appalled.  “You could try to love her,” he
snapped.  His mother blinked in surprise, and looked up at him as if she had
never quite seen him before.  He shook his head, pained.  “You could try to
love me.”
                “I do love you, Shaislyn,” she insisted, but he heard the
question in her voice:  A wavering tone as she tried to assure herself of it. 
It was something no child should have to hear his mother utter.  And even
though it was what he already knew, it was bitter to hear aloud.
                He shook his head a little.  “What’s my uncle’s name again?”
                “Leto,” she answered softly.
                He nodded, and crossed his arms, then uncrossed them.  He
shifted from one foot to the other in the uncomfortable silence.  “What’s my
father’s name?”
                She didn’t answer, and looked back down at the book.  She
sighed, and rose from the bed she was sitting on.  She went to Shaislyn and
thrust the book into his hands.  He looked down at it.  She pointed to her name
in it.  He looked, and his own name, that of his sister—Viscaria.  There was
Mieta, and Leto even.  He traced the figures, but there was no mark detailing
who his father had been.
                “His name is in this book,” she said, as if the words were
being forced from her.
                Shaislyn looked at her, a hint of venom in his gaze.  “Just…
somewhere in this book.”
                She bit her lip.  “Yes, but not in the way you would think.”
                Shaislyn stared at her.  “What does that even mean?” he
demanded.
                Varania turned from her son, as she had done time and again in
his life.  “It’s late.  I need to sleep.”
                He ground his teeth, frustrated.  He was tired of riddles, and
games.  He was tired of this book, and the names in it.  It was making him
bitter.  And he had read so much of the book and never come across their
names—his family’s was toward the back of it.  He knew that, so far, there was
no connection to his family.  How could he ever guess which one was his
father?  He knew only to look at the ones marked as human, but even that was
enough for him to want to burn the book.
                Hours of watching him scour the book again and again, his
mother constantly assuring him that it was there, but oh so very reluctant to
say where exactly, she finally gave him a clue, “You are looking in the wrong
places.”  And she left for a day’s work.
                Frustrated, he didn’t even know where to begin now.  The wrong
places?  Was there a human somewhere amidst the elven names?  Why?
                He sighed and went back to the beginning.  It had the
magister’s name scrawled on to it, along with a short list of the names
belonging to the hands that had written the book.  He froze, a chill running up
his spine.  A name on this list?  Which, he wondered?  There was the magister’s
name, and four others, which made:  Cillian Danarius, Roschelle Danarius, Raith
Longe, Hadriana Capena, and Annalkylie Danarius.  Well, three of those he could
annihilate right off, because they were female.  But that left the magister,
and the other.
                Well, he may find records of both in Minrathous.
                He put the book away, and flew off for more sword training.  He
slept in his master’s hayloft, and stayed the three days a week he spent there
every week.  Sometimes he would fly home during those times, but he didn’t feel
like it today.  His mother could make this so much easier for him if she would
just come out and say it, but she stubbornly refused, so he wasn’t in much of a
mood to see her if he didn’t have to.
 
                Hadriana had come to visit, and they had been talking for a
long while over tea, on matters of weather, politics, and investments.  She was
seeking financial advice primarily, though Danarius had groomed her well for
most matters, and he let her come to her own natural conclusions.  If those
conclusions were wrong in any way, he kept asking about it until something
better was thought up.
                “I was given the task of overseeing management of taxes,” she
complained.  Danarius kind of chuckled.  It was a horrible task, most often
designated to the newest magister like a hazing ritual.  He had done it before
too; it was an awful bore and a headache at the best of times.  “Couple cases
of fraud I found.”
                “You’re nothing if not thorough,” he praised her.
                She smiled warmly.  “Thank you.”  She looked at her teacup,
because it kept her from staring at the way he kept flexing the fingers of his
left hand—as if it were incredibly painful to do it.  It was, but it was better
than the alternative, which was to not move it and let it grow lax.  “I noticed
you’re paying property taxes outside of the Imperium.”
                He raised an eyebrow.  “Took you a long time to find that out,
Hadriana.”
                She frowned.  “A long time.  I noticed something odd when I was
handling accounts when I was here, but you kept assuring me that it was right. 
Anyway, I noticed you have a house in Kirkwall… under a different name.”
                He smiled, pleased.  “Three different names,” he corrected
her.  “One name bought it initially, another name bought it from her, and the
third one is the present owner.  All of which are me.”
                “Why?” she inquired.
                He shrugged.  “I bought it a long time ago.”  His eyes drifted
down to the contents of his cup.  Roschelle had bought that house, actually. 
She had spent her childhood summers in Kirkwall, with her cousins.  She had
said that she wanted their child to visit the place too.  And she had found the
house through happenstance, and insisted it would be just perfect,and it was
such a good deal...  He had kept it all this time, for one reason or another,
consistently burying the fact that it was he that owned it.  It kept people
from asking questions.  Anyway, it also made a decent base for the slaving
company he dabbled in.  Or had, until a year or so ago when he made them stop
going there.  Fenris would just kill them anyway.  Now, he kept up the taxes on
it because it meant Fenris would be relatively safe from harm.  He didn’t want
him on the streets, after all, and anyway, it kept him in one place.
                “Why the different names?” she asked.
                He blinked.  “In the past, because I used it as a slaving
den.”  He frowned.  “In the present, because Fenris lives there and it would
set my pet’s mind at better ease if my name wasn’t tacked on it.”
                Hadriana frowned, then thought about it.  “I guess so,” she
said with a shrug.  “Seems like an extravagant expense.”
                He shrugged a shoulder dismissively.  “I’d be paying taxes on
it anyway, and the company moved on to another region when their sister branch
was annihilated.”  He took a sip of tea.  “And I do like to keep a better eye
on Fenris.”
                “You spoil him,” Hadriana said bluntly.
                “I always have,” Danarius agreed.  He snorted a laugh.  “Too
much, apparently—ungrateful wretch.”
                “What do you plan to do when you catch him again?” she
inquired.
                He set the cup down.  “A few things I’ll have to do—wipe his
memory again.”  He sighed a little.  “He’ll go back to being perfectly
obedient, though he may have to retrain with the sword again.  I hope not,” he
added, making a face.  “Past that, things would go back to the way they were.”
                “Is it really so easy?” she wondered, taking a last sip of
tea.  “You wipe his memory and that’s that?”
                “I’ve been working on the spell,” he said with a slight nod. 
“An… improved version of the original.  Do you want to borrow my notes?”
                “I am curious—how is it improved?”
                “I can erase selective parts of his memory, not just all of
it.  I’ll keep his first couple of years after he woke, but remove the rest—he
doesn’t need it.”  A pause.  “Furthermore, it will actually be gone, not just
forgotten.  Nothing could wake his memories—which was a constant worry for me,
I must say.”
                “Could I borrow your notes—now I’m curious.”
                “Certainly.”
 
                At first, Fenris wasn’t sure that all the work of hauling and
heating the hot water had been worth the effort.  Forty minutes later, and he
only wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner.
                Up to his neck in hot water, eyes closed, steam rising out of
the water, he was as content as could be.  It was difficult not to be.  He
liked water.  Had, really, always kind of liked water.  Running water, rain,
the sea.  The sea was always a comforting old friend.  Drowning had always
sounded so pleasant a thing.
                When was his last real bath anyway?  He had been having sponge
baths for so long, he assumed it must have been… the morning of Kylie’s failed
wedding ceremony, come to think of it.  Had he really gone over three
years—almost four years actually--without a proper bath?  There must be more
dirt than soap in the water.  Making one’s own bath was so difficult though,
and time-consuming.
                He had used to bathe nearly every day.  Danarius always wanted
him perfectly groomed, polished, pretty—like a lapdog, or some kind of
ornament.  It had been kind of nice not to be.  But, there was really no
replacing a good bath, was there?
                The hot water soothed out all his aching muscles, the tension
along his neck he had not noticed before.  He took a deep breath, and let it
out slowly, sinking in a little deeper.  The tub wasn’t the giant concoction
that the master of the house would have—that would have required more work.  He
had opted to use the much easier bath in what would be the guest quarters, as
it had a copper bottom and would just heat from a fire under it, not to mention
he didn’t have to haul nearly as many buckets of water.  When he had finally
finished the arduous task, the sun had long set, but the open window let in the
moonlight.  The glow of the lyrium and the dim moonlight illuminated the
otherwise dark room.
                He took a deep breath, and plunged beneath the surface, holding
himself under the warm water until his lungs burned.  He came up slowly,
breathing deeply, waiting for when he was ready to submerge again.  He liked
the feeling of weightlessness, the feeling of the warm water cradling and
enveloping him.  He waited a long moment, eyes closed, relaxing, before he
slipped under again, reclaiming the feeling and wishing it would last.
                If I were to ever commit suicide, let it be drowning in warm
water, he thought placidly, perfectly content.  Drowning…
                His eyes snapped open, and he sat up suddenly.  Drowning…
                An infant screaming.  Anger, confusion.  Tears…
                The half-remembered images stopped, and faded, receding back
into the dark corners of his mind.  Something about drowning?
                He shivered as if it were cold, and tried to relax again,
letting the memory fade.  He wished it wouldn’t do that, actually.  He wished
his old memories—whatever life he had had before Danarius and the lyrium—he
wished it would leave him be.  He wanted those memories to go, to stop
tormenting him and just leave him alone.  Whatever they were, they couldn’t be
that important, could they?  He was fine without them, he tried to lie to
himself.  Everything was fine.
                Hadn’t he proved he did not need them to live his life?  Hadn’t
he proved that?  Then why was he haunted by them?  What was so important that
his memories would flood his mind and drown him under their torrent whenever
they could?  Why?
                He leaned back in the water, briefly angry that his old
memories would not just leave him be.
 
                Shaislyn’s sword master said his form was much improving, and
one day he might be fit enough to not embarrass his name.   He said all of this
while Shaislyn fended off the swords of two other boys of like age.  The lad
had only rolled his eyes and shouted in retaliation, “One day, maybe you’ll
face me instead of drinking tea in the shade while I do all this work!”  And
with that, Shaislyn parried a blow to the left, dodged the other blade, and
spun to block again.  He turned the pommel of his sword, bashing it into the
knuckles of the second boy, making him drop his sword.  Shaislyn caught it with
his free hand, bringing it up to meet the first boy.  A series of relentless
strikes, and he knocked the boy back, and he held the blade to his throat,
grinning down at him.
                The three were dripping sweat, and Shaislyn was panting, but he
felt like he had just conquered the world.  He was learning how to see from
every angle at once, and move at the same time.  It was invaluable in sword
fighting.  He had first been learning to see the way most people saw—through
their eyes; where he directed his vision most of the time.  But he didn’t
haveto limit himself like that.  A visor would never inhibit him the same way
it did others.  He could see from all around him, and once he learned to
interpret it and act to it, the swordplay had become just that—play.  He still
had a lot to learn, but nothing came as a complete surprise.  He saw every blow
coming; he just had to learn to react in time, and how.
                The boys sat in a semicircle around their swordmaster,
breathing hard as they listened to his lecture on everything each of them did
wrong in turn.  The other two boys were not outwardly cruel to Shaislyn, as he
had been half-expecting them to be when he began here; their master would not
tolerate such behaviour.  However, they did treat him with some distaste, and
were not overly friendly.
                He was used to that, though.  He reasoned that if no one ever
wanted to be friends with him, it just meant there were fewer people that
others could threaten if he ever really got into trouble.
                “Dismissed for the day.  Except you, Shaislyn.”  The other two
hurried off—back home to their families, paying for this training because they
could well afford it.  That may be another reason for the disdain they held
towards Shaislyn—he was not only half-elven, but a peasant too, born Liberati.
                His master rose from his chair, setting his cup down.  A slave
Shaislyn knew to be named Ylia removed the cup and tea tray.  He picked up one
of the blunted training swords on the rack, and turned toward Shaislyn,
standing in the center of the hard-packed dirt training circle.  “Your sword,”
he instructed.
                Feeling a thrill of excitement run through him, he selected a
blade, and barely had time to turn before the older man attacked.  Shaislyn at
first thought to attack, but then quickly realized he could barely defend, even
with his superior sight.  When he realized he was being driven back, he
stepped, and tried to at least control where he was being backed up, even if he
could not control that he was being backed.
                He was sweaty and felt exhausted, but the blows kept coming,
and his arms were shaking.  The blade was getting so heavy…  He hadn’t realized
he had been so exhausted from before.  Each parry was loud, and sent a shiver
down his arms that he could feel in his belly.  The older man kicked him in the
stomach, and Shaislyn fell, dropping the sword.
                His master swiped his brow.  Shaislyn grumbled, feeling put
out.  “That’s cheating,” he complained.
                He shook his head, not even a little winded.  “Not even a
little bit,” he told him.  “When it’s your life or your opponents, nothing is
cheating.”
                Shaislyn opened his mouth to complain that it wasn’t life or
death, then he considered that he would rather be prepared for such an
eventuality rather than not ever have experienced it.  He nodded.  “I guess
that makes sense,” he said after several deep breaths.
                “I think I’ll advance your class,” he said, his lips pursed
together.  “It will be hard.  It costs a bit more, and you’ll be the youngest
in the class.”  He left unsaid that he would also be “elven enough” in a group
of highborn human boys.  But Shaislyn was also used to that.
                “I can do it—I want to learn.  If… you think I’m ready for
that.”
                “You won’t learn much more with those two oafs,” he said with a
shrug.  He and the boy discussed the new times of these classes, and agreed on
a rate of pay.  Shaislyn left, pleased that next week he would be in a new
class.
 
                Shaislyn went to Minrathous, and began simply by asking around,
and eventually, someone directed him to the Chantry, and with some work and a
great deal of sneaking around, he found records of the mages and their
families.  It was easy enough—he just found the most current one, and looked up
their last names.  Cillian Danarius was easy enough; he lived in the city. 
Raith Longe was more difficult, because he found after hours of digging that
Longe was from a Soporati family.  Moreover, the man was dead.  However, he had
died when, according to the date, Shaislyn was a few weeks old.
                It could be him, he thought to himself, and more digging
brought up more details on the family.  There were a few other mages in their
bloodline, he found—just none that ever aspired to the rank of magister.  The
book detailed their hair and eye colour, along with minor other traits—a
particular scar or notable magical talents.  It was fascinating, really—the
last bit anyway.
                However, he was disappointed to find, his family ran to
brunette to blonde.  Raith’s eyes had been brown, his hair blonde.  Shaislyn
sighed, a little nervously.  Maybe his mother had meant something else?
                He put the book back, listened for footsteps, and heard
nothing.  He went to the Danarius family records, and sat back down.  This book
only pertained to the one Altus bloodline, beginning centuries ago; it was a
thick volume, and the cover looked…  Was that dragon hide used to bind the
book?  He ran his fingertips lightly over the soft, worn cover, tracing the
branded family crest.  The crest had been burned into the hide with magic,
rather than with a brand.  It was well-done, too detailed and lifelike for a
mundane item to do it.  He had heard that all the statues in Minrathous were
crafted with magic too.  Magic could do so many things.  He wondered why people
didn’t still use magic to do things like that.
                He flipped it open, turning each page delicately to get to the
still-living branches of the family.  It didn’t take him long before he sat up
straight, a creeping feeling on his spine.  Their family had dominantly blonde
hair with some scattered brunettes—a particular parent had black, and it had
passed to children too.  Twins were also quite common in the family line.
                Shaislyn shivered again, and thought about closing the book,
shoving it back in place.  He thought about just walking away, but he had to
know.
                He kept reading.  A long line of magisters, slave owners. 
Known for cruelty.  He crossed his arms as if it were cold.  He couldn’t be…
                Black-brown hair passed from a woman three generations back,
most often curly.  Eyes were frequently a pale blue in colour, and sometimes
ran to gray.  Well, if that didn’t describe him…
                He looked up the most recent generation, out of desperation. 
Dark-haired twins, older than himself, and two other daughters, only one of
which was blonde.  All had blue eyes and curly hair.  One was a mage, the
youngest daughter.  This was Cillian Danarius’ brother’s line.  He traced the
tree farther back, finding a twin sister of Cillian’s, who had died some years
back.  Cillian had a dead wife too (that one was the “Roschelle” from the
book), no children.  No legitimatechildren anyway.
                Shaislyn swallowed, reading the description a second time, just
to be sure.
                He shut the book, and shoved it back on the shelf.  He sat back
down, and felt numb.  He covered his face, and sobbed once, and choked back his
grief.  He had wanted to know, hadn’t he?  He had known nothing good could come
of it if he confirmed it was the magister.  But…  Not only was his father a
rapist, he was probably a maleficar, a slave owner, and in all ways that
mattered, vile.
                His mother hadn’t wanted him to know.  Maybe there was
something to that after all.  He went for a walk to try to clear his head, and
found himself down at the docks looking out at the sea, knowing Seheron lay to
the north.  He turned from it, and walked.
                He found himself down the street from an address he never
thought he would memorize.  He went to it, as if drawn to it.  He stared up at
the big manor from the gate, through the bars.  Somewhere, in the shadow of
that mansion, he had been birthed. 
                Come nightfall, a cat slipped through the bars, and wandered
about the grounds.  The cat went to the slave compound, and walked amongst the
buildings.  He felt only sadness here, only grief.
                He went to the training grounds, where his mother had once
commented that she had watched her brother practice at swords.  He looked at it
for a while, and went to the orchard.  He lingered by the stream, pacing around
it, then went back to the slave compound.  He sat amongst the little graveyard,
looking at the unmarked graves—little mounds kept only by and for those in
living memory.  He looked at it for a long time, and went to the manor.  He
looked at it, and passed it by, having no interest in seeing what grandeur the
master lived in while his slaves slept in such drab conditions.
                My father is a vile man, he thought for the umpteenth time that
night.  He could never run far enough from that truth.  He couldn’t deny it,
couldn’t make up for it.  There was something peculiar about knowing that one’s
parent is evil.  It made him ashamed, made him feel ashamed for living.  He
felt like, perhaps, his mother was right not to love him.  He was terrible for
existing, for putting his mother through the grief of bearing a child borne of
rape.  She was practically a saint for even trying to love him after all the
pain he had caused.
                And he had never even known.  He felt ignorant, and stupid.  He
felt sorrowful, and hateful.  He felt terribly ashamed and guilty.  There was
no way to apologize to his mother for his birth or what had happened to her,
but maybe he could try to make her life better.  He felt responsible for the
crimes of his sire.  Surely even a terrible man’s bastard child could do
something?
 
                Fenris sat in the library with Isabela and Varric, the two
rogues helping him sort through the books and figure out which were the most
valuable—to sell of course.  Isabela was there out of sheer boredom, and Varric
because Fenris had made some mention of needing the coin, and they got to
talking about what was in the mansion.  For his work, Varric would get a cut of
course.
                “Ew,” Isabela said, plucking a very thick volume off of a
shelf.  “This is the unabridged Chant of Light.  You could bludgeon someone
with this.”
                “Is it worth anything?” Fenris inquired.
                Varric glanced at it.  “Not that edition.”  He sighed. 
“Shame.”
                Isabela glanced at Fenris.  “It would make a fine step ladder.”
                The elf looked at the mold growing in the corner of the room,
the leak in the ceiling.  Outside, it was raining.  All the books they were not
selling would be moved to another room.  Most of them could be sold.  Isabela
dropped the book down on the floor in the smaller pile that would be kept.  It
was loud, and the elf looked at it instinctively when it hit the floor.
                The cover had fallen open.  He frowned, and went to it.  He
knelt, looking at the item pressed between the pages.  Gingerly, he removed the
daffodil—something that looked older than he was, its leaves crumbling at his
lightest touch.
                A daffodil was an odd flower to find pressed in a book.  People
pressed roses, or violets, or things like that.  But a
daffodil?            Fenris turned the daffodil between two fingers, wondering
who had put it there. 
                “Is that a flower?” Isabela asked, glancing over at him.
                “Yes,” he answered, setting it on the table absently.  He
flipped the book closed, and went back to stacking the others in neat little
piles.  He couldn’t read, so most of the work was Varric’s and Isabela’s.
                He glanced back at the daffodil, frowning.  Danarius probably
owned the mansion, he assumed.  Maybe he would ask Varric or Aveline what they
could find out, just to be sure.  Danarius liked daffodils, he remembered
suddenly.
                They were growing in the garden, and sometimes, he would stop
and look at them.  When they were in season, they decorated the hall and the
library, a bouquet with other seasonal flowers, but mostly the daffodils. 
Hadriana had laughed, and said, “It’s such a feminine flower.”
                “Spring is a feminine season,” he had countered.
                “Yellow is such an ugly colour though—it really clashes with
the library.”
                He had stared at her, and Fenris was only grateful that
Danarius had never stared at him that way.  Hadriana wilted, looking distinctly
uncomfortable.  “They were my late wife’s favourite.”
                The young mage’s mouth had formed into a large “O” of
surprise.  She stuttered for a moment, and flushed, and stared downwards.  “I
am sorry.  I had… no idea.”
                “No.  You didn’t.”
                Maybe that proved it was Danarius’ manor.  Fenris wondered what
kind of woman his late wife was—if she would have engaged in his behaviour or
sick delights, or had been a key in dissolving it.  The painting of a woman
that hung in the hall, Danarius often stopped and looked at, but Fenris had
never asked, would never have even dreamed of asking if that were her.  But he
felt like it must be.  He could tell by watching him, watching the way he
looked at the flowers, the way he had visited her grave when he went to the
Vinewood, or the way he stared at the painting, he had lost something when she
died.
                Maybe…  When someone was very close to you, when you cared very
deeply for someone, when they leave, a part of you leaves too.  And perhaps,
what he knew of Danarius was only what was left after that part had gone.
***** Blissful Mistakes and Dark Agreements *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris has some personal time with Hawke, and Shaislyn just wants
     someone to care about him.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                                    Part_Six
 
           That… was easily the worst mistake of my life, Fenris thought,
listening to the mage walk down the stairs.  He heard the front door click
shut, and he rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, as if to
suffocate himself.
            One moment, they had been talking…  He had confessed that he
thought Hawke was attractive.  The mage had propositioned him…  Fenris had
never particularly felt wanted, not in a way that he knew was healthy anyway. 
And, after enough time, he didn’t believe he ever would, because there was
nothing about him worth wanting.  Danarius had told him that “no one will ever
appreciate you the way I do” and the elf even believed him, because it had
always been true from what he could tell.  And yet, Hawke seemed interested,
and he was at first skeptical.  Was Hawke teasing him somehow?  Was it because
he was a mage, and Fenris was so… interesting to mages?  Yet even so, the
thought of being held by someone, his body crying out for another person, and
the man had been there…
            He had at first declined, ultimately deciding that perhaps Hawke
didn’t really mean what he had said and that he had misinterpreted.  There was
also the distant, nagging feeling that perhaps the man was teasing him and he
was too unversed in social graces to catch on to it.  Hawke made as if to go,
then turned around, smiled at him, and didn’t say a word.  He just walked back
to him, and pushed his lips against his.  Fenris had been alarmed at first,
surprised really.  Hawke hadn’t been teasing, and he hadn’t misinterpreted his
meaning, and that was relieving to the elf.
He opened his mouth to his tongue, his arms wrapping around him, the ever-
present knot of tension in his stomach unwinding.  Letting go of all of his
inhibitions and tension, and fear, had felt too good to give up.
            He felt safe then.  Like there were no hunters after him, no
Danarius.  Nothing but Hawke, and he wanted it to stay that way.  And, Maker,
had he ever wanted it!  He had been dreaming of what sex would be like for
years, been dreaming of someone wanting him like that for years, and wanting
them back the same way.  It was what he had wanted—almost everything he had
wanted.
            The armor had been the hardest parts to get off quickly, but the
pair managed it.  Pieces of it still lay scattered across the floor, where it
was likely to stay, at least until morning.
            They had gotten to the bed, half-dressed, moaning desperately
against one another’s mouths.  Fenris tasted like expensive wine, and Hawke
tasted vaguely smoky, and a little like he had been to the bar before he had
come to visit him; Fenris could taste the cheap whisky on his tongue.
            Once they got to the bed, the pair struggled out of their clothes,
reluctant to break the kiss, but desperately needing to feel one another’s skin
against theirs.  Fenris wanted the comfort, wanted the connection to another
person.
            A brief struggle of dominance—the two of them grappling, groping,
all the while kissing savagely.  Hawke kissed his neck, and bit down.  On a lot
of people, it might have made them cry out in pain.  Fenris had crumpled back
against the bed instead, his legs wrapping willingly around Hawke’s hips,
breathing hard.  It had bruised, and Hawke had left other marks too.  He had
bitten him more after seeing his initial reaction, licked him, most of all
kissed him.
            The elf was near-desperate when Hawke finally went down past his
hips, leaving trailing kisses along his thighs, his fingers just teasing him. 
He lapped his tongue along the lyrium that etched his skin, following it back
to his crotch, and up to the tip of his erect member.
            Fenris shuddered, fingers digging into Hawke’s hair, pulling him
down on him until the mage gagged, easing when he realized Hawke was
struggling.  He himself did not have much of a gag reflex, and it had never
really occurred to him that other people might not be the same.  He cried out
at the movements of the mage’s tongue, and louder when his fingers met his
mouth.  The human’s eyes opened, watching Fenris’ expressions as he did, and
was pleased with what he saw.
            He wet his fingers with his tongue, and moved his hand between the
elf’s legs.  He noticed the brief tension, and made a note to be slow.  He
pushed his fingertip against him but gently, watching Fenris for a reaction. 
The elf had tensed visibly, still obviously aroused, but definitely tense, as
if he expected it to be painful.  He closed his eyes again, and licked, sucked,
and kissed him until the tension eased, and he pushed one damp fingertip into
him, and waited.  Fenris kind of made a noise—something uncertain.  Hawke’s
eyes opened again, watching as he lapped his erection.
            He eased one finger in, and moved slowly, gently.  Fenris half-
expected it to be painful, because that was what he was experienced with, but
it wasn’t.  It wasn’t humiliating, or painful, or even about dominance—Hawke
just wanted him.  And, so much more than that, the elf felt the same way.  He
waited until Fenris was ready for two.  His back arced, fingers twining in the
sheets, a small moan escaping his lips despite the way his breathing came in
shuddering breaths and the way his throat felt constricted.  He fell back
against the bed, staring up at the ceiling.  Hawke’s tongue ran along him, and
he shivered.  The tension drained from his thighs; it didn’t hurt, and it never
had to, and it wasn’t a guarantee that it would.  Hawke waited until he could
take three, and by then the elf leaned forward, and whispered, in the most
seductive voice Hawke could imagine, “I’m tired of your fingers.”
            “You’re a demanding lover,” Hawke said, taking the opportunity to
kiss him.  Fenris could taste himself on Hawke’s mouth, and pulled him back
down on top of him.  Fenris trailed his fingers through Hawke’s chest hair,
down to the coarse hair between his legs, his fingers dexterously toying with
his dripping cock before he drew him close.  He shifted himself, and tilted,
and the pair worked to ease the mage inside him.
            Fenris’ back arched, and he moved against him, urging him faster
and harder, his fingernails digging almost painfully into the mage’s back, his
leg rubbing against his, sometimes his teeth nibbling against his neck and
shoulders.  The mage kissed him savagely as he pounded into him.
            Fenris never thought about the rape.  Never even thought about any
of that.  It was so, so different from what he had experienced before that it
wasn’t even comparable.  It was like two completely different acts and they
were so unalike that one could not be compared to the other.
            “My shoulders are bleeding,” the mage grumbled against his ear, his
tongue lapping along it.
            Fenris’ answer was to move his head, and licked the blood off of
his shoulder.  The mage scowled, plunging into him hard enough to shift both of
them further up the bed, and again, and again.  The elf’s fingernails bit into
his shoulders.  The mage grabbed both of his wrists, pinning them to the bed. 
The elf raised an eyebrow, his lips curving into a half-smile as he took a
deep, shuddering breath.  Hawke kissed him, pounding into him with a vengeance.
            Fenris wanted to move, to touch him, to feel the corded muscle of
his back and chest, to run his hands over his buttocks, feel his thighs tense
to the motions of his thrusting, and being denied that almost felt as good.  It
may have even continued until they were finished, except that Fenris was
stronger than Hawke when it came down to brute strength.  The elf pushed back,
rolling with the mage until he was on top of him.  The elf smirked down at him,
and leaned down to kiss him, then tilted his head back.  He arched his back,
riding him like there was nothing else, and didn’t care about anything else.
            The lyrium sang.
            The light from the lyrium cast the walls in an eerie glow.  Fenris
barely noticed, but Hawke did.  However, rather than be frightened of it, he
wanted to touch him, to feel him.  Curiosity or a death wish, Fenris meant him
no harm, and he had enough control over it now that Hawke was in no real
danger.
            As Fenris writhed atop him, the mage touched him—everywhere, and
wished he could touch every part of him at once and was only frustrated that he
could not.  The elf’s fingers wrapped around the headboard to support himself,
staring into the other’s eyes at some times, eyes closed at other times.  Hawke
struggled somewhat awkwardly upwards, arms wrapping around him, kissing him
with wanton passion.  Fenris shifted, his legs wrapping around his hips, one of
his hands against his shoulder, the same motion in a slightly different
position.
            By some miracle of happenstance, they both came together, their
lips pressed firmly against the other’s, tangled in one another’s arms.  Their
sweat slickened their bodies, hair plastered to their face and they panted,
throats dry.  They lay in one another’s arms for a while, just listening and
breathing.
            Hawke took a deep breath and commented, “I never would have guessed
that you were circumcised.”
            “Indeed.”
            The mage sat up partway, looking at him—at his face, that is.  “Is
that a common practice in the Imperium?”
            “Not particularly,” Fenris admitted.  He had woken after the Ritual
circumcised.  He had no idea if his parents had made the decision, or if for
some reason his master had.  It seemed an odd thing either way, but he hadn’t
ever given it much thought.  Danarius claimed that he was the one to have given
the order, but he wasn’t sure how far he could trust him—and his master had
been drunk when he had said that anyway.
            Hawke ran his hand down the elf’s chest, down to the subject at
hand.  He looked down, smiling a little as he ran his thumb along his limb
member.  Fenris looked at him.  “Maybe it was because of the lyrium?” Hawke
suggested, running the digit along the lyrium vein.  He sat up, his other hand
loosely around his own member.  This has some possibilities, Fenris thought,
vaguely amused.  Hawke pulled back the foreskin on his dick, toyed with it a
little.  It was a well-practiced yet somehow non-sexual motion.  “I mean,
look—the foreskin would totally get in the way, and you’re not just
circumcised—it’s like they tried to remove every piece of ‘excess’ skin.”  He
peered back at Fenris.  The elf was half-tempted to pull his head back in his
lap.
            Hawke looked at him.  “Was it like this after the Ritual?”
            “Yes,” Fenris sighed.
            He nodded thoughtfully, but that didn’t confirm much.  “I’ve heard
it doesn’t feel as good when you masturbate.”
            “I can’t confirm that.”
            Hawke laughed, and Fenris smiled.  “Well, you can still masturbate,
can’t you?”
            The elf raised an eyebrow, amused that the mage was even asking. 
“That I can confirm,” the elf said, when he realized that it was a genuine
question.  “Maker, that would be awful if I couldn’t.”
            Hawke laughed, falling back down beside him.  “You would’ve figured
something out,” the mage insisted.  “You would just have to be creative.”
            “Shut up, mage.”
            The man laughed again, kissing him.  “Oh, Maker, you’d be even more
pissed off all the time.”
            Fenris couldn’t help but laugh.  “I would have killed Danarius—a
long time ago.”  The second he had mentioned that it was he that had done it,
years of oppressed sexual tension would have insisted on blood.
            Hawke chuckled.  “I mean, when I was a teenager, I would jerk off
something like twice a day—at least.  And in my twenties, I am not much better,
so I imagine…”
            “I would’ve been pretty sexually frustrated,” he agreed.  They both
laughed again, kissed, their bodies intertwining, relaxing in each other’s
embrace.
            They hadn’t slept, but hadn’t fucked again either.  Rather, they
had lain there, and Hawke had stretched, said his mother would be worried. 
Fenris had watched him dress from the bed, and Hawke had walked back to him. 
He had touched his ankle, and ran his hand along his calf, up his thigh, the
curve of his hip, his waist, up his chest to touch his face and brought himself
in for one last, wordless kiss before he left.
            The entire thing had been a mistake.
            A mistake I would gladly make again, but a mistake nonetheless.  He
shouldn’t get involved like that.  He shouldn’t dare to become attached to
someone, anyone.  He needed to be always on his guard, and he had never been
more vulnerable, and he knew that.
            And he shouldn’t trust Hawke enough to have sex with him.  He was a
mage.  How quickly would even the best mage become an abomination?  Look at
Anders—truly, all he wanted to do was help people; he was a doctor at heart. 
But he…  And Merrill!  Innocent-looking, well-intentioned, with every advantage
none of their people had—and a blood mage.  Not to mention Annalkylie!
            He thought of Shaislyn.  Just a child, and all that boy could do
was lie, cheat, and disobey.  He wondered if he were still alive.
            It was just so hard to trust someone.  When he was aroused, and it
was difficult to think clearly, it hadn’t mattered; he had just wanted, and
gave in to that want.  It had felt… amazing… to want someone like that, and
have them want him back.  Being held, kissed, and cuddled was unlike anything
he had every experienced—and the sex…!  He had been subjected to so much
negative sexuality, witnessed so much tragedy, to see what it was supposed to
be, what it was really meant to be, was as beautiful as one of Anastas’
paintings.  He had wanted companionship for a long time, craved it.  He wanted
to feel wanted, and Hawke had filled that void over the past couple of hours. 
But the smoke had cleared, and now he was left alone with dirty sheets.  He
rolled, and the blankets smelled like Hawke.
            A part of him—a dark part that he didn’t ever want to consider but
was always there—wondered.  If Danarius appeared again, and told him to kill
Hawke or any of the others, would he?  That he didn’t know made him want to
run, to hide, to bury the thought away because he couldn’t run and hide from
himself.
            Is it so wrong that I wanted someone to hold me for a while? he
thought miserably.  Just to feel like someone else might care, even for a
little while…  Just to feel protected and… loved…  Even if it were fake and
Hawke cared about him no more than a brief flit in the dark, for a moment, they
were all that was in each other’s world.  What would it be like if that feeling
could last?  Surely, he had had a family once.  He wished he could remember
them.  Had he known his family?  Had he loved them?  Had they loved him too? 
Not knowing the answers was worse than knowing that the answer was “no”.  What
if it were “no”?  What if it were “yes”?  Which would hurt more, he wondered?
            He slept, and dreamed about people he didn’t know, as someone with
honey eyes begged him to remember her.  He didn’t.  She begged and begged, and
cried when he didn’t remember her, but he could not remember her.  She had
thrown her arms around him anyway, and wept, burying her face against his
shoulder, and he wished with everything he had that he could lie to her and
tell her that he remembered.
            So he did.  “I remember you,” he lied.  “I remember everything.”
            She had wept harder then.  “No you don’t.  I love you.”
            He forgot most of the dream when he had woken, only remembering the
way she had wept, and a desperate desire to calm her, and that faded too with
the morning dew.
 
            Shaislyn leaned against the rail on the footbridge, watching the
still waters down below, listening to the crickets.  It was always the same,
day after day.  At practice, the other boys would bully him for being half-
elven.  He tried not to let it bother him, but it did.  He couldn’t help that,
no more than he could help that his eyes were blue and his hair was black. 
Adults would say snide things too from time to time, and he did notice people
stare at him, sometimes even pointing.
            It had been easier when he had been a child, but now he realized
that that was only pity.  Pity had been what motivated people to be nice to
him, to let him run errands and do odd jobs.  It was harder now.  He looked at
the pearl necklace in his fist, and slipped it back into a pocket.  He didn’t
want to be a thief, not really.  It sounded like a life of hardship, when it
came down to it.  And it wasn’t like he could save up a bunch of it and then
buy property one day and just live out his life as a retired thief; he wasn’t
allowed to own property… he wasn’t really a person, by any law.
            Liberati were allowed to own property, but they were not exactly
Imperial citizens, and there wasn’t a word for what Shaislyn was in the
Imperium.  If that weren’t bad enough, half-elves were even lower on the social
scale than elves.  It just wasn’t possible for him to be anything else.
            People would always cheat him, treat him like scum, laugh behind
his back, whisper to one another as he passed.  Always.
            He looked at his reflection, and wanted to change it.  But how he
looked was like a uniform he could never take off.  He could not conceal it,
not truly, though the effort had always been made.  He hadn’t used to feel
especially ashamed of being half-elven, but he did when he discovered all the
things he could never have that everyone else simply took for granted.  People
had been trying to manipulate, bully, and use him for years.  Humans, because
he was elven enough, maybe even lower.  Elves, too, because he did not fit in
there either.  But it wasn’t just humans and elves that were the problem.  No,
he had gone to both races looking for work and found nothing, his imagination
leaving him with images of the proprietors laughing as he left—at the
preposterous idea of a half-elf seen working for them under the close scrutiny
of the public eye.  What a scandal that would be!
            But dwarves, too, would not hire him, and for the same reasons!  He
would make their human and elven customers alike feel uncomfortable, if he were
seen only for a moment, he would raise questions.
            It wasn’t that Shaislyn had not tried to fit in, had not tried to
get a real job, a home, a life—of any kind.  What did that leave him?  They
would not even accept him into the military unless he sold himself as a slave. 
He couldn’t be hired out as a mercenary either.  Apparently, he made people
uncomfortable with his presence, and it did nothing to inspire camaraderie.
            Was it such a vain hope that someone, someday, would take pity on
him and give him the opportunity to prove that he can be a working, productive
member of society?  Why?  Why was it that when he tried, desperately, to be a
productive citizen, no one would give him the chance?  They all looked at him,
as if to say “Go away, you worthless piece of shit, you disgusting deformity”. 
And he often feltlike that was all he was, all he could ever be.  Slowly, it
made him ashamed of who he was, and how he looked, in a way he had never quite
felt before.  And every day, he had to face it, and every day it was hard to do
it.  Maybe that was why being an animal was so much easier.  Maybe it was why
shapeshifting came so naturally to him, because he did not care very much for
his birth form.
            No matter the hardships, though, he had to keep going.  He always
tried to think, It doesn’t matter what they think; I can fly and they never
will.  But the sad truth was that he craved companionship and a life and could
not attain either.
            A last-ditch effort to make something of himself had led him to the
Grey Wardens, but they, too, would not take him.  They had sat down with him
and talked for a long time, asked him questions, and he was frank about it and
tried to be honest.  They would accept thieves and murderers, take people
against their will, and lead them all to almost certain death.  But they
wouldn’t take Shaislyn.
            He had demanded to know why, and harried the man until he told
him.  “You won’t take orders.  You look for fights wherever you go, because you
expect to find them.  And nothing about you tells me that I can trust you.”
            At least it was better than his bloodlines, but what did any of
that mean anyway?  Why was Shaislyn “untrustworthy” in his eyes?  They didn’t
care about thieves overmuch, and Shaislyn was no murderer.  He remembered
Mahkerin’s words:  Murderer.  At least… he didn’t think so.
            Every bridge in his life was closed—all except the thievery, so
that was what he did.  What choice did he have?
           
            Time passed.  Neither the mage nor the warrior really mentioned
that night to one another.  A glance here and there, but that was all.  Hawke
came over once, after he had moved into Hightown—his expedition had turned out
well for him.
            They had talked for a little while, even laughed.  It was getting
easier to laugh again.  Or, was it again?  He couldn’t really remember laughing
in his life.  He remembered laughing with the Fog Warriors, the smugglers, a
little with Anastas, but before that?  He couldn’t recall a time.
            Hawke spent a lot of time with Fenris at his mansion, fulfilling
his promise to teach him how to read.  He listened to Fenris sound out words,
felt like kissing him when he took to it so well, so he did.  The elf wanted to
learn, and Hawke was a bit… surprised at his ability to learn.  He absorbed
facts like there weren’t enough of them, soaking up any new information like a
sponge.  Missing so much of his memory he may be, but he had such a superb
memory Hawke only wondered how he could have forgotten so much.  He commented
as much, once.
            Fenris replied, “Not being able to read meant I had to memorize
anything I needed to remember—that’s all,” he said, and looked back at the
book.  “Hawke, I’m having trouble with this one.”
            Hawke looked over his shoulder.  He leaned down, peering at the
print.  “Orlesian words are hard,” he agreed.  “I have no idea what it says, or
how to pronounce it, but that mark—“  He pointed. “--usually means there’s a
translation…”  He pointed at the bottom of the page, leaning closer.  “Here.”
            Fenris turned his head and began to thank him, and stopped.  The
mage leaned the rest of the way forward, catching his lips in his.  Fenris
dropped the book in his lap, forgetting utterly about whatever he had been
reading a moment ago.
            They kissed for a long time, and the hour grew later, and their
clothes became more unbearable.  Of course they did more than simply kiss;
hands could not help but stray.  Half-dressed, they continued to kiss, to touch
one another.
            Hawke shoved Fenris back against a low dresser in his haste.  He
grunted with the impact, and kissed him harder.  His lips against his neck,
fingers on his nipples, one hand gripping his buttocks.  Hawke bit his neck
playfully, then harder, kissed him again.  More clothes were kicked and
struggled out of.
            Hawke pushed the elf, a little roughly, back against the dresser. 
He slid onto it, knocking an empty candlestick onto the floor.  Neither really
noticed.  They kissed, and touched, and explored one another’s bodies—so long
apart.  Why had they waited so long?  The timing had just never been right. 
Hawke had left, taking Anders and his brother to the Deep Roads, barely saying
goodbye to him.  When he came back, he was gloomy over the loss of Carver to
the Wardens, and then he was so busy reclaiming the mansion in High Town and
his own affairs, they barely even spoke.  It didn’t matter any longer.
            The dresser was really just the right height, when the act finally
began.  It rattled, and banged against the wall—a sound that seemed scarcely
audible between the moans and cries of the pair, the wet sound of their
lovemaking.
            The dresser finally tilted.  Alarmed, Hawke backed up a pace, and
Fenris dropped to the floor, standing erect.  Hawke smiled a little; the elf
flushed.  Back in one another’s arms, and a fair distance to the bed, and still
so much to be done.
            Hawke kissed him.  Kissed his neck, his chest, his shoulders.  He
twisted around him and kissed his back, trailing his fingers along his waist,
his other hand slipping to his front.  His fingers grasped him, wet and
needful.  He—gently—shoved him, bending him over the dresser.  He kissed his
neck again, his shoulder.  His beard scratched against his skin.
            Fenris’ fingernails scraped along the wood as his hands clenched
into fists.  Eyes shut.
            Danarius had always taken him like this.  Danarius had been just as
eager to do it too.  So careful not to hurt him, but so eager to take him.  His
beard had scratched against his skin the same way.  And he was a mage too… 
They were almost the same height…  He had…  His mouth felt dry.  Hawke kissed
his neck, completely unaware of the elf’s inner turmoil.  His stomach twisted,
and he couldn’t…  He couldn’t do this any longer.  Maybe never again.
            He twisted, and shoved the mage back, away from him.  The act
shoved his own past away, the way he had wanted to shove his master away.  And
he tried to shove the memory back the same way.
            Hawke looked at him.  “What…” the question formed, but went unsaid.
            Fenris couldn’t even bear to look at him.  “I can’t,” he whispered,
backing up a pace, away from the dresser.
            Hawke took a step toward him, his hand reaching out.  His
fingertips brushed Fenris’ arm.  The elf was caught for a moment between a
desire to step into his arms, and a desire to run from the embrace.  He shifted
away from the mage’s touch instead, still unable to meet his eyes.  “Fenris?”
            The elf shook his head a little.  “It’s nothing.  I just can’t…  I
can’t do this.”  He stared downwards, his eyes wide, heart pounding like a
drum.  Something similar to terror ran through him.
            Hawke’s arm dropped away numbly, and he stood there, confused.  He
could only wonder what he had done wrong.  “What…  Is it something I did?  Or
said…”
            Fenris looked at the floor, at his clothes.  He would feel better
if he were clothed, he decided.  And alone.  Very alone.  He took a deep,
shuddering breath, trying to calm his racing heart.
            The elf turned away from him, and pulled a blanket off of one of
the sofas.  He wrapped himself in it, feeling a little less vulnerable for
that.  He still could not bear to look at Hawke.  “…  It’s nothing,” he lied,
but he was shaking.
            Hawke was silent for a long moment.  “What’s wrong?”
            Fenris glanced at him, once, cringed, then looked back down.  He
was briefly angry, then it died.  But Hawke, at this point, deserved to know. 
“Would you still want me if you knew what happened to me?”
            “Yes,” Hawke said, and did not even think about the answer.
            His green eyes flicked upwards again, and stayed looking at the
man.  It took some amount of effort.  “I’ve been… taken… by another man…”  His
eyes flicked back downwards.
            Hawke was silent for a time as he came to realize, with a sickening
feeling, what Fenris meant.  The silence was excruciating for both of them.
 “I’m sorry,” Hawke said, at a loss for words.  He knew a mere “I’m sorry”
would never make something like that better, but he just didn’t know what else
to say.  What can one say to someone who confessed to being molested?  He had
not been prepared for such a confession.  They had been so intimate one moment,
and then it had moved to this so suddenly.  Was it right to go to him?  Was it
right to keep his distance—after all, he had pushed him away?
            “If you tell anyone, I will kill you,” Fenris added, almost as an
afterthought.
            “I won’t,” Hawke said, voice soft.  “I wouldn’t.”  Another pause. 
“But…  We’ve… been together before…”
            The elf looked back at him.  “On the bed.  Face to face.”
            Cruel understanding suddenly flooded Hawke’s mind.  Guilt followed
it.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean…  I didn’t know…”
            Fenris looked at him, his lips pressed into a thin line.  “He had a
beard.  He was a human mage, about your height.”
            Hawke cringed inwardly.  Outwardly, he tried to smile winningly. 
“I can shave,” he offered.
            Fenris actually laughed, and it helped with the awkwardness when
Hawke joined in.  Fenris sighed at the end, looking at his face again.  “I’m
sorry; I can’t…”
            Hawke shrugged a shoulder.  “Another time then.”  The both of them
dressed, in an awkward silence.  Hawke went back to him, fully dressed, to kiss
him.  He barely caught the elf’s lips, and Fenris stepped back, and looked
away.  He didn’t look up until he heard the door shut.  A sigh escaped his
lips, and he sat down.
            He did want Hawke.  He knew that.  Hawke wasn’t Danarius; he knew
that.  It had just felt like…  It had been too much for him, that was all.  I
should go to him sometime, Fenris thought to himself.  He had thought he was
over it.  He had thought that—it had happened so long ago—it couldn’t bother
him now.  But it had, and it did.
 
            Hadriana passed back amongst the halls she had left what felt ages
ago, remembering all that had transpired here, all that had happened.  She had
apprenticed here, been raised to the rank of magister here.  …  Had sex with
someone she cared about, fell in love, gave birth.
            Her young son was back at her villa with his nurse, happily
occupied.  She didn’t know what had ever happened to his aunts—one sickly, and
one crippled.  A part of her didn’t care, and another part only felt guilty
that she had simply opened the door and, eyes filled with tears, told them to
go.
            Lysander, her darling Lysander, had been gone so long.  He had a
prestigious enough family name—she had planned to have his child, to take his
name and marry him.  She would have cared for his two sisters of course, and
they all could have lived in the villa together:  Practically an ending from a
fable.
            But…
            They had said it was torture.  Unmistakably torture. 
Someone—everyone strongly suspected Fenris—had cut off some of his fingers. 
The bones had been found not far from the body—picked clean by carrion.  It was
only identifiable as Lysander by the odd few clumps of hair still clinging to
the body, and some tattered clothing… the sword through the arm, pinning even
the half-eaten and rotted corpse to the deck of the ship.
            Hadriana had purchased the sword from his remaining family—it was
theirs by rights, and she was no thief to cheat someone of such a family
heirloom.  She gave them a modest sum and sent them away.
            She laid his bones to rest beside that of the rest of his family,
where they belonged, and she went there once a year.  They couldn’t tell her
exactly when he had died, but she went every year the day he had left, and laid
flowers on his grave.  She had loved him.  She wished she had gotten to know
him better, but she loved him.  And she knew he loved her too.
            She kept all of his letters—every one.  She wondered if he had ever
received her last letter.  She knew that she had nearly read the words off of
his letters, and she knew them all by heart the way she knew her spells.
            And Fenris had killed him.
            Tortured and killed him.  He was so young—barely a man!  And that
damned elf murdered him!  It filled her with fury to think of it, and she had
been aching for revenge ever since she had laid eyes on the broken bones of her
lover.
            Time finally allowed for it.
            She came to her former master, and they exchanged pleasantries over
tea.  They chatted of the weather, of politics, and she commented that she was
investing in a mine that promised a high yield this year.  They spoke of these
things for a time, and finally she asked, “How fares the hunt for your escaped
slave?”
            Danarius made a face.  “I don’t have the time for it, but I know
where he is at least.”
            She raised an eyebrow.  “And what occupies your time so, that you
cannot go after your prized possession?”
            He sighed, leaning back in his chair.  “Old age,” he admitted
dryly.  “Family matters.”  He paused.  “That if I don’t come back, my greedy
nephew will fight you tooth and nail for the manor and my estates.”
            “Not much choice is there?” she said, knowing full well that she
was the named heir in the will.  “Do you really think Fenris would kill you?”
            Danarius was silent, contemplative.  “I’m not certain any more, and
that bothers me.”  He frowned.  “On his own, I don’t believe he would.  It’s
that Hawke person I wonder about.”
            Hadriana frowned.  “Who?”
            The mage shrugged.  “An apostate, by the sounds of it.  I’ve heard…
stories.”  He blinked.  “Anyway, Fenris has found hirelings before, but this is
a bit different, I’m afraid.”
            Hadriana watched him flinch as he put the teacup down, though said
nothing about it.  She knew what it was.  Magic couldn’t fix
everything—certainly not the pain in his wrists and hands, not forever.  She
shrugged.  “I’ll get him for you,” she said bluntly, thinking of her dead
Lysander.  She had always disliked Fenris, but now…  Now she just wanted the
elf to suffer—and never stop suffering.  “I owe you everything—I’ll go bring
back your lost pet.”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “And how do you propose to do that?”
            She shrugged.  “Imperial hunters—and I’ll go myself.  Why not?”
            He was silent for a long moment.  “Be careful.”
            She rose to her feet with confidence.  “I will.”  Her fingers
curled into fists.  “I’m not afraid of him.”
            “Perhaps you should be,” Danarius said quietly, so quietly she
couldn’t be certain that she heard it, as she left.  She took her carriage back
to the villa, and immediately went to visit her son.  She opened the door to
his nursery, and smiled when she saw him.
            He dropped the toy he held, his face lighting up with a grin.  He
ran toward her, little arms wrapping around her legs.  She laughed, lifting him
into her arms.  “Mommy!” he cried.
            She kissed his cherubic cheeks, holding him tight.  “Let’s go out
in the garden—it’s a beautiful day,” she told him, carrying him outside.  His
elven nurse, Orana, followed, ever ready to be of service.  She played with her
son for the rest of the afternoon, before she felt she had procrastinated her
duties long enough, and left him in the capable hands of his nurse—a slave of
course.
            Hadriana held a particular preference to human slaves, as they were
often cheaper—because they reproduced more quickly--had less alarming features
such as an elf’s eyes, and were simply stronger, but she had an odd assortment
of elven ones too.  His nurse and a few others were as such.  She felt it was
important that her son quickly learn that elves were lesser creatures than
humans just as quickly as he learned his alphabet, and what better way than to
have a few elven slaves?
            She first saw to the running of her villa—more going over her
steward’s work, really, something she did only every so often.  Next, she
looked into her investments, made sure that the people that she had lent money
to were paying it back.  Those that were not, she sent threats to as necessary,
and on one of those, she made certain that the threat was carried out.  She had
a few duties as a magister—reading petitions mostly, giving them her seal of
either approval or rejection.  All tedious work, but it could not be helped.
            When that was all finished, she went to dinner with her son, asked
him about his day.  Orana took him for a bath, and she began to plan the trip
to Kirkwall.  She debated on it and decided to sail partway there, and then
travel the rest of the way by land.  If she docked, someone might see her, and
it would not work half so well should Fenris be so alerted.
            Planning the journey took a great deal of time, and hand-picking
hunters took longer still.  She relied on a network of spies in regards to
Fenris’ whereabouts and well-being.  He had been in the same place for several
years, it seemed, but he did have certain habits.  Unfortunately, he stayed
primarily within the city.  Except on ventures into the countryside every so
often with that Hawke person, and he had ventured out to guard a caravan to a
neighboring city in the Free Marches once or twice but not often enough to rely
on that.
            Or so the half-elf said, sitting sprawled in the chair opposite
her.  “And you’ve seen Hawke?” she inquired.
            He nodded absently.  “Dark hair, a beard.  Apostate.”
            “Fenris’ new master, I presume?” she said, mostly to herself.  That
was what made the most sense to her.  “Will we need to lure them away from the
city?”
            The boy shrugged a shoulder.  “I’m not sure,” he said honestly. 
“They seem to go out kind of randomly, but usually on one errand or another, to
tell you the truth.”  He frowned.  “But I feel I should warn you, there is a
group of Dalish elves not far from Kirkwall—and they will not take kindly to
slavers, so be wary on Sandermount.”
            “I appreciate the warning,” she told him.
            He rose from the chair.  “That’s everything I know.”  He waited,
and she slid a coin across the table.  He inspected it briefly, and pocketed
it.  “Unless you require my services farther?”
            She hesitated, then nodded.  “Yes, actually.  I want you to come
with me to Kirkwall.”
            He paused.  “Why?”
            She looked at him, into his pale, pale eyes.  “Because, Shaislyn,
if we do need bait, you’ll be perfect.  And because we might need a spy of
your… talents.”
            He breathed a small sigh.  “I’ve no desire to play bait in this. 
However…  How much would I be paid?”
            They haggled, and accused one another of being outrageous, or
cheap, or thinking too highly of oneself, and eventually settled on terms. 
Shaislyn seemed pleased.  Hadriana felt cheated, but what she had spoken was
true.  If they needed to lure Fenris away, Shaislyn was the ideal way to do
it.  Not only had Fenris met him before, but the right word here and there—the
truth—would be enough to make the elf want to go.  A person from his past, a
connection to his only surviving family, and Danarius’ only child.  Yes, if
Fenris knew half of that, he would meet with Shaislyn if they had to arrange
it.
                         
            Shaislyn was spending less and less time with his mother—he simply
did not have time for it.  He gave her all the coin he could spare, to make her
life more comfortable.  He paid off all of her debts, and bought her things in
a desperate effort to get any of her love, and still felt rebuked.
            Everyone that I’ve ever cared about is gone, he thought miserably. 
Everyone who has ever loved me at all is gone, and the one person left that I
want to love me doesn’t.  And never will.
            It was a difficult thing for a teenager to accept, and he didn’t
want to.  I just want to be cared about… by someone.
            But no one really cared about a half-elven mage, did they? 
Moreover, a half-elven mage who couldn’t really do much magic.  He was making a
bit of a name for himself in the Imperium, as a thief capable of things thought
impossible—not by name, of course, but he heard people talking about him. 
There was even a sizeable bounty on the “mysterious thief’s” head.  Some people
suspected, he didn’t doubt.  He sold information to the magisters, but he
didn’t think they had connected him to the thief exactly.  He still had to
dodge bounty hunters on occasion though, and dumping bodies wasn’t the most
enjoyable task.
            He kept the hood of his cloak pulled up to shadow his face as he
walked down into the under city.  The smell was awful down there, but that was
where the fence was.  He made his way there, past thieves and cutpurses, cheap
whores, hungry children, and hollow-faced men and women.
            He hadn’t been to Kirkwall in quite some time—months, in fact.  He
thought it best to avoid the place for a while, but his accent stood out when
he went to Orlais or Rivain, but no one thought twice about it in Kirkwall.
            He spotted the man he was looking for, and stopped short, lingering
by a wall in the shadow, his eyes narrowed.  The dark-haired apostate had just
finished speaking to the fence, and it looked like some kind of business was
conducted; the apostate handed over the gold and turned back to his
companions—a dwarf, a scowling human woman, and one elf he was now quite
familiar with.
            Soon, he thought.  It won’t be long now, will it?  The ship was
well on its way; he had simply gone ahead to wait, and prepare, to scout.  He
waited until the four passed and were gone before he went to the fence.  They
greeted one another, well enough on friendly terms as Shaislyn’s business was
often profitable for both of them.
            “Haven’t seen you in a while, kid,” he said.  “What have you got
for me?”
            “Bit of jewelry,” he said with a shrug.  “An enchantment on one of
them.  Ah, and this book.”
            He looked at the items, and they did a bit of haggling between some
friendly talk.
“I won’t pay more than twenty silver for this,” he said, looking at a ring.
            Shaislyn scoffed.  “The gold in it is worth more than that.  I
stole that off an Orlesian noblewoman’s fingers.”
            “Which Orlesian noblewoman?” he inquired skeptically.
            Shaislyn smirked.  “Look at the seal a little closer.”
            The man looked at it, frowning, and then his eyebrows raised.  “All
right, fifty.”
            The half-elf stared at him flatly.  “Do you know how hard it was to
get that?  No, at least two sovereigns.”
            The fence scoffed.  “That’s highway robbery.  What am I?  An honest
merchant?  Seventy silver.”
            “Seventy?  I could have just stolen the coin!” Shaislyn exclaimed. 
“Two sovereigns.  I risked life and limb getting that, and you’re selling me
short.”
            His face twisted into a frown.  “I have to pay for necessities too,
you know.”  Then he frowned in thought.  “Just got this in this morning—here.” 
He knelt at his chest, flipping the lid up.  He rummaged about for a while and
pulled a small bundle free.  “Bit tarnished, but have a look at them.”
            He unwrapped the bundle on the filthy floor.  Shaislyn knelt to
look at what it was.  The blades were just a little too short to be called
swords, and were obviously twins.  The hilt of one was fashioned to look like a
dragon, the crossguard the creature’s unfurled wings.  Its eyes had once been
perhaps some kind of gem that someone had long since plucked from the sockets. 
It was white, the blade had the wavy, bluish look of well-forged steel.  The
other was its equal in every way, but instead of a dragon, it was a griffin,
and this one all in black down to the blade.  Its eyes were also gone.  It was
a bit tarnished, a bit dull from neglect, but he could take it to a smith; that
wasn’t a problem.  Shaislyn had never believed in love at first sight—he barely
believed in love—but he was in love with the tarnished weapons all the same,
and the fence, clever as he was, saw it immediately.
            “We’ll trade instead,” he said.  “The blades, for all of your
items.”
            “Done,” Shaislyn whispered, and took the blades.  The fence even
threw in a couple of old, tooled sheathes.  Shaislyn was already thinking of
where to take them to clean them up and sharpen them when the fence stopped
him.
            “Would you be interested in a job?” the man asked, his voice low.
            Shaislyn paused, wondering what this could be.  He had done the odd
job here and there for the fence, but this one had the human man a little
nervous.  “Maybe,” he said.  “What’s wrong with your usual crew?”
            A pause.  “They won’t do it.  Not once I tell them what it is.”
            Shaislyn felt suddenly intrigued.  “You have my attention.”
            “A… client… is interested in the Qunari’s black powder recipe,” he
said slowly.
            The half-elf was silent for a moment.  He had no love for the
Qunari, and would delight in stealing such a thing from them.  He would only
too eagerly sell the recipe to Tevinter.  The issue would be getting such a
thing.  But who better for the task?  He could read and speak their language. 
He could shapeshift, not to mention had become quite talented with his spell of
sight.  “You want me to steal it?”
            The fence gave a slight shake of the head.  “Just copy it.  If the
Qunari don’t know, it’s better.”
            Shaislyn hesitated.  The pay for something like that would be
phenomenal.  It was a close-guarded secret, and every country in the world
would want a copy of that recipe.  But the cost of failure…  His fingertips
touched the old scars near his lips, a shiver running down his spine.  But the
Qunari were in Kirkwall, he reminded himself.  Stranded, or that was what they
claimed.  Cut off from supplies.  They might kill him, but he didn’t think…  It
wasn’t likely that they would try to imprison him.  He would rather die than be
imprisoned.
            “I might be able to get that for you.  Give me a few days at
least.”  Shaislyn raised an eyebrow.  “What’s the pay?”
 
Chapter End Notes
     Sad thing is, if Fenris and Shai would actually sit down and talk to
     each other, I'm sure they could look past their differences and find
     in one another what they both want: Companionship, someone to care
     about, and someone who would care about them in return. I mean, they
     are really more alike than they are different. Unfortunately, Fenris'
     mage prejudice, and Shaislyn's hatred of Fenris kind of get in the
     way of that.
     Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone actually reads my notes, but this is
     the point in the fic where I am slightly screwing with the game story
     (though as little as I can--I just want Fenris and Hawke to have as
     much sex as possible, ok? Is that so wrong?). Just ignore it if you
     don't like it.
***** Unknowing Sins *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris has a final confrontation with Hadriana, which has some
     unforeseen side effects.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Hadriana sat on the deck of the ship, teaching her son about sigils
and spells.  Ordinarily, she would have left him, but he had begged, and
pleaded, and so wanted to go on the ship…
            She would keep him out of harm’s way, and all should be just fine,
she knew.  Still, she would take all due caution; she knew that Fenris had
killed every hunter that had gone after him.  Still, no magister had gone after
him.  And no one half so well prepared.  And the one time he had been caught
and escaped had been because of a serious of misfortunes that had befallen the
ship, the crew, and the hunters.
            Therefore, she deduced that things would progress well enough.  She
would dock in a nearby city and travel over land to Kirkwall, lay a trap, and
simply wait.  Shaislyn was looking into likely places right now, and should
have everything well in hand by the time they got there.
            She wasn’t sure how much she trusted the half-breed, but she would
go over everything herself before they set the trap, so all should be well
enough, she assumed.
            She had, of course, read Danarius’ notes and the book he had
written about the ritual that had carved lyrium into Fenris’ flesh.  The
process was being called “the lyrium tattoo” as a sort of slang term.  Danarius
had first attempted to call it something much more formal, like “the Imperial
Rite of Lyrium something-such”.  Her master had tried to fight it at first, but
eventually gave up on the matter when people went to talk about the process.
            Danarius had only mentioned in two sentences how he had used a
“blood link” between himself and “the subject” in his book, but his notes had
been much more specific.  His notes had likened himself to a continent, and
Fenris to an island—each self-supporting in their own way, but could feed off
of one another.  They were accessible to each other without the “bridge” that
was the “blood connection” but the “connection”—or “bridge”—made it easier, and
safer.  Danarius could use Fenris like a battery for his magic, and Fenris
actually did acquire something out of the connection, but what Danarius had
still been trying to discover.  More intriguing, since Fenris had no point of
comparisonwithoutthe link, he himself would have no idea what it was he was
getting out of the link.  The magister had some ideas, but each one was only a
theory in truth.  Fenris had been tested, many times, but it came to no real
conclusions without a point of comparison.  Any small thing could simply be a
side effect of the lyrium and not the connection itself.  However, knowing
about the “bridge”, she knew very well that the “blood link” mentioned had to
be Shaislyn.
            She wondered if the boy even knew.  She doubted it somehow.  How
could he have known?  He had a queer aversion to ever meeting his father, his
mother had never known much to begin with about the Rite, and he had been an
infant in arms at the time.  Not to mention that anyone else who had been there
was either dead or didn’t remember any of the details of the Ritual, namely
Fenris.
            It was just as well, considering that Danarius had put the bounty
on Shaislyn’s head, and the magister did not want him captured; just killed. 
Hadriana didn’t have to imagine why—the boy’s existence was a terrible scandal
for him, but he did have his uses.  Once she had Fenris safely caged, if the
boy was foolish enough to hang around, she would kill him just as her old
master wished.
            She finished the day’s lesson and sent her son for his nap. 
Hadriana herself felt restless, and wandered down into the bowels of the ship. 
Therein was the re-forged cage that had once held Fenris, a set of manacles.  A
cruel smile graced her lips as she touched a locked chest, a wicked glint in
her eye as she thought of all the things she had kept inside it.
            She had never… practiced such things before.  Not really, anyway. 
But she had brought a couple of books on the subject with her—and there were
many of them, she had found.  Why, it was such a studied topic that one would
think there was some sport in torture.
            Perhaps there was.
            And, after she had extracted every ounce of pain she could inflict
on the elf, she would heal him—every wound.  Every scrape, every broken bone,
every cut, every inch of flesh.  And then do it again.  And again.
            And when she finally tired of hearing him shriek in indescribable
agony, why, then she would call in the huntsman she had brought, and watch him,
ever so neatly, carve the lyrium out of Fenris’ skin.  Danarius had even told
her that, if Fenris could not be caged or captured alive, he would accept the
lyrium.  If Fenris survived the process of the carving by some accident of
fate, she may yet let him live.  She would stopover in Seheron and sell him to
the army to fight—which was a useful enough purpose for him.
            Still, a part of her disliked the idea of torturing someone like
that.  A part of her—a small part—knew that it was wrong.  She didn’t mind
killing people, but torturing them was something else.
            But then she thought of how her darling Lysander’s body had been
found—tortured and broken.  Fenris had done that, she was certain.  And she
would have the story out of him by the end—all of it.  She wanted him to tell
her of Lysander’s every last word, every breath.  She wanted to hear from the
elf’s own lips that he had killed the man she loved, the father of her child.
            And she wanted to watch him suffer for that action.  That wasn’t so
wrong, was it?  It wasn’t wrong to want revenge for someone you cared about. 
And she hated him more than she had known she could.  She had never known,
before she had seen those bones, that she held such capacity for hatred.
            “Mama?” a voice called in the gloom.
            Hadriana turned, and smiled warmly.  “Lys, baby, shouldn’t you be
in bed?”
            “I’m not a baby!” he complained.  He harrumphed.  “I couldn’t
sleep.”
            “Aw, come on.  I’ll tuck you in for a nap.”  She stretched and
yawned.  “Actually, a nap doesn’t sound half bad.”  She put her hand on her
son’s back and guided him back up the stairs, away from the hold and the dark
things she kept in its shadows.
 
            Midnight found Hawke and Fenris walking back to Hightown from the
Hanged Man.  The moon was dark that night, and the sky was cloudy.  It felt
like it was about to rain at any moment.  The odd pair walked silently, but
with the sort of comfort that came with knowing someone for a long time.
            The streets were relatively empty once they came to Hightown, save
the odd patrolling guard or someone hurrying from one place to the next.  As
they rounded a corner, Hawke stopped short, nearly running into someone.  The
cloaked figure—he guessed an elf from the stature—stepped back a pace, flashed
a disarming smile shadowed from the hood of the cloak, and hurried past him. 
Hawke frowned, looking back, puzzled.
            Fenris glanced at Hawke.  “Something wrong?”
            Hawke frowned.  “No…  I just…”
            “Check your purse,” Fenris advised.
            It was good advice, and Hawke reached to his waist.  The pouch was
still there, just as heavy as he remembered it being.  “Have I seen him before,
I wonder?”
            “Maybe a servant?” Fenris mused.  Hawke shrugged, giving up on the
matter.  They continued, and Hawke mentioned a bottle of port that he had in
his cellar.
            The elf looked bemused.  “Are you going to try to seduce me?”
            “Only if you want to be seduced,” Hawke told him with a wan smile.
            A brief pause.  “I don’t know…”
            Hawke shrugged.  “I’ll walk you to your place then.”  But he had
the idea that Fenris was just trying to avoid it.  After what happened last
time…  Well, Hawke hadn’t lost interest, and he really just wanted the elf to
know that.  And possibly fuck him—several times if possible.
            “Ah…  No,” Fenris said, making a face.  Hawke sighed.  “I’d rather
go alone.”
            Hawke rolled his eyes, and bit back his scathing remark.  He
nodded.  “Goodnight then,” he said tartly, and turned, but not toward home.  He
was aware of Fenris watching him.  When he glanced back, the elf looked away
and walked briskly toward his stolen mansion.
            The mage looked up one way, then the other, and went back down the
path.  He didn’t want to be alone.  He was tired of being alone, and Fenris
just wouldn’t give him what he needed.  He wouldn’t be there for him when he
wanted companionship, or even simple friendship.  He wouldn’t be there
sexually, intimately.  He just refused to do it.
            By the time he arrived at the Blooming Rose, it was raining.  He
tossed some money around, and went to bed with the best-looking male elven
whore in the house.
            He remembered all the things he had done with Fenris, and did those
things.  He kissed, and sucked, and touched.  It wasn’t what he wanted, not
really, but it was close enough and it had been so long…  Fenris wouldn’t even
really let him touch him any more.  He would shy away, or get this look in his
eyes like he was really far away even though he was right there beside him.  Or
those pretty sage eyes would close, and he would have this expression on his
face like he wanted to run.  Hawke had touched his hand once, and the elf had
simply withdrawn, averting his eyes.
            He did all the things he wanted to do to Fenris, with Fenris.  And
the whore made all the appropriate noises, did all the things Hawke wished of
him, because that was what whores were for.  They were for wishing it was
someone else beneath him when he drove them into the bed.  Whores were for
moaning when the moment required it, not when the moment drove it out of them. 
Whores were for relieving an ache that he could not otherwise.
            Hawke fell asleep resting his head on the whore’s stomach, and
woke, and took the whore again.  He didn’t even know his name.  Didn’t want to,
didn’t care.  It just wasn’t what he really wanted.
            He left in the morning, feeling he had his money’s worth at least. 
He felt better, sure, but it wasn’t the same.  It wasn’t Fenris.  The elf had
not broken fingernails in his back, nor did he want him so desperately that
they had to have one another.  No, it was just a coupling in a whorehouse.  It
was fine.  Not great, not totally memorable—but fine.  It served a purpose,
which was the most he could ask for from a whore.
            He went back the next night, seeking the comfort of a woman this
time—human.  Something so far apart from Fenris that he could not truly compare
the experience.  It wasn’t what he wanted then either.  Frustrated, he did not
stay the entire night.  He had sex with her twice, and left.  He fell into his
own bed, and felt like a cold dead thing lay in the pit of his being—too cold
to rot away.
            The next morning, he paced about the manor restlessly, stalking
from end to end until his aging mother told him to go outside.  He grumbled
about being treated like a child, but heeded her advice anyway.  He walked down
to Low Town.  He had a pint with Varric and Isabela, then restlessly left.  He
walked down to the alienage to visit Merrill.  Sometimes the elves down there
in that cesspool of a place would stare at him suspiciously when he came and
went, always half-expecting him to be causing problems that they, being elves,
would simply have to endure.  She usually put a smile on his face, and she did
this time too—not anything she did specifically to make him laugh, but he
sometimes felt she was too cute not to smile at.  Aside from the whole blood
mage thing.
            He left and walked around Low Town for a bit longer, pacing around
the merchant shops, staring at their wares with no real intent to buy.
            He passed by a weapon smith, and paused, eyes narrowing.  He took a
step back, and stood in the shadow of a building, watching.  A cloaked figure
stood at the smith’s forge, and the smith held one blade, and another was in
the figure’s hands.  The cloak and the stature looked familiar to Hawke, and he
frowned, trying to place where he had seen the person before.
            He saw a flash of a smile from under the shadow of the cloak, and
blinked as he realized it must be the same person from the other night—with
Fenris in High Town.  He had thought it was just an elven servant, but...
            He could just be picking up an order for someone, he assumed.  He
doubted it, however, when he saw the way he inspected them, and when he held
both of them in his hands.  The figure set the blades down, shook hands with
the smith.
            The figure suddenly stopped, as if he had noticed someone was
watching, but all without turning to look at Hawke.  Very odd.
            The cloaked figure paid the smith, quickly, and scooped up the
blades, stashing them under his cloak.  The figure turned away—opposite to
Hawke, and strode off hastily.  Hawke frowned, and strolled after him, doing
his best to make it look coincidental.  The figure walked very quickly,
purposefully.  Hawke saw him go down an alley, swore, and followed him.  He
couldn’t say why, except that he was bored, and more than a little curious. 
Part of him did not believe in coincidence.
            The alley ended abruptly, sectioned off at an impossible climb.  No
one was here.  He looked around, wondering if he had missed him somehow, but it
was a very narrow alley, and there wasn’t much to hide behind.
            Puzzled, he looked up at the wall that sectioned off the alley.  It
was much too high to climb so quickly, or with any kind of ease for that
matter.  A crow perched on top of it, staring down at him accusingly.
            Hawke made a face at it, and gave up on the matter.  He turned,
deciding it was just one more mystery to be had in Kirkwall.
            Speaking of mysteries, one of the many wonders of the world was not
so very far away, and he hadn’t seen Anders in a while.
            Anders was with a patient when Hawke entered the clinic.  “…  It’ll
be tender for a few more days, so be careful,” he was saying.  He looked up at
Hawke, flashed a smile, and looked back at the miner he was talking to.  “Treat
it as if it were still broken until the pain goes away—about three days, I
should think.  Come back if you have any problems, all right?”
            The miner thanked him profusely, and left eagerly.  Anders glanced
at another patient at a table, gestured to Hawke to wait a moment, and went to
them.  Hawke heard him speaking in low soothing tones as he worked.  Hawke
doubted that anyone so devoted to healing another person’s suffering could ever
be the cause of suffering.
            And he liked watching Anders work anyway.
            The middle-aged woman left soon, and Anders told his assistant to
not let anyone in for a few minutes.
            “I could use a break anyway,” he said.  He looked tired, Hawke
noticed.
            “You’re always busy, aren’t you?”
            Anders shrugged helplessly, but smiled.  “Flu season, babies, cold
season…  It doesn’t really end.”
            Hawke snorted a laugh.  “No, I guess not.”
            They talked for a little while, about their lives, the weather. 
Hawke commented that he kind of missed the food in Fereldon.  Both of them
laughed.
            “Are you still…” Anders said slowly.  Hawke raised an eyebrow. 
“Seeing… Fenris?”
            “If by ‘seeing,’ you mean ‘fucking’, no; he doesn’t let me fucking
touch him.”  Despite his best efforts, Hawke could not keep the venom out of
his voice at that.  “I am still capable of seeing Fenris.  He doesn’t turn
completely invisible, you know.”
            Anders snorted a laugh.  “If only.”  Then he frowned.  “No, I still
think I’d prefer to know where he is, so never mind.”
            Hawke laughed again, then sighed deeply.  “I don’t think he wants
me.  He doesn’t act like it, and I have tried…”
            “He’s an idiot,” Anders said with a shrug.  The quirk of a smile on
his lips begged to be kissed, so Hawke kissed him.
 
            Shaislyn had been watching the Qunari Compound for days, in one
animal form or another.  They had particular quarters that he had managed to
explore in bits and pieces, always careful.  There were so many of them, and
they absolutely terrified him.
            Still, he was reasonably certain of where the recipe was kept; he
just needed an opportunity to steal it.  Shouldn’t be too much of a problem;
all he had to do was look at it, copy it, and be gone.
            He had planned on doing it that evening, but when he went to fly
out and check on Hadriana’s ship, it was docked and the hunters were on their
way.  So, he put it off another night, and went back to her.  He believed, very
fervently, that she should have left her son and his caretaker on the ship,
where it was safe.  But the magister insisted, and ignored his opinions
utterly.  Which, he supposed, was valid enough; he was a teenage apostate,
half-elven, and a thief.  Still…
            Hadriana hired on some more men at the port, and they moved on to
the hills, where they set up camp in an old slaver’s den and waited.  Shaislyn
scouted for them in the city, keeping an eye on Fenris the whole time.  While
the elf slept, he stole away to Dark Town, and told the fence that it would
have to wait a few more days, because he had an assignment.  The fence only
shrugged, and said that he would pay whoever got it first.  Shaislyn nodded
that he understood, and went to get some sleep for the night.
 
Hawke fell into the arms of a whore, he noticed, nearly every time Fenris had
rejected him.  He had tried many times since the last.  Each time, the elf
shied away, or pretended not to notice his advances.  Each time, Hawke had
left, feeling angry, and went whoring.  His relationship with Anders would
require quotations around the word “relationship” and they were not quite at
the point Hawke needed yet, and Anders was always busy anyway.  He knew he
liked Anders, but he knew he could love Fenris if the elf would only open up to
him.  It was a difficult place to be.
            He had even found a particular favourite whore, very good for
taking his mind off of the elf he really wanted.  But she would do—human and
very pretty, she would do.
            The whore knelt on the floor, her arms running up his bare thighs. 
She kissed him, and he could taste the salt of his seed on her lips.  She knelt
back, working out the tension in his thighs with her hands.  “Guess what
happened to me yesterday morning?” she asked in her velvet purr.
            The mage was bemused, and not really listening to what she was
saying, so much as the sound of her voice; she had a beautiful voice.  “What
happened?” he inquired, laying back on the bed.  She climbed onto him,
straddling his hips.  She massaged his stomach, ran her hands up to his
shoulders.
            “I was at my sister’s house on my off day, you see, and anyway, she
had gone out on an errand, and I decided to take a bath,” she began.
            Hawke felt like he knew where this was going.  “Did one of her
neighbors see you?” he asked teasingly.
            She laughed.  “No, silly.  Hey, roll over.”  They scrambled around,
and she worked at his back.  “I had just gotten out of the bath, and the door
was open, since it was just me home.  And her dog.  He’s a big dog, some kind
of mutt or something.”
            Hawke opened his eyes, and frowned.  “Is this about peanut
butter?”  That wasn’t too unusual, so he had heard.  A bit… uncomfortable to
think about, but not unheard of.
            She laughed, paying some special attention to his lower back. 
“No.  Nothing so juvenile.”
            His frown deepened.  Hawke suddenly didn’t like where this
conversation was headed.  Maybe he should just tell her not to tell him.  And,
at the same time, maybe he really should know.  Please tell me this heads in a
different direction, he pleaded silently with the Maker.  Please.
            “I bent over to drain the water, and the dog was there.”  Hawke
froze, eyes widening.  His fingers slowly clenched.  “The dog must have done
this before; he jumped on me—“
            “I have to bathe,” Hawke announced loudly, shoving her off of him. 
She reached toward him, raising an eyebrow.  “I’ll fill the bath,” she said
suggestively.  “You want to act it out?” 
            He blanched, looking at her arm reaching out toward him.  “At
home,” he reiterated.  He snatched her wrists, and shoved them back into her
lap forcefully.  He scrambled out of the bed, and started hunting for his
clothing.
            The whore seemed genuinely shocked.  “The other men liked my
story,” she huffed, crossing her arms under her bare breasts.
            He looked at her, and flinched.  “I imagine they did,” he said. 
Maybe this was a sign from the Maker to stop seeing whores.  He dressed
somewhat haphazardly and grabbed his staff.  “Have a nice dog—Er, day!”  Hawke
dashed away, not even bothering to request his money back.  His hand would do
from now on.
           
            In the late morning on the second day of stalking Fenris since
Hadriana had set up camp, the escaped slave left town with Hawke.  The half-elf
noticed which road they set upon, and he flew back with all due haste to their
camp.  He roused everyone, and the slavers and hunters sprang into motion
fluidly, everyone falling into their places.  Hadriana told Shaislyn to stay
nearby them and watch, and to come back and report if anything went wrong.
            He did.  A crow flew overhead, and watched the goings-on.  It was
shocking to see four people kill so many slavers.  He may have felt it was
justice, too, except that he held no love for Fenris after what that man had
done.
            Alarmed when the last mage fell, Shaislyn winged away to warn the
others.
            He changed back outside the door and stormed inside.
            Hadriana looked up, and her face fell to ash when she saw the look
on his face.  “They couldn’t have failed,” she insisted.
            Shaislyn glared at her.  “Child’s play to them—Fenris has gotten
stronger.”  He shrugged helplessly.  “And that Hawke person is… something
else.”
            Hadriana looked at her son, looked at the gathered few around
them.  “How close are they?”
            “You’ll never make it out of here,” he said bluntly.  “They’ll be
here in a few minutes—it’s not that far away.”  He left unsaid that that had
been purposeful, because they didn’t want to have to drag Fenris that far,
given a choice.  Hadriana held her son close to her, protectively.  Her eyes
closed, and she trembled for a moment, and swallowed.
            “We’ll be fine,” she whispered.  “Everything will be fine.”
            Shaislyn stared at her as if she were mad.  “They will kill you,”he
reiterated.
            She looked at him as if she very much desired to strike him, but
was unwilling to let go of her child, who only stared at the adults and
Shaislyn with great confusion.  “You have to protect Lysander,” Hadriana said,
looking directly at Shaislyn.
            The mage scoffed.  “Can’t someone else do it?”  He looked at the
gathered hunters, what few were left.
            “No,” Hadriana said.  “They have to stand with me against them.” 
It went unsaid that Shaislyn would refuse to do that.  He had no real desires
to die yet.  Given a choice, he would gladly stab Fenris in the back, maybe
while the elf was asleep, but engage him in combat?  He wasn’t that foolhardy.
            Shaislyn looked at the frightened little boy, and groaned inwardly,
knowing he could not refuse to help a child.  “Fine.”
            Hadriana hugged Lysander close, kissed his cheek, whispered
comforting lies to him.  Shaislyn listened at the door, his eyes flicking to
the slaves, knowing full well what was going to happen to them.
            He had best get the boy away before that did happen.
            “Come on—we have to hide,” Shaislyn said, looking at the little
boy.
            Hadriana nodded, and rose.  She beckoned her child to go with
Shaislyn.  The boy looked back at his nurse, Orana, as if he might protest
leaving her.  Shaislyn knew better.  He scooped up the child.  “Come on—we have
to go.”  The front door was no good—there was only one path they could walk
down, and that led straight to Fenris.  But there were other corridors.
            “Seal the door behind me,” Shaislyn told Hadriana over his
shoulder.  He opened it, and stepped through.  He heard the first scream behind
him, and the door sealed shut firmly.
            The boy, to his credit, was very quiet.  He did not scream, or cry,
or ask stupid questions, but he was a magister’s only son, after all.  He sat
on the floor, and stared, and listened to the screaming.  More eerie was the
silence after the screams—the quiet weeping of the remaining slaves.  Shaislyn
had his back against the wall, and listened as the magister and her men marched
deeper inside.  More screaming, more wailing.
            The boy remained silent, but paled, and began to shake when the
silence fell again.  When they heard fighting outside—cries that could only be
demonic in nature, both mages looked at one another, and finally the child
began to weep.  Again, the silence foretold everything, and the child cried
harder.  Shaislyn watched the candles in the room, watched the dripping wax. 
He should have brought a book or something, maybe some cards.
            He sighed, and listened to the fighting.  He sensed the seal
breaking.  Curiosity made him rise to his feet.  He hesitated, and opened the
door, peering outside.  Demons didn’t leave much in the way of bodies, but he
saw the reanimated corpses—or, rather, pieces of them--and he sighed a little
at that.
            He heard battle sounds again, and the door opened enough for the
boy to peer out.  Shaislyn didn’t really think about it.
            “Mama?” he whispered.
            “Don’t you dare,” Shaislyn snapped, half a second too late, because
the boy tore through the doorway, down the hall.  The half-elf could only
barely believe it for a moment, before he ran after him.
            Orana, against all odds, was running down the hall, and nearly ran
into the child.  Instinctively, she stopped him, kneeling down at his level. 
He fought her as he tried to get away, but she held him securely from long
practice.
            “You can’t go to your mama right now, all right?” she said, her
voice gentle and soothing.
            Shaislyn and she shared a look.  “What happened?” he asked, his
mouth dry.
            She held the boy close, wrapping her arms around him.  Her eyes
watered.  “I don’t know,” she gasped.  “The magister just… she killed
everyone.”
            Shaislyn glanced away, feeling half a party to it.  He had known
what would happen.  And he had let it happen, because if Hadriana lured them
away, he would be able to sneak out later, alive.  And if Fenris were to see
him, recognize him, would he try to finish what he had started all those years
ago?  Would he kill him?  Especially because he had been here?  He dared not
test it.
            “I’m sorry,” Shaislyn told her, meaning it as well as all the
things he didn’t say.
            They heard a piercing wail further down the hall—the howl of a
demon in bloodlust.  The girl shrieked in fright, let go of the child, and
bolted past him, down the hall.  He watched her go, wondering where she would
go—where she could go.  All she had ever known was slavery.  How could she hope
to survive?
            He supposed it was none of his concern, but he was concerned
nonetheless.
            He heard footsteps down the hallway, and his eyes opened wide as he
realized the boy had kept going, toward the sound of battle that could only
mean his mother.
            One mage rushed after the other, but the boy had a good head start
on him.  It had gone silent again, and he heard voices.  One angry, one
frightened.
            Shaislyn ran faster.  Lysander was just out of reach.  The boy
raced through the archway, into the room.  Shaislyn grabbed him, lifting him
off his feet, one of his hands clamping over the boy’s mouth before he cried
out.  The drama unfolding held the five people left in the room.  No one looked
back to see a half-elf carry a human child out of the room against his will. 
Everyone was too busy watching an elf kill a magister.
            And Shaislyn was not quick enough to prevent Lysander seeing it. 
He only had so many hands, and he had to restrain him and keep him quiet.  He
could not make him close his eyes too.  The boy went slack when he saw his mama
die, and Shaislyn knew he was weeping.  Was it more horrible that Fenris had
orphaned the child—killed both his parents—and was not aware of it?  Shaislyn
wondered, if Fenris had known that the child was only a few yards away, if he
still would have killed her.  The half-elf feared that he would, even so. 
Shaislyn hated Fenris.
            The half-elf turned, and fled the room, thinking himself unseen.
            And he would have been, had a particular dwarf not turned at the
sound of an echo no one else heard over their own troubles, and saw a flash of
dark hair, a cloak, and a shadow on the wall as Shaislyn hurried away.
            Varric’s eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to mention that a
slaver had gotten away, but Fenris had already left.
            “Hawke,” he tried to say, but Hawke was so distraught, Varric
didn’t think he had heard him.  The dwarf sighed.  He supposed it didn’t make
any difference at this point.
            Aveline looked at him.  “What is it?” she inquired.
            Varric glanced back down the hallway.  “I think we missed a
slaver.  Should we let him get away?”
            “I don’t care,” Hawke muttered, following Fenris out the door. 
Varric made a face, but followed the mage out anyway.
 
            Shaislyn dropped the boy down in the grass outside, and was silent
while he had a long cry.  He sat, and watched the stars, and debated on what to
do.  He ran his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth.  Lysander
continued to cry, sobbing, and occasionally had fits of rage where he would rip
out tufts of grass or rip apart dandelions and other things.  Twice, Shaislyn
had to stop him from setting trees on fire—that was the problem with mage
children who were always given everything; they were spoiled, and had more
power than an ordinary child.
            Still, he had lost his mother this afternoon, and Shaislyn could
not bear to be angry with him.  He knew how much it had hurt when his
grandmother died, and how much it had hurt when he thought he was the only one
of his known family left alive.
            The boy’s father had died so long ago, and now his mother…  He felt
pity for him, but it didn’t make his own problems go away.  Hadriana had shoved
a purse of coin at him, likely to see them both to Minrathous, but then what?
            Therein lay the problem.  Hadriana had no other family, and neither
did Lysander to Shaislyn’s knowledge.  He supposed he could turn the boy over
to the Chantry.  Hell…  If he really wanted to be rid of him, he would take him
to Kirkwall.
            But… no.  He was a Tevinter mage, and that was where he should go. 
Shaislyn would not condemn him to that life.  Even a life in the Tevinter
Chantry was better than a life in Kirkwall’s Circle.  Shaislyn had walked
around it, and looked at the miserable mages, and his heart had cried out in
sorrow.  They were kept in small dark rooms and scarcely let outside, often for
days at a time.  They were taken from their families and never allowed to so
much as write to them.  It was so sad.  It was less than what the Qunari did,
but that did not make it better, and his heart still cried out for them. 
Worse, so many of them were made Tranquil.  There were more nearly every day,
and he wanted to bear witness to such brutality, tell the Imperial mages about
it.  Perhaps…  But they had other things to do, even though it would enrage a
fair amount of the Magisterium.
            Shaislyn spent the evening cooking some of what the slavers had
brought in their stores, but would not let the child inside, where Fenris had
murdered Hadriana.  After they had eaten, Shaislyn washed the dishes, and let
the boy cry himself to sleep. 
 
            Fenris pulled Hawke down on top of him, arms wrapped around his
neck in a desperate embrace.  It had been a long, long time.  Lately, that
first night together was all he could think about, and he felt like…  It was
finally time, wasn’t it?
            It felt good just to hold him, to feel his skin against his, and
know that, even for a little while, he wasn’t alone.  More importantly, tonight
at least, he was safe.  The hunters were dead—Hadriana was dead.  That left him
almost jubilant.  It wasn’t quite as sweet as the thought of looking into
Danarius’ eyes while he tore out his vital organs, but it was still very
satisfying to know that she had died.
            Though even that triumph was almost washed away when Hawke kissed
him, and it was completely gone from his mind when their bodies intertwined. 
Sweat clung to their bodies, dampening the sheets.  They panted, and groaned,
and twisted.
            One position flowed like water into another, Fenris frustrated that
he couldn’t feel enough of his lover.  They rolled, the elf’s hands steadying
himself on the headboard.  He knelt, and kissed him with all the fierce passion
a lost man had for home.  He writhed atop him, using the headboard to steady
himself.  Hawke touched him, his hands never staying in one place too long—too
many places to touch, to feel, to caress.
            Hawke came with a cry muffled against Fenris’ timely lips.  The elf
kissed him harder, the mage’s hands both trailing to his dripping cock.  He ran
his hands along him.  They were rough and callused, but he was slick with sweat
and other things.  He pushed him off of him suddenly, springing over him.  He
pinned the elf to the bed and kissed him savagely.  He nibbled along his lips,
left biting kisses along his neck.  He licked his nipples, and ran his nails
along the elf’s ribs, listening to his quick breathing.  His damp lips touched
his erection, before they covered it.  His tongue lapped along the lyrium, his
mouth pumping back and forth over it, his hands working with his mouth. 
Fenris’ fingers trailed along his shoulder, twisted in his hair.
            The rhythm developed, then increased.  His hand working hard
against him, Hawke lifted his head, and kissed Fenris again.  The elf could
taste himself on his tongue, and he shivered, and gave a muffled cry.  Hawke
broke the kiss to kneel back between his legs, barely in time to catch his
orgasm in his mouth.  He gagged a little at the unexpected taste, and
swallowed, if with some force behind it.
            He crawled back up to him, and kissed him.  They touched one
another, kissing and caressing until they were ready again.  Hawke moved to
take him, and Fenris knocked him back, shoving him back down.  The elf kissed
him into some form of submission, and ran his hands down Hawke’s chest, as
usual liking what he found.
            He cupped his balls in one hand, the other going back a little
farther.
            “That’s…” the human tried to say, but Fenris kissed him, cutting
off whatever he had intended to say.  To the mage, it felt weird at first. 
Weird, and uncomfortable, and he was about to insist that Fenris stop when the
elf worked in a third finger, and stroked something inside him that abruptly
changed his mind.  The tension in his legs faded, and he was suddenly only
eager to try this new thing.
            Fenris obliged him, when the time came.
            For a while, all he could think about was Hawke—how good he felt,
how much he wanted this.  He moved only slowly at first, but toward the end, it
was almost reckless.  Thrust after thrust, he could think of nothing else but
the mage.  And, moreover, didn’t care that he was a mage.  Didn’t care that he
was human, and an apostate, and Fereldon.  He didn’t care about any of that; it
didn’t matter.
            In Hawke’s embrace, he felt at peace, like he was somewhere holy
and nothing bad could ever happen to him again.
            As he relaxed, and his mind was set at ease, in the throes of
passion, it was like a gate in his mind opened.  A lock he had never known was
there turned, and the knowledge of who he had been, who he was, flooded him. 
It was not as if he were stunned to pieces by it.  It was not a floodgate to
have swept him under its current.  Rather, it was as a dry stream slowly being
filled, and when the knowledge floated in his mind, he only felt at ease
because of it.  It was no great wonder.  He merely wondered how he had ever
forgotten it.  How could he have sought so desperately for this knowledge?  It
had been here all along.
            His memories and past had never truly left him; they were here. 
Buried in the depths of his mind, but here.  He smiled against Hawke’s lips.  I
can’t wait to tell you, he thought, moaning.  I want to tell you who I am.  I
want to tell you my name.
            The feeling it filled him with was nothing short of peaceful.  He
knew who he was.  Nothing was missing any more.  He had a name, maybe a family
somewhere and he knew where to look for them.  With the peacefulness, came a
certain sadness.  Some things were best left forgotten, he knew that now, but
his memories were still his own, and some of the people he had known only lived
in them.
            And Lura!  He hadn’t even recognized her.  She had died in his
arms, and he…  But she was dead nonetheless, and he was filled with a peace
that he had tried, that even though he hadn’t recognized her, that he had still
tried to help her.  Even though he had not known her at the time, he had held
her.
            And Shaislyn…  Oh, if only he had known that was his nephew.  If I
had remembered who I was all this time, if I had never bartered my memories
away, I would have known both of them.
            Freedom would have meant more to him, when he had first tasted it. 
It would have meant that he could find his family, and live the way he had once
known, so very long ago.  But without his memories…  He had no reason to rebel
against his master’s wishes.  He had no reason to say “no”.
            But he knew, deep down in his heart, that same contract Danarius no
doubt still held.  A cold pit in his stomach churned at that, and he was even
terrified of it.  The contract held his family’s lives in the balance.  Gone
they may be, but he bet that, if they had survived the fires of Seheron, their
lives were forfeit because of his actions.  Had Danarius acted upon that?  No,
he didn’t think so; Danarius would have given him the option first, to come
back.  He would dangle their lives in front of him, and tell him to surrender,
or they die.  But he may have enslaved them again, and he knew he had to do
something.  Maybe Hawke could help him.  He believed that his family, whatever
was left of that, could be helped.  If Danarius had them, maybe he could do
something, even if it meant submitting, and he knew that, deep down, he had to
if it came down to it.  He had signed that contract, though he couldn’t read,
his master reading it to him, and he had marked it, signing his life away, and
signing his consent to forfeit his family if he should ever break the
agreement.  But he hadn’t known!  However—and this set him at ease—Hadriana had
said that Varania was in Seheron, which meant she was safe from Danarius.  No
news of his mother, but that meant little if they had been there when the city
fell.  Lura was gone, but at least he knew that for sure, and wished he had
known her at the time.  Hadriana may have opted to tell him more if she had any
more information, but he didn’t think she did, which meant Danarius did not
have his family.
            All the same, what was done, was done.  And he was here. 
Blessedly, happily here.  The memories were his own, and for the first time in
so long, he felt complete and whole and truly happy.  So much had happened, and
he felt like everything, in its own way, had come together and a lot of it had
been worth it.  He had been through a lot of suffering, but the end result had
been worth it.  He smiled against Hawke’s lips.
            Thank you, Danarius, he thought.  If you had never put these
markings on me, I’d still be your slave.  My family would still be your
slaves—if not dead.  I wouldn’t be here with Hawke right now.  Thank you. 
Thank you.  Thank you.
           He had never thought, not since he was three years old, that he
would ever be free again.  And he was.  He laughed aloud, the laugh muffled
against Hawke’s neck, and Hawke never guessed the cause.  He felt happy and
peaceful and whole.
            I want to tell you everything, Hawke.  I want to tell you who I am.
            With the holes in his memory filled, everything made sense.  All
the little pieces and details, everything fit together so perfectly.  In fact,
why hadn’t he seen it all before?  If not for the lyrium markings, he would
have died—been sacrificed for whoever had won the markings, and his family
too.  It had been the only thing to have saved them.  And that, too, brought
him a sense of peace.  Everything he had done had been for his family, and if
the cost of their lives was the pain of the lyrium, the things Danarius had
done to him…  Well, it was worth it, because his family meant everything to
him.  And he knew that, if he but asked Hawke, the mage would help him find
them, and he even knew where to begin to look.
            It left one more question for him, though—one that would require a
lot of thought.  Who was Fenris?  Who was Leto?  Where did one end and the
other begin?  Who was he now?  We—they—I…  It’s like I’m two different people. 
Who am I now?  He wasn’t certain, except to say, I’m me.  Maybe he could talk
about it with Hawke.  Maybe Hawke would understand part of the problem, and he
could try to figure out which name he wanted to use.  Leto—probably Leto. 
Danarius gave me the name Fenris.  It’s the only thing he ever gave me for my
sake, and even that was a source of amusement to him—a jest.
            They came at nearly the same time, and lay in an exhausted, tangled
pile.  Sleep was quick to claim them, but for the elf did not stay.
            Fenris woke quickly, as he was wont to do in unfamiliar
surroundings.  He was comforted to find that he was lying in Hawke’s arms, but
something bothered him.  He started to relax, wondering what could be nagging
at him.  Had he forgotten something…?
            His eyes opened wide, and he thought, No, no no!  He had remembered
it.  He had remembered everything.  He had known his name, his entire life.  He
still remembered the peace and joy that it had brought him.  But he didn’t know
why.  His eyes watered with the loss of it.  How could he not remember?  It was
simply gone again, leaving only a raw ache in its wake.  Why had it even
brought him such peace and joy?  He had known that it had, but could not say
why.  He knew that all of his rage and anger had gone, crushed under the peace
he had known when he had remembered.  The worst part was that he knew that,
whatever kind of person he had been before he could remember, that person had
brought him a hope, a joy, a peace that he had simply never known, and he
wanted it back more than he could say.  That he knew he was missing it now was
worse than not knowing that he was missing it.  It left him raw.
            He turned away from the mage, and closed his eyes, wondering if he
could go back to sleep.  Maybe in his dreams, he could reclaim even a small
piece of what he had lost.  His legs curled, arms crossing over his stomach as
if he were in pain.  Of course he was in pain—the lyrium ached always, but…  He
had had everything, and now he was left with nothing again.  To have it ripped
away like that…  It left him more wretched than he had felt before.  He had it
all, and now it was gone again.  Why had he been filled with so much hope, joy,
and peace?  Why had he felt so happy?  What had he forgotten that had made him
happy?
            The aching in his thighs reminded him of how long he and Hawke had
been together that evening.  The embers of the fire had died low.  He watched
the coals for a time, and thought about how good it had felt, how much he had
wanted Hawke.  How much he still wanted Hawke.  He almost woke him for another
round, but he stopped.  What if he remembered again, and lost it again?  The
thought was almost too much to bear.  No matter how good it had been, it wasn’t
worth that.  And it had been good.  It had been everything he had dreamed of,
everything he wanted.
            Had…  When Danarius had raped him, had he felt what Fenris had felt
when he took Hawke?  That thought bothered him, and he found himself shifting
away in the bed.  He told himself it was to stretch, and Hawke rolled over onto
his other side anyway.  Fenris stretched, a little, but was perturbed.
            It had felt good.  Really good, for that matter.  Was that why he
had raped him, so many times?  His stomach twisted, and he suddenly felt
restless.  He got up, and found some water in the basin.  He washed off
briefly, and stood in front of the fire for a long moment.  He put some more
wood on it, and knelt and watched it burn.  He paced, and looked at Hawke with
growing indecision.
            I can’t do this, he knew.  He was afraid to love Hawke.  He was
afraid to be with him, because he was afraid to like being with him, afraid to
love being with him.  He had never known love, only known it as an abstract
concept that he had never touched or beheld, and a part of him was afraid of
the unknown depths of the single syllable and the meanings attached to it. 
What was love, anyway?  Was it worth the pain he felt now?
He dressed, and thought he might be able to sneak out before Hawke woke, but
that proved impossible.  Fenris couldn’t tell Hawke everything; he just
couldn’t bring himself to do it.
            Still, given everything, he may one day tell him; he deserved at
least some of the truth.  But what Fenris gave him was the truth, just not all
of it, and he left before Hawke said anything more.
           
He worked through the night, finding enough kindling and dry wood to build a
fire.  The slavers had some charcoal, and he added all of that to it as well. 
He slept, and when the morning came, he had brought Hadriana’s broken body
outside.  It was cold and stiff, and not at all a sight a child should see, but
still Shaislyn felt he should see it.
            “He killed her,” the boy whispered for the umpteenth time.
            Shaislyn’s teeth ground as he laid the body down gently on the
pyre.  “No,” he snapped, a little more harshly than he had intended.  He
cleared his throat.  “No.  Greed and hate killed her.  Danarius’ greed, and
Fenris’ hate.”
            The boy stared at him.  “He tore out her heart,” he protested.
            It was hard to argue with that, but Shaislyn had had enough, and he
refused to pamper any hatred this boy was developing, even for the sake of
making him feel better.  No, especially because of that.  “That elf is nothing
but a product of what his master made him,” Shaislyn heard himself say, and
knew it to be true.  “If you want to hate someone, hate Magister Danarius. 
He’s the one who made the elf hate enough to do those kinds of things.  No one
would do something like that to someone who treated them kindly.  He doesn’t
want to go back to being a slave.”  Even as he said it, the words stung the
half-elf too; he hated Fenris, but knew the truth in what he said.  He just
wasn’t ready for it yet.
            The boy didn’t understand.  He had grown up with household slaves
being commonplace to him.  Shaislyn could see in his eyes that he didn’t
understand.  “But… that’s what he is.”
            “It isn’t what he wants to be,” Shaislyn told him again.
            The boy stared at him, utterly confused.  “Wants to be?” he echoed,
the idea that a slave had any wants or desires outside of his own a foreign
concept to him.  It almost made Shaislyn want to slap him, but he knew the boy
had been through a lot in the past couple of days.
            The half-elf glanced at the pyre.  “Set it alight.  We can’t take
the body back.”
            The boy hesitated, all of their previous conversation forgotten,
and put both his hands out.  With all his effort, he sent fire into the dry
tinder.  The two mages watched it burn from a reasonable distance, in silence.
Chapter End Notes
     It was a bad situation all around, really. Hadriana dies, her kid is
     gonna be super messed up, Shai is left to take care of him, Fenris
     breaks things off with Hawke. On the bright side, Anders is there to
     catch Hawke on the rebound!
     I included the bit about Hawke and the whore because I felt like this
     chapter needed something funny in it.
***** Confessions *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris is plagued by nightmares while Hawke pursues Anders. Danarius
     tells Shaislyn something shocking.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Hawke pinned Fenris to the bed, laying on his stomach.  Fenris
pulled his legs around him, rolling his tongue along his neck.  He nibbled and
sucked, and eventually Hawke caught his lips with his own.  Hawke’s fingers
were buried knuckle-deep inside him between his legs, and he was all but
desperate for more of him but Hawke was just as content to, seemingly, torment
him endlessly.
            “Twice now, you’ve brought me nearly to orgasm then stopped,”
Fenris muttered against his ear.  “If you do it again, the next time I bite
you, the marks will be permanent.”
            “I just want it to last as long as possible,” the mage gasped,
moaning when the elf stroked him.
            “You’re a damned bastard, and you just like teasing me,” he
moaned.  “Fuck me.”  The last part was a complaint.  Hawke answered by kissing
him back to a relative silence, broken by moaning and gasping.
            Fenris’ other hand trailed along Hawke’s chest, toying with his
chest hair, rubbing his thumb over his nipples.  He knew he wanted him.  He
just seemed to like teasing him more than fucking him—which was patronizing. 
But he knew that wasn’t entirely true—he did genuinely want it to last longer. 
So did he, but…
            Hawke bent, lapping along the elf’s neck, nuzzling against his
chest.  He ran his tongue over a nipple, and took it between his teeth.  He bit
just hard enough to sting, and the elf’s toes curled, giving a louder cry that
time.
            And—that was it.
            Fenris put a hand against his shoulder, and one against Hawke’s
hard-chiseled stomach, and rolled with him, until he was on top.  “If you won’t
fuck me, I’m going to fuck you.”
            Hawke raised an eyebrow.  “That’ll take some time to get me ready,
and you’re already ready.”  He drove harder into him, making the elf’s back
arch, and he moaned, but his hand moved up Hawke’s leg, drifting up his thigh.
            “But you’d rather drive me mad than fuck me tonight,” he complained
between kisses.  He moved his lips to his neck, ran his tongue over a mark he
had already made that night, and lower, finding more marks that he had already
made.  Long scratches from his fingernails over his chest, and he kissed along
them, ran his tongue over them.  He trailed a finger down from Hawke’s neck,
tracing the line of hair all the way down to his cock.  He shoved Hawke’s hand
away so he could move down lower.  His lips covered just the tip, and teased
just as much as Hawke was teasing him.  The mage partway sat up, as if he might
protest, but stopped when Fenris nibbled along the vein, ran his tongue over
his balls, and back up, toying with the head with only the tip of his tongue. 
His teeth lightly teased him, tongue caressing.  He moved his lips, kissing
along the length of him.  His eyes slid closed, and he took his testicles in
his mouth, running his tongue over them, sucking gently, keeping his teeth
carefully away, and listened to Hawke’s desperate moaning.
            And now you know how I felt, he thought, smirking.  He only stopped
to kiss along his erection, and back down, running his tongue back farther,
farther…  Hawke made a noise somewhere between a gasp, a moan, and maybe even a
word.  His tongue ran over him, his finger worming inside, wet by his tongue.
            Listening to the sounds his lover produced made him want him all
the more, made him enjoy the task more.  Another finger when the time came, and
his mouth moved back up, lips covering his erection, and he slowly moved him to
the back of his throat, and back out, and slowly again.  A third finger, and
some more time, and he lifted his head.
            Hawke’s back was arcing beautifully, and the mage stopped and
looked at him, panting.  “You’re damn sexy, you know that, right?” he breathed,
and knelt to kiss him—despite where his mouth had been a while ago.
            He shoved Fenris onto his back, and pushed his dripping cock
against his.  He took both his own erection and the elf’s in his hand, wet from
saliva and pre-cum, stroking both of them, slowly and gently in tandem.  They
kissed until Hawke stopped, and shifted, pressing himself against him.  Fenris’
legs parted, and accepted him into him.
            Kissing was suddenly no longer possible, though attempts were
made.  Biting, sucking, and licking had to suffice, because Hawke’s movements
were too rapid.  The bed shook, the headboard pounded against  the wall and
neither particularly noticed.  Or cared, for that matter.
            They shifted, Hawke shoving Fenris onto his side to pound into him
at a different angle.  Fenris’ toes felt numb.  No, he felt numb all the way up
to his hips, and couldn’t really feel anything past the incredible sensation of
the mage penetrating him.  He couldn’t think either for that matter.  Rational
thought—thought at all—was completely gone, leaving only the basest of his
desires.  Right now, that was sex, and having it, and enjoying it.
            “I love you,” Hawke whispered.
            Fenris could barely make sense of the words, and it took him a
moment.  “What?” he heard himself say.
            “I said, I love you,” he moaned into his ear.
            It took another long moment, a few more moans, and a shuddering
sigh to process this.  “Oh,” he said, and it could have been mistaken for the
rest of the noises he was making.  Hawke didn’t seem to mind overall.  Fenris’
fingers wrapped around his forearms, and he opened his eyes, watching him work,
sweat dripping off of his skin.  “Hawke, I love you.”
            “Couldn’t you at least use my first name for something like that?”
he said between heavy panting, and kissed him before he could answer.
            “Garret,” Fenris gasped.  The man smiled, and he whispered his name
again, then screamed it with another movement.
            Hawke ran his hand along his back, a hand up his leg, perched on
his shoulder, the other one wrapped partway around his hip.  He tilted his head
back.  “Do you trust me?”
            Fenris looked at him, watched him.  His eyes were dark with lust,
glinting with desire.  “Yes.”
            “Good.”  And he kind of smiled, and if he had been looking, it
looked rather like a smirk.  “And, pet?”
            “Hmm?”   He just couldn’t seem to think, but his stomach twisted
for some reason.
            “You’re forgetting the appellation.”  There was something…
different… about his voice.
            Hawke kissed him one last time, and, his hand against his back,
quickly shoved him the rest of the way onto his stomach.  He didn’t even think
about it at first.  Hawke just continued, and it still felt good.
            But then…
            Something… changed.  It just felt different, he couldn’t say why
exactly.  He opened his eyes again, and the bedroom had changed.  Or had it
been that way before?  Because it looked like…
            It felt like his heart had stopped, and the man atop him continued
to thrust.  He flinched, and just had to know.  He glanced back, once, and was
immediately backhanded for it.
            “I told you to keep your head down, Fenris,” his master said.
            The elf turned back, breathing quickened, but in fear.  Why…  Why
did…  What had…  He cried out, half in pain, half in pleasure, and completely
confused.  But…  What had happened?  Hawke…  It hadn’t been a dream, had it? 
Some fantasy?  Why…?  Or was it blood magic?  Some cruel jape?  No.  No!  “No,”
he whispered, and flinched when Danarius pulled his hair, hair that was
suddenly the length of his back.  “No!”  He couldn’t believe it wasn’t all
true.  He had…  It couldn’t be…
            “You’re disobeying me.”
            He was going to hurt him.  Maybe have him whipped, maybe just
strike him.  “I’m sorry, Master,” he whispered, then repeated it louder,
cringing with the appellation.  He wanted to cry.
            He moved back, sliding out of him.  “Roll over.”  He let go of his
hair.  Fenris shook, and decided to accept it.  He couldn’t believe Hawke had
been a lie, but…  He rolled, his eyes flicking up once to look at his master,
his heart breaking.  He had loved Hawke.  He still loved Hawke.  How could…?
            It couldn’t all be made up, could it?  That wasn’t possible…  It
just…
            “Apologize again.”
            “I’m sorry, Master,” he said, his voice turning pleading--but for
the dream to come back.  He stared upwards, his eyes wet.  Had it all been a
cruel joke?  Some blood magic of some kind?  It just couldn’t be…  But he was
so terrified that it was true, that he believed it was.  “Danarius…”
            He slapped him—a relatively gentle slap, more to remind him of who
his master was than to hurt him.  “What?”
            Fenris glanced away, cringing when he plunged deep inside him.  He
swallowed the pain, and the tears that threatened to spill.  Some emotional
pains were much, much worse than physical pain.  “Master.”
            “That’s right, pet, and don’t you dare think of me as anything
else.  So, tell me, I am…?”
            He gave a sharp cry.  “My master.  You’re my master,” he answered,
half-choking on the words.  His eyes watered, and when he squeezed them shut,
the water spilled down his cheeks.  “I’m your slave, your pet.  I’m sorry,
Master.”  He took a sharp intake of breath, and the words just tumbled out of
him, “I won’t ever be anything but your slave.”  It had all been a cruel trick,
and this was reality, and his master had brought him back in the cruelest way,
to teach him a lesson, he didn’t doubt.  But he wanted the dream to come back. 
If it were a lie, he wanted it to come back, and he didn’t want to wake up to
reality.  He would happily live in the dream, and die in reality, if that was
what it meant.  If this was the difference…
            Fenris’ eyes shot open.  He was covered in a cold sweat, and he
realized he had said those last words aloud.  His mouth clamped shut, glad
there was no one around to hear him say it.  May I never have to call anyone
‘master’ ever again, he thought with some disdain.
            His throat felt dry.  All a dream then.  Shame, because the sex
with Hawke had been amazing.  He tried to think on that, to distract him from
how terribly wrong the dream had gone.  He shivered, swiping sweat from his
brow with the back of his hand.  Until the end, anyway, it had been amazing.
  Until he had confessed his love for Hawke.  Did he love Hawke?  He thought
about him all the time, and he wanted him more than anything.  Was that love? 
He didn’t really know.
            He swallowed, still shaken by the entire thing.  That had been
awful, and hurt in too many ways to consider; he was so terrified that a part
of it was true.
            He slid out of bed.  He had slept too long anyway.  He needed to
get out of this manor, get some fresh air, or something.  Like a stiff drink.
 
            Hawke and Anders walked along the beach near sunset, otherwise
alone.  Mostly, they simply enjoyed one another’s company, but Hawke had asked
him to come, because he needed someone to talk to and Anders was the first
person he thought of when it came to his personal life.  No one else would be
so understanding, or for that matter, even listen to the whole thing.
            “I can’t talk to anyone else,” he had confessed, before he had told
him everything.
            “I’m glad that you thought of me when you needed to talk about
it—even if it is about him,” Anders said, making his own confession.
            Hawke paused at that.  Yes, his first instinct had been to go to
Anders.  Anders was the one he thought of when he was upset and lonely and
needed someone to be there for him.  Fenris wasn’t that person, and he
realized, with a sad certainty, that he had simply never been that person, and
never would be.  Even if things had gone differently the other night, he would
still never be that person.  Or, would he?  Fenris had told him that he had
remembered who he was, regained all the lost memories while they had been
entwined.  Yet he forgot them again, and Hawke wondered if the person he had
been with those memories was the same person he knew to be Fenris.  Or would he
be someone else?  Was any of that even true?
He told him that Fenris had left him, told him what the elf had said—or part of
it anyway.  He told him, quietly, that it had broken his heart.
            “I’m good at fixing broken things,” Anders had said gently.
            Hawke stared at him.  Anders would never do something like that, he
knew.  He would never leave him, never hurt him.  But he didn’t want to simply
fall into the other mage’s arms because Fenris had rejected him.  “I just feel…
used, you know,” Hawke went on.  “We fucked a couple of times.  I let him… do
things I’d never let anyone do, and...  Maker’s breath, he just leaves.  And
gives me this awful excuse as to why he can’t be with me.  I feel like it was
all just… I don’t know—a lie.”
            Anders smiled teasingly.  “Because he wouldn’t hold you all night?”
            Hawke looked at him.  Put that way, it sounded petty, but Hawke
still felt used.  But hadn’t he left Fenris the same way before?  No, he
thought.  It had been completely different.  “Would you stay all night?”
            Anders stared at him, wondering if it were an invitation.  But
Hawke was a bit emotionally distraught.  He didn’t want to take advantage of
him.  “Only if the person I was with wanted me to.  But…  I’d prefer that,
yes.”
            The two mages were silent.  The gulls were crying along the shore. 
“If you ask me, Fenris isn’t much of a man anyway,” Anders said.
            Hawke raised an eyebrow, a knowing smile about his lips.
            Anders caught the meaning behind the look, and made a face.  “Not
like that—I mean…”  He struggled for a moment.  “No emotionally stable, mature
man acts the way he does.”  He shrugged again.  “Send him to a few years of
therapy, maybe some medication, get him to lay off the alcohol—maybe one day he
would be a decent enough person to have a relationship with, but as is…”  He
made a face.  “He’d be emotionally dependent, possibly mentally abusive,
unstable, and violent.  Not a great combination.  So, no, definitely not
relationship material.”
            “He makes the cutest facial expressions during sex though.  Or when
he’s sad,” Hawke commented.  Anders snorted a laugh, but seemed vaguely
uncomfortable.  Hawke shook his head.  “You’re right though.”  He sighed, and
looked away.  Anders hesitated, and reached for his hand.  Hawke’s fingers
entwined with Anders, but he still didn’t look up.  They stood there for a
while like that, holding hands, and standing on the beach as the tide came in
and the sun went down.
            “I don’t want to fall into your arms just because he rejected me,”
Hawke told him.
            “Then fall into my arms because you want to.  Not because you’ve
been driven there.”  Anders looked at him sidelong.  “But I’ve been waiting a
long time—I can wait a little longer.”
            Hawke kind of smiled, and pulled the mage closer to him, enjoying
the comfort of another apostate, and another person for that matter.  As the
light faded from the sky, and one mage felt more certain of himself and his
feelings, he leaned toward the other, and waited.  Hawke hesitated but once
before he closed the gap between them, and kissed him.
            They kissed until it was utterly dark outside, and they were
breathless, and knew it would be a long walk back.
 
            Varania sniffed, rubbing at her eyes.  They just wouldn’t stop
watering.  She sniffed again, trying to hold back the tears.  The bruises hurt,
but the words stung more.  And she really wasn’t any good at magic.  She didn’t
want it.
            Why couldn’t she just be like everyone else?  She didn’t want to be
a mage.  Look at what mages did!  Every mage she knew was cruel and mean.  She
didn’t want to become like them.  She just wanted… to be a normal girl.  Why
couldn’t the magic just go away?
            She couldn’t make it stop though.  Nothing made it stop.  And when
she didn’t want to practice, things just happened.  The magic just… happened,
all around her—all the time.  It wasn’t fair.
            “Nia, there you are,” a voice said, and knelt down next to her.
            She sniffed, and looked at her brother.  “I hate being a mage,” she
told him point-blank.
            He blinked.  “Would you rather be scrubbing floors?”
            “Yes,” she said without even thinking about it.
            He grinned crookedly at her, and shifted, sitting beside her, his
back against the magnolia tree.  “I’d rather be a mage than scrub floors,” he
said conversationally.
            “You’re not a mage,” she muttered.
            “And you’ve never had to spend an entire day scrubbing floors,” he
pointed out.  She could think of nothing to say to that, so sulked instead,
feeling sorry for herself.
            “I still hate being a mage,” she grumbled.  “It’s awful…  I just… 
I just want it all t’ go away!”
            He was quiet for a moment.  “I love you just the way you are, sis.”
            She stopped, and stared at him, then sighed.  “You’re my brother;
you have to love me.”
            He muffed her red hair affectionately.  She made a face.  “Yeah,
but it wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t a mage.”
            She stared down at the dirt.  “It’d be better,” she countered.
            He sighed, apparently not knowing what to say to her.  He hugged
her instead, fiercely protective for a moment, then let go.  “It’s getting
late.  We should go to sleep.”  He climbed to his feet, and held his hand out
to help her up.
            She stared at his hand, then crossed her arms indolently.  “You go
without me.”
            He frowned, then smiled warmly down at her.  She stared at him
dispassionately, even suspiciously.  “I won’t go anywhere without you.”
            Her lips curved into a deep, dissatisfied frown.  “Just leave me
behind,” she insisted.
            He shook his head.  “I won’t ever leave you behind, sis.”  He knelt
in front of her, making her look at him.  “I love you, you little ragamuffin. 
Come on, you’re all covered in dirt—let’s go.”
            She refused, and he tickled her until she was giggling, then he
scooped her up in his arms, and carried her.  She pouted, and complained, but
he wouldn’t put her down.  Eventually, she leaned against his shoulder.  “You
really won’t ever leave me, Leto?”
            “No,” he promised.  “I won’t ever leave you, ‘Nia.”
            That had been so long ago—she had been nine and he had been twelve-
-but Varania never forgot it.  And every day, she felt oddly cheated, because
he had left her.  He was gone, and she’d never see him again.  Why had he
bought her freedom, too?  Why couldn’t he have just got their mother freedom? 
Why did he have to send her away too?  Away from the one person who had
understood her, and loved her, and he had promised not to do the very thing he
had done.
            Maybe it was childish, but Varania felt abandoned even so many
years later.
 
            Isabela had been the one to tell him about it.  She hadn’t been
gossiping or anything—she had simply thought Fenris had already known and
casually mentioned it.  Well, he hadn’t.
            Their conversation had been awkward after that, and Fenris had
decided to leave, after a couple more drinks, that he felt like he needed.
            He felt like his life would never really come together, like he
would never be whole, and couldn’t be happy.  Every time it seemed like he
might be happy, something always changed.  The Fog Warriors, Kirkwall, Hawke… 
He shivered thinking about that nightmare from last week.  He hadn’t really
slept much since.
            He knew a lot of that was him—that it was his fault things were
like that, and that just made it worse.  He didn’t want things to be like that,
it was just the way it turned out.  But…  The Fog Warriors—he was Danarius’
slave, how could he have turned against his master?  It sickened him to think
about it, but that was how it was, and it hurt more than words could say.  And
Danarius knew where he was, had really always known.  He had thought maybe he
could be happy in Kirkwall, but he wasn’t so certain any more.  After Hawke… 
That was his own fault.  He had pushed Hawke away so many times.  And the man
had waited, and waited, and had the patience of a saint.  Fenris knew he went
to whores, but that was different than going to someone else.  And yet, still
Fenris had pushed him away.  Had he been expecting Hawke to wait again?
            Maybe, he thought miserably.  Maybe he had believed that Hawke
would always be there, ready to accept him again with open arms.  It was
childish, and stupid.  No, it was beyond stupid and childish.  Even children
knew you couldn’t do that to someone.  But he had never really had friends
before, never really developed any social skills that other people took for
granted.  He tried to tell himself that, and that he just didn’t know, but
maybe, in a way, he did know.  He just didn’t want to believe it.  He had
wanted to believe…  Did it matter?
Anders claimed that he was self-destructive by nature, and maybe he was right. 
Not that Fenris would ever admit that aloud.  He was jealous of Anders now. 
Jealous because he had Hawke’s eye, and even angry that he had turned Hawke
away from Fenris.  But all the anger was misdirected at best, because he knew
it was his fault.  Anders had never tried overmuch to pursue Hawke while the
man expressed a desire to be with Fenris.  It had only happened after he kept
pushing Hawke away.  He had driven Hawke into his arms, maybe even knowingly. 
Hadn’t he known that Anders was quietly fuming  with seething jealousy when
Fenris had, smirking, commented on the size of Hawke’s dick after the first
time?  And hadn’t he baited him with that one?  No, this was entirely his own
fault.  He was trapped in a misery of his own devising this time.
He was so used to being able to blame other people—Danarius, Hadriana—for his
own miseries that knowing he had no one to blame but himself was… more painful
than he had thought it would be.  Being free, as opposed to being a slave, was
so much harder.
            He stared up at the statue of Andraste, as if oblivious to the
people around him, and felt pained and torn with indecision.  He wanted
direction in his life.  He wanted stability and something he could feel secure
in.  He wanted to believe in the teachings of Andraste.  He really did.
            He wanted to believe in a benevolent Maker that watched out for him
and guided him when he was in danger or needed help.  He did want to believe
that.  He wanted to believe that he wasn’t as alone and lost as he felt.
            It was a beautiful tale, wasn’t it?  Some divine omnipresent being
always watching you, knowing you are never truly alone.  Every step part of a
divine plan.  It would give him a direction, faith, maybe even hope.
            His heart ached, and he knelt, and lowered his head for a long
moment.  He didn’t know how to pray.  He didn’t know if there were any proper
words to use, or any proper form.
            I want to believe, he thought.  I can’t do this alone.
            Then he thought, I’d better leave before Sebastian sees me.
 
            Hawke watched the young boys and girls—men and women, he
amended—march in their white frocks and gowns in a joyful parade toward the
Chantry.  Sebastian would have his hands full trying to teach all of them about
the importance of chastity until marriage, and whatever else it was the Chantry
babbled on about.  When Hawke had been part of that march, oh so very many
Summerdays ago, he had been trying to get a glimpse up a girl’s skirt and
hadn’t been particularly listening to the speeches.  The day had ended with him
kissing a different girl behind the Chantry, near the rose bushes.
            Maybe the day would end with him kissing Anders—who knew? 
Summerday was always full of surprises.
            It wasn’t exactly traditional, but it was a holiday all the same,
so he invited his friends and they talked, drank expensive wines, ate cheese,
and enjoyed one another’s company.  Sebastian came late, but he was welcome as
anyone else.
            Fenris sat alone, partway curled in an overstuffed chair.  His
glass was empty on the table next to him.  Hawke realized he had fallen
asleep.  Drunk already?  He went over to him, and nudged him gently.  “Hey,
don’t sleep through my party,” he pretended to scold him.
            The elf blinked up at him.  His eyes were dark, and his face a bit
pale.  “Sorry,” he muttered.
            Hawke frowned, concerned.  “You look tired.”
            He shrugged, and covered a yawn with his hand even as he tried to
fight it down.  “Sorry,” he said again.  He hesitated.  “I haven’t… been
sleeping well.”
            The apostate sighed.  “You worried about the hunters?  Look, if you
need a place to stay, I have a spare bedroom—“
            “Won’t help the nightmares,” Fenris said quietly, eyes darting away
from him.
            Hawke wondered what could help with that.  “Maybe—I could ask
Anders if he has any ideas—“
            “I don’t want any help—least of all from him,” the elf snapped, and
blinked in surprise at the venom in his own voice.
            The other was taken aback.  “Sorry I tried to help then,” he
apologized, backing a step away.  If Fenris wanted to keep pushing him away, he
supposed he had best back off.  He had been like this at Wintersend too—only
worse, in some ways.  He had been sleeping back then, though, which was
something.  Fenris had commented, snidely, that it was when the tourneys and
contests began in the Imperium.  Too hot in the summer, too rainy in the
spring, but fall and winter were good times for the gladiatorial season.  He
said that Danarius had enjoyed the Grand Proving, and only got more broody
during the week around Wintersend, and wouldn’t talk to Hawke about it.
            What Hawke didn’t know was that Wintersend, and the tourneys
starting, reminded him of what Danarius had told him about how he had once
trained for the gladiatorial arena.  And no matter how much he thought about
it, or tried to remember, he just didn’t, and the sad truth that he never would
burned.  It seemed plausible, he had to admit—it would be far simpler if it
wasn’t so easy to believe.  That day he had killed the Qunari in the sands, it
had been like he knew every trap and pitfall in the Grand Proving as intimately
as he knew himself, and there was no way to explain that.  Today, though, he
really was just exhausted, and his nightmares were only getting worse with the
season’s progression.
           
            Shaislyn would have normally walked, but he had
learned—quickly—that children did not walk particularly fast and Lysander had
trouble keeping up with him.  So he ordered a carriage—on Hadriana’s name.  Why
not?  She had been a magister, after all.  Now she was just a pile of ash in a
little obsidian urn that the boy clutched carefully in both hands.
            Shaislyn would have simply sent the child off, but a sense of right
and wrong inspired him to find a proper caretaker for him.  Hadriana’s family
being dead, the boy’s family being unfound or dead, the closest thing would be,
to Shaislyn’s great distaste, Danarius, as Hadriana’s benefactor.
            He had contacted him, briefly.  He hadn’t mentioned who he was—only
spoke of himself as one of Hadriana’s retainers.  Even so, he might still have
sent the boy on his way, but he was not so certain that he trusted even the
driver of the carriage.  The boy reeked of highborn breeding down to his
clothes, and if Shaislyn were to just give him the rest of the money Hadriana
had sent with him, the boy would be robbed, for one, and possibly kidnapped for
two.
            So, Shaislyn grudgingly went with him.
            He went with him all the way to the gate, where he had intended to
say his farewell, but the boy had begged and pleaded.  “I’m scared,” he had
said, standing there all alone with his mother’s ashes in his arms.  And the
half-elf had sighed, and followed after him.
            Shaislyn glared at everything within the manor, knowing that any
room could be the one he was sired in.  And what atrocities had gone on in
these walls?  Every painting, every tapestry, every vase, every expensive rug
or polished statue—it all sickened him.  So much grief in this world, and this
man builds such a thing as a monument to himself.
            I hate him, Shaislyn thought, remembering that book of names, dates
and symbols.
            He was brought to a grand door, and informed that it was the
library.  The servant opened the door for him, and the half-elf hesitated, and
then strode inside, the boy close at his heels.
            With barely a conscious thought, the half-elf expanded his field of
vision until he could see the entire room, then narrowed it back down, looking
up at the magister standing on the second floor.  The magister looked at them,
and slowly made his way down the half-spiral stair.
            “Lysander,” he said, addressing the human child first—fitting,
considering rank and that Danarius knew him.  “You look tired.  Are you
hungry?”
            The boy shook his head, and looked down, taking a step closer to
the half-elf.  Shaislyn automatically put an arm around the boy, knowing he was
seeking comfort.  He had spent a long time with him.  No one else could give
him any solace, and the mage knew he was a poor substitute for… oh, anyone
else, but he was determined to try his best anyway.  He was determined not to
shun the child, because no child should ever be shunned the same way he had. 
What his mother had done still stung more than it had a right to.  He didn’t
think he would ever really get over that.  Was it so wrong to want his parent
to love him?
            Danarius looked at the child a moment longer, before he called in a
servant.  The boy reluctantly went with the woman, who had a gentle face and a
kind manner.
            Shaislyn looked back at Danarius.  “Then he will be cared for?”
            Danarius shrugged.  “He’s a mage.  I will find someone for him to
apprentice under.”
            “Take him yourself.”  The half-elf sneered.  “I hear you have need
of one.”
            Danarius scoffed, sitting down in an over-stuffed armchair.  “I’m
too old to apprentice children.  I don’t want to deal with them.  I haven’t the
patience.”
            “No, you’d rather just rape them,” Shaislyn said scornfully.
            Danarius had the audacity to laugh.  “A woman flowered is not
considered a child, is she?”
            The half-elf glared at him with no small amount of contempt. 
“’Fourteen’ is still a child.”
            “’Fourteen’ is an age that is not uncommon for a woman to be
married,” he countered, and raised an eyebrow.  “And, well… producing
children.”
            “You’re a monster,” Shaislyn said, and knew he should go.  He knew
he should just turn around and leave.  In fact, the half-elf turned, and
started for the door.
 “Your name is Shaislyn, isn’t it?” the magister asked slowly.
Shaislyn stopped, his back to him.  “Yes.”
            The briefest of pauses.  “That would make you my son, I take it.”
            Shaislyn’s back stiffened.  “No get of yours,” he snapped, turning
to face him.
            The human laughed.  The half-elf’s eyes narrowed.  “But I’m still
the one who sired you.”
            “You raped my mother—that’s all.”  His tone was curt, his gaze
aimed like daggers, but Danarius didn’t seem to care.
            “Without which, you would not be there to hate me so much, would
you?”  A longer pause.  “You come at an… interesting time.”
            “Oh?” the half-elf inquired testily.
            “Well, with Hadriana dead, it puts me in a most… unusual place.”
            Shaislyn’s fingers curled into fists.  He thought of half a dozen
terse replies before he reigned in his temper.  He took a deep, calming
breath.  “No.”  He shook his head.  “Absolutely not.”  His lips drew into a
thin line.  “I want nothing to do with you.”
            He snorted.  “Yet you’ll protect your mother so?”  He snorted. 
“She murdered her own child, and you are so devoted to her.  Why?”
            Shaislyn stared at him, his jaw dropping.  “What?”  It came out as
a whisper, wrenched from his throat.
            “She never told you?  She drowned your sister.”  He made a vague
gesture.  “In the stream that runs through the orchard.  Would have drowned you
too, I suspect, but your uncle intervened.”
            Shaislyn shook his head, astonished.  He took a half step back,
then ran from the room.  The door slammed shut behind him.
Chapter End Notes
     We are finally nearing where I am actually writing this, hence the
     longer periods between updates--sorry about that. I also try to go
     through this once in a while and add in or fix things, and that takes
     some time... So many characters have died! I feel like a homicidal
     maniac.
***** Letters *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris is finally able to contact Varania. Shaislyn confronts his
     mother about his sister's death.
            Not being able to—or, rather, too afraid to go—to Qarinus himself
was the most difficult thing.  If Fenris could simply go there, he could begin
to inquire.  He should have at least got her name.  He sighed.  He should have
gotten more information out of Hadriana, but he had been so angry, so full of
hate…
            Hadriana had mentioned Qarinus, and a magister’s name, that she was
a servant.  It was not a whole lot to go off of, and Fenris would have liked
more information.  He had killed Hadriana too hastily.  It was a simply
coincidence which confirmed that the information had to be true, or at least
repeated to more than one person.  He could believe that Hadriana had lied in
her last moments in an effort to spare herself the inevitable.  People did odd
things when they were staring down their own deaths.
            One of the slavers had limped away from a recent massacre they had
unleashed, and Varric happened to see him in Low Town, and whispered to Fenris
what he had seen.  Twenty minutes later, and the slaver was bleeding in an
alley, courtesy of Isabela, who watched for the guard while Fenris questioned
him.  The slaver had known Fenris on sight,  based on his description, so he
decided to keep asking questions.  The man had been one of Hadriana’s lackeys,
and had apparently run when his fellows died.  He admitted, bleeding from his
mouth, that he was a coward, and always ran when things looked bad.  Before
Fenris had crushed his knee caps, he had had strong legs, and was fast.  He had
done some work in the Free Marches, and had ended up back in Kirkwall—a
mistake, and his last.
            He hadn’t known much, granted, but he had heard that Fenris’ sister
was in Qarinus.  He hadn’t known her name, though, or even a description—just
the name of the town.  Even then, the slaver had only claimed to be certain
when Fenris threatened to cut off another finger, so the elf was not entirely
sure.  Still, that made two people to confirm one theory.
            They dumped the body in the water and were done with it.
            “Let’s not tell Hawke about this,” Isabela suggested, wisely. 
Fenris agreed.  Hawke would not condone the torture—even to a slaver.  Hawke
was not below threats or bribes, but was too much of a generally good guy to be
fine with torture.  Fenris had no such compunctions, and Isabela had seen
worse.
            He had been more than tempted to simply leave for the Imperium. 
Qarinus wasn’t that close to Minrathous, but…  Still too close, Fenris thought
with some unease.  Anything in the Imperium was just too close.  Danarius had
too much influence there.  True, Fenris would not live out his life without
ever confronting the man.  If Danarius forgot about him, he would go to him
himself, but…  It’s too soon.
            It was infuriating.  All the same, he made attempts, asked
questions of any travelers who were from there or even near there.  Varric gave
him a discount on information, but wasn’t about to give it for free. 
Sometimes, they could exchange favours, and Fenris did occasionally get
mercenary work—his favourite of which was when the Templars would hire him and
they would root out nests of blood mages, like rats.  What he didn’t put
towards living expenses went in to finding his sister.  Sometimes, he had his
doubts about it.  What if it were a lie?  What if she were actually dead, if
she had ever existed?  More terrifying, what if he actually did find her?  The
tumultuous thoughts almost made him give up the hunt on more than one
occasion.  He was oddly averted to it at times, in fact.  Any bit of
information acquired, any kind of information gathering, often made him feel
physically ill.  Maybe it was all in his head, and he was just so nervous about
it that he made himself sick.
            Everything ground to a halt during the Qunari uprising, and did not
begin again for some time after that, but he got by and in time got back to
looking for his sister.  He couldn’t begin to explain properly why it felt so
important to him, but it did.  He just… had to know.  So much felt like it was
missing.  If anyone could fill in anything he was missing…
            Varric did not have a whole lot to go off of, and it was difficult
to get information from so far away, but the dwarf was resourceful if nothing
else.  An elf of an unknown age, servant to a magister in Qarinus, and, if
Danarius could be believed, might have been from Seheron.
Eventually, Varric cropped up a name.  Fenris had at first been reluctant to
learn her name, going back and forth between “don’t tell me” and “I have to
know”.  He was afraid of that name; afraid of what it meant to him, for him. 
What would her name reveal?  Would it sound familiar?  He was afraid if it
would, and afraid if it would not.  He was afraid that he would want so badly
for it to sound familiar that he could convince himself that it did.  Varric,
in the end, decided to end Fenris’ nonsense, and simply tell him.
            “Varania,” he said with certainty, a pleased look plastered to his
face.
            Fenris was dubious.  The name did not sound familiar.  A part of
him was crestfallen at that, and another part almost relieved, for it meant no
flash of half-remembered images, no clips of words people he didn’t know had
said.  It wasn’t like a story, where someone with amnesia remembered vital
parts of their life in timely moments, and the name meant nothing to him. 
“Var…a… nia,” he echoed slowly, blinked, and frowned.  For a moment, it had
almost felt like a name he should know, but the moment faded so quickly that he
was not so sure that he was only fooling himself.  “You’re certain?”
            The dwarf smiled, ever self-satisfied.  “Yep.  Elven servant, from
Seheron, says she has one brother who might still be alive, but hasn’t seen him
in…”  He quirked an eyebrow.  “About sixteen years, give or take.”
            Fenris blinked.  It was about how long it had been since he had
woken after the Ritual.  That was an odd coincidence.  A servant, though?  It
was what Hadriana had said, but…  How could she not be a slave… if he was?  He
supposed it was entirely possible that his parents (the concept that he had
lost memories of parents was a painful one) had sold him, and kept her.  He had
sometimes wondered which of them was older.  “How old is she?” he asked
suddenly.
            Varric frowned.  “I don’t know.  A few years younger than you,
maybe.  She’s kind of quiet, they say.”
            Fenris paced restlessly, feeling an urge to move.  He thought more
clearly when he was walking.  “Could you write for me?” he asked, rounding on
Varric suddenly.
            Varric blinked.  “Didn’t Hawke teach you to read?”
            The elf sighed, pained.  “Read, not write.”
            The dwarf made a face.  “I’m no scribe, but you should ask
Rivaini—she actually has lovely penmanship.”
            Fenris debated that but for a moment.  “She’d charge me double,
just to make her stop telling everyone what I want her to write.”  She would
probably also embellish it.
            Varric shrugged.  “Hawke, then.”
            The elf sighed, and left, but not to go to Hawke’s.  He had seen
the way Hawke was looking at Anders lately, and he had no interest in begging
favors from him.  Maybe he should just go to a scribe, but he just didn’t trust
anyone.  Varric could get the letters delivered, but really didn’t want to know
what they said—too much heartache, no doubt.  Fenris groaned inwardly.  What a
dilemma.
            He thought for a long moment, before he realized exactly who was
the perfect person to go to with this.  And why hadn’t he thought of it before?
            He began the walk back to Hightown, and nearly ran into Merrill in
the Lowtown market.  She dropped the basket she was carrying, and made a pouty
face.
            He briefly debated glaring at the blood mage and walking on, but
decided to help her pick up her basket instead; it was equally his fault as
hers, and it was the right thing to do.  “I’m trying to learn how to knit,”
Merrill commented, picking up the yarn she had bought.  “For when I’m tired of
working on the mirror, I mean.  And it’s useful.”
            “Have you gotten any good at it?” he said, just to be
conversational as he picked up some kind of root vegetable, setting it back in
the basket.  At least if she were knitting, she couldn’t be practicing blood
magic—or could she?  He had no idea how either actually worked.
            She grinned.  “I’m making everyone sweaters by winter.  You
too—speaking of which, did you prefer a colour?”
            “Please don’t,” he said.
            But she smiled, and he knew better.  He also knew that everyone
else would goad him into wearing it at least once.  “I don’t care.”
            “Green?  I bought a lot of green,” she went on in her lilting
accent.  “Oh, do you want one of these scones?”
            He blinked.  “What?” he heard himself say, but something…  He felt
his memories balancing, knew he was on the verge of remembering something.
            Merrill, oblivious, continued on, “Well, I bought all these—there
was a really good sale—but I don’t think I can eat this many, so do you want
one?”
            “Want… what?”
            “A scone, silly.”
            He looked at her as if he had never seen her before, or perhaps as
if she was someone else entirely.  For an instant, he saw a young elven girl
with freckles and stringy red hair, shining mismatched eyes and a crooked
smile—knew she spoke with the same lilting accent.
            “Here, take it,” Merrill said, shoving one of the warm scones into
his hand.  She smiled, bid him a good day, and skipped off.  Fenris felt
dazed.  What… happened?  Had he… remembered something, someone?  Who?  It
wasn’t Varania, was it?
            Something about Merrill’s accent…
            He looked at the scone in his hand, and tried to remember. 
Something about the pastry, and Merrill’s accent, and…
            Try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything at all.  He
remembered the girl’s crooked smile, and that was it.  Not the sound of her
voice, or anything else.  Just an image of her grinning up at him, a
mischievous glint in her mismatched eyes, and he couldn’t even say why.
            He picked at the pastry on his way up to Hightown, still bothered
by the entire thing but willing to let the matter go out of necessity.
            As much as he was loathe to go into the Chantry, he did.  Sebastian
was talking to a couple of middle aged women, and Fenris waited for him to
finish, doing his best to not hear the sermon he was preaching to them, about
the goodness of their Maker and the works of Andraste—all of which made him
roll his eyes, and seethe with hatred in turns.  Sure, he wanted to believe in
it.  But he didn’t, and with everything he had seen… how could he?
            He thought of the Chantries in Tevinter, how they sold slaves in
the markets outside of them, the Chantry tithing each slave sold.  How could a
benevolent god exist when that did?  He had seen so much atrocity and
suffering.  How could an all-powerful being let that happen?  How?
            Yet…  A part of him wanted to believe in it.  He wanted to accept
blind faith and love, because it was all he really had left.  No family, no
past, no future.  He wanted to feel secure, and there was a certain security in
the Chantry and in the faith of the Maker.
            Sebastian spotted him and came to him when he broke away.  “What
brings you here?” he asked, a faint trace of hopefulness in his tone that
Fenris was not certain he enjoyed.
            “Not what you are hoping,” he said immediately.  The human raised
an eyebrow.  “I need your help though.”
            Sebastian smiled pleasantly.  “I’m happy to help, Fenris.  What do
you need?”  Still hopeful, Fenris noticed.  The priest beckoned vaguely and the
pair began to walk away, somewhere more private.
            The elf got the idea that perhaps Sebastian was hoping Fenris
wanted to confess past sins and talk about his problems.  Not even close. 
“Could you help me write a letter?”
            Sebastian almost missed a step.  “What?”
            Fenris sighed.  “Varric thinks he might have found my sister.  But
I don’t know how to write…”
            Sebastian shrugged, kind of sighed.  “Yes, of course I’ll help.”
 
            Varania held her hands a few inches apart, took a deep breath and
let the mana flow through her.  The little sphere of light hovered over her
hand, and she sent it into the lamppost—the last one of the evening.  The chore
kept her busy for hours—the entire street, the manor grounds, and the interior
of the manor, every evening.
            Still, it was a simple spell, and the pay was good.
            She headed back toward the manor, wondering if Shaislyn might be
there.  She hadn’t seen him since…  Over a year, now that she thought about
it.  She wondered if he were all right.  She knew he was alive, because he sent
her money frequently, but that was it.  Not a word otherwise.  She wrote back,
of course, but she didn’t know if he ever received her letters, because he
never replied, and they always came from a different location anyway.  Only
once was a package just left in her room.  She knew he had been by, but the boy
was gone before she had even known he was here.
            She wondered if it were just some strange teenage phase he was
undergoing, or if it was something… more.  She didn’t know.  She didn’t have
any idea, unfortunately, and he wouldn’t talk to her.
            When she came to retire for the evening, the headmistress stopped
her.  “Something came for you today,” she said, handing her a small bundle.
            She blinked.  A package and a letter?  “Thank you,” she said, and
unhurriedly went to her room.  She tossed the package down on the small table,
and locked the door.  The letter slipped off of the package onto the table. 
She undressed and pulled on her sleeping shift, and brushed out her hair.  She
created another of the spheres of glowing light, and cast it above her, so she
could read.  She opened the brown paper package first.  It was just a small
bundle.  She unfolded it, finding that it was a lightweight linen dress, dyed
blue with green embroidery that looked like leaves along the bottom.  It looked
like it would fit.  Her son sent her clothing from time to time, and she found
a single gold sovereign at the bottom of the package.  She picked it up, and
hid it in her little savings box, which she kept under a loose board, under the
bed.  She put the dress away, and went to the letter.  Had her son finally
decided to say something to her?
            She sat down, and opened the letter with care.  She removed the
slip of paper.
            The first thing she noticed was that it was in a different hand
than the one she knew as Shaislyn’s.  Shaislyn wrote—when he still sent
letters—as if he were actively running from people trying to kill him.  The ink
was often blotchy, there would be smears, and sometimes scribbles as he tried
to ink something out.  Granted, most of the smearing was because he was left-
handed.
            Whoever wrote this wrote elegantly—a hand that had been trained
since birth on the importance of proper penmanship.  Definitely not her son. 
She frowned and began to read.
 
            To Varania,
            I hope this letter reaches you well.  I don’t know if you will
believe me when I write to you, but I’m your brother.  I only learned of you a
couple of years ago, and I’ve been trying to find you ever since.
            I’m sorry; I don’t remember what my name used to be, or anything
about you but I want to know you.  I would have pursued you sooner, except that
my memory loss left me with no knowledge of your existence.  I’m so sorry.
I’ve escaped Danarius and been on the run for several years.  I’ve been staying
in Kirkwall.
I understand that this might be hard to believe, and since I don’t remember who
I used to be, it will be difficult to prove myself to you.  I’m sorry; all I
know is that you exist, your name, and that you work for a magister in
Qarinus.  I heard that you had a brother that you have not seen in well over a
decade.  My memories stop over a decade ago.
If there’s anything I need to do to convince you that I am the same person,
tell me; I’ll do my best.
 
            It was unsigned.  Ordinarily, that would have made Varania throw it
away, dismissing it as some kind of cruel joke, but she stopped, and reread
it.  The person writing it was not the person dictating it, she didn’t think. 
It sounded like two different people had written it—things wanting to be said
that were edited, and there were two different “voices” in the writing.  One of
them was detached, and the other desperate.
            If he doesn’t remember past a decade or so, perhaps he doesn’t
remembered his name either, Varania thought.  But surely Danarius, the scum,
would have called him something?  Or maybe he hadn’t.  Maybe he had just
referred to him generically, who knows?
            She wondered why his memories would end only so far back.  Had
something… gone wrong with the Ritual?  Had Leto ended up hurt in some way?
            An old anxiety gnawed at her.  She couldn’t for a moment imagine
why this person would lie about it.  She didn’t have anything to give them or
be tricked out of, so why would someone put forth the effort?  Still…  It
wouldn’t do to be hasty about it, would it?
            Varania reread the letter, then set it down.  She threw out the
trash and went to bed.  The letter was still sitting there in the morning,
which is where it sat all day, and the next evening and still she didn’t know
what to do about it.
            Reply, she supposed, but put it off until her off day when she
finally sat down to write a reply.  She read the letter again, biting her lip
in anxiety.  She wasn’t entirely sure who to address it to either, but an
address was given, and frankly, it sounded like it was going to some kind of
pub.  Maybe he was staying there, or it was going through a third party for
some reason.  Well, if someone else was writing it, that made some degree of
sense.
            Where did she begin, though?  If it really were Leto…  Oh, there
was just so much she wanted to say!  But she was cautious.  If she said too
much, anyone could claim they were him.  Worse still because he apparently
didn’t remember her or anything about her.  How could she be assured that it
was him?
            If it really were though…  If it were true…  She started to write. 
She paused frequently, trying to decide on the words and what she wanted to say
to him, knowing she had to hold back, lest her emotions get ahead of her.  She
missed her brother more than anything, even though a part of her felt spiteful
towards him.  It would be so much easier if she could only see him, talk to
him, listen to his voice.  She would know it was him if she did.
            She wasn’t very articulate.  She had learned to read and write
later in life, and from a busy woman at that.  Her penmanship was not as neat
as the other’s, and she worried that she misspelled things here and there. 
Still, she felt as though her point had come across when she reread it.
 
            If its really you, I dont know what to say.  I haven’t seen you in
years.  Do you truly not remember me?  When we were growing up, you meant the
whole world to me.  It is hard to imagine that you do not remember.  I suppose
you have changed—I suppose we both have!
            How did you ever find me, though, if you do not remember who I am? 
Do you remember anything at all?  I wish I could talk to you.  I think I woud
know its you if I see you.
            If it is you, brother, I have missed you more than I can say and I
love you so much.  I have so much to tell you but I dont think I can find the
right words to write.
            Love Varania
 
            There was more she wanted to say, but she was so nervous that it
might only be someone toying with her in some cruel way that she didn’t. 
Varania was guarded, but sincere.  She had to buy an envelope, and sent it in
the post.  She had a few more errands to run too, and came back in the early
evening.
 
            Shaislyn felt like he was finally brave enough to confront his
mother.  He had ran from the possibility long enough, letting it stew and knew
he was too cowardly to face it, to believe in it.  But he had to know.  So he
walked down the hall to the room he sometimes shared with his mother.  He
tested the door and found it locked.  He sighed, and left the hall, and went to
the courtyard.  He snuck in through the window.  He paced restlessly, and sat
down in the chair in front of the table.
            Was what Danarius said true?  He hoped not.  He prayed it wasn’t,
but he was terrified that it was.  After she had given birth, she had taken no
interest in him or his twin whatsoever.  And she hadn’t just “died” the way his
mother always said.  She had drowned her in the stream in the orchard.
            Shaislyn had lain in the orchard and cried with fear that it might
be true.  He had gone to the graveyard where his twin lay buried, and prayed
that it wasn’t.
            He had to know.  He couldn’t trust Danarius, his grandmother was
dead, and Leto might as well be, because Fenris would not remember should he
ask.  That left his mother alone.
            And… and even if that were true…
            She had still raised him.  She had done everything she could,
hadn’t she?  She was still his mother.  And…
            And I have no other family—not really.  And I’ve never had any
friends either… and…  Shaislyn sighed, ending the spell of his vision, and
closing his eyes.  He didn’t want to see anything right now, and he was afraid
of seeing his mother when the time came.  And I’m so alone.
           It felt like a long time before the door opened.  He did not need to
see to know that it was Varania.
            “Mom?” he said, a little hesitant.
            “I haven’t seen you in a long time,” she commented, her voice
sounding tired but trying to be cheery.  She stretched, closing the door behind
her.  “What brings you back to Qarinus?”
            “You,” he answered bluntly.  His mouth twisted into a frown,
listening to her walk about.  “You can change—I’m not… using the spell.”
            A pause.  “Well, all right, but keep your head turned.”
            He rolled his eyes, but did it anyway.  “It doesn’t matter which
way I’m facing, you know—even if I were using it.”
            “It’s the principle of the thing,” she told him chidingly, opening
a drawer.
He snorted, listening to the fabric rustle.  “Did you try on the dress I got
you?” he inquired.  “Or… has that not come yet?”  His heart pounded nervously. 
He was terrified of this conversation.  I can put it off another night, can’t
I? 
She said, obliviously, “I was wearing it, silly.”
“Oh.”  He needed to say something now, before he lost his nerve.  He fidgeted
in his seat, and tried to think of something to say.  “Mama, I just want you to
know…”  His lips drew into a line, then he made a face, struggling for a long
moment.  “I just wanted you to know that I love you.”  He hesitated, listening
to the silence he knew would come.  “I…  You’ve done… a lot… for me.  And I’m
thankful.  And you’re…  Well, you’re my mother.  I love you.”
            It was a poor speech, but it was heartfelt to the teenager, and
everything he really wanted to say to her.  But she was silent, as a part of
him had always known she would be.  When she spoke at all, he was sort of
surprised.  “You’re not… dying or anything, are you?” she inquired slowly.
Shaislyn was not amused.  He sighed.  “No.”  He kind of laughed a little,
nervously.  “But…  I have to know…  How did my sister die?”  His voice came out
in a whisper.
Varania paused again, a long time as more fabric rustled.  He heard drawers
opening and closing as she busied herself suddenly.  He could understand not
wanting to talk about a dead child, even a dead child that died of natural
causes—it was simply not something a mother was equipped to handle.  “She was a
baby.  She just… didn’t make it; you did.”
Her son listened, and knew when he was not being told the truth.  Or at least,
not all of the truth.  “You killed her,” he said softly.  “You drowned her in
the stream, in the orchard near Danarius’ slave compound.”  That man is not my
father, he tried to tell himself.  No more than a bee is father to a
flower—just because it helps it grow.
And his mother simply said nothing.  He heard the bed creak as she sat down,
heard her reach for her brush as she let her hair down and brushed it, never
saying a single word, which is when he knew it was true.
He bit his lip, a tear running down his cheek.  It so easily could have been
him she had drowned.  Maybe it should have been, instead of his sister.  And it
was true:  She had tried to kill them both.  “I love you, mama,” he cried, his
heart breaking.  His voice left his throat broken.  He swallowed hard, knowing
no answer from her was coming and still desperately wanting one.
            And yet, she said nothing.  She set the brush down, closed the
window.  She sat back down on the bed, asked him if he were staying here for
the night.
            “Why do you not love me?” he whispered, half to himself, but loudly
enough for her to hear him.  “I’ve tried so hard…  I’ve tried to help you.  I… 
I do everything I can for you, and I just want you to love me.”  A second tear
rolled down his face.  His throat and mouth felt dry.  “I just want…”  He
lowered his head, feeling awkward and childish.  He covered his face with his
hands.
            The silence was uncomfortable, and he knew that he should go.  Just
turn around and never come back.  As he rose, the chair creaked.  He felt
angry, angry enough to smash the chair against the table, but he didn’t.  He
felt angry enough to scream and yell, but he didn’t.  He swiped at the dampness
on his face with his sleeve.  “Goodbye, Mother.”
            “Shai…”  He heard the bed creak, the blankets shift.  “I’m sorry… 
I don’t…  I don’t know what came over me.  It was a long time ago, and…”
            He stopped, his hand on the doorknob.  “Did you ever love me?” he
asked quietly.  “Even once?”
            She said nothing.  Not a whisper, not a word.  His eyes felt wet,
and he blinked it away.  He turned the lock, wishing she would say something. 
Anything.  And at the same time, just wanting to run as far away as possible.
            “Shai.”
            He stopped before he opened the door.  “Yes?”
            “I…  I do love you.”
            The tears dripped down his face, and he wanted them to stop.  He
was supposed to be a man.  He shouldn’t be crying.  This shouldn’t hurt so
much.  “I wish I believed you,” he said, and cursed himself internally when his
voice wavered.  He fled before she could say anything else, the door slamming
shut behind him.
            Once he was outside in the open air, he flew away, and didn’t even
care if someone saw him change.  Crows don’t cry.
***** Karma *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris receives Varania's first letter. Danarius decides he needs to
     do something about Fenris.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            “Got something for you,” Varric said, sounding mildly pleased.
            Fenris looked up from his pint, and then his eyes flicked back to
the cards.  Playing with Isabela was trying—for one, you had to watch her to
make sure she wasn’t cheating; for two, don’t take your eyes off her, because
she will cheat.  Worse, she was good at it.  And she’d been trying to get him
to play strip poker in her room for years.  Like that would ever happen.
            “What is it?” he inquired, staring at Isabela, watching her hands.
            The pirate smiled slyly, laying down her hand.  Fenris swore,
tossing his cards down, then looked at Varric when she reached for the coins. 
Varric handed him a small, battered envelope.  His heart skipped a beat and he
snatched it out of his hands.  He stared at it.  Did he open it now?  He
glanced at Isabela.  No, bad idea—she’d read over his shoulder, possibly aloud
while doing voices.
            He tucked it away in an absent manner, and looked back at her, his
gaze slowly trailing down her neck, watching the rise and fall of her chest for
a moment, before he blinked and realized he was doing it.  She smiled
knowingly, all white teeth as she leaned forward.  “’Nother round?” she asked
him, making the gesture expose more of her cleavage, if that were even
possible.
            His eyes flicked back to his half-finished pint.  He grabbed the
mug.  “No, I don’t think so.”
            She winked.  “I saw that.”
            “If you’re going around advertising, you can’t expect people not to
look,” he said amiably.
            She raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, I expect people to look.  But it’s
rude to look and when I offer, you turn me down.”
            Varric laughed.  “It’s also rude to cheat at cards, but you do it
anyway.”
            She blinked, as if offended.  “It’s part of the game!”  She glanced
at Fenris’ half-finished mug.  “Last one to finish buys the next round.”  She
raised her pint.
            He shook his head.  “I’m going—thanks.”
            “Spoil sport,” she complained.  “Varric?”
            Fenris halfway listened to the other two talk while he finished off
the pint, but was really thinking about the letter.  It had to be from
Varania.  He was anxious to read what she had written to him.  Of course she
would want some kind of assurance that it was him.  He was nervous about what
he could do or say for that. 
Isabela was trying to convince Varric that champagne fountains were good ideas
for parties, and that it had to be champagne because champagne was the drink to
celebrate with.
            “Like a water fountain, but with sparkling champagne,” she was
saying.
            “Someone will get drunk and take a piss in it,” he argued.  “It’s
inevitable.”
            Meeting Varania, maybe—that might prove their connection, to her at
least.  He would love to meet her.  That idea made him nervous too, but in a
different sort of way.
            He plopped the empty mug down and bolted out the door with barely a
goodbye to his friends—something they were more or less accustomed to and
scarcely took note of. 
            He hurried back to Hightown, for some privacy mostly.  Walking up
the steps, he saw Anders walking back down.  He looked at Fenris, a slight
smirk playing about his lips.  Without a word, he kept on walking.  Fenris’
eyes narrowed.  And what had he been doing?
            He absolutely despised the idea of Anders and Hawke being
together.  True, it was his own fault that Hawke was with him and not Fenris,
but he still hated the thought of it.  He wondered if Hawke did that thing
where he would nibble on his lower lip with Anders, and the thought filled him
with a seething rage.
            He tried to brush it off and keep walking.  He had more important
matters anyway, didn’t he?
            He saw Aveline on patrol.  She nodded towards him in a friendly
manner.  He kind of vaguely waved as they passed one another by.
            Safely at home—it had become home, hadn’t it?—he nestled into his
favourite sofa and pried off his gauntlets.  I can’t do anything with these on,
he half-complained to himself.
           They clunked when he dropped them on the floor.  As usual, he felt
about five pounds or so lighter without them, and likely was.  He pried the
letter out of his belt, and stared at it for a long moment.  Did this occasion
require anything?  A drink or something?  He didn’t feel like getting up. 
Lowtown to Hightown was a decently long walk.  Well, he had a few pints at the
bar earlier anyway.
            I’m stalling, he realized with a sense of unease.  He took a deep,
calming breath, and let it out slowly through his nose.
            He tore it open, tossing the envelope on the floor, over his
shoulder in much the same manner that Danarius did with paperwork he didn’t
care about.  The similarity was lost on the elf, however.
            He unfolded it with care, noting that the parchment was a cheap
material, the ink equally cheap and kind of flakey.  That was fine; it was
still legible.  Her print was that of someone who could write, just not well. 
If she had been born a slave, or was a slave for much of her life, that would
make sense though.  He read her words, slowly.  He was past the point of having
to sound them out, but he still couldn’t read particularly quickly.  Still, it
was much improved.
            She seemed to want to believe him, but was wary.  That was fine. 
He could work with wary—but if she had never responded or called him a liar, he
didn’t know what he could have done.
            She had never mentioned what his name was, though—he noticed.  She
was being careful about it, not to mention anything.  That was her wariness, he
knew.
            He read it again, and prayed that this was her.  He didn’t know to
what god, or even if it mattered, but prayed nonetheless.  He wanted it to be
her so badly.  He wondered if they had been close—it seemed like it.
            It was frustrating that he didn’t remember.  He got up, looked at
the letter again and put it inside a thick book—the unabridged copy of the
Chant of Light.  It seemed a pretty safe place to keep it, where he wasn’t
likely to lose it.
            He left, headed back to the Chantry to see Sebastian.
 
            The bow gave the barest creak as he bent it back.  His back was
straight, the bowstring taught.  It wasn’t the draw he would have pulled in his
youth.  No, the days Danarius could pull a 200-pound bow that he used to hunt
bears, elk, and cats with were over.  The eighty-pound bow seemed a lot, in his
old age.  As the years went by, he kept having to decrease the draw, and lately
it was more for the pain in his wrists and fingers than anything.  That Dalish
bow, he had only shot from a couple of times, and it was a work of art in every
way.
            His fingers all the way to his elbows ached enough to make his eyes
water, his entire body screaming for him to stop.  The arrow flew, sailing
through the air, and buried itself in the deer’s side.  He swore, grabbed
another arrow, knocked, and drew, then shot—all one fluid motion.  That one
went through its neck.  The creature stumbled mid-flight.  He shot again, that
one striking a second time in the throat.  The buck collapsed, and so did he. 
One of his slaves hurried toward him.
            “Master?” he inquired.
            “I’m fine,” he lied, staring at his shaking hands.  “Go get the
buck.”  The three jumped to obey him, and he stayed where he was, kneeling on
the grass.  His hands shook as if possessed, and it felt like fire running
through every nerve, all the way up to his elbows.  They tingled, and every
movement hurt.
            Arthritis will be the end of my career as a magister, he thought,
even as he moved his fingers, forcing his way past the pain.  The blue healing
light coalesced around his hands.  When the light faded, the pain lingered—or
some of it anyway, but it was better.
            A mage with arthritis… wasn’t much of a mage.  He had been fighting
it for years, and was beginning to lose the battle.  A part of him had always
known he would get it.  His father had.  It had skipped his grandfather, or
maybe he had just died too young.  He remembered that his great-grandfather had
it, so his father had told him, but both of them had died younger than he was
now.  At least they had children, he thought with a sigh.  Proper mageborn sons
and daughters to carry on the legacy.  Once I die, that will end the line of
mages in my family.
            Agasius had a child.  So did Caleigh, and so did Cristabelle—two in
fact for both the women.  And not a single mage so far between them.  It was
disheartening.  The family would go on, the line would go on, of course.  But
the magery seemed to be bleeding out of the bloodline.  And they had wed into
mage families, married mages for some of them.  Yet…  Well, some of the
children were young yet.
            It was saddening to know that everything he had worked for in life
would go to ruins.  Everything would be gone when he died, and he wouldn’t even
die with the rank of magister; he couldn’t.
            I need Fenris.  Casting was getting difficult.  It wasn’t a lack of
mana, or a lack of willingness to use blood magic—he had never been so
squeamish.  It was his damned hands.  But Fenris would act like a living
battery.  Cutting himself for blood magic was difficult.  Holding a knife was
difficult, and even more so in a duel.  He was still well enough for that, but
for how much longer?  It was terrifying to think about.  There was no dishonor
in retiring for health reasons, but it was a personal wound to his pride, and
he wanted to die as he lived.
            But with Fenris…  That would just solve everything.  Fenris could
fight his duels, fuel his magic, secure his station.  He may die heirless, but
he wouldn’t die decrepit and unable to hold his position.  If I put it off too
much longer, I will.
           He should have attempted the Ritual again, at least.  He should have
put more effort into dragging Fenris back to Minrathous.  Should have just gone
to collect him himself—no one else seemed able to do it.  It was dangerous, but
he was just as likely to die in Minrathous, when he thought about it seriously.
            I need to get that damned elf back, he thought.  He had waited too
long.  He had put it off too damned long, and look what he had let happen.  I
shouldn’t have told him to kill Shaislyn.
            Fenris had always had a particular weakness for children, he
reminded himself.  He remembered the way his eyes would ache to see a child,
any child, suffer or die.  The way he had thrown himself at his master’s feet
and begged desperately for Danarius to use his blood in a spell, instead of a
child’s.  Fenris couldn’t bear to see a child hurt, and Danarius should have
known better.  If he had only been thinking properly, if he had only remembered
how much Fenris hated the idea of a child suffering, he would have known not to
have told him to kill the boy.  Too late now.
            The ache in his leg reminded him of when he had first met Leto.  It
had started causing problems a few years ago, just a sharp pinprick every now
and again, but lately more like the briefest stabs of pain, and it mingled with
the rest of the aching in his leg—from his childhood when he had broken it. 
The stitch in his side reminded him of where he had been shot in Seheron.  Old
aches and old wounds reminding him that he wasn’t as young as he once was.
            He took a deep breath as he began to suddenly pant, but it was
hard-gained and he struggled.  He didn’t know why.  Had the hunting been too
much, or…?  No, he thought.  Something is wrong.
            A sudden pressure on his chest made him frown.  Instinctively, he
reached up, touching his chest.  The pressure increased though not at his
touch, and he struggled to breathe.  He felt cold but a sweat broke out in a
fine sheen over his body—he was only dimly aware of it.  And then he felt the
pain.
            He had broken his leg when he was eight—he fell out of a tree his
mother had distinctly told him to stay out of.  He had screamed and begged his
father to heal it—and he wouldn’t.  He told him that it was “his own damned
fault” and he could live with the pain of the broken leg until it healed on its
own.  It was a fine lesson, but the pain was unspeakable, and he did not
remember it fondly.
            When he was fourteen, he had been hunting and ended up mauled by
the cat he was hunting.  His father had killed the animal, in the end, but it
had been the single most terrifying, mortal experience of his life.
            This was worse than both of those things.
            He couldn’t speak.  He could barely breathe past the crushing pain
that seemed to weigh down his chest.  He was conscious of lying down on the
earth, but couldn’t remember having collapsed.  The pain arced down both of his
arms, and mingled with the arthritic pain in his hands, both conspiring
together to kill him.  It felt like his heart was skipping beats.  He was
terribly aware of how hard it was to breathe, and knew he desperately needed
to.  Every beat of his heart felt like a minor victory, every pull of his lungs
under the enormous weight on his chest a battle won.  It felt like a damned
elephant was standing on his chest.
            When he looked around, he felt like everything he saw was far away
and he was spinning.  He squeezed his eyes shut to make it stop, hoping it
would stop the sudden nausea too.
            Like a gift from the Maker, he gasped, drawing in a deep breath,
and another.  The pain ebbed if only slowly and gradually, the pressure fading
just as gradually with it.  His eyes opened, and he was aware that one of his
slaves was calling to the other two, yelling at one of them to run back to the
manor for help.  Good.
            Maybe he should consider not taking these trips relatively alone. 
He had thought…  Whatever he had thought, he had been wrong.
            “Master, are you…”  The slave’s voice simply trailed off, as if not
quite knowing how to finish the sentence.  Well?  No.  Alive?  Debatable.  “Can
you move?”
            “I shouldn’t,” he said, mostly to himself.  He tried to sit up, and
immediately laid back down.  “Hell.”
            The slave they had sent could run quickly, or maybe it just felt
like it was quickly.  He felt oddly faint, not to mention exhausted.  He just
wanted to go to sleep…  There were servants, one of them a mage.  She looked
like she had been pulled from a bath—her hair was wet and her clothing damp. 
She knelt beside him, her hands glowing.  The healing light spilled over him,
and he was only annoyed by it.  It would take the nausea away, the dizziness,
and the numbness.  But it wouldn’t cure it.  Magic had limits, and it couldn’t
take away old age.  He didn’t see why not.  Old age was just his body dying and
things shutting down.  So why couldn’t magic stop it?
            He almost laughed.  Mages had been trying for centuries to stop
aging.  So had non-mages, for that matter.  It seemed logical that magic could
stop aging.  It made aging less difficult, sure—but it never stopped it.  Why
not?
            He tried to get up, found his legs weak.  Two servants helped him
onto a litter, carried by slaves.  Most undignified, but it had to do.  He felt
like he was too exhausted to walk or ride anyway.
            He wondered if anyone had thought to grab his bow and the arrows. 
And the buck, for that matter.
            Rianda, the elven Laetan mage he hired as a healer among a few
other things, told him what he feared, that it was a heart attack.  “Bed
rest—five days, minimum,” she told him with feeling.  He argued with her, and
threatened, and she remained resolute.  He almost felt like congratulating her
for having the backbone so many of her knife-eared kind lacked.
            “Do you want to get better or not?” she demanded.  He grumbled, and
resolved himself to this treatment.  He argued with her about it nearly every
day, and still she wouldn’t budge.  Still, it looked like they had brought the
deer—but Rianda wouldn’t let him have any of it.
            “You hired me for my healing skills—it isn’t just about magic,” she
insisted.  “It would be too much for your heart right now.  You can have light
foods for a few more days.”
            “The venison is best fresh,” he argued.
            “Fancy another heart attack?  One not enough for you?  Absolutely
not.”  It just went around in circles, and she wouldn’t budge even when
ordered.
            “You’ll thank me for this later,” she told him instead.  It was
infuriating, and probably exactly what he needed to keep him well, which was
more infuriating.  Once the other magisters found out, they would just insist
he was too old.  Tell him to give up the post and retire.  Damn them all.  If
he was anything, he was a stubborn man and he simply refused, and he could
already hear every argument in favor of his retirement.  “For your health” they
would say.  Bah!  He’d sooner die of boredom without his work as a magister.
            He had worked all day, nearly every day, since he had arisen to the
status.  Taking even a small luxury, like returning to Vinewood and going on
the briefest of hunting excursions, left him fidgeting and anxious to get back
to his affairs.  It was practically unnatural to not be working.  Rianda
wouldn’t let him work much either, which was just as infuriating.  She said,
“Nothing that will work up your blood pressure, and you hate all this paperwork
anyway.”  She frowned.  “Though I think you secretly like it, or you wouldn’t
insist on seeing it all the time.”
            “I don’t want it piling up so much,” he said, irritated.
            “Calm down before you hurt yourself,” she said, saintly calm.
            On the fifth day, she had a serious talk with him about caring for
his heart.  No hunting, avoid things that made him angry and increased blood
pressure, things like that.  He, with some reluctance, mentioned the arthritis
in his hands.  She frowned, said she had some salves and things to manage the
pain, but that was it right now, and she would read up on anything else she
could do. 
            She left the room, and he stared out the window, out at the forest,
the pain in his hands making them shake.  His eyes slid to the little graveyard
with its garden and statuary, and one in particular.  Why did the Maker take
everything you loved?
Chapter End Notes
     Yes, Danarius had a heart attack. Fenris would be pleased.
***** Wicked Intentions *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania contemplates how she feels about her brother. Shaislyn and
     Danarius make an agreement. Fenris has an interesting night with a
     whore.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            It’s him.  It’s him and I know it’s him.
            Knowing it was him made Varania feel relieved.  She wasn’t alone. 
She wasn’t all that was left of their family.  Shaislyn grew more and more
estranged as he got older, and one day she thought he might just disappear from
her life entirely.  It was comforting to know that her brother was still
around, and wanted to know her.
            They had exchanged three letters.  He finally admitted that
Danarius had given him a different name, and he inquired, gently, what his real
name had been.  She had replied, You’ll hear it from my lips, and my lips
alone.  I can’t wait to meet you.
            She prayed it was really Leto.
            But she didn’t really know what she would do if it was.  She
couldn’t stay in Kirkwall or she’d risk imprisonment in their Circle—he
couldn’t come with her to Qarinus.  As the days passed, her initial joy at the
thought of meeting him submerged, replaced by other thoughts.  At the moment,
it was just something talked about—she constantly said that the issue was
money, but that was only the half of it.
            From his letters, she could discern that he had been somewhat
privileged even as Danarius’ slave.  His prize possession, more like.  So
basically, while she had to scrimp and save and sell herself for a place to
live, he had slept on silk sheets and dined on sweetmeats.  That angered her,
more than anything, and her old hate surfaced.
            It wasn’t directed at her brother, per se—more like the world in
general.  But as she kept reading his words, her hate became more and more
misdirected.  Mother had died, and spoke of Leto when she did.  She had sang to
him, and to him alone the last time they had met.  She hadn’t even sang to
Varania when the mage was dying in childbirth.  Varania, who had healed the
pain in her hands and her stomach.  Varania, who had held her hand as she
passed from the world.  Varania, who did everything in her power to make her
last days comfortable.  It wasn’t fair that Leto should have been her last
thoughts.
            And it wasn’t fair that while Leto was a slave and had everything
and more he had ever desired, she had been near-starving.  She had—well, Lura
had—sold her son into slavery to keep them out of debt.  And what of Leto? 
Spoiled.  Given everything he ever needed.  Safe, comfortable, dry.  He had an
easy life.  She wanted to slap him for speaking of how much he hated slavery
and how awful it had been.
            How dare he?  How dare he say it was awful, when she…
            “Varania,” the mage slurred, his hand on her waist.  The man was a
Senior Enchanter, and maybe he had been more ambitious when he was younger, but
those days were past.  Lately, he did nothing at all in the magister’s employ
except keep the books and the odd spell here and there.  And this.  She
swallowed hard.  He touched her breasts, his hands caressed her backside, and
found their way under her robes.  She flinched, and endured it, and he was gone
in a few minutes.  It never was more than that, but it made her weep sometimes.
Her brother was a damned spoiled brat.  He always had been, hadn’t he?  She had
thought…  He had meant so much to her once, and she felt nothing if not
betrayed.  He had told her he would never leave her behind—and he had.
            It left her bitter, and angry.  Did she even want to go see him? 
Why?  So he could see how desperate she had become?  So depraved, and
wretched?  So he could smile that cheeky grin she knew Leto possessed, and call
her names, like they had when they were younger?  Pull her hair, trip her,
laugh when she tried to hit him.
            She wasn’t certain she wanted to meet him.  It would be hard to see
him.  Heapparently had everything he ever wanted.  Well, good for him.
 
            It’s past the point where magic can do anything.  The realization
came to Danarius like the dawn, and shocked him just as much as the first dawn
had shocked the earth.  He stared down at his hands, flexing the fingers as if
it would dull the pain.  It didn’t, but a quick swallow of the medicine would. 
He debated that, and put a different flask to his lips.  The liquor would dull
it too of course.
            Age, he thought.  There was nothing to be done about that.  Where
had all the years gone, anyway?  They had came and went so quickly, and all the
while he had always felt like there would always be time for something else.
            Well, there was time for his duties as a magister, little else any
more.  He found himself annoyed with the younger magisters and especially the
apprentices—their insolence and entitlement, all of it.
            He stared back at his hands, rolling one wrist until it gave a
satisfying crack.  His father had had it too, he recalled.  He remembered all
the medicines, and the foul-smelling stinging nettle tea said to dull the
pain.  He felt like he would sooner free all his slaves—Fenris included--than
drink that vile liquid.  Rianda had suggested it once, but she never would
again.
            A sudden gust of wind billowed the drapes.  He hadn’t thought he
had left the window open, but maybe it had been.  He rose to close it, lest the
wind make a mess of his desk, then stopped.
            A young man, more a boy really, leaned against the window frame,
framed by the drapes.  The room was six stories up—a difficult climb but
apparently not impossible.  Two swords were strapped to the boy’s back, their
hilts poking over his shoulders.  He had a full head of dark curls, and
Danarius’ eyes narrowed when he saw his eyes, then he looked back at the
swords.  He had seen those blades somewhere before, and couldn’t remember where
exactly.
            “If you’ve come to kill me, you are underprepared,” Danarius said
testily, but was ready to throw up a protective barrier at the first sign of
attack.  Shaislyn hadn’t changed too much in the past year.  He wondered if the
kid had figured out who had put the bounty on his head, or if he still thought
it was some other magister annoyed at Shaislyn selling information.
            The boy’s hands did not go near his blades.  Rather, he hopped down
from the window, mud tracking on the polished hardwood.  It had been raining
outside this morning.  “Good afternoon,” the boy said, giving the magister a
wide berth as he walked around him.  He sat down very casually in the stuffed
leather chair across from him as if he belonged in it, despite his half-blood
birth.
            Danarius slowly sat back down, still prepared for an attack. 
Shaislyn was a mage too.  “And to you,” the magister said, quite displeased. 
The boy picked up something off of his desk absently—an expensive cigar box
that the magister had never even opened.  “What can I do for you, my bastard
son?”  He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice.
            Shaislyn pried the lid off of the cigar box, and found them to be
more slender than perhaps he was used to seeing.  “Nothing I can’t do for
myself,” he said, not even looking at him, which was grating.  But Danarius
supposed that he wasn’t seeing with his eyes exactly, so why bother.  “You and
I have… similar interests.”
            Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, I doubt that.”
            Shaislyn selected one of the cigars and pulled it from the box
without asking.  He set the box down, and shut the lid.  “It’s about Fenris.”
            Danarius leaned back in his chair, and watched the boy stick the
cigar in his mouth, and light it with his own mage fire.  Danarius did not
smoke himself, but the box had been a gift.  At least someone was getting some
use out of them.  “Go on.”
            Shaislyn exhaled the smoke, wisps of it clinging to him.  He really
did have pointed ears, Danarius reflected.  His curls hid much of it, but he
could see the barest tips poking out of the curls.  Yet, much too small to be
truly elven.  Most half-breeds looked more human.  Something wrong had happened
in his development, Danarius guessed.  “And my mother, really,” he added for
good measure, taking another drag.  Shaislyn smiled indulgently behind a veil
of smoke.  “But what I’d really love is to see your pet elf dead.”
            The magister was not amused.  “Why?”
            Shaislyn stared at him, sickened.  “You were there.  You tell me
why.  Those Vashoth sheltered us for three months.  They befriended us, helped
us—and you…”  He looked at him with such hatred that Danarius felt he should
burst into flame.  Rather, he smiled.  “You told him to kill them and he did. 
I think he should be punished at least.”
            “And what does this have to do with your mother?”
            “Fenris is my uncle,” Shaislyn said simply with a shrug.  “’Leto’
was his name, mother said.”
            Danarius smiled, amused.  His bastard son may hate him, but he was
willing to compromise when there was someone else he hated more.  Why?  “And
how did you learn all this?”
            “Asking questions,” the boy said.  “Reading.”  He was silent for a
moment.  “Anyway, I want him to suffer, and the bastard deserves it.”  Shaislyn
gave him a nasty smile.  We have some of the same facial expressions, Danarius
reflected.  “He murdered Hadriana, leaving her child an orphan as he killed
bothparents, and every hunter you have sent for him.  I dare not consider their
families in the equation—orphaning one child is bad enough.”  He paused, and
smiled.  “Do you think he would kill his sister?”
            And Danarius suddenly understood Shaislyn’s plan.  “You mean to
have Varania betray Fenris to me.”
            “Yes,” Shaislyn said, without hesitation, all the while continuing
to smoke.  Ash fell to the carpet.
            Danarius was intrigued.  “Varania loves her brother.  Why do you
suppose she would betray him?”
            But the half-elf smiled that wicked smile again, and Danarius felt
like he may just grow fond of the boy.  “She does love him.  And hates him.  He
freed her as a mage who had passed her Harrowing by the skin of her teeth,
illiterate, and nearly penniless with no friends or relatives—and, worse,
elven.  She hated the alienage more than anything—and who do you think she
blames?  Tell her that while she was eating cabbage soup and selling her body
to eat it, that Fenris slept on a featherbed and dined on sweetmeats.  Tell her
that while she slept in a gutter in rags, Fenris was clothed and cared for. 
Tell her that.  Remember, she never hated slavery the same way ‘Leto’ and my
grandmother did.”
            The magister blinked slowly, taking all of this in.  “Varania is in
Qarinus the last I heard.”
            Shaislyn took a long drag on the cigar.  “That’s true.”  He
grinned.  “What’s also true is that Fenris found her.  They’ve exchanged
letters at least three times.”  He made a face.  “I… intercepted two of them. 
Make what you will of that.”
            Danarius considered.  Resourceful, wasn’t he—his bastard son.  “And
you really think she can be turned against him?”
            “With the right motivation, yes.  Which brings me to the subject of
payment.”
            The magister frowned at him, watched him raise the cigar to his
lips with his left hand.  Iriel had been left-handed.  “Of course.”
            Shaislyn looked at him.  “If I only wanted Fenris dead, I would
poison him.  Long, lingering.  I know a poison he would never even taste, and
it would take him weeks to die.  And don’t doubt I would do it.”  He inhaled on
the cigar.  “He’s been in Kirkwall for ages.  It wouldn’t be hard.”  He glanced
at the man who had sired him—the turn of his head more a courtesy than anything
else.  “But that’s messy and dangerous for me, and besides, you want him back,
don’t you?”
            Danarius paused.  “Indeed.  What do you want, Shaislyn?” he asked,
growing weary of this.
            Shaislyn dropped ash into the dragon bone ash tray that had been
sent along with his gift of cigars.  An expensive thing for ash, yet somehow
fitting and tasteful.  The man who had sent the gifts was trying to convince
Danarius to wed his eldest daughter.  “I want my mother cared for,” the half-
elf said bluntly.  “Make her your apprentice.”
            The magister looked at him.  He looked at his half-bred son, his
sunburned complexion, tousled hair, and fierce but pale and clouded eyes.  The
boy had a warrior’s heart—like it or not, like his uncle, like Leto, but
without any ridiculous notions of honour or family values.  Danarius wondered
what sorts of magic the boy had learned, and if he could use those swords.  He
certainly moved with them as if he could—the comfortable swagger that came from
confidence.  In a way, it was almost refreshing to see someone of his
bloodlines reek of confidence rather than fear.  He would rather take Shaislyn
as his apprentice, and almost didn’t care about the political scandal that was
the only thing that could ever be.  He was just going to die in a few years
anyway, so what did he care?  “She’s old for an apprentice,” he said instead.
            “You would have little to teach her,” Shaislyn countered.  “The
first several years of apprenticeship are nothing but training how to handle
one’s gift anyway.  She already knows that.  Just teach her the political
portion.”
            “You said it yourself—she passed her Harrowing by the skin of her
teeth.  She’d never make it as a magister.”
            Shaislyn frowned.  “She would.  She’s an entropic mage—she’ll be
fine.”  He frowned.  “Even so, she’ll have… me.”  He looked distant and sad
when he said the last sentence.
            Danarius frowned.  “What is stopping me from taking your plan and
leaving you out of it?”
            Shaislyn’s eyes narrowed.  “Me,” he said.  He raised an eyebrow. 
“Even if you bribe my mother enough, I can beg her not to—and she will listen
to me; not betraying her only brother is the honorable thing to do, after all. 
However, even so, if you win her over nonetheless, I will get to Kirkwall
before you, and I will warn Fenris.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “I think he may
even believe me.”
            Willful and stubborn—smart too.  He was the son he should have had
with Roschelle, but his wife had died, and the boy had been sired on an elven
slave instead.  “Fine.  I will extend my offer to your mother, but why do you
think she would accept it from the man who raped her?”
            Shaislyn looked at him.  “Because she’s desperate, and I will talk
to her about it.  Just trust me.”
            Danarius could probably throw Shaislyn farther than he trusted
him.  “Fine.  Shall I draw up the contract?”
            “Do so,” Shaislyn said.  The magister busied himself with what a
politician did best—creating sketchy contracts.  Shaislyn would comment on the
wording with frequency, demanding different and easy to understand verbs—smart
kid.  What was interesting was that the teenager, not once, rose from the chair
and looked at the words.  He was seeing it some other way.  The magister
stopped, dipping the quill back into the inkwell.  His hands were shaking.  He
stopped, and moved to open a drawer.  His fingers twitched, and they were hard
to move, but he got it open.  The aching pain made lifting the vial of medicine
from the drawer a chore, and he struggled, briefly, with the cap.  Shaislyn was
not watching him, not in a way that he could tell anyway, but he was conscious
of his presence all the same.  He cringed inwardly as he swallowed it, knowing
he had to or he would never be able to write the rest of the contract.  He
should have just called in someone else to do it—make it more official.  That
would take longer though.
            He closed the stopper, and set it back in the drawer.  The foul
taste of the medicine lingered in his mouth, and he swallowed a mouthful of
white wine to wash out the taste.  Slowly, his hands stopped shaking.  Even
more slowly, the pain ebbed.  He picked up the quill again, his fingers still
complaining with the movement.  The quill scratched along the parchment, every
mark a fresh lance of pain until the medicine dulled it, brought it away.
            Danarius paused.  Shaislyn had not asked for a single thing for
himself, even though he had made it quite clear that he could single-handedly
destroy the entire operation if he so chose.  Why?  “What do you want for
yourself?” Danarius demanded, barely looking up from his writing.
            “Nothing,” the half-elf said, his voice soft.  “You have nothing
that I desire.”
            Danarius paused.  “Surely there is something.”
            He shook his head.  “I just want my mother taken care of.”  He
seemed sad for a moment.  “I can look after myself.”
            The magister looked back at him, the way he lounged in the chair,
exhaling smoke, the cigar dangling between his fingers.  “Yes, I suppose you
can.”
            He paused.  “My mother will want one thing, though—and this is more
to ease her conscience:  She will hate seeing her brother tormented and a
slave.”  He made a face.  “Oh, she might cynically enjoy it for a while, but
she will grow to hate it, given time,” Shaislyn said, fidgeting in the chair in
a most unbecoming manner.  “Don’t offer this immediately—just when she is
interested in the offer, but trying to say no, throw it in then:  When you die,
let Fenris go free.”
            Danarius was silent for a moment, thinking.  Truth be told, he had
given a lot of thought to what he would do with Fenris.  No one in his family
would do anything appropriate with the elf.  Send him off to fight Qunari, let
him die in the sands in the coliseum or some pit, sell him—none of it was
something Danarius would ever condone.  He said nothing, but in truth, he
already had the papers for it, and the aching in his hands reminded him of how
long he had taken to draft them up.  “If it comes to that,” he said, as if the
idea pained him.  “What will you do, though, Shaislyn?  I thought you wanted
him dead?”
            “As your slave?”  He raised an eyebrow, grinding the butt of the
cigar into the ashtray.  “He’ll wish he was.  And what do you think he’ll do
once he is truly free and has no one to run from, and no one left to hate?” 
Shaislyn’s smile was cynical this time. 
            It was the worst thing he could really do to Fenris, wasn’t it? 
Enslave him for a few more years, never telling him that one day he would be
free forever, granting him his freedom suddenly, and then there would be no one
to hate, no one to run from.  Worse, no where for him to go and no desperate
need to run to urge him there.  Danarius sprinkled sand over ink on the
parchment, then brushed off the excess.  He had signed it earlier, but turned
it toward the boy.  Shaislyn made no move to grab it or even look at it in a
way that made sense, but he was still for a while, then frowned, taking one
last drag on the cigar.  “The second paragraph,” he said, grinding the stub of
the cigar into the ashtray.  “I want a fail-safe for my mother.  If she doesn’t
work out for you, I want you to pay her instead.  Pay her whatever you would
pay your hunters—two of them.”  The pair discussed sums, and argued and
bickered like old fishwives for several minutes—one having grown up arguing
over tallies and sums as the money lender, and the other growing up on the
opposite spectrum.  In the end, neither were exactly happy with the terms, but
they settled.
            Danarius paused, sighed, and took the parchment again, scratching a
quick note.  More sand, and he didn’t even flip it back to him.  Shaislyn
paused again.  It was a most useful and interesting talent.  “I would pay you a
fair amount to learn that trick,” Danarius told him.
            The boy raised an eyebrow.  “Sight?  I can’t teach you,” he said
with a pained shrug.  “I’ve tried.  Only the blind can learn it.”  He rose, and
flipped the parchment around.  He put his name to it, and Danarius was amused
to see him leave out a last name completely.  “Put out your eyes, and I’ll
teach you.”  Something about the way he said it implied he would be glad to
help with the process.
            Danarius looked at him, at his pale, pale eyes.  “It’s almost
tempting.”
            A pause.  “I’m going to Qarinus.  Meet me there soon; I’ll talk to
her about Fenris.”  He breezed past him.
            Danarius had a thought, and said, “Wait.”  Shaislyn looked back at
him, one foot on the windowsill.  He almost asked him how he had gotten in and
out, then decided he had a better question.
            Shaislyn’s lips pressed into a thin line.  “I thought we were done,
you twisted bastard.”
            “Curious,” his father said, leaning back comfortably in the chair. 
“Do you hate me so much because I raped your mother, or… because it was your
mother that I raped?”
            Shaislyn stopped, turning back toward him, his muddy boot falling
back down to the floor.  His eyes narrowed.  “Do you know that in every country
I’m not really considered a person?” he demanded, pointing towards himself. 
“Do you know that I’m not allowed to get married in any country?”  He swallowed
back the hurt.  “Do you know that I’m a thief because it’s all I’m ‘allowed’ to
do?”  His teeth clenched.  “You know no human will hire me because I’m half-
elven, and no elf will hire me in a damned alienage because I’m half-human?” 
He ran his hands through his hair, and shifted.  “And dwarves won’t hire me
because I make their patrons uncomfortable.”  He looked away, then back at him.
 He started to gesture, then dropped his hand back down.  “I’m not even allowed
to die for a country.  Not even as a mercenary.  Why?  Because they can’t have
my presence ‘causing problems’.”  He  lowered his head.  “So I steal shit, and
sell information, and everything I do is illegal, because that’s my only option
left.”  He was silent a moment, as if he were finished, then added, “And even
then, I have to wear a hooded cloak when I deal with the fences.”
            “It can’t be that bad,” Danarius objected, but doubt clouded his
voice.
            “It is!” he insisted.  “There are even places in the world where I
would just be killed on sight.”  A pause as he lifted his head, staring at the
man who had sired him and cursed him.  “For being half-elven, for being a
mage.”  He crossed his arms angrily.  “Couldn’t you have raped a human girl
that night instead?”  His throat felt dry.
            “Shaislyn, if I could make you human, if that’s what you wanted, I
would.”
            The half-elven teenager stared at him, hurt and sadness beyond what
he could name in his eyes, and the boy could say nothing.  He disappeared out
the window, the gently billowing drapes concealing whatever method he had used
to come and go.  There was more to that boy than he let on, and something he
was definitely not telling Danarius.  It could be as simple as desperation;
that was what the boy hinted at—choosing a mother he knew over an uncle he
didn’t.
 
            Fenris had ground his teeth in silent fury when Anders moved into
Hightown with Hawke.  Oh, he still spent his days, and sometimes in an
emergency, nights, down in Darktown at his clinic, but the thought of him in
Hawke’s arms every night—most nights—was enough to make him angry with himself,
and that was the worst part.  He had always been able to blame someone else for
his problems.  Now, he couldn’t.  Was this another aspect of freedom?  He hated
it.
            It was made worse when Anders would touch Hawke.  Not in a sexual
way even—a hand on his shoulder, their fingers brushing, a glance, maybe a
chaste kiss here and there.  But when the elf saw it, it drove him mad with
jealousy.  But he had had his chance, hadn’t he?
            And he couldn’t blame Hawke, and he wanted to blame Anders—mostly
because of the way Anders would smirk at him—but he couldn’t really blame him
either.  Anders genuinely liked Hawke, and often professed his love and
devotion to him, pretty much shamelessly.  That made it worse too.  What if he
had just told Hawke how he really felt?  Told him everything, unconditionally,
holding nothing back the way that Anders did?  Would that be him in Hawke’s bed
every night instead of the mage?
            It hurt something fierce.  And he couldn’t talk to anyone about it,
or felt like he couldn’t.  Logically, he knew at least two people who wouldn’t
mind talking to him about it—namely, Aveline and Sebastian.  But he couldn’t
quite bring himself to do it.  It seemed selfish, maybe even immature, and he
was reluctant to talk about it.
            His nightmares kept getting worse too, to the point where he was
almost afraid to sleep, unless he drank.  When he drank, he usually slept
dreamlessly.
            A combination of those things had brought him here.  He downed the
shot of whiskey, and turned back to the whore, who smiled at him seductively. 
It made him want to roll his eyes.  Most of whoring was acting.
            “Ready,” he half-muttered.
            “It’s not an unusual request,” the whore said, climbing up the
stairs with the elf trailing behind him.
            Fenris chose not to comment.  It felt unusual.  It felt wrong, for
that matter.  But he missed Hawke so much…  The whore took the usual steps
toward seduction, which weren’t needed but were at least appreciated.
            An expected amount of foreplay—touching, licking, undressing him. 
Fenris had just asked for a human male who wasn’t afraid of the lyrium.  The
woman had asked for him to give her a moment, and she had come back with one.
            “Was it just the money that interested you?” he heard himself say.
            The whore looked up, and tilted his head, but put his hand where
his mouth had been a moment ago.  “I wanted to see you naked,” he said
bluntly.  “Do you glow during sex?  I heard lyrium glows sometimes.”
            “It always does—just sometimes brighter than other times.”
            “Hmm.”  He bent his head back.  The elf’s eyes slid closed, and
tried not to think about any of his fears, or his petty jealousy.  If he closed
his eyes, he could pretend it was Hawke.  It was Hawke climbing on top of him,
wrapping his arms around him, nibbling on his neck, and pushing into him. 
Hawke thrusting and twisting, and Hawke touching him and panting.
            Yes, he could pretend that it was, if he kept his eyes closed.  It
felt better that way, made him more inclined to be more of an active
participant, rather than just lying there and enjoying the way it felt.  But it
wasn’t Hawke.  And he knew by the man’s back, by his shaved chest, his trimmed
mound of hair at the base of his cock.  It wasn’t the same.
            Fenris tentatively made another request, and the whore didn’t even
bat an eye.  They moved on the bed, taking another position.  The whore rode
him, his hand around his throat as he thrust into him.  Not tight enough to
cause damage, just tight enough to feel light-headed, making him focus more on
the way he felt inside him.  The pain from the lyrium felt dimmer like that
too—everything felt dimmer.  He reached down, touching himself to bring himself
closer to climax.  The whore licked his shoulder, ran a hand down his chest,
his fingers gently smoothed over his hand, taking control.
            He must have made some noise or expression that alerted the whore,
because he stopped, his hand wrapping around the base of his member, tight—too
tight.  Fenris flinched.
            “No,” he said, voice low.  “I’m not finished with you yet.  How
dare you try to finish.”
            His eyes slid closed.  “I’m sorry, master.”
            “You should be.”  His grip tightened until he cried out, half in
pain and half in pleasure, his fingers twisting into the sheets.  “Don’t come
until I tell you to.”
            “Yes, master,” he breathed, before his fingers wrapped around his
throat again.  He bit his lower lip, hard and harder, trying desperately not to
orgasm, even though every thrust and cry was in favor of the act.  Every minute
stretched and it couldn’t have been hours, but it felt like it.  It hurt not to
come, especially when he wanted to.  Especially because he knew there was no
real repercussion for doing so anyway.
            Still, that wasn’t what this was about.  He thought, I’ll just get
it out of my head.  And once I do, I’ll stop dreaming about it.  Maybe he
would, maybe he wouldn’t.  He wasn’t so sure he cared, in the heat of the
moment, about the nightmares.  Acted out in real life, under safe
circumstances, it felt really good.  He even felt better about the rape in a
way he couldn’t explain.  Maybe, partially reenacted, it let him accept it, let
him put it behind him, safe and away.  Gave him a different, safe, memory in
its place.  Even a good memory.  It let him associate the rape with this
instead, and he felt better about it.  He didn’t know if he could ever explain
that to someone, but it was how he felt.
            And the whore pounded into him, nearly mercilessly, and he was
tempted to start begging.  He had to when he flipped him onto his stomach, and
he had to hold onto himself, tightly, to keep from spilling his seed.  “I—I
can’t,” he whispered.
            “You can,” he corrected him.
            “No…”
            “You will fucking do what I tell you to,” the whore gasped.
            A pause, then, “Yes, master.”  The whore drove into him hard three
times, releasing deep inside him, pumping gently with his orgasm.  The whore
kissed his shoulder, running his hands down his back.  Fenris shivered, but
still hadn’t been told he was allowed to come.  The whore withdrew, shoving him
almost angrily over.  Fenris rolled, and looked at him expectantly.  The whore
smiled a little, and bent, mouth covering him, teasing him in every way he
could think of.  It was excruciating, and amazing, and Fenris wanted to hit him
for the teasing and kiss him for how it felt.
            Finally, the whore moved the elf’s hands away, pushing him down his
throat.  Swallowing his seed was more an act of simply letting it run down his
throat.  Fenris fell back against the pillows, sighing in relief.  The whore
climbed over him, staring down at him.
            “I still didn’t tellyou to come,” he muttered, and smiled again. 
“I guess I have to punish you.”
            “I tried, master,” he whispered, eyes closed.
            “Not hard enough,” he said, his hand snaking between his legs,
toying with his limp member.  He kind of laughed.  “On two accounts.”  That
elicited a small chuckle from Fenris.  “Hmm—what shall I do with you?”  His
hand cupped him, played and caressed.   “I think I’m going to bend you over the
side of the bed.”
            “Not a good enough punishment,” Fenris murmured.  He opened one
eye.  “I’d like that too much.”
            The whore kind of laughed, nibbling along his neck.  “Then when I’m
pounding your ass, I’ll spank you, and if you continue to be so misbehaved,
I’ll choke you.”  He licked along his shoulder.  “And if you’re really bad,
darling, you can spend the rest of the night tied to my bedpost, and I’m going
to do every devious act I can think of to you—and I can be very creative.”
            Fenris smiled lazily, eyes opening.  His arms raised, sliding over
his shoulders leisurely, his leg rubbing against one of his.  That last idea
had some promise to it.  “Nothing you could do could make me behave,” he
whispered, licking along the curve of the whore’s neck.
            “Oh, darling, you’re going to keep me up all night, aren’t you?”
 
            Dawn found Fenris stretched on the whore’s bed, asleep for maybe
the lesser part of two hours.  The whore was asleep nearby him, curled in a
semi-circle and his hair looking better tousled than it had slicked back and
groomed.  His legs ached, his ass hurt, he had bite marks, scratches, bruises,
and red marks covering much of his body.  And welts, he reflected.  The lyrium
made him feel raw, and it surged under his skin as if it were angry it had
competition in terms of pain.
            He stretched, looking at his wrists.  The rope had been silk, but
it had chafed under enough pressure.  His throat felt dry, his lips felt
cracked.  No, not just his legs aching—his whole body.  And he felt absolutely
amazing.
            The entire night had been amazing.  He woke feeling good.  Not the
same happy, safe, peacefulness he had felt with Hawke, but still good.  Like he
didn’t care about the rape in his past any more.  He just felt better.  He felt
less overall sad and depressed about the things that had happened to him.  As
though, he could make it feel better, even if he couldn’t change the way it
was.  The memories of the rape didn’t have to hurt.  They could just be
memories, like anything else.
            He slipped out of the bed, and went to dress, and saw the whore
watching him.  “I like your ass,” the whore said, rolling to get a better view.
            The elf raised an eyebrow.  “I like your dick,” he countered.  His
ass had felt good too, come to think of it.
            “Will I be seeing you again?” the whore inquired, winking.
            “Maybe,” he said with some reserve.
            The whore rolled, reaching toward him.  “Come back to bed.”
            Fenris shook his head, stepping away.  “No thanks.”  He worked at
buttoning the tunic. 
            “Usually, when I’m doing shit like that, I prefer ‘ser’ as to
‘master’.  But I like the sound of your voice when you said it, so I let it
slide.”  He winked broadly.  “In the future though, I’ll spank you if you don’t
use my preferred title.”
            “Ser?” Fenris wondered dubiously.  “I never got your name.”
            “Uh…  Wensley.”
            “Wensley?” Fenris inquired, and almost laughed.
            “Shut up,” Wensley suggested.  “Or I’ll charge you double next
time.”
            “That’s unfair.  And after everything we shared too,” Fenris said,
his tone carrying traces of sarcasm.
            “I guess I owe you something—hell, you look bruised.  I’m sorry,”
he said, flinching.
            “I wasn’t complaining at the time,” the elf reminded him.
            “Hell, you can take a hit,” he agreed.  “I felt bad about it for a
while.  None on your face though, and I’m glad your neck didn’t bruise—much.”
            Fenris ran his fingers through his disheveled hair, glad it was
short.  He never wanted to have long hair again.  He bid Wensley farewell, and
headed back home, where he stripped and fell back into bed.  He slept well, if
not dreamlessly.  But it was just the sort of ordinary dreams—dreams about
falling or something about a city being sacked by Imperials and he was hiding
under a staircase for some reason, and another one about cheese.
Chapter End Notes
     I like how in this chapter, everyone else has a really serious,
     intense, plot-defining monologue, and Fenris gets laid.
***** Manipulation *****
Chapter Summary
     Shaislyn speaks to Varania about Fenris and Danarius. Fenris and
     Isabela enjoy one another's company.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Varania almost dropped her staff when she saw Shaislyn leaning
against the gates.  She looked again, knew it was him, and went toward him.
            “Shaislyn?” she inquired.  When had been the last time she had seen
him?  Oh…  No, she remembered—he had run from her in tears after it came out in
the open that she had murdered his sister.  She wondered if he would ever
forgive her for that.  She knew she could barely live with herself for it, so
how could she ask that of him, when she thought about it? 
            Because I need him to forgive me… before I can forgive me.
            He looked up, exhaling smoke.  He dropped the stub of the cigar and
ground it into the gravel, grinding out the flame with the toe of his boot.  “I
need to talk to you about something.”
            He reached into his coat and removed a silver case.  He opened it,
and she frowned to see it was just more cigars.  “When did you take up
smoking?” she demanded.
            He frowned at her.  “A couple of years ago,” he admitted dryly. 
“It helps keep me relatively calm.”  He removed one of them.  They were the
thinner Orlesian variety, and something told her he had most likely stolen
them.
            She walked up to him, frowning in disapproval while her son stuck
the end of the cigar in his mouth, pocketed the case, and lit it with his own
fire.  “Well, what did you need to talk about?”
            He blinked.  “You were lighting up the street, right?  I’ll walk
with you.”  He walked along beside her as she went about the nightly chore.
            “My brother contacted me for the first time almost a year ago,” she
said conversationally.
            He paused.  “That so.”
            She nodded.  “We exchanged a few letters.”  Another pause.  “I’m
going to go see him eventually.”
            He gave a slight nod of his head.  “Right.”  More silence passed. 
“Do you really want to?” he inquired.
            She stopped, the light gathering at the end of her staff, and she
cast it up into the lantern.  “What do you mean?”
            He shrugged a shoulder noncommittally.  “Even if it really is him,
he doesn’t remember you.”
            Varania turned and looked at him, eyes narrowing with suspicion. 
“How do you know that?”
            Her son’s face was oddly blank, and he ignored the question.  “Do
you like where you’re at right now?” he asked instead.  “Are you happy here?”
            She started walking again, and he kept pace with her.  “No,” she
admitted.
            “Would you have been happier in Minrathous, as a slave?”
            She looked down, then back up.  “It would have been easier,” she
admitted.  She looked back at him.  “For both of us, I think.  And Lura too.” 
A pause.  “Maybe not for your grandmother, but it really wasn’t that bad.”  A
long pause.  “Better than some of the things I—we’ve—gone through anyway.”
            He looked at her for a while, smoking, as she worked.  “Do you
blame your brother for that?”
            Her lips pressed into a thin line.  “I try not to,” she admitted
with some hesitation.  “He was trying to make our lives better.  He
didn’t—that’s all.”
            The half-elf nodded appreciatively.  “Did you know that while we
were eating moldy millet soup, he was pampered?  Danarius’ prized possession,
and he spared no expense on him.”
            Varania ground her teeth, but said nothing.
            Shaislyn looked at her, judging her, and took another long drag on
the cigar.  “And we could have all been together if he had lost.”  He left out
his suspicion—what had happened to all of the manor’s slaves.
            Her fists clenched, and she stopped at another dim lantern.  She
lit it, and moved on to the next.  “What’s your point?”
            He trailed after her, and finished the cigar.  He ground it out on
a low garden wall.  “How would you like to be a magister?”
            She stopped, then laughed as if it had been a joke.  He stared at
her, his face stoic.  She shook her head.  “Oh, that’s impossible.”  She looked
back at the magister’s lavish estate.  She thought about its gardens, orchards,
she thought about the fountain in the yard and the manicured lawn.  She thought
about his horses, the army of servants and pages, slaves, the foreign and
expensive furniture, the exotic pets he bought for his only mageborn daughter—a
spoiled thing who wanted for nothing and would never know what it meant to be
hungry or cold.
            She peered closer at her son’s grave expression, and her smile
turned into a frown.  “You can’t be serious, Shai.”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “I am.”  They began the walk to the next
lantern.  “I’ve… come to an agreement with a magister.”
            She nodded.  “Are you finally going to join the Circle?” she
inquired, thinking this must really be about him.
            He shook his head, laughing.  “I’m quite happy being an apostate,
thank you, Mother.”
            “I wish you’d visit more often,” she said quietly.  “Or at least
write.  I worry all the time that you might be… dead, or captured by Templars,
or…”  She sighed, shrugging.
            His lips curved into a smile.  “I have been captured by Templars,”
he admitted.  “I got careless in Orlais one time.”
            She looked at him, wondering how he had gotten away, but did she
really need to ask?  She looked at the swords strapped to his back, the
confident way he walked.  She knew he was some kind of shapeshifter, likely a
thief.  Was he a murderer too?  What room did he have to judge her?  But he had
never killed his own child.  “Not again, I hope.”
            He didn’t say anything else about the matter.  “Don’t worry about
me.”  He fell silent as she lit another lantern.  “But would you like to be a
magister?”
            She frowned in thought.  “That’s a nice daydream, isn’t it.”  Of
course she would be interested in that.  Fine foods, servants, a beautiful
house, wealth, the power to protect herself—yes that sounded lovely.  More than
she could ever have imagined.  Or hoped for.  More than she knew she could ever
achieve on her own.
            Shaislyn’s lips curved into a smile.  “Not a daydream—a real
possibility.”
            Varania considered her son’s words.  “How?” she demanded.
            He shrugged.  “A series of… circumstances.”
            “Such as?” she lit another lantern, and they crossed the street to
light the others.
            He stretched, took another long drag and exhaled slowly.  “You do
something for him, and he will make you his apprentice.”
            She looked at him.  What mess was he getting himself into, anyway? 
“What favor would a magister ask of me?” she demanded, almost laughing.
            He watched her light another lantern.  “He just wants you to… act
as bait for someone.”
            Slowly, she began to see the pieces of this puzzle, but he couldn’t
mean…  “Leto?” she whispered.  “You’re talking about Danarius.”  Her fingers
curled, her nails biting into her palms.  “I hate that man.  Why are you
talking to him?”
            He glanced at her, pained.  “I wanted to meet my father.  I hate
him—but I wanted to meet him.”  He sighed.  “And anyway, I hate seeing you
here.”
            They walked to the next lantern.  Someone hurried by them carrying
a parcel, and they were silent until the woman had passed.  “I’ve had worse
places to stay, Shai.”
            He shrugged helplessly.  “Maybe.”  He was quiet for a moment.  “But
imagine being a magister.”
            She didn’t have to imagine; she had been around magisters and their
wealth and their power all her life.  That would be… a dream.  But it was
Danarius he was talking about, and he had raped her.  “I hate Danarius.”
            Her son shrugged again.  “So?”
            She frowned at him.  “You want me to betray my brother to that vile
man?”
            “To be a magister,” he finished.
            She was appalled at the thought.  “It’s my brother.”
            He looked pained.  “He’s a murderer, Mother,” he said, his voice
quiet.  “I met him in Seheron.  He killed… so many people.”  He stared
downwards.  “He’s tortured people, and left children orphaned.”  He paused. 
“He isn’t the man you knew.”
            She stared at him, her jaw dropping at his words.  “That… can’t be
true…”
            “It is.  I’ve seenit.  I’ve spoken to the victims.  It is true.”
            The elven mage clamped her mouth shut in despair.  That… that
wasn’t Leto.  It couldn’t be.  He would never…  But maybe this person he had
become—Fenris—maybe he would.  She didn’t know what to say, or even if there
were words she could say.  She was appalled.  The two walked in silence, and
all she could think of was what her son told her about her brother.  Had he
really changed so much?  It made her heart break to think of it.
            “He’s not even the same person,” Shaislyn said after a long silence
had passed.  “He’s a stranger to you.  The only similarity is that Leto and
Fenris happen to have the same body.  That’s it.”
            She looked out at the street and watched a carriage go by.  She
didn’t want to believe that.  “You can’t know that.”
            “I do,” he insisted.
            And hadn’t she felt resentment toward her brother anyway?  Shaislyn
was saying that Leto was basically dead, and this person who had… hijacked his
body was nothing at all like him.  It wouldn’t really be betraying Leto,
because Leto was gone.  This man wasn’t even really her brother, not truly. 
And… a magister, she?  “What… do I have to do?” she asked when the last lantern
was lit and they began the walk back.
            “Nothing, not really.  Continue what you were doing.  Write him
letters, sail to Kirkwall.  Meet with him.  That’s it.  Danarius will take care
of the rest.”
            She looked down.  “But he’ll be a slave.”
            He shrugged.  “You said it yourself—that’s not so bad.”
            They walked past the gate.  “I couldn’t bear to see him like that. 
He’d hate me.”
            Shaislyn crossed his arms.  “Maybe.  Does it matter?  So he’ll give
you a condescending look now and again.”  He paused.  “But even in slavery,
Danarius will still continue to treat him like a prize possession.  And you’ll
see how he treats him, and remember that while we lived in that sewer they call
an alienage, he slept on silk pillows.”
            “Truly?” she asked him.
            “That’s what Hadriana—er, that’s Danarius’ last apprentice—said,”
he told her.
            Her lips pressed together into a thin line.  “I don’t know,” she
admitted.  “It’s my brother.”
            Shaislyn sighed.  “Think about it.  I’ll see you in a few more
days,” he said, and turned.  She stopped.  He looked over his shoulder.  He did
look like Danarius, she reflected with some sorrow.  Some of the same
expressions, something about his jaw and the set of his eyes, the way his brow
furrowed when he scowled.  But he wasn’t his father, and it was nice to see him
growing up into a man, and she could see parts of herself and her family in him
too—and that was comforting.  “And one more thing:  When Danarius dies, all of
his inheritance—the estates, his wealth—would pass to you.  That would include
your brother, so think about that.  You don’t have to keep him as a slave.”
            She watched her son go.  That did change things, didn’t it?  She
could be there with him.  Yes, she could betray him to his master, but Leto
would forgive her over time.  And she could make sure he was well during that
time.  She could look after him like he had looked after her.  And when the
magister died, she would get everything, including him.  She could free him,
make him a citizen like he had once done for her.  He wouldn’t be a runaway any
more.  She would give him a place to stay, and maybe she could try to do
something about his memory loss.  They could try to work through it together. 
If she could just make him see…
            Danarius was old, she reflected.  It wouldn’t be very long, would
it?  And she would be kind to her brother anyway.  There was still the issue
that the magister had raped her, but that had been such a long time ago.  She
wasn’t a helpless child any more, and while she would never forgive the man for
that, perhaps something could be arranged at least.
            Varania turned back toward the manor, her head full of dizzying
thoughts.
 
            “And…  I fold,” the elf said, laying down his cards.  The others
showed theirs.  Isabela swore, shaking her head.  Fenris seemed pleased with
himself as he took the coins off the table.  The deck was passed to Varric to
shuffle, and Isabela called for another round of drinks.
            “One more round,” Varric said.  “Then I have some business to
attend to.”
            Isabela raised an eyebrow.  “What kind of business?”
            “The kind I don’t tell you about it,” he said.
            The pirate rolled her eyes.  “Fine, but higher stakes this
time—because you’re cutting it short.”
            “Hands where I can see ‘em, Rivaini,” he said, glancing up.  Fenris
would keep an eye on her.  Or on her cleavage—either way.
            “Anyone seen Hawke around lately?” Isabela asked the other two.
            “No,” Fenris replied without feeling, suddenly busily finishing his
tankard.
            Varric shrugged as he dealt the hand.  “He’s been pretty
preoccupied with everyone’s favourite Grey Warden,” he said.
            “Abomination,” Fenris corrected.
            “Apostate,” Isabela said, just making it worse.
            Varric rolled his eyes.  “Whatever—Andraste’s tits, you two.”
            Isabela shrugged.  “What?  I have nothing against Anders.  You know
he uses magic in bed?  He can do this electricity thing—“
            “That’s more than I need to hear,” Varric said, speaking for Fenris
as well as himself.
            “I bet he does it with Hawke,” she said, resting her chin on her
hand.  She ran her tongue slowly over her lip.
            “If you’re fantasizing about a threesome with them, you can forget
it,” Varric told her point-blank.  “They’re practically married.”
            Fenris stared at the bottom of his empty tankard, wondering when
the barmaid would be back.
            “Not a threesome, Varric,” she said, smiling at him slyly.
            “No.”
            Her gaze shifted to Fenris, who did not look up.  Her eyebrows
raised, and she cleared her throat.  She cleared it a second time, and he
finally looked up.  “You…  No.”
            She smiled instead.  “And then, perhaps, we can get Sebastian
really, really drunk…”  The other two laughed.  “I’m serious!”  She picked up
her hand, and the three busily looked at their cards.  The barmaid came around,
filling everyone’s tankards.  She coughed when she stepped behind Varric, and
cleared her throat when she stepped behind Fenris.  Isabela smiled.
            The other two were suddenly suspicious of the barmaid, but she was
already away at another table.
            “Of course, we’ll need to invite Merrill as well.  She’s so cute,”
she said as she rearranged her cards.
            “Don’t you dare drag Daisy into your sick fantasies, Rivaini,”
Varric said protectively.
            “I was teaching her how to do body shots last week, and you had no
problems then!” Isabela objected.
            “Of course not; I was drunk,” he said.  “Everything seems like a
good idea when you’re drunk.”
            “Mmm—and Zevran…”
            “Just shut up,” Fenris said as the round started and bets were
made, cards were left and drawn.  All he could think about was Anders in bed
with Hawke, and it took everything he had not to let the lyrium react violently
to his mood.  All the same, he felt it pulse—once.  Everyone near him turned
and looked.  It was almost normal at this point, but people still looked
instinctively.  He flinched a little, and blinked, trying to keep his
expression blank.
            Isabela cocked her head to the side, as if trying to guess what was
bothering him.  “The Warden Commander too,” she went on.
            Varric looked at Fenris, watched the lyrium flare again.  His gaze
shifted back to the pirate.  “Rivaini…”
            Fenris took a long drink from his tankard, trying to calm his
emotions.  He thought about the last time he had seen Anders kiss Hawke.  He
remembered the way Hawke had smiled, the soft look in his eyes that he knew to
be love.  He could see it, but no one had ever looked at him like that.  No one
ever would either.  He remembered the way Hawke tasted, the way his caress had
felt on his skin.  And he thought about Hawke touching Anders the same way.  It
hurt.  He had thought, once, that the lyrium brought him more lasting pain than
anything else ever could.  He had been wrong.
            He would rather be lashed to a post again and whipped than see them
kiss even one more time.  It hurt so much.  Fenris took a deep breath, and set
the tankard down now that he felt he could school his emotions.
            “What?” she demanded as more bets were laid.  “You act like there’s
something wrong with fantasy.  Now, picture it—an orgy of hot, naked bodies on
a massive bed with silk sheets-“
            “The silk would be ruined,” Fenris pointed out helpfully, as if
nothing at all were wrong.  As if he didn’t fantasize, almost nightly, about
ruining silk sheets with Hawke.
            She shot him a scowl.  “Fine.  Rather than a bed, what if it’s… 
What if it’s solid gold?”  Her toes curled at the thought, in glee.  “With a
fountain of wine pouring onto it—both to cool us down, drink, and to
lubricate.”
            “Sounds sticky,” Varric said with a huff.
            Isabela rolled her eyes.  “It’s a fantasy.  It has no grounds in
reality.”  She sighed wistfully.  “Yet.”  She smiled, caught up in her
daydream.  “And then I can fuck to my heart’s content, I get all the gold
afterwards, and I can be completely wasted on wine.  Sounds amazing.”
            The other two glanced at one another, then back at the cards.  The
serving girl passed by again, and they were caught up enough in the game to not
notice as she went by, until she walked behind Isabela on her way to another
table.  She tripped, and the rogue turned to help her up, taking her cards in
her hand with her.  Fenris’ eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Varric tried to
look, but neither saw the brief exchange of a single card that passed between
the two.  Isabela turned back to them, waited for another round, and folded.
            “I’m out,” Varric muttered.  “But you’re a cheat, Rivaini.”
            She only laughed, and looked to Fenris.  “Strip poker, my room?”
            “I don’t think so,” he said, sipping at the ale.
            “Fine.  Strip poker, out here.”
            “You don’t give up, do you?”
            She rolled her eyes, and they had another round.  “Hey, let’s make
this more interesting.  I win, you come up to my room, take off all your
clothes—nah, just your pants--and I break out a pair of handcuffs and whipped
cream, and we see where it goes from there.”
            He stared at her.  “And what do I get?”
            “Who cares about what you get?” she demanded, then rolled her
eyes.  “Fine, if you win, we’ll go back to your manor, you take off all your
clothes, and I cover you in whipped cream and have to remove it all using only
my tongue.  Sound fair?”
            He stared at her for a long moment.  “No.”  He looked at his
cards.  “If I win, you stop trying to get in my pants.”  The serving girl
started to pass, and he covered his cards.  “And you shut up about it.”
            They stared at one another for a long, intense moment.  The serving
girl passed them by, the elf’s cards still covered.  “Deal,” she said.
            And Fenris smirked, and laid down his cards on the table.  Isabela
looked at them, and swore loudly and with feeling.  “Damn you!” she cursed. 
Pleased with himself, he reached across the table for the coins.  She stared at
him, her fury slowly mounting.  Then she smiled, serenely.  He looked at her,
and felt like, perhaps, he should take the coins and run.
            She catapulted herself out of her chair, crashed into Fenris across
the table.  She slammed him down to the floor, knocking over his chair.  Her
knees pinned his arms down at the elbow, and she reached her hands to his belt,
twisting to see what she was doing.
            “I agreed not to try,” she said through gritted teeth.
            “Here?” he demanded.
            “Shut up,” she suggested.
            The bar patrons looked on with mute interest.  The owner of the bar
was growing more and more displeased by the moment.  By the time the barkeep
had come around, she had, despite his squirming and struggling, and noisy
complaints, got her hand down the front of his pants.
            “Isabela,” the barkeep said.
            “I’m busy,” she said, trying to get just a little lower while he
tried to squirm out from under her without actually hurting her.  Most of his
instincts screamed to attack, but he had to fight them; she was a friend.
            “Go rape the elf outside then,” he said, pointing to the door.  “Or
in your room, just not here.”
            She grumbled, and pulled her hand out of his pants.  Fenris was a
bit shocked, over the entire thing, and she helped him to his feet.  His belt
fell to the floor, and he scowled at her.  She grinned, grabbed it, and dashed
up the stairs.  He watched her go, and would have just let her have the damned
thing, except that he realized, with mounting dismay, that the little wolf
carving was in one of those bags.
            He swore, grabbed the coins off the table, and ran after her.
            She was standing in the hallway, outside her door, with a smile
like she knew something he didn’t.  “Isabela,” he said, walking toward her.
            She dangled the belt in one hand.  “Want it?  Come get it.”  She
opened her door, and stepped inside.  He ground his teeth in fury, and marched
after her, knowing this was a very bad decision.    The door opened again a
moment later, and Isabela peered out at him, holding something in her hand that
was distinctly not his belt.  When he got closer, he realized that it was her
underwear.  Oh, Maker…
            She looked at him again, sizing him up, he noticed.  Should he go
for his sword?  Was that the right thing to do in a situation like this?  Or
should he leave the belt and the carving and run, and beg for it back later? 
Or should he try to reason with her?  No, that was impossible—one does not
reason with the unreasonable.
            “I’ll give it back to you, but you have to take off your pants,”
she said, leaning casually in the doorway.
            “No.”
            She raised an eyebrow.  “No deal then.  Pants, or the belt.  Pick
one.”
            “Isabela…”
            She shrugged.  “Fine.”  She turned, kicking the door shut behind
her.  He stared at the door, knowing this was just a horrible idea.
            He took a deep breath, and opened it. 
Isabela was faster than he was; her blade was pressed against his throat.  In
her sultry voice, she whispered, “Pants or no belt.”  He glowered at her, not
remotely intimidated.  She shrugged, tossed the knife away, and shut the door. 
“I wonder what’s in these pouches!” she called.
            He tried the door.  It was locked.  He stared at it, wondering if
he should just walk through the door or not.  “In bag number one, we have… 
Some coins—not bad…  Looks like…”
            “Isabela—really—this is very immature.”
            “Pants,” she called again.
            “You have got to be kidding,” he muttered under his breath.
            “Twenty pieces of silver, eight coppers,” she said.
            “Isabela!”
            “Pants,” she insisted.
            He stared at the door in indecision.  He sighed, his forehead
hitting the wall.  “I’m taking off my pants now,” he called.  “They’re off, and
in my hand.  Now open the damned door.”
            A long pause, and he heard the lock turn.  He slammed the door
open.  She jumped back.  He dashed for the belt lying on the floor, and she
tackled him.  He dropped the coins in his hand, and they scattered noisily
across the floor.
            “Liar,” she accused.  “I knew it.”  They grappled, and fought like
children.  She bit his arm, and struck him in the neck, knocking the wind out
of him.  He gagged, and she sprang on top of him, worming her hand back into
his pants.
            “Damnit, Isabela!” he gasped, squirming to get away from under
her.  She scowled at him.
            “You just keep still,” she told him, and pushed the toe of her boot
onto his neck, applying a minimal pressure to keep him gagging, but still.  He
complained and they continued to fight, but she managed to force his pants down
to his mid-thighs.  “I think you like being choked.”  She smiled lazily at
him.  He rolled his eyes.
            Now the tricky part was coming up.  She put her hand around him,
and waited for him to just give up.  She eased the pressure off of his neck as
he started to become more erect.
            He gasped, breathing hard.  “You are determined,” he told her.
            “It wouldn’t have come to this if you would just give in,” she
quipped, her hand moving expertly down his length, two fingers working along
the space between the shaft and his testicles.
            He rolled his eyes, then shivered as she ran her thumb in slow
circles over the tip.  “You’re a fucking rapist,” he accused her.
            She looked back at his erection in her hand.  “You can’t rape the
willing.”
            “Willing,” he laughed.  He sat up, knocking her down.  He pinned
her to the floor, glowering down at her.  A little frustrated, he wormed his
way out of his pants, kicking them aside, shoving her tunic out of the way. 
She smiled up at him, and gasped when he pushed inside her.  He kept her pinned
to the floor, even when she struggled, and kicked, and wanted to be on top. 
No, especially when she did that.
            She writhed under him in a desperate attempt to get him deeper
inside of her, and when she kissed him, it was like she was trying to devour
him—it was hungry, full of passion and desire.
            The pair shifted, tangled together, never apart and hungry for
more—always hungry for more.  They couldn’t seem to find enough positions, at
times disagreed on positions and there was always a battle for which one. 
Sometimes, he lost, sometimes he won—but he felt like even when he lost, he
didn’t, not truly.  Isabela liked being on top.  She liked being in control,
and when it was taken from her, it was exciting and almost frightening at the
same time, and she liked that too.
            The lyrium was glowing, bright enough to light up the small room
and illuminate all the dingy corners, the silver and copper coins glinting on
the floor, their clothing strewn haphazardly about the room—things to trip over
and fall against.  He shuddered, and breathed, and had to try something.
            He felt his soul slip away from him.  It had once been—not painful
exactly—but uncomfortable.  It took a piece of his body and mind with it, as
ever it did.  He, as always, was conscious of someone, or something watching. 
But it had always felt benevolent before.  He had long ago accepted that it
might just be a demon watching him, but it had never approached him.  The
presence was only that—a presence—something watching and waiting, but never
able to partake.
            The experience left him able to touch the world around him, but
able to move through it like he couldn’t before.  He could push deeper into her
than before, more inside her than before—but oh so careful not to hurt her.  It
could kill her, if he were not very, very careful.  He tried to judge where he
was inside her with one hand on her belly, and then he looked at her, her face
contorted in ecstasy and wonder, and passed his hand into her stomach.  He
could kill her if he wanted to.  Rip out her intestines inch by inch and she
would be powerless to stop him, but he didn’t.
            It took every effort not to harm her, to touch her in places no one
else could, sensations that had never been achieved before—save perhaps through
other dark magics.  And he could touch himself too, brushing against her,
watching her shudder and scream, her whole body shaking.
            She was so wet it was a small wonder he could stay inside her, the
torrent of her orgasms almost fighting against him as much as welcoming him. 
He pulled his hand away, as gentle as could be, and pulled back, just enough. 
He was tired of being careful.
            He relaxed, his form melting back from the Fade, and he bent to
kiss her again.  Or, would have, except that her arms snaked around his head
and she yanked him down to kiss him savagely.  She was wanton and mad in her
lust, and asked him to do it again.  And he did.
            The pair twisted into every position they could think of, against
every object in the room, heedless of any kind of noise or breaking anything,
and when they stopped, it wasn’t from orgasm—it was from being too tired, too
breathless, bodies too sore to keep going and simply passed out, one atop the
other.
            Fenris woke up when Isabela rolled off of him.  She groaned
groggily, and rolled her head to look at him.  “Want to go again?”
            Of course he wanted to go again.  He kissed her breasts, caressed
her legs.  He lapped along her cleavage, down to her naval.  He kissed down
between her legs, his tongue pushing against her.  He liked the feel of her
muscles in his hands, her firm buttocks, her gorgeous breasts.  He liked the
taste of her, liked the way she felt.  He liked being inside her, and he knew
she liked him inside her.
            She took him in her mouth, tasting herself on his member.  Her
fingers ran along his ribs, touching his stomach, curving around behind him. 
He thrust deeper into her mouth, and she took him, her beautiful lips pressed
against him.  Slowly, her tongue escaped her lips, rolling downward to barely
stroke his balls.  Her hands cupped him, touched him, held him like a
worshipper held a holy artifact.
            Her fingers entered him wet, and he moaned.  She licked across his
testicles, against where her fingers were, and nibbled along his thigh.  She
lapped the salt from his erection, toying with it in her mouth.  She rose,
kissing one of his nipples.  She took it between her teeth, and pulled, gently,
making him rise with her mouth.  She let go, and he sighed, pushing against her
fingers.  She smiled, her hand slipping away.  She pressed her breasts against
his hips, his erection mashed between her cleavage.  He touched her shoulders,
his hand going down to her bosom.  He pushed them together, gasping as he
pumped against her breasts.  It was an entirely new sensation, slick with sweat
and her saliva.  He could control the way it felt by how hard he could push
against his breasts.  She had amazing breasts.
            The way she had worshipped his cock and testicles, he knelt and
worshipped her breasts.  He kissed them, caressed them, covered every inch of
them with kisses, soft caresses, kneaded them, and needed them.  He sucked on
her nipple like a newborn babe, lapping against it slowly.  He could never fit
her breasts in his mouth, but he could get as much of them as possible.  He
lifted her breasts in his hands, loved the way they felt.
            He had only ever been with men.  Been raped by men, fucked men,
made love once to a man.  A woman was an entirely different experience, and he
loved it.  He kissed her nipples again, and she slid down on his dick. 
            He watched her breasts bounce as she rode him, touched the curve of
her ass, the bend of her waist, her heaving chest.  She was so wet that it
soaked his hips.  He gasped, shivering at the marvel of how a woman could
orgasm and just keep fucking.  He, alternately, was finished when he reached
his orgasm, as ever.  He dressed quickly, and had intended to leave before she
distracted him again, except that he had glanced back at her.  She was sitting
on the bed, her legs spread, her chest bare and glistening with sweat.  He had
stared, longer than he had intended to.
            “You don’t have to leave,” she told him.
            He wasn’t looking at her face when he said goodbye.
            Varric saw him leaving, and laughed.  “Ah, the Walk of Shame,” he
mused with a knowing nod.
            Fenris sighed, and rolled his eyes, but self-consciously picked at
his hair.  “Shut up, Varric.  What time is it?”
            The dwarf briefly debated pointing out the controversy in telling
someone to shut up and then asking them a question, but decided otherwise. 
“About noon.”
            “Hell.”  His entire body felt sore, and by the time he made it to
Hightown, he felt like he was dying.  It does no justice to describe the
particular ecstasy he felt when he peeled off his clothes and armor, and fell
face-first into bed, with the intention of never moving again.
            So, he thought half-sarcastically to himself.  That was sex with
Isabela.
Chapter End Notes
     And you do it again, don't you, Fenris? The world is conspiring
     against you, and you go have sex.
***** Signatures *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania and Danarius strike a deal. Fenris apologizes to Hawke and
     they work at being friends.
           He should have expected it, but Isabela went around to everyone in
the pub talking about how amazing the sex had been, and mentioned it to nearly
everyone he knew too, not to mention pestered him for more.  It didn’t take
much, though, and they were tangled in his sheets.
            He didn’t even really know why he did it, just that he did, and the
pirate would give him these lusty looks even in public—blatant and proud to let
the entire world know it.  Though she did reminisce that she would like to have
a threesome with him and someone else—nearly anyone else, it seemed like.  She
would lament only that there was not at least two of him.
            Apparently, he couldn’t be in all of her orifices at once, though
he did make the attempt, and this was the only fault she found in the sex.  Not
a bad fault, he had to say.
            Though it did fill up his nights (and mornings, and sometimes a
little bit of afternoon, and occasionally evenings), it didn’t entirely take
his mind off of Hawke.  Oh, in the heat of the moment, sure; he didn’t think
about anything except savage lust.  But afterwards, he would wonder, If I had
just stayed that night, would it be any different?
           Hawke told him that he was happy for him, and that just made the
entire thing worse.  I’m only fucking Isabela because I can’t fuck you, he
wanted to say, but instead he plastered the face he had worn when Danarius
killed that little boy, and nodded.  Mentioned that the sex was fantastic. 
Hawke had laughed and they talked like old friends.  He supposed they were, if
grudgingly.  It was… strange having friends.  He was new to the concept, and
uncertain in a lot of ways, but they had known one another for many years, had
fought side by side, and he liked Hawke anyway.
            It just hurt to see him with Anders.
            Fenris felt like he couldn’t bear to spend another moment in his
mansion.  It was too big, too empty.  Someone’s memories resided here, and he
had dwelled there for a long time, but he, in many ways, was a stranger in the
place he lived.  He didn’t belong anywhere.  He left, with no real intent or
purpose, and found himself outside of Hawke’s manor, the gentle rain running
down his face.  When he went inside, Orana spotted him.  She was standing on a
ladder, dusting off the Amell family crest.
            “Are you looking for Hawke?” she asked, in perfect Tevene.
            Fenris had to think about the translation for a moment, and
mentally kicked himself for it.  It was his first language, and he was losing
hold of it because no one else spoke it.  “Yes.  Do you know where he is?” he
asked, halting only once.  His pronunciation was lacking.  If he spoke to Orana
more often, he might remember more of it.  She was the only one he knew who
spoke it, after all.  Likewise for her, he thought, which is why she did it. 
Not that she did not also speak the Trade tongue fluently—very much a household
slave, her past.
            “He left—oh—about an hour ago.”  She started to climb down, missed
a peg and yelped as she clutched the ladder.  Fenris moved to catch her should
she fall.  Orana took a deep breath, and continued the rest of the way down
without incident.
            “Do you know where he went?” he asked, as she couldn’t fall to her
untimely death now that she was safely on the floor.
            She shrugged, then frowned in thought.  She giggled a little and
said, “Maybe to see Anders—he had that look on his face he gets when he’s
thinking about him.”  She blushed, covering her mouth as if she had said
something she should not have.  It was slow-going, but she was gradually
learning what it meant to not be a slave.  Why, she had even asked for a
personal day or two.  Progress was progress, he supposed, and in many ways,
this was the best place for her; Hawke kept her out of the alienage, with the
express desire that she really should never go through Low Town alone.
            Fenris forced a smile, for her sake, so she would know that she had
not offended him inadvertently.  She was still a bit nervous about talking to
Hawke and any of his friends, even when asked direct questions.  It wasn’t a
slave’s place, but she was learning.  She had always been most comfortable with
Fenris, who understood, completely, what it was like.  That he spoke Tevene
helped.  “Thank you, Orana.”
            “You’re welcome, Fenris.”
            He bit his lip as he left, wondering if he should really go all the
way to Dark Town.  He could just walk back in to the mansion, hide in his
library maybe, and wait for him to show up.
            He didn’t really feel like it though.  Every minute that passed was
another minute that he lost his nerve.  He needed to apologize to Hawke for his
actions.  He needed to be accountable for his actions.  And, though it hurt, he
needed to tell Hawke how he felt about him, even though he knew it would only
hurt more.  Even when he knew Hawke would stay with Anders.
            So he followed the streets down to Low Town, and finally to Dark
Town.  The glowing lyrium was even more evident down here, and people looked at
him.  He was careful of where he stepped, cringing with nearly every footfall. 
The stink alone was bad enough.  It was even worse than the alienage, and that
was saying something.
            The clinic, though, was cleanerif not exactly clean, he had to
admit—a wooden floor and everything.  It even looked swept.  It did nothing at
all for the smell, however.
            He opened the door.  Anders was sitting down, a young child on his
lap, and he was smiling gently, speaking soothingly.  Blue healing magic flowed
freely from his hands, and the child cradled his wrist as if it were broken. 
The child’s eyes were red, nose runny.  A mother stood nearby, grateful and
relieved.  Anders had not yet noticed Fenris.  The child suddenly hugged
Anders, happy to be healed, and grateful.  The mage was shocked briefly, then
smiled.  He hugged the child once, and seemed happy for a moment, before he
passed the child to its mother, who hugged him in turn.  They exchanged a few
words, and the woman hurried past Fenris.
            Anders looked at him, and frowned.  “Isabela give you a disease? 
She does that, you know.”
            Fenris sighed.  “Is Hawke around?”
            The apostate’s jaw set, lips pressed together.  “Haven’t seen him
since we were in bed this morning,” he said a little smugly, leaning against
the table.
            Fenris’ eyes narrowed.  “I don’t care what you and Hawke do, but I
don’t care to hear about it either.”
            “You’re so jealous,” he laughed.
            It was true, at least.  But he hadn’t come here to pick a fight
with Anders.  “I was the first man who fucked him,” Fenris hissed, and
immediately regretted it.  He had to say that, didn’t he?  He couldn’t just
change the topic, or leave, could he?  He had to say it.
            Anders looked briefly annoyed, a flash of his own jealousy.  “But
not the last.”
            “You know they say you never forget your first—all the ones in
between—but not the first.”
            The human crossed his arms.  “And not the last either.  He loves
me, Fenris.  Not you.”
            The elf stared at him, his temper riled.  “He’d still be with me. 
He wanted me.  He chose me over you.  When I left him, he went to you.  You
were his second choice.”
            The remark stung.  “If you have regrets, it’s a little late for
that, elf.”  Anders smirked.  “It’s me in Hawke’s bed every night, and you need
to get over it.”
            Where I’ve been only once, he thought miserably.  “If I had stayed
that night, you’d still be down here alone, mage.”
            “What’s going on?” a new voice inquired, and Fenris stiffened when
he knew it was Hawke.  He turned and looked at him, his rage ebbing.  Hawke
looked at him curiously, then his eyes slid to Anders, and his expression
changed.  His gaze was softer, fonder.  There was an adoration in his eyes, a
longing in his lips.  The look on his face confirmed it for him.  Hawke had
never looked at Fenris that way.  His entire argument with Anders was stupid;
the mage had won.  It wasn’t even that Fenris had walked out that night; Hawke
had never once looked at Fenris the same way he looked at Anders.
            His heart rose up in his throat.  He needed to apologize to Hawke. 
He needed to say something.
            Anders smiled warmly at his lover.  The two kissed but briefly, and
Fenris looked away.  “Fenris was looking for you,” Anders said warmly, as if
they had not been in a heated argument a moment before.
            Hawke looked back at Fenris.  “Did you need something?”
            The elf looked at him, then back at the floor.  “No.  Never mind.” 
He turned, and put the clinic quickly behind him, but Hawke followed him.
            “I heard some of that, Fenris,” Hawke said quietly, catching up to
walk beside him.  The elf paused, wondering how much he had heard.  “I’m sorry
that you’re jealous.”  He shrugged.  “But I thought you had Isabela.”
            Fenris sighed, but didn’t say anything immediately.  They walked,
and made it up a flight of stairs before the elf said, “He just provokes me,
that’s all.”
            “Anders says the same about you.”  Hawke paused.  “Look, I
understand that you both hate each other, and that’s fine.  But I’d appreciate
it if you could be civil to one another.”
            Then tell him to stop smirking at me and bringing it up!  “I wanted
to apologize for walking out on you that night,” he said quietly.  “And
rejecting you.  I should not have done that.”
            Hawke shrugged.  “Apology accepted.” 
Fenris looked away.  The apostate just didn’t grasp how poorly Fenris felt
about the situation, but why would he?  He had Anders.  He had wanted to
apologize and tell him how he felt.  He had done one of those things at least,
but now…?  No, he couldn’t tell him; he couldn’t bear it.  The apology was
enough for now.
 
            Varania’s eyes squeezed shut as she tried to ignore the man’s
fumbling hands.  Just think of something else, she thought.  There were other
things to think about, too.
            She thought about the chores she needed to do, what was left of the
day to be precise.  There was help needed in the infirmary—there had been an
accident in the fields earlier.  There was the magister’s wife’s little chapel
that she spent much of her time in, praying to Andraste and the Maker for one
reason or another.  Perhaps for her corrupt husband’s soul.  It was Varania’s
duty to keep the fires ever-burning and they required care a couple of times a
day—just a touch of magic was all.  Then there were the lights…
            His hand slipped down the front of her robe, between her breasts…
           After that, she would be finished for the day—another day’s wages
anyway.  She could eat, rest, and begin again the next day.  She wondered what
Leto would be like, when she finally got to meet him.  Did he look any
different with all that lyrium on his skin?  She did wonder…
            The man suddenly stopped, and she blinked, more confused that he
had frozen than anything.
            “Touch my mother again, and I will cut it off and stuff it down
your throat,” a voice hissed.  The man dropped his hands away from her. 
Shaislyn?
            “I’m aSenior Enchanter, boy,” he reminded him, half of a threat.
            “I don’t care.  Fuck off,” he said.  One of the twin blades he kept
at his back were drawn, pointing at the other mage.  The man made as if to
fight him.  Shaislyn reached for the other sword.  “I’m a mage too.”
            “Apostate,” he sniffed, hurling the word like a grave insult. 
Shaislyn tilted his chin in opposition.  The man glared at the pair.  He
pointed at Varania.  “A month’s pay I’m deducting, for what your brat did.” 
And he turned and stomped off.
            Her mouth dropped.  “Shaislyn, why would you…”
            “Are you all right, Mother?” he inquired gently, sheathing the
blade.  He looked truly concerned, and it was difficult to be angry with him.
            “A month’s pay!” she tried again, flustered.  “What am I going to
do?”
            He seemed unconcerned.  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, and fished
at a leather pouch at his hip for a moment, and produced two gold coins. 
“Here, take it.”  He shoved them into her hands, and ran his fingers through
his curly hair.  “I’m sorry; I just…  I can’t…”  He sighed.
            Varania looked down, embarrassed.  “He’s never raped me,” she
insisted.
            He didn’t look like he believed her, his face twisted into grief. 
“Did you consider my offer?”
            Varania looked away.  “I don’t know…  I just… how can I make that
kind of decision?”
            He shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly, and they began to walk. 
Varania walked toward the infirmary, and he followed beside her.  “I would do
it,” Shaislyn said pleasantly.
            Varania missed a step.  “But… you don’t understand.  Leto
wouldn’t—“
            “He isn’t Leto any more, Mother,” her son insisted.  “Different
person, same body—that’s all.”  He was silent for a moment.  “Fenris murders,
kills, even tortures.  Was Leto like that?”
            She wanted to say no, but thought about all the times he had come
back from the coliseum, and he had bragged about whatever bloody feats he had
accomplished.  But he had never tortured anyone, had he?  He had never been a
party to something like that, had he?  Or… was her brother never the person she
thought he was?  Had she just been too young and naïve to see it?  She didn’t
know any more.  It had been such a long time ago…  “Even if I could betray my
brother, how could I ever ally myself with that man?”
            His hand around her arm stopped her, and she looked back at him. 
He looked disheartened.  “If you won’t do it for you, and you won’t do it for
what it meant when he set you free, will you do it for me?” he asked, his voice
quiet.  “I just want to see you happy.”  He lowered his head.  “I can’t stand
seeing you here.”  His hand fell away from her arm, but she stayed rooted to
the spot.  “If you do this, you’ll be rich, and need nothing, and I won’t worry
about you any more…”  He looked up again.  “I’ve never asked you for
anything—won’t you do this for me?”
            She looked at her son, a son she knew she had never loved the way
that she should have, who had loved her more than perhaps she deserved.  He had
never asked for anything, had he?  He had made so many sacrifices, and done
everything he could to try to provide for her, to try to make her happier, all
to gain her approval and her love, and she had never really given it to him,
had she?  She had been pushing him away all his life, and he had always kept
reaching out to her, and loving her, and it had crushed him to pieces when she
admitted to what she had done to his sister, what she had intended to do to
him.
            And it broke her heart to say it, but she did, “I can’t.”
            He stared at her, his blind eyes filled with tears.  “Why do you
love a brother who sent you away more than a son who has done nothing but try
to help you?” he asked her.
            “He was trying to help me,” she objected.
            “He didn’t, though—not really,” he pointed out, blinking away the
tears.  “He made things worse.  You said so yourself.”
            “Not on purpose,” she continued to defend her brother.
            Shaislyn shook his head, as if in despair.  “Grandmother died and
her last words were for him,” he whispered.  “Not you.  Not me.  Him.  Always
him and he wasn’t even there.”
            “I have to go,” Varania said, and turned, dashing into the
infirmary.  She thought about what her son had said for the rest of the day. 
She fell asleep thinking about it.  She woke thinking about it, and the
bitterness Leto had left her with.  She thought about all she had had to do to
get by, all the things she had to bear alone.
            Shaislyn came back the next night, and said not one word.  He sat
in her room, and she brushed her hair, and set the brush down, and said, “He’ll
make me a magister?”
            “Yes,” he said quietly.  “You’ll have everything you’ve ever
dreamed of, Mother.  And more.”
            Varania was silent a long moment.  “If I agree to this, I want
something from you.”
            His chair squeaked as he rose from it.  “What do you need?”
            “I don’t trust Danarius.  I just want you to keep me safe,” she
said honestly.  “And…  Please.  Join the Circle, Shaislyn.  I worry about you
as an apostate.  It’s not safe.”
            He looked down.  “I’ll keep you safe from Danarius.  But I won’t
join the Circle.  Any Circle.”
            “What if you get caught by Templars somewhere else?” she insisted. 
“Orlais?  Or the Free Marches?  Or anywhere?”  She bit her lip.  “I’d never see
you again, Shaislyn.  If you’re a Tevinter Circle mage, you can at least say
that, and they would have to send you back home—especially if I were a
magister.”
            His lips pressed together into a thin, tight line.  “No.”
            She blinked, and sighed.  “Fine.  Tell Danarius my answer is no.”
            He looked at her, and seemed angry for a moment.  “Fine.  But only
after we get back to Minrathous—with my uncle.”
            Varania nodded, and hesitated.  She stepped toward her son, and
hugged him, tightly for all the times she should have held him and had let Lura
or her mother do it instead.  She wanted to love him; he was becoming a good
man and she knew he deserved a mother’s love.  It was just… so hard when every
time she looked at him, she saw a little of his father in him.
            What would it be like being that man’s apprentice?  She reasoned
that Shaislyn would be there, and he had promised to keep her safe.  She knew
that her brother would be there, but she couldn’t say how he would react after
so long—and after what she was going to do to him.
 
            The gull winged across the Nocen Sea, searching, and finally found
what it was looking for.  It changed direction only slightly, and in what
seemed like no time at all, with a fair wind to guide its wings, it landed on
the deck of the ship.  No one paid the bird any heed, until it began to glow,
and one of the sailors gave a cry of alarm.
            Shaislyn strutted past him, utterly ignoring him.  They had best
get used to it, anyway.  He was challenged once, by two sailors, and it might
have come to blows, except Danarius heard the bickering, and knew it could only
be instigated by one person.
            “Leave him alone—he’s welcome,” Danarius said with barely a glance
their way.
            Shaislyn smirked at the sailors, and leaned against the railing. 
“I went to talk to my mother,” he said, cocking his head to the side.
            “How long has it been since then?”
            “Two weeks,” he said.  He quirked a smile.  “She consented, but
she’s a little uncertain; I’m confident she’ll come around.”  He looked out at
the sea.  “The whole thing will have more weight if she can talk to you
though.”  He glanced at him.  “And if you aren’t civil, this whole thing is
off.”
            “I’m nothing but civil.”
            Shaislyn raised an eyebrow, but chose not to comment.  “An apology
might do more than a promise of enormous wealth and power, you know.”
            “An apology for what?” the magister said flatly, watching the
dolphins.
            Shaislyn watched them too, for different reasons.  He had trouble
watching marine life, and as a result, had no aquatic forms at his disposal,
something he believed should be remedied.  “I can’t believe we’re having this
conversation,” he muttered, and cleared his throat.  “My existence.”
            “Ah, that.”
            “Yes, that.”
            The magister looked at his bastard child.  “An apology would imply
that I am sorry about it; I’m not.”
            “You could at least go through the motions,” he insisted.  “Surely,
you can say that raping a fourteen-year old girl was at least in bad taste.”
            He frowned at him.  “Perhaps.”  He looked back at the water.  “But
I still don’t care.”
            Shaislyn ground his teeth.  “Then pretend you do.  This will be so
much easier if you can at least pretend to have any kind of decency or moral
standards.  Or at least sympathy.”
            “Are you quite finished chastising me for not living up to your
‘standards’ of morality?”
            “No,” the half-elf said, but fell silent anyway.
            “How did you fly so far?” he inquired.
            Shaislyn shrugged.  “I flew up to the Eyes and hopped around the
islands, and flew along the coast of Seheron—I hate trying to cross the sea, in
case you were curious.  I figured you wouldn’t be too far from Minrathous, and
I was right.  Got a little distracted in Alam, or I would have found you
sooner.”
            “’Distracted’.”
            “Fine.  I was whoring, which is illegal there, so that’s more
difficult than it sounds.”
            He rolled his eyes.  “At least you aren’t thieving.”
            The half-elf smirked.  “Oh, I did that too.  How do you think I
paid for the whores?”
            Danarius made a face.  “Sometimes, you disgust me.”
            Shaislyn raised an eyebrow.  “And sometimes you disgust me. The
whores are at least willing.”  He frowned at him.  “And I only steal from
people who can afford the loss.  Which is more than you can say, with your
raping and your taxes and fines.”  He stretched until his shoulders popped. 
“Anyway, I’m going to head back and see about my mother, but I thought I’d let
you know what was going on.  See you in a couple of weeks.”  He grinned.  “And
we’ll see Fenris soon enough too.”
            At least there are small things to look forward to, Shaislyn
thought as he winged northward, back to Seheron.
 
            Hawke sat across from Fenris in the dark bar.  Varric had gone to
bed an hour ago, complaining about the merchant guild, and Isabela had just
gone to walk Merrill home.  Hawke was on a steady losing streak to
Fenris—cards, dice, and arm wrestling.  He was determined not to lose this one.
            Their hands locked together, arms straight.  Fenris smirked when he
saw Hawke’s arm start to go down.  The mage grimaced, and kicked the
elf—hard—in the knee.  Fenris jumped, and Hawke slammed his hand down against
the table.  He drank to his victory.
            Fenris scowled.  “That’s cheating.”
            “Still won.”
            “By cheating,” he muttered.
            “Grow a pair,” the mage countered.  The other rolled his eyes. 
Hawke grinned, and finished off his mug of ale.  A trace of a smile remained on
his face.  “I used to do this with Carver all the time when we were kids.”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “Cheat at arm wrestling?”
            “Only when he started beating me.”  He glanced down at his empty
mug, and signaled for more ale.  He ran a finger absently along the brim of the
cup.  “I once stripped him naked and tied him to a tree too.  It was funnier
than hell.”
            “It’s a small wonder he doesn’t hate you,” Fenris commented.
            Hawke shook his head, laughing.  “That’s what having siblings is
about, Fenris.”  Then his smile faded, as he again realized.  “Sorry,” he said
quietly.  Hadriana had mentioned a sister, and he hoped he hadn’t accidentally
struck a bad cord.
            Fenris shrugged noncommittally, but otherwise said nothing.
            Hawke looked at him, watched him stare into his ale.  He leaned
forward on the table.  “How old were you when the Ritual happened, Fenris?” he
asked gently.
            The elf glanced up, green eyes peering out at him.  “I was eighteen
when I woke up.”  Even that was debatable; Danarius consistently did not
remember Fenris’ exact age, and Fenris had certainly never been told after he
woke.  He had been afraid to ask, embarrassed that he did not know.  Taggart
had once haphazardly guessed his age to be late teens, but he didn’t really
know.  If Fenris did the math, from that one day that Danarius had told him his
age, he guessed 18, but he could be wrong.  Or maybe Danarius was even
untruthful; he had no way of knowing.
            Hawke’s lips twitched in sympathy, and started to say something,
then stopped.  He considered all the embarrassing things he had said and did
when he was a teenager, the mind-numbing things that had happened in his
preteens.  He leaned back in the chair.  “I actually wouldn’t mind forgetting a
good portion of my life from when I was 12-17.”  He cocked his head to the
side.  “I mean, sometimes I think about how fucking dumb I was, and I just
would rather not remember any of that.  I mean, you say something dumb, and
then you think about it for eight years—being alive is hard.  I think I’d
rather not remember.”
            Fenris decided to take it good-naturedly, even catching himself
smiling as he thought about a man like Hawke doing something “dumb”.  “Do a lot
of embarrassing things, I take it?”
            He cringed inwardly just thinking about it.  “Yeah.  Mostly normal
stuff—puberty, awkward erections, Mom walking in on me masturbating—things like
that.”  He laughed at himself, face even flushing a little.  The barmaid filled
up his mug and went on her way.  The mage looked at Fenris.  “What was it like
when you woke up?”
            Fenris shrugged a shoulder, not really knowing where to begin.  He
glanced at the ceiling, stained with years of smoke and grime, a story of its
history like a tangible memory.  He looked back at Hawke.  “I was confused.  I
had no idea where I was, who I was.  I had apparently been comatose for about
six weeks after the Ritual, so I was very weak too; I couldn’t even stand.”
            Hawke’s eyebrows rose in surprise.  “Six weeks?” he said, wondering
if he had somehow misheard him.
            The elf nodded in confirmation.  “It might have been more or less—I
had no concept of time.”  He was silent a moment.  “It took a lot to be able to
walk again,” he said quietly.  “All I wanted in the world was to walk.  I felt
so useless.”
            Hawke wondered what he could possibly say to that.  He tried to
imagine someone like Fenris—muscular, active, strong-willed—bedridden and
weak.  He couldn’t.  “I’m sorry,” he said instead.
            The other hesitated, taking a sip of his ale.  “I wasn’t unhappy,
though, that first year anyway,” he confessed.
            He leaned forward again, both because Fenris was speaking softly
and because he was suddenly curious.  “Really?” he inquired.
            Fenris nodded absently, looking away.  “I was relearning how to
walk, run, even some basic motor functions.  A little bit about combat and
fighting.  I barely even saw Danarius.”  He looked down at the ale, the liquid
tranquil in its cup, undisturbed by even a ripple.  “My master had horses—he
bred destriers—and they needed to be exercised.  It was good for me; it helped
me gain back some of the muscle I had lost.  So I rode them often.”
            This was something Hawke could have never guessed about his
friend.  Fenris never talked about any of his personal interests.  Hawke had
been half-convinced that all he really cared about was, well, his hatred of
slavery and all things Imperial, his hatred of mages, and occasionally his love
of alcohol—Fenris also enjoyed combat, he recalled.  This was a more pleasant
change of subject.  “Really?  You like riding horses?”
            The elf peered at him curiously, wondering why Hawke was suddenly
so interested.  It was such a small thing.  “I loved it,” he admitted, smiling
shyly.  “It was the only time…”  His voice suddenly trailed off, the smile
fading with his own uncertainty.  It was the only time I felt free, even though
I didn’t know that yet.  “I was happy,” he said instead.  When he said it, he
knew it was true.  He had been happy training in the sun with Taggart and the
dwarven woman.  He had been happy on the horses, learning to ride.  There was a
particular joy to it, especially with a high-spirited animal.  He remembered
the way the animal would move beneath him, leaping at his urging, its hooves
racing across the earth faster than he could ever hope to move, bearing his
weight effortlessly.  Hawke watched, content to see the hint of a smile on the
elf’s face, the way even his eyes would glint as he thought about a happy
memory.  Fenris had few of those, and Hawke was glad to see it.
            “Maybe I could rent a couple horses for a day,” he said slowly. 
Fenris looked up.  “Do you want to go riding with me?”
            Fenris picked up his ale.  “It’s been a long time since I was on a
horse.”
            Hawke laughed.  “Longer for me, and I bet you’re a better rider
than I am.  We just had a plough horse.”
            Fenris actually laughed.  “As I mentioned before, Danarius bred
destriers—war horses.  You taught me to read; I can teach you to ride.”
            The mage looked at him.  Fenris seemed almost happy at the mention
of it.  Seeing him happy made his heart melt, the part of his heart that would
always care for him rejoicing to see something so rare.  What he would do to
see him happy all the time…  “I’d like that,” he said.  He blinked.  “I’m sure
Anders wouldn’t object to me spending time with you.”
            Fenris’ smile withered, and he busied himself with the ale.  “Don’t
tell him,” he said, taking a long drink of it.  “He won’t like it.”
            “There’s nothing between you and I anymore,” Hawke pointed out. 
“And I do love Anders, and he knows that.”  And Hawke smiled, hoping to still
the sudden awkwardness between them that had not been there a moment ago. 
“So.  Tell me all your secrets:  How is it that you are the best lay Isabela
has ever had?”
            Fenris set the mug down, and gave a seductive smirk.  “Well,
serrah, I’ll tell you all about it.”
 
            Shaislyn waited by the docks, watching for the ship.  He talked
with the workers, chatted with the whores, gambled with the sailors, until he
saw the ship pulling up to dock.
            He slipped away, and strolled toward it, but stayed back a fair
distance until he saw the magister, then he waited, arms crossed, at the
opposite end of the pier.  Danarius saw him, but made no rush to get to him. 
That was fine; there was a nice sea breeze and the gulls were crying.  A boy in
nothing but tattered trousers had cast a line off of a dirty dock.
            One of the magister’s servants went past him on some errand. 
Shaislyn watched him pass, followed by another.  One for transportation, one
for an inn, he assumed.
            Rightly, as it was.
            The magister finally approached him, followed by a large contingent
of guards in his house’s livery.  “Where is she?” the magister seemed bored,
and a little apprehensive.
            “Waiting for you,” Shaislyn said with a shrug.  He cocked his head
to the side.  “At the inn, matter of fact.”
            “Which inn did you presume I was going to?”
            Shaislyn turned, and began to walk up the steps to the street, but
turned his head as he spoke.  “Nacona’s Pearl,” he answered.  “Best inn in the
city, nothing less for your rank.”  He said the last bit with a touch of
sarcasm.
            The carriage drew up, and Shaislyn insisted that he would walk, and
he got there sooner.  He had to lead his mother out of her room—something
Shaislyn had put her in to keep her away from the local magister while this was
going on—it conveniently fell on her off day, anyway.  He hugged her for
reassurance, told her that it would be all right, and promised to stay with her
the entire time.
            By the time he had coaxed courage into his mother, the magister had
already arrived, and the staff were rushing about seeing to his every desire. 
His mother and the man that had raped her sat down to a table, and talked. 
Shaislyn watched them from what would be a distance to most people, but he
adjusted his vision so that he was practically sitting beside them. 
Unfortunately, it did nothing for hearing them, but he could read the forms
that were laid out, and see his mother’s anxious expressions.  He really should
learn how to read lips.
            At the table, the pair discussed Shaislyn’s uncle.  “Why doesn’t he
know me?” she demanded of Danarius.  “Why doesn’t Leto remember me?”
            The magister looked at her.  “The Ritual was a very traumatic
experience for him; he lost his memories.”
            Varania frowned.  “What are you not telling me?”  Her eyes
narrowed.  “If you’re lying to me, I’ll have no part of this.”
            Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “He sold his memories, Varania, if it
pleases you to know.” 
Her jaw dropped.  “Why would he do that?  Howcould he do that?”
The magister took a sip of tea.  “He did it for you.”  He smiled a little. 
“Remember how I gifted to your mother a small purse of silver?  That was what
his memories were worth.  His memories paid for your crossing to Seheron.”
Varania wanted to cry.  He had sold his memories… for her?  And she was doing
this to him?  Then she felt angry.  All his memories were to him were a few
pieces of silver?  That was it?  He wanted them away so badly, and sent her and
her mother on a ship to get rid of them?  “Why?”
The magister frowned.  “I offered.”
The elven mage’s eyes narrowed.  “And why would you offer?”
            Danarius blinked.  “I didn’t want him to remember; he was so much
more obedient when he had no past, after all.”
            Varania looked at him.  “That’s sick.”
            He shrugged.  “I did offer him; I never forced him.”  He left
unsaid that he would have, if it came to pass.
            She looked down, disturbed.  Then she looked back up.  “Did you
hurt him?”  She looked about to cry.  “Did you hurt Leto?”
            “No.”
            Then she realized what she had said, and covered her mouth in
horror.  “I sold you Shaislyn so that you wouldn’t hurt him… then you…”  Her
eyes watered.  “You changed his name…”
            The magister nodded, and gestured back to the scroll on the table. 
“Loopholes, my dear, are something I’ll teach you about.  You’ll learn to
exploit them.”
            She looked down at the scroll.  “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
            Danarius looked at her, raising an eyebrow.  “Believe me, Fenris is
nothing like Leto, if it puts your mind to ease.”
            She stared downwards.  “Will he ever remember me?”
            “No—probably not.”
            She did not move.  “You… hurt my brother.”
            “Fenris is no more your brother than your neighbor is, Varania,” he
said serenely.  “They’re just not the same person.”
            She barely heard him.  “Why would you hurt him?”
            He frowned.  “Why did I ever have Leto whipped or beaten, Varania? 
When he did something I disliked, he was punished; that’s all.”  A pause. 
“He’s my slave.”
            “It’s my brother,” she whispered.  She stared down at her hands. 
“Or… what’s left of him.”
            “Varania,” he said gently.  “He would betray you in a heartbeat if
he thought it would keep him out of my reach for even a week longer.”  He
sighed.  “I fear that’s my fault; I did train him to be ruthless.”
            She hesitated.  “Let’s get this over with,” she sighed.
Then finally, his father signed the form, and handed her the pen.
            Shaislyn watched her tremble as she accepted it, watched her hand
shake as she signed her name, and placed the pen down.  It was done; bargain
struck.  Varania signaled for Shaislyn, a curious frown about her lips.
            “You have to sign as well,” she said.
            He nodded.  “I know,” he said, and took the pen, and signed the new
document.  The original one he had signed was also on the table.  Varania had
made a couple demands, though, he saw.  She wanted it in ink that Fenris would
be released from slavery upon his death—no loopholes, nothing.  She wanted it
confirmed that he wasn’t going to simply gift or sell her brother and put him
forever out of her reach.  She also had made it said, in no uncertain terms,
that her brother was to be treated well.  She had insisted it say that he would
not be killed, nor mutilated in any fashion.  She was explicit.  Shaislyn was
pleased; she had learned.
            On the ship back to Minrathous, Danarius and Varania discussed what
sorts of lies they would tell Fenris.  She of course had to tell him that she
was moving to Minrathous; Danarius would pay for her tutors, as a show of good
grace, while she worked under the employ of a magister that owed Danarius a
favour or two, as a tailor.  She agreed not to mention that she was a mage to
him.
            “It will make him suspicious,” Danarius said.  “He seems to hate
mages.”
            “I wonder why,” Varania muttered under her breath, but consented. 
She wrote him a letter when she arrived, telling him about the voyage over
there, about her new job and how an acquaintance had helped her acquire it. 
She lived at her employer’s tower, and went to Danarius’ manor to study about
politics, law, and etiquette—and any other thing he could think to teach her. 
Shaislyn sat through many of the lessons, often more to keep her at ease than
out of a desire to learn about them, though it did help her to study. 
Danarius mentioned that, one thing that might intrigue Fenris, would be to
mention Seheron, so she did.  She commented that she had gone to Seheron with
their mother and learned how to sew.  She said that she had fled on the ships
when the city was sacked, and come to Qarinus when it came limping into port. 
Fenris’ reply letter was only to be careful in Minrathous, as well as a couple
other comments about the voyage, congratulating her on the new position.  He
also mentioned that he had been there when the city fell, which is why he had
escaped.  They both mutually lamented how close they had been to meeting once. 
Varania wondered if she should dare to mention that she had glimpsed him, once,
during that awful night, but thought better of it.
Varania once wrote of how their mother had taught her to sew, and Fenris was
very much intrigued to know more about their parents, though Varania was fairly
guarded with such information, saying only that “I’d love to tell you
everything I know, but I could write pages and not be finished.  Can we talk
about it face to face when we finally meet?”
            But, truth be told, she did very little tailoring.
***** Acceptance *****
Chapter Summary
     Merrill gives Fenris a gift. Shaislyn finds acceptance from Danarius,
     and Varania finally tries to reach out to her son.
            The afternoon heat warmed the room, the sunlight fading the carpet
and the curtains, highlighting the dust that had gathered.  A wisp of a sigh
could be heard, and she rolled, awake but with her eyes still closed, legs
tangled in dirty sheets.
            “Come back to bed,” Isabela called.
            Fenris reclined in the chair, still mostly naked.  He looked up,
watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, the way her dark skin
perfectly accented the eggshell sheets.  When she opened her eyes, the sun
glinting golden off of her cinnamon complexion, the faded gold paint on the bed
a beautiful match for her gilded eyes, he was almost tempted though.  Isabela,
for all her dueling, pirating, thieving, and whorish behaviour, was
unquestionably beautiful—more beautiful still, because she was confident.
            It would be easy to love Isabela.  Their friendship was easy; their
sex life was easy, one fading into the other and back out again like paint on
canvas.  If he wanted to do something, or for her to do something, that might
be unconventional, she had either already tried it before, or was open to
trying it, and that made him more than willing to experiment, to play
sexually.  In friendship, she preferred to be open and nonchalant, often
choosing to banter and tease him rather than let him sulk—it was what he
needed, and she seemed to sense it.  However, when she saw that what he needed
was to sulk, she would be there for him, saying nothing, her arms around his
shoulders reminding him that he need never be alone.
            He couldn’t talk to her the same way he had been able to talk to
Hawke; he would never be able to tell Isabela about the Fog Warriors, but he
could talk to her about other things.  She had told him what her marriage had
been like, the awful things that had happened to her in her past, and he had
finally confided in her some of what he had been through in a way he had been
too ashamed to talk about with Hawke.  But Isabela had wrapped her arms around
him, said she understood, that she had been there.  He supposed it was why
being with her was so easy.  He put little to no effort into their
relationship, and it always worked.
            He could do nor say anything to truly provoke her.  He and Hawke
always seemed moments away from an intense argument, the heat of their twin
passions either used for lust or for anger.  Isabela was too agreeable, her
attitude too lackadaisical.  She had no strong feelings about mages, and what
feelings she did have, he almost agreed with; she wanted freedom for everyone,
and while they might argue their points on occasion, things just never became
heated.  She didn’t like to argue; she was fine with making her points of view
made and leaving it at that.  She said, “You have your opinions, and I have
mine.  Can’t we agree to disagree?  It’s so much more fun when we aren’t
arguing about something stupid; neither of us are mages, so what does it
matter?”
            She had once asked him to tell her the real reason he hated
Merrill.  She understood the blood magic, that she was a mage, but she pointed
out that Hawke was a mage, and Fenris had no real qualms with him.  She pointed
out that Anders was an abomination, but he tolerated him for Hawke, could even
be civil when Hawke was nearby if he tried hard enough.  “If we’re being
honest,” he said cautiously.  “—I should admit I am jealous of her.”
            She laughed, her fingers exploring the dips and curves of his chest
and stomach.  “Why?  Not of her being a mage?”
            “No,” he said quickly.  Then he had sighed, staring up at the
ceiling forlornly.  “She had everything—everything—I have ever wanted, or
dreamed about.”  He shifted his head, staring at her, wondering how he could
convey to the woman who had also abandoned her life of her own choice to seek a
new destiny.  Maybe that was why she understood Merrill, and the two got along
so well.  “She had a home, and a family, and people that cared about her—all
the freedom no other elves have.  And she just threw it all away to go chasing
the past.”  He closed his eyes, pained.  “I would give anything for that.”
            He looked back at her, saw her fighting with two different
desires.  One, he didn’t doubt, to tease him—to laugh and tell him he was being
silly and jealous.  The second won over.  “Oh, Fenris,” she said gently, and
kissed him softly.  She understood.  He did want a home, a family, a life—love
and happiness and everything he had never known.  But they were things he had
seen with other people.  He had seen rich men miserable, and the poor happy,
because of family.  He had seen a magister suffer and a slave joyous because of
love.  But he didn’t know what either of those things was like.
            He thought about Varania.  He hoped he could find true family in
her, and with it a familial love.  He wasn’t sure, but he could dream, and
crave it.
            There was no strange tension when he and Isabela were out with the
rest of their friends or adventuring with Hawke, no awkward glances, no hidden
touches.  They could just as easily be friends as if they had never had sex. 
Isabela completely expected that they would not last forever, and approached
their relationship in that way.  If he wanted to break things off tomorrow,
there would be no hard feelings.  If he wanted to love her, he could, and she
might even love him back—with the same approach.  Easy, harmless, and not at
all something he could expect to last forever.  But then, what did?  His
relationship with Isabela was perfect.
            “Not in the mood,” he told her.
            She sat up, the sheet falling to her lap, exposing her nipples. 
“Something on your mind?”
            There was, but nothing he was willing to talk about.  “Just you,”
he told her.
            Her smile was somewhere between coy, seductive, and all-knowing. 
“Well, if we’re not going to have sex, I’m going to go visit someone.”
            “Aveline?” he guessed.
            She scowled, slipping out of bed.  “How’d you know?”
            “Lucky guess,” he said, watching her as she bent at the waist to
pick up her things from the floor.  If he didn’t know better, he would say that
Aveline and Isabela hated one another, but that wasn’t the truth at all.  They
were both strong, independent women, their political and personal views
different, but in many ways exactly the same.  If they didn’t fight all the
time, then he would know they really did hate one another.  Men and women were
so different; Isabela and Aveline seemed to argue and undercut one another
constantly and they were actually good friends, whereas Fenris and Anders
bickered all the time and truly hated one another.
            Isabela kissed him before she left.  He got dressed eventually, and
flopped back down in the chair, looking at the wolf carving.  His fingers ran
over its buttery surface, trying to guess at its origin.  When he looked at it,
somehow he felt at peace.  He wondered if Danarius had ever found the little
halla carving he had left at the mansion, and what he had done with it if he
did.  Destroy it, he imagined.  He would have been angry that Fenris had such a
thing, probably.
            He smirked a little.  Oh, how angry he would be to know that he had
had sex with Hawke, with whores, with Isabela especially.
            He heard the door open, and wondered who it could be.  Some kids
had tried to break in to drink a few months ago, thinking it perhaps completely
abandoned.  It had been quite simple to chase them out.  He just let the lyrium
engulf his body completely, and now most of the neighbours thought it was
haunted.  Why hadn’t he thought of that years ago?
            He heard someone trip going up the stairs, and he frowned, looking
at the door.  He was a bit surprised to see Merrill.
            He sat up, setting the carving down on the stained coffee table. 
“Hi, Fenris!” she said brightly, as if she had no idea that he did not like her
at all.  Well…  That was an overstatement, he guessed.  She was a stupid kid
that did stupid things, and he really wished she would see that.  Isabela had
copious amounts of sex, but always half-expected disease and the possibility of
pregnancy.  Merrill used blood magic, much worse than Isabela’s promiscuity,
yet expected only positive results.  It was maddening that she was this naïve. 
Her heart was in the right place, but she did everything the wrong way.  He
imagined that being burdened by Merrill was exactly what having a little sister
would be like, sans blood magic.  Varania…
            “Merrill,” he sighed.
            “I have something for you,” she blurted.  She grinned, then it
faded.  “I know that Wintersend was two weeks ago, and it’s a little late…”
            He raised his eyebrows.  Oh, Maker, no, please…
            She smiled again.  “But it took me a long time to make everyone
one, and…  Well, sorry.”
            He frowned.  “I didn’t get anything for you.  Or anyone, so…”
            She waved the matter off.  “It’s fun to observe human holidays
sometimes, don’t you think?” she babbled on.  “Sebastian told me all about the
human holidays—they’re really interesting, and each country has slightly
different celebrations.”  She plucked a package from her basket.  “This one is
for you.”  She started to hand it to him, then stopped, and glanced at it
again.  “Yes.”  She blinked, thrusting it toward him.
            He sighed, not knowing what to do except to accept it.  He looked
at the brown paper package, tied up with a brightly coloured string.  Each
package’s string was three different colours that she had braided together. 
His was black, white, and green.  His finger curved around the string, running
his thumb over the yarns.  He had used to braid his hair when it was long.  A
slave had taught him to braid his hair, a human girl that had been pregnant. 
He couldn’t remember her name any more.
            His eyebrows were black, and he wondered if his hair had been such
an ebony shade before, or if it had always been alabaster.  The green, for the
vineyard, for the deep green of the bay.  Or were the colours for the Arlathan
forest?  The black for the shadows he had been lost in, the green for the
evergreen trees that had all looked so similar to him, then white for the snow
that had been nearly the death of him.
            “Fenris?” Merrill asked, sounding concerned.
            He blinked, looking up at her.  “It’s nothing,” he said
automatically.  She looked at him, concern etched across her tattooed face. 
“Thank you, Merrill.”
            She scowled.  “Well, open it,” she insisted, rocking back excitedly
on her heels.  He sighed, and pried apart the string.
            “Why’d you choose those colours?”
            She shrugged.  “I just picked up three balls of yarn, and that was
the combination for you, I guess.”
            He snorted.  Indeed.  “Are you sure you didn’t just think of me
when you had them together?”
            She laughed.  “If I were going to pick a colour for you, I’d
pick…”  She thought about it for a moment, frowning at him.  “Neutral colours. 
Black and white are too stark for your complexion, Fenris.”  She blinked.  “I
mean, it’s fine for your hair, I guess, but not to wear.”
            He realized she was teasing him.  “They wouldn’t match the lyrium
at all, would they?”
            She shook her head, laughing.  “Brown actually looks good on you. 
Maybe a dark grey, a little gold or silver—tarnished brass?  You might even get
away with certain shades of green, or muted blues?  It would depend on how it’s
done.”
            “Red,” he said, to nettle her.  “Crimson.”
            She stared at him in horror.  “Oh, that would make all the red
pigment in your skin…  Oh, that would be awful.”
            He laughed.  She was the only one he could do this with, he
realized as they talked about colours.  Humans, he had long-since discovered,
were practically colour-blind compared to elves.  He wished that Merrill was
not a mage.  Especially not a blood mage.  What she did was wrong, and he
didn’t want to be there to watch her become possessed.  And, dare he say it,
didn’t want to have to be the one to kill her if it happened.  And sometimes,
he would get so angry to think of things she would do, and for what?  For
something that had died a long, long time ago.  How could anyone go forward if
they were always looking backward? 
He just wished she would grow up.  She had all this potential, all the
potential none of their kind had, and she threw it away as if it were nothing. 
It was everything, all the freedom he could only dream at, love and family and
everything he ever wanted in his life, and she threw it all away.  And
that—that—more than the blood magic, made him angry with her.
            But he didn’t want to start an argument today; she had come with
good intentions.  It would be childish and immature to bicker right now.
            The paper crinkled as he unwrapped it, revealing the scarf folded
neatly inside.  He lifted the scarf from the paper, tossing the wrapping on the
table.  He looked at the scarf in his hand, running a thumb along the yarns. 
It was green—different shades of green:  Sage green like his eyes, forest green
like the Arlathan forest, seafoam green like the Nocen Sea in spring, grass
green like the garden in Minrathous, bright leaf green like…
            A flash of memory—laughing eyes, bright and leaf-green, the
features blurred.  He blinked, shaking off the remnants of memory.  “I thought
you were making sweaters.”
            Merrill sighed, flustered.  “It was too hard,” she said, defeated. 
“Is it awful?”
            He set it down.  “No.”  He paused.  “Thank you, Merrill.”  At least
if she were knitting, she couldn’t be doing blood magic, he reasoned.
Merrill smiled.  “You’re in a good mood, Fenris.  You’ve usually yelled at me
by now,” she commented brightly.
He shrugged a shoulder dismissively.  “Isabela just left.”
The elven mage frowned quizzically.  “What does that have to do with it?  Does
she usually make you happy?”
Bemused at her ignorance, he smiled.  “She usually finds one way or another to,
yes.”
She blinked.  “Well, that’s nice.  It’s nice to see you happy once in a while.
 What does she do, though?”
He almost laughed.  “Merrill.  Isabela comes over to have sex.”
Her face turned bright red with a sudden rush of blood.  She covered her face
with a hand, trying to hide her own embarrassment.  “Oh--my!  Well…”  Her eyes
caught on the carving.  She blinked in surprise, and lifted it from the table. 
“This is cute,” she exclaimed, smiling as if delighted to see it.  He watched
her look over it.  Perhaps she might have more insight into the carving than he
did, but he doubted it.  “Is it Dalish?”  That last question was mostly to
herself.  She looked over it again.  “It’s so old, I…”  Her eyes widened. 
“Oh!”
            He frowned.  What had she seen?  “What?”
            Her smile faded into mere curiosity, brow furrowing as if she were
trying to figure out a puzzle.  “That’s… strange.”
            His own curiosity piqued.  “What?”
            She stared at him oddly.  “Where did you find this?”
            He wondered if he should tell her.  He hesitated, and admitted, “I
found it hidden in Danarius’ slave compound—in Minrathous.”
            He watched all the colour drain from her face.  She looked back at
it, and he could see her heart sinking as she looked at it.  She set the
carving down.  “Excuse me—I’m sorry.  I need to go.”
            She was so upset that he couldn’t ask her what she had seen in the
carving, and gone before he knew the words to say.
 
            The stave made a small creaking sound as the bow bent back. 
Peacock feathers brushed against his cheek, and the arrow flew, landing solidly
in the target.  It had time to quiver but a moment before another one followed
it.  Thok!  Thok!  To anyone but Danarius, it would look like each shot was
wildly farther away from the target than the other.  Six more arrows had
landed, exactly where he wanted them, by the time he noticed the cat sitting on
the fence behind him.
            “Shaislyn,” he commented, drawing back again.  Out of the corner of
his eye, he could see the light from the boy’s spell.
            “You’re getting better at noticing me,” the teenager commented.
            “You don’t behave exactly like the animals you impersonate either,”
the magister pointed out, drawing again, firing.  “You can, but you don’t.”
            “Fair enough.”  The boy cocked his head to the side in a very
wolfish manner.  He spent so much time as animals that he adopted their habits
in every form.  Soon, Danarius imagined, he would find him eating worms from
the garden.  “How’s my mother?”
            “Ask her yourself.”
            A pause.  “She hates me.”  He shrugged hopelessly.  “It makes
talking to her awkward.  At least talking to you, the hatred is mutual.”
            “I don’t hate you.  Nor do I hate your mother,” Danarius said
bluntly.  “I have no reason to.”  Thok!  Thok!
            “That a spiral?” Shaislyn asked, raising his eyebrows a little. 
“Here I was thinking it was random and you just sucked at aiming.”
            “Indeed.”
            “So.  I know this guy—really great archer.  He got a blue ribbon
for putting an arrow through another arrow—“
            Thwok!  “Like that?”
            “Yeah!”  Then he added, “Damn.”
            “Don’t be too impressed; I used magic to aim that time.”
            “Isn’t that cheating?”
            He shrugged.  “It’s a natural ability.”
Shaislyn laughed.  “I don’t know how to use a bow.”
            Danarius shrugged.  “You don’t need to.”  He glanced at his son as
he knocked an arrow again.  “If you wanted to hunt, you can turn into an animal
and do it.  And if you needed to not use magic for any reason, you have
swords.”
            “So, you hunt?”
            “I used to.”  He was quiet, thinking about the last hunting
incident.  It was always hunting, wasn’t it?
Shaislyn cocked his head to the side, watching him.  “It’s not really a fair
fight, though, is it?  You and the deer, I mean.”
Danarius glanced back at him.  “No, not really.”  He drew back on the bow
again.  “Maybe if I weren’t a mage, and was trying to kill it with a knife,
then it would be a fair fight.  But they do have superior hearing, and they can
run much faster.”
“But you’re armed, and a person is smarter than a deer.”
“So I guess that would balance it out then.”
“No it doesn’t,” Shaislyn argued.  “Intelligence always counteracts physical
abilities.”
            Danarius said nothing, but smiled softly.
            The boy was quiet for a moment as he watched him shoot again. 
“So.  About my mum.”
            “She’s fine.  She even talks to me on occasion.”
            His eyebrows raised a little.  “She seems happier.”  A pause. 
Thok!  “You said she talked to you on occasion?”
            “More frequently since I gave her something I found in Fenris’
quarters.”
            The half-elf was interested in this news.  “What was it?”
            He paused, for breath.  He wasn’t as young as he used to be.  “A
carving—I thought it was a goat at first.  After inspection, I realized it was
a halla.  She cried all day, and after that, she’s been pretty amiable.”  A
pause.  “But it’s disturbing that he had it.”
            “Why?” the other inquired.
            “Because Leto had it.”
            The young mage was silent as he thought about what that meant.  He
had read all about the Ritual in his spare time, and knew about the spells that
had gone into it.  “That is… kind of disturbing.  Do you suppose… a part of him
remembers?”
            Danarius sighed, drawing again—the last arrow this time.  “I know a
part of him remembers.”  Thok!  He stretched, sighed again.  “Fortunately, one
of the things I instilled in his mind was an aversion to the truth, or he’d
know by now.”
            Shaislyn was intrigued.  “Blood magic?  You tampered with his mind
a bit?”
            “A fail-safe,” Danarius explained.  “Call him by his real name, and
it will rile his temper.  Things like that.  He won’t want to think about it.”
            “That’s interesting.  But how does it work?”
            “I can tell you about the mechanics of the spell if you like.  Or
are you more interested in how he’s averted to it?”
            The teenager frowned.  “Both, leaning more towards that second
bit.”  He shrugged.  “Spells are useless to me.”  He kind of laughed.  “You’rea
mage; I’m more of a swordsman who can use some magic.”
            A slave plucked the arrows from the feathered target.  “His past
will just be unpleasant for him to think about.  Imagine stepping on a slug
every time you thought about women, Shaislyn.  Eventually, you would stop.”
            Shaislyn laughed, and then said seriously, “I’d just think about
men—realistically speaking.”  He frowned, then brightened.  “Oh, I get it.”  He
frowned again.  “But why would that be unpleasant?”
            “It just creates an unpleasant sensation.”  He paused.  “Except
once, that is.  I’m uncertain as to why, but I have some ideas.”
            Shaislyn blinked.  “You know when he has memory breaches like
that?”
            “It’s my spell.  Don’t you always know what you are looking at,
when you use magic to see?”
            “But that’s different,” Shaislyn argued, pulling himself up to sit
on the fence, his legs dangling off the ground like a child’s.  “How do you
know?”
            The slave returned with the arrows.  “I sense Fenris through a…
particular link—I believe it might be through you even if I can’t sense you—and
I know when he is in danger, or when one of my spells comes close to
breaking.”  A pause as he knocked the bow again.  “It was truly breached, and I
feared broken, only once.”  He kind of smiled as he drew, and let loose. 
“Fenris’ aversion to it is partly to blame, I imagine.”  And a damn good thing
he had added that fail-safe.  If he suddenly remembered Varania, this latest
trap in the making would have no chance of working.
            Shaislyn paused.  “I don’t know,” he confessed.  “If I lost my
memory, and then gained it back suddenly, and lost it again, I think… I think
that would be enough heartbreak that I wouldn’t try again.”  He was silent for
a moment, staring downwards, as if lost in thought.  Danarius wondered if
Shaislyn was having second thoughts about this.  Everything would go to ruin if
he were, and the months of planning he was putting into this were spiraling
down the drain if he didn’t keep the boy from feeling guilty.
            The half-elf looked up suddenly.  “Don’t get me wrong, Danarius.  I
think Fenris is a fucking asshole and I care more about my mom’s well-being
than that bastard.  So don’t worry about me ruining this whole fucking thing.”
            “Your breeding is quite apparent in your speech,” the magister
muttered.
            “What?”
            He didn’t respond, but knocked an arrow again, thinking, I’ll empty
the quiver again, and then I’m done for the day.
            Shaislyn watched in silence for three shots before he piped up
again, “Hunting as an animal is kind of dangerous.  I can kill deer as a wolf
or something, but they have hooves and antlers; they could kill me or seriously
hurt me if I’m not careful.”  A slight pause.  “I don’t know how to heal
either.”
            “Is there anything you can actually do besides spy on people and
sleep in the sun?” Danarius said with some amount of sarcasm.
            “I’m an accomplished thief,” Shaislyn complained.  “And I’m great
with swords.”  He frowned a little, watching the magister with the bow.  “That
doesn’t look that hard.”
            “Do you want to try it?” he asked him, beginning to get the idea
that that was what he had been hinting at the entire time.
            The half-elf perked up, sliding off of the fence.  “I’d love to
learn a new way to kill things,” he said cheerfully.  The task proved more
difficult than he had thought.  For one, he wasn’t used to moving his muscles
in the same way the bow demanded he move them; and for another, aiming was more
difficult than he had assumed.  The first shot was terrible, the second he
listened more and used the offered guidance and words of advice and at least
hit the target, the third he missed again completely.
            “Start closer to the target.”
            “You were hitting it from this distance!”
            “And I’ve been doing archery since I was seven.  Move closer.”
            Shaislyn made a face, and tried to aim again, but his hands shook
when he pulled the arrow back.  The arrow pulled away from the shaft awkwardly,
and clacked against it again.  Shaislyn gave an irritated noise, trying to
steady his hand again, and shot a little prematurely.  He stared at the arrow,
which had only gone about five feet, listening to the magister laugh.
            “This isn’t the best bow to start with,” he admitted.  “And it’s a
bit too long for you.”
            Shaislyn scowled; he knew he was short by human standards, and
about average by elven standards.  “I’ve seen people use bows a lot bigger than
this,” he complained.
            “And I imagine they were more skilled than you,” the magister said
gently.  “Were you always so skilled with the sword?”
            “Well…  No.  I just thought… archery looked a lot easier.”
            “Magic doesn’t look that difficult either, to those that know
nothing about it,” he reminded him.  “Keep practicing, and remember what I told
you about keeping it level.”
            Shaislyn looked back at him as Danarius turned to leave.  “Where
are you going?”
            “I have to see how your mother is doing in her studies.”  Shaislyn
hesitated, but decided to leave it be for now.  He was sure that his mother
would be all right, and anyway Danarius seemed fairly mellow compared to how
Fenris, Lura, and Varania had described him as being.  Maybe that was his age;
the half-elf wasn’t sure.  He aimed again, keeping his back straight, both feet
firmly planted, his arms steady, muscles taught.  The feathers brushed his
cheek as he released the arrow.  It was a much better form, but his aim was
still terrible.
 
            It was later than Varania had wanted to be out.  She wore a warm
cloak in the chilly early spring air, but a breeze kept pushing the hood off of
her head, so she had given up on keeping her ears warm.  She stayed in the
light areas, and places that were guarded.  In Seheron, she would have been
accosted, demanding to know what she was doing out of the alienage so late at
night.
            Here, people were more likely to assume she was on some errand for
her master.  Well, she didn’t live in the alienage, and furthermore, she was
headed home for the night.  Ordinarily, “home” always meant an alienage for an
elf—or their master’s slave quarters.  But she was a mage, and thus had certain
privileges.
            A letter had come from Fenris this morning.  She had not had time
to read it, but she had left it sitting on her desk.  She wondered what it
said.  It was the second reply she had gotten since she had written to him
after she moved to Minrathous.  Letters were slow things—especially across
territories like this.  It took months to get from one place to another, and
she was always concerned that the letters would be lost.  How long had it been
since she had moved here?  Almost a year, she realized.
            She was beginning to not feel guilty at all about her scheming. 
Danarius and Shaislyn were right; Fenris really was nothing like Leto at all. 
He was hesitant, and reserved, and wouldn’t really talk very much about his
personal life, though she did inquire.  But at least, in that respect, they
were both the same way, always feeling that it would be easier to talk in
person.
            Varania was as happy as she could remember being.  She saw what her
life would be like if she were a magister, and experienced a bit of it now and
again, always learning.  She was not yet an apprentice, per se, not officially,
but she was always assured that she would be.  It was exciting, and new, and
she felt a particular joy in her heart that she had never had time for before. 
She felt a sort of pride, and knew that this was something she would be good
at.  That made her almost giddy; she had longed for years for something she
would be good at, and now here it was!
            It was everything she could ever want, really.  No more alienage,
no more moldy millet soup, patched linens, and sewing.  All her life, she had
watched those around her be and become skilled at things that she had no innate
skill for.  She had watched Leto and Ginger fight; watched Mother sew; watched
Lura as she charmed those around her and socialized; watched Shaislyn become as
resourceful as he had turned out to be.  And what had she been good at? 
Nothing, not really.  She could get by in sewing, and she knew enough about
magic to defend herself, but she was shy by nature and not very confident. 
Now, though, it was like everything had changed.  She liked studying politics
and the like.  She understood it in a way she had never understood anything
else before.
            She felt like it was something she would be good at, given time.
            She heard footsteps, and her son fell into step beside her.  “I
thought I’d walk with you,” he said.  “Just in case—it’s dark and all, I mean.”
            She nodded, and they walked in silence for a bit.  “You’ve been
spending a lot of time with Danarius,” she said, with some displeasure.
            He shrugged a shoulder nonchalantly.  “Guess so.”
            She was quiet for a long time.  “You shouldn’t talk to him so
much.”
            “He is my father,” Shaislyn said bluntly.
            “And don’t you ever forget why,” she hissed, anger heating her
words.
            Her son was quiet, and did not even take offense to the affront. 
“Over the past year, he’s been more of a parent to me than you have my entire
life,” he said, carefully picking all the bitterness from his voice like seeds
from a grapefruit.  “He’s never lied to me, or kept anything from me when I
ask, and has never tried to kill me either now that I think about it—directly
anyway.”
            Varania wanted to be angry.  She even bristled, and the words she
wanted to say were on the tip of her tongue, then she looked at him, and
stopped.  One thing that she had realized in her life, that was vitally
important when dealing with others, was controlling her anger.  She had learned
that in slavery:  Control your emotions and always stop before you speak.  If
she didn’t, she could be beaten, even sold or killed if she were too out of
line.  It was a habit she rarely forgot, and often wished that others around
her had learned it.  “Shaislyn?  If I had known you would be the man you are—if
I had known, when I was a fourteen—that you would grow up to be… smart, and
strong, and resourceful, and the best person who could ever be in my life…  If
I had known that that is the kind of person you would grow up to be, when I was
fourteen and thought you would grow up to be as cruel and awful as your
father…  I never would have tried to hurt you.  Or your sister.”
            He stopped walking, not crying exactly, but with an expression as
if he wanted to.  He looked alone, she thought.  Alone, and desperately wanting
her acceptance.  “Really?” he whispered.  “Really, Mama?”
            She stepped back toward him, her green eyes full of compassion, and
as much love as she could muster for her son who would do anything for her. 
And he had never really asked for anything in return, had he?  All he wanted in
the world was her acceptance and her love.  “Really,” she said, and her eyes
watered.  She blinked, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill
as she looked at her son.  Tears of guilt over the hurt she had caused him,
tears of sorrow, and pain.  “I’m so sorry.”  She took a step toward him.  “For…
everything.”  He looked at her, pained.  “I’m sorry about your sister.  And
that I tried to kill you too.  I wish I could take it back—I do.”  She
swallowed hard.  But she had been so young, and she hadn’t been ready, and it
hadn’t been fair.  “And I’m sorry I never cared about you the way I should
have.  And I’m sorry I never loved you the way I should have either.” 
She hugged him, and he started to move to return the gesture, then stopped and
pulled away.  She looked at him.  She didn’t understand.  She had thought…  No,
she had imagined that it would be this easy, but it wasn’t.  It was in stories,
and songs, and books.  It was this easy there.  But the reality of it was that
he was still hurt.  She had apologized, but it didn’t take the hurt away.
            “It doesn’t fix it,” he said, his voice so low she had to strain to
hear it.  “I love you, Mama.  And I’d do anything to make you happy.  And I’d
do anything to make you love me.  But one apology doesn’t fix a lifetime of
shunning and neglect.”  She stared at him, and did not know at all what to say,
or where to start.  He stepped past her.  “You don’t have far to go from here. 
You should be okay.”  With that, he turned the corner.  She was frozen for a
moment, shocked at his words, and hurt, and knew it was true.
            One apology couldn’t fix everything.  But it was a start.  She
would have to do something, anything, to make this right.  But what?  She
hurried after her son, rounding the corner.  “Shai—“  She stopped.  The street
was empty.  “—slyn.”  He was already gone.
***** Passion *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris and Hawke spend some time together and Shaislyn causes Aveline
     problems.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Fenris said that Hawke rode like a sack of potatoes, and he
guessed, watching the elf vault over a fallen log, the way he leaned in the
saddle, he was right.  Fereldens did not have many horses; they had dogs. 
Hawke’s dog trailed along after them, tongue lolling happily out of his mouth. 
It liked to run along beside the horses, but Hawke was uncertain about the
galloping.  Fenris had made faces until Hawke had sighed and told him to go on
ahead, and he had.
            Fenris had taken the younger, more spirited of the two horses, and
the horse seemed to catch on to his mood quickly.  Maybe the animal was just
glad to have a skilled rider.  Fenris actually had a lot of talents, Hawke
mused.  Fighting, he spoke three languages come to think of it, he was one of
the most well-traveled people the apostate had ever met, horseback riding
apparently—anything in bed.
            That last thought came unbidden, and he felt guilty for it.  Anders
knew, of course, that Hawke still cared about Fenris.  Anders even respected
that; because Anders still loved Carl.  Hawke knew, from the bottom of his
heart, that if Carl had never died that night, if he had never been made
Tranquil, Anders would never have been with Hawke.  And Hawke respected that. 
Anders knew that if Fenris had never walked away that night, Hawke would be
with Fenris.  And Anders respected that.  Late at night, sometimes the pair
would talk about it, how it was as though fate had carefully removed the
obstacles leading to one another in each other’s paths.  Hawke in no way
thought of Anders as just someone he had gone to when he was lonely and craving
the touch of another body.  He in no way felt driven into his embrace.  He was
there because he wanted to be.  He loved Anders, loved him more than he had
thought himself capable of.  He adored him, mind, body, and soul.
            Even knowing that, even with his heart belonging wholly to another,
he watched Fenris.  He watched the horse almost fly along the surf, its hooves
kicking up sand as the tide lapped at its ankles.  Fenris looked happy, Hawke
reflected.  He had never known he could just look happy.  He knew that his
friend could be happy.  He knew that he smiled, and laughed, and could even
tell jokes and had a sense of humor.  But just being happy was something
entirely new to Hawke.
            Fenris looked happy in that moment.  He actually feels free, the
apostate thought, a peaceful smile adorning his features.  It wasn’t fair
really; if Fenris had only been human, his skills and talents could have earned
him knighthood, but he was an elf and the best he could ever hope for was a
mercenary, even when he was stronger and more talented than most knights.  He
didn’t think Fenris cared about that though.
            Hawke had to stretch his legs; his thighs burned.  He swung out of
the saddle, hopping awkwardly out of the stirrup.  His dog got excited, and
nearly knocked him over.  He shoved him aside, and tied the horse to a large
piece of driftwood.  He spread out a blanket, and quickly weighted it down with
another piece of driftwood and a couple of rocks.  He sprawled down on it,
waiting for when Fenris would show up.  The elf took a long time in coming, and
the apostate just as quickly grew restless.  He had brought lunch, assuming
they would be out all day.  He got up, and started unpacking the small meal. 
Bodahn had packed it, so he had no idea what was actually in it.
            He saw Fenris finally make his way toward him.  The elf hopped out
of the saddle as if he did it every day, and busied himself with the horses. 
Hawke frowned, watching him remove their bridles and used their lead ropes to
secure them instead.
            Fenris glanced at him.  “Well, how would you like to have a piece
of metal shoved in your mouth?”  The elf plopped down beside him.  His legs
were wet from the surf, his hair wind-tousled, but his eyes were still
shining.  Hawke said nothing, but he smiled, hoping Fenris’ mood would last. 
He looked beautiful when he was sad, but Hawke liked him best just as he was
right now.
            “Shove this in your mouth,” Hawke said, thrusting a sandwich toward
him.  The dog whined, just at the edge of the blanket, eying the food
hungrily.  Hawke sighed, rolling his eyes, and looked for something for the
dog.  He found a small container that was obviously meant for the hound.  He
opened it slowly, making faces.  “I don’t think you really deserve this, mutt,”
he muttered, holding it high above his head.  The dog whined again, head low to
the ground.  He sighed as if relenting, and set the tin down near the animal. 
It excitedly went to work at it.
            “You aren’t really doing much ‘teaching’,” the apostate teased
Fenris.
            The elf blinked, and swallowed.  “Sorry,” he said, but wasn’t sorry
at all.
            He laughed a little.  “It’s fine.”  He gave a crooked smile.  “You
looked happy.”
            He studied his sandwich, as if analyzing where the next best place
to bite would be.  “I guess I was.”
            “’Was’?” he demanded.
            Fenris looked up, and gave a small, tight-lipped smile.  “Am,
sorry.”
            “Do you miss riding?” Hawke asked innocently.
            The elf considered that.  “You once asked me if I missed anything
about Minrathous—I miss my damn horse.”
            Hawke laughed, then frowned.  “You had a horse, though?  I
thought…”
            Fenris shrugged a shoulder.  “In a manner of speaking, she was
mine; I was the only one who ever rode Siren.”
            “Siren?  Did you get to name her?”
            “No.”
            Hawke took a bite of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed.  “You and
Isabela.  Is it serious?”
            He shook his head.  “No.”  He looked at him.  “And I prefer it that
way.”
            Hawke feigned disappointment.  “Shame.”  Hawke leaned back,
propping himself up on one elbow.  “Isabela has an amazing rack.”
            Fenris nodded once in agreement.  “I am infatuated with her body,”
he agreed.  “Maker, though, she has beautiful breasts.”
            The apostate took a bite of his sandwich.  “Enjoy them while they
last—breasts that big tend to sag when they get older.”  He gestured to
emphasize his point.
            Fenris scowled.  “Stop ruining my fantasy.”
            “It’s true,” he insisted.  “Gorgeous in the meantime though.”  He
raised his hands, curving them in the air like one would hold a woman’s
breasts.  “I just want to bury my face in her cleavage.”
            “She wouldn’t be adverse to that if you’d ask.”
            “Anders would kill me.”  He sighed.  “But, hell, I just want to
play with her tits.”
            “It is fun to play with her tits,” the elf said agreeably behind a
mouthful of sandwich.  “I like being with men—I understand how a man’s body
works—but with women it’s like…”  He struggled, taking another bite.
            “Like new territory,” Hawke finished.  “They have all these parts
that I don’t, and their body does things that I don’t, and it’s fascinating,
and fun, and when you go down on her it’s like you’re an explorer on an
undiscovered continent or something.”
            Fenris swallowed, and gestured.  “Yes—that.  That exactly.”
            The human looked at Fenris, finding a rising jealousy somewhere in
the pit of his stomach, or maybe lower.  He didn’t know why; he was happy with
Anders.  But something about how Fenris had described to him that first night
he had spent with Isabela made him jealous.  Fenris hadn’t remembered with
Isabela.  He hadn’t left her, and kept coming back to her night after night. 
They had done things that Hawke had never experienced with him, Fenris trying
things that he had never dared with Hawke.  And he was jealous. The realization
made him uncomfortable.  “So, do you prefer vaginal, or anal sex?”
            Fenris considered the answer for a moment.  “I don’t know what it’s
like to receive vaginal sex, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I like giving
vaginal better than anal.”
            Hawke nodded, sighing deeply.  “And I will never get to plow a
pussy again,” he lamented, then laughed.  “No, but really, I won’t.”
            “Anders not enough for you?” Fenris inquired, his tone teasing.
            The apostate raised an eyebrow.  “Anders gives amazing head—he once
gave me a ten-minute long orgasm using only his mouth.  He gives the best head
I have ever had.  Plus he can do this electric thing—and ice too.  I’m not
exaggerating—he is… amazing in bed.”  Hawke gave him a knowing look, then
gestured with his half-eaten sandwich.  “I digress.  But I do occasionally miss
the feeling of a wet pussy.  I imagine Isabela is unnaturally wet.  But isn’t
she really loose, too?  I mean, all things considered…”
            Fenris shrugged.  “I try not to think about it, to be honest. 
But…”  He made a face.  “I could probably fit two of me in her with not… too
much work, yes.”
            “You should have a threesome with her.  Tell me how it turns out,”
he insisted.
            “Right.”
            Hawke nodded to him, saluting him with his sandwich.  “I’m
serious.  I want all the details of it.”
            “She’d want it to be with another woman, and while I am not adverse
to that—the opposite, actually—I feel like it is slightly unfair that she gets
all the attention.”
            Hawke laughed.  He raised his flagon of summer wine.  “I’ll drink
to that.”  He tapped the flagon against Fenris’, still sitting on the blanket,
and drank.  “You just want to get fucked in the ass once in a while, right?” he
teased him.
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “You’ve no idea.”  He took a sip of the
wine.  Orlesian, he thought.  He was partial to Tevinter wine, and hated
himself for it.  “Isabela does do her best to accommodate, but frankly, it
isn’t the same.”
            Hawke groaned.  “Oh, fuck, I miss fucking women.”
            Fenris laughed.  “That sounds like a personal problem.”
            “Well, you wanna hear how my last sexual encounter with a woman
went?”  Hawke did not wait for a reply.  “Sit on that driftwood; I’ll
illustrate.”  Hawke eventually got Fenris to sit down, still eating his
sandwich.  Hawke knelt in front of him, his arms on his legs.  “She was sitting
exactly where I am, and imagine you’re me.”
            Fenris suddenly slouched, legs spread considerably farther, as if
he were trying to take up as much room as possible.  Hawke scowled.  “While
you’re down there,” he commented, gesturing toward his crotch.
            “Asshole,” Hawke muttered.  “Is that really how I act?”  Fenris
stuffed some sandwich into his mouth rather than answer.  Hawke had half a mind
to hit him, and decided to just progress with the story.  “So, she said—“ The
apostate impersonated his best feminine voice.  “—‘You wanna know what I did
yesterday?’  So I said, ‘sure’ thinking it would be some stupid sex story—and
it was.  Oh, Maker, it was!”  Hawke wheeled away for a moment.  Fenris
continued eating the sandwich, vaguely amused.  Hawke propped himself back
against the other’s legs.  “So she says, ‘I was at my sisters, and she has this
dog.  I had just gotten out of the bath, and I was all wet and steamy.  I bent
over the tub to drain it, and the dog—‘”
            Fenris stood up abruptly, knocking Hawke over.  “No.  No.”  He
marched away, cringing.
            Hawke chased after him.  “I have to finish it!”
            “No!” the elf cried, throwing the remains of his sandwich at the
other.  Hawke swiped lettuce out of his hair.
            “I can’t be the only one who knows this story!”
            “Tell Anders!” the elf insisted, moving away from him.
            “I can’t; I want him to have sex with me again!”  Hawke strode
purposefully toward him.  “You’re hearing the rest of it.”
            “No.  No I’m not.”  Fenris turned and fled.  Hawke chased after
him, and tackled him on the sand.  They grappled, and Hawke came out on top,
pinning the elf down under him.  Hawke was laughing too hard to continue his
story, every time he tried, it just dissolved in fits of giggles over how
juvenile they were acting.
            Hawke grinned mischievously, and tickled Fenris instead, because he
could.  He remembered all the places that Fenris was sensitive to the touch,
and tickled him there.  The elf kicked, shoving him, yelling at him, but Hawke
only laughed and kept at it.  They wrestled in the sand, and Hawke tormented
his ribs and narrowly avoided getting kicked in the face when he attacked his
feet.  They sat on the sand, panting and laughing.  When Hawke had finally
caught his breath, he said, “And then the dog fucked her.  And she fucking
thought I would be turned on by that.”
            Fenris laughed, and struck him in the shoulder.  “I didn’t want to
hear that.”  He laughed again.  “So, did you fuck her?”
            “Fuckno.  Never again.  I will never visit another whore again, for
the rest of my life, I swear.”
            Fenris smirked.  “It’s only a matter of time, Hawke.  You’ll want
to go back and bend her over a bathtub like the dog.”
            Hawke punched him in the shoulder.  “Shut up, you.  I mean,
seriously, do I really seem like the kind of man who would be interested in
that?” Hawke asked Fenris.
The elf’s eyes strayed immediately to the mabari hound, chasing seagulls and
blissfully unaware of their conversation.  As soon as he did it, Fenris jerked,
looking back at Hawke, hoping the mage had not noticed the direction his eyes
had strayed.  “I--”
Hawke was staring at him flatly.  “I can’t believe you.”
Fenris made a face.  “You’re the one with a dog.”
The mage was aghast.  “You really think I’d…?  Really?  Your opinion of me is
that low?”  Hawke frowned.  “You must think even less of me than you do
Danarius.”
Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “I have no doubt he enjoys his hunting hounds.”
Hawke burst with laughter.  “Wow.  That.... wow.”
Fenris smirked.  “Anders seems to prefer cats though.  Perhaps they are more
suited to his size?”
Hawke abruptly stopped laughing, but was still smiling.  He shook his head.
 “You…”  He stopped and shook his head again.  He chuckled a little.  “I have
no words.  If you’re asking about his size, he leaves nothing to be desired,
elf.”
“Am I supposed to feel insulted?”
Hawke shrugged, his lips curving into a lopsided grin.  “You are kind of…”  He
made a gesture, moving both of his hands near to one another.  Fenris glared at
him and Hawke grinned devilishly.  “Slender.”
“I’m circumcised.”
Hawke smiled a little.  “You never needed to impale me.”
Fenris rolled his eyes.  “You’re an asshole.”
Hawke frowned at him, feigning offence.  “You just accused me of being
attracted to my dog a minute ago, and I make one joke about your dick, and now
I’m the asshole?  You can give it, but you can’t take it, can you?”
Fenris’ eyebrows rose innocently.  “I can take it just fine, Hawke.”
“With some lubrication,” Hawke added, knowing exactly what he was talking
about.  He raked his hands through his hair.  “So.  Thoughts?”
            Fenris chuckled.  “You fucked a whore… who fucked a dog.”
            He scowled.  “Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge; I’ve fucked a
wolf too,” Hawke quipped.  Fenris hit him.  Hawke hit him back, and they walked
back to the blanket. 
            “You’re cute when you’re playful,” Hawke commented.  Fenris glanced
away.  Really cute, he sighed inwardly.  “Why don’t you always just act like
this?”
            Fenris felt his face heat, suddenly embarrassed.  He had forgotten,
if only temporarily, all his problems, all his woes and past grievances. 
Slavery, the lyrium in his skin, Danarius; they had all floated to the back of
his mind and there hadn’t been anything except Hawke and his awful, awful
story, the beauty of the day, and the horses.  Everything had been so perfect
and disgusting, he just hadn’t thought about any of the things that usually
occupied his mind.  “I guess…  I just wasn’t thinking about anything else.”
            “Well…”  The apostate hesitated.  “Do it more often.  It’s out of
character for you, but it’s a good change.”  He paused.  “I liked it.  I liked
seeing you happy, and laughing.”
            Fenris didn’t know how to say that he had too.  It had felt good,
even freeing.  Forgetting misery was a blessing.  He sat back down on the
blanket and took a long swallow of the wine.  “We could do this more often,” he
offered, looking back at Hawke.
            The apostate sat beside him.  “It would be fun,” he agreed.  Fenris
glanced at him, then looked away.  Hawke let out a long sigh, taking a drink of
his wine.  “And that’s my last sexual encounter with a woman.”
            “That’s traumatizing,” Fenris said sympathetically.
            Hawke watched his dog dig around in the sand for a while.  “So. 
When was your last experience with a man?”
            Fenris considered lying and saying it had been with Hawke, but that
would make it awkward, wouldn’t it?  “I… requested a few things from a whore.”
            Hawke grinned.  “Sounds like a story.  Let’s hear it.”
            The elf shrugged.  “I might have asked him to choke me…  And bite
me.  Slap my ass…”
            “Not too abnormal.  I’ve done that shit.”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “And tie me to the bed.”
            “Still not that weird.”
            “And cane me.  And hit me with a riding crop…”
            Hawke’s eyebrows rose in surprise.  “You’re kind of kinky, aren’t
you?”
            He only looked at him.  “I was covered in bruises and welts.”  He
left out the rest, what he had wanted reenacted; that was private.
            Hawke nodded, as if none of this really surprised him that much. 
“Varric and I did once vote you most likely to be into kink.”
            “Really?  You didn’t vote Isabela higher on that scale than me?” he
demanded.  He didn’t care that neither of them had ever mentioned it to him, or
that the two had talked about him like that.
            Hawke shrugged helplessly.  “Isabela was voted most likely to come
down with weird, new diseases.  You’re really perfect for each other,” he
insisted.
            “Are you and Anders perfect for one another?” Fenris asked mildly,
finishing off the rest of his tankard.  He mentally kicked himself for saying
it.
            Hawke smiled a little, staring down at his wine.  “He’s… the most
amazing man I’ve ever met.  I love him.  I wish you knew what that was like,
Fenris.”
            Fenris stared at him, and wanted to punch him again, for entirely
different reasons.  Hawke was being genuine though.  He genuinely wanted him to
feel love and be loved in return.  He sighed.  It was too late now.  “He’s
really better at oral than I am?”
            Hawke laughed.  “Still hung up on that?”
            “I find it hard to believe.”
            Hawke smirked.  “Full of yourself, aren’t we, Fenris?”
            He raised an eyebrow, giving him a seductive stare.  “I think
you’ve just forgotten what I can do.”
            Hawke stared at him.  Maybe he had.  Maybe he had forgotten,
somewhere between Anders’ kisses and Anders’ arms, the way Fenris felt.  Was
that an invitation, he wondered?  Something about the sun, and the shore, the
blue sky, and how close they were made him feel incredibly warm.  He stood up
suddenly.  “Can you swim?”
            “No…”
            Hawke pulled himself out of his clothes, and ran toward the sea. 
He leaped into the waves.  He had only barely managed to half-convince Fenris
to come down with him.  The elf stood, mostly naked, and scowling at the
water.  Hawke stood up, a wave crashing against his back.  He walked slowly
back toward shore, and didn’t ask; he just scooped the elf up in his arms. 
Fenris complained, and demanded to be put down.  Hawke walked out to the waist-
deep waves, and dropped Fenris in it.  He didn’t think he would ever be too old
to play in the waves, or too old to have fun.
            He swam out farther, where the water was gentle, urging Fenris to
join him.  He taught him to swim, how to float.  The water was chilly, but it
was a warm day, and Hawke liked the water.  His dog swam out too, playing with
them in the water before it ran back to shore.  Back in shallower water, they
walked, side by side, chatting amiably about swimming.
            A large wave knocked Fenris forward, and Hawke caught him
automatically.  The elf, regaining his balance, looked up at him, intent on
thanking him, and stopped.  He couldn’t say which of them had kissed the other,
except that it happened, and he wanted it.  The waves crashed around them,
drenching both of them all over again.  Water dripped down their hair, off
their bodies.
            Fenris ran his hands down Hawke’s muscled chest, moaning against
his lips.  Hawke’s grip on his arm tightened, one of his hands falling to the
elf’s side, fingers trailing down to his hip.  Fenris clutched Hawke’s shoulder
as another wave hammered them, his other hand falling down to the man’s
stomach.  His fingertips had just touched the top of Hawke’s soaked
underclothes when the apostate’s eyes opened wide.  Hawke jerked, stepping away
from him, shoving Fenris almost violently aside.  The elf stumbled in the surf,
staring at him.
            Hawke was watching him as if he were something horrible, as if he
were his undoing, his eyes wide.  He touched his lips as if he had swallowed
poison.  Fenris didn’t know what he had been expecting, but he felt like he
should not have been surprised.
            Hawke turned and walked quickly away from him.  He was still wet,
but he dressed anyway, with all due haste.  He fumbled a little with the
bridles while Fenris got dressed, and couldn’t quite figure out how to get them
on.  Fenris took the bridle out of his hands wordlessly, and did it himself.
            “Fuck,” Hawke finally said.  “Hell.”  He glared at Fenris, as if it
were entirely his fault.  The elf stared downwards, just as angry that Hawke
blamed him.  “I have to tell Anders.  Maker.”
            Fenris busied himself with the horses.  “Don’t,” he advised him. 
“Nothing happened.”
            “I kissed you.  Or you kissed me, or whatever.  It doesn’t matter. 
I have to tell him.”  The elf’s teeth clenched.  Hawke started packing up the
remains of lunch.  He shoved the things mindlessly into the saddlebag, wadding
up the blanket.  “Fuck,” he said again.  “I’m sorry.  Look, I…  What do I say
to him?”
            Fenris stared at the way the horse’s flanks heaved as it breathed. 
“He’ll forgive you,” he whispered.  “Tell him that it was me.”  Anders already
hated him.  One more thing to hate him about would not make much difference,
the way he saw it.  And maybe he had been the one to kiss Hawke anyway, and the
other had just…  He kissed me back.  I don’t care who moved first—he kissed me
back.
            Hawke bit his lip.  “I love Anders.  What…?”
            Fenris stepped closer to him, frustrated.  There were so many
things he wanted to say.  Nothing felt right.  What could he say?  He grabbed
onto Hawke’s arm, pulling him to a halt in his pacing.  He stared at him, and
still the right words never came to him.  I love you.  He stepped toward him,
and kissed him again, hard, fierce, trying to communicate in passion and touch
what he could not bear to say aloud.  Hawke’s lips barely yielded.
            Fenris was back in the saddle in a heartbeat, wheeling the horse
away.  He kicked it into a gallop.
            He had seen the look on Hawke’s face when he had pulled away.
           
            The jail had a damp floor, and smelled strongly of urine.  The
ceiling dripped and the walls oozed with an unidentifiable dark sludge.  In the
little cell was a bench carved out of the same stone as the walls and floor and
was the only thing in the room, except the lone prisoner, staring angrily at
the shackles on his wrists, as he had been since late the night before, when he
had been dumped into the room.
            Shaislyn’s vision guttered out for the umpteenth time.  The
shackles restricted his flow of mana.  Someone had known enough about him to
know that he was a mage.
            He heard the heavy outer door creak open on whining hinges,
footsteps making their way down the hall.  A few short words exchanged, and one
set of footsteps walked the rest of the way down.  Some of the prisoners
stirred in their cells at the man’s passing, others taunted.  One of them threw
something, and it made a wet sound and a smell that told anyone what it had
been.  There was a splashing sound, water being dumped on the prisoner, and
then it was silent for a moment, and the person continued walking.  Shaislyn
wondered if the missile had hit, but doubted it.  Visibility was poor between
the bars, and they were so high up that one was given the choice between just
barely being able to see, or being able to throw something out.
            In the chill of the jail, the water being dumped on the man was
more or less a death sentence, though.
            The footsteps stopped somewhere near, and keys jangled, a heavy
bolt thudded as the lock turned.  Shaislyn jumped when the door opened, but
couldn’t summon the mana to see who it was.  This was the truly frustrating
part about being blind.  In ordinary circumstances, outside of jail, he might
deduce who it was by where he was, or sounds the person made.  But here?  He
didn’t know the sounds well enough here, or the people well enough yet.
            “Typical that I should find you here,” a familiar voice said, the
tone criticizing.  He hadn’t gone back to the manor in weeks, as he had been
avoiding his mother, and whoring.
            Shaislyn made a face and sighed, hanging his head.  “They won’t
tell me what I did,” he complained.
            “Theft,” his father informed him.  “Someone saw you with that
necklace you stole.  Or, more accurately, they saw the whore you gave it to.”
            “Did you see her?  Isn’t she beautiful?  She can do this thing with
her legs—“
            “Spare me.”
            Shaislyn shrugged.  “Couldn’t they have at least waited to get me
until after I’d left the whorehouse?  My entire arrest was extremely awkward
for everyone involved.”
            “You disgust me sometimes.”
            The young mage was silent for a moment in thought.  He sought the
arms of whores because no one else would ever want him.  His own mother didn’t
want him, and all he ever wanted in the world was acceptance.  And no one but
the people he paid to give it to him ever gave it.  “You and everyone else in
the world.”  A short pause.  “So, did you come here to criticize my life
choices, mock me, or something else?”
            “Get up.  I have work for you to do.”
            He lifted his hands.  “Shackled.”  The chain ran to the ceiling,
assuring everyone that Shaislyn was trapped.
            The magister unlocked them and the half-elf sighed in relief,
rubbing his wrists.  He stood up, able to see once more.  “What’s the job?” he
inquired.
            “I want you to go check on Fenris, and while you’re there, do you
think you could set a small fire?”
            He crossed his arms.  “What kind of fire?  Metaphoric or literal?”
            “Literal,” Danarius answered, leading the way out of the jail. 
“Specifically, I want you to burn all the documents about the house I own in
Kirkwall.”
            Shaislyn let out a low whistle.  “Any idea where they are?”
            “I have a map for you.”
            “Why?”
            “Fenris is getting curious, it seems.  Someone is prying about it. 
And, while I don’t believe he will run away again if he knows I actually do own
it, that could make things… inconvenient for me.”
            Shaislyn raised an eyebrow.   “’Inconvenient’ how exactly?” he
inquired.  The magister’s eyes flicked to the bars they passed, as if to remind
him that their conversation was not so very private.  Shaislyn’s mouth opened
in a small “o” of understanding.  “I hope you have copies of it, or you’ll lose
it.”
            “I do.”
            He nodded seriously.  “I can do that.  What do I get out of it?”
            “Don’t get greedy; I just paid your bail.”
            The half-elf pursed his lips, and thought about arguing, then
sighed.  “Fine.  Don’t tell my mother I got arrested.  She worries enough about
me.”
            “I’ve half a mind to,” Danarius said, more than a little irritated
with his bastard son:  A thief, a whoremonger, and exasperating all at the same
time.
            “Please don’t.”  Shaislyn smirked at the guards, and picked apart
the storeroom they kept prisoner’s belongings.
            He found his coin purse sitting desolate on a shelf.  “I had more
money in this when I came in,” Shaislyn complained, loudly and with feeling.
            “From ill-gotten means,” his father reminded him.  “Are you
finished?”
            “I can’t find my swords—Oh.  Nice.”  He swore as he pulled them out
of the box, the belts getting tangled on the other belts and baldrics in the
box.  He looked at the handles and inspected the blades before he strapped them
back on.  “Right.  I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”  He strolled past
Danarius, who fell into step beside him, then proceeded to lead him out, their
prison-guard-made-escort following them instead of the other way round.
            “You’ll leave within the next hour,” the magister admonished him.
            “The hell?” the boy complained.  “I’ve been in prison for two
days.  I’m tired, and don’t ask me about the pig slop they feed us.  I need a
long nap and some real food before I go—“
            “You’ll have a short nap in the carriage, a light snack, and then
you’ll go after I get you your map, and the documents I want you to plant.” 
His tone brooked no argument.
            “Ah.”  Shaislyn fell silent, sensing when a battle was lost.
            At the top of the stairs, there was a door that a guard on the
other side opened at a knock, and Danarius’ bodyguard sighed with evident
relief, and followed them.  In the carriage, in relative solitude, Shaislyn
yawned, and looked at his father.  “So why am I setting the fire?”
            He was not a man used to having orders questioned.  “Outside
Tevinter, slavery is illegal.”
            The half-elf’s eyebrows rose.  “You were conducting slave
trafficking through the house.”
            “Among other things.”  A pause.  “Lyrium smuggling, wine, drugs…  I
had a hand in a few different things.”
            “And it’s completely illegal,” Shaislyn added as the carriage
rolled to a halt.  Danarius was dodging high taxes on slaves, lyrium, wine, and
drugs by smuggling them through other countries.  He may have removed himself
from the business, it sounded like, but he could still be traced to it if he
were not very careful.  Imperial law would frown upon such behaviour.  And, if
there was a full investigation going on, the city guard in Kirkwall might want
to tear apart the house looking for clues.  He frowned as he stepped out into
the sunlight after the magister.  “I’m a bit curious though—were you ever in
Kirkwall that night I stole your slave breeding book?”
            “You stole that?” he asked, a bit surprised as they headed into the
mansion.
            “How do you think I found you?”  A pause.  A servant opened the
door for them.  “Fenris seemed to think you had accompanied the slavers.  Did
you?”
            “No.”  Danarius gave a small frown.  “I wonder why he thought
that?  But there were mages there, and they did have access to the manor. 
Maybe he found the key is all.”  The magister paused.  “By the way, you’ll
still be standing trial a few weeks from now, Shaislyn.”
He made a face.  “What’s the point?”
“Do you like your apostate status, or would you prefer ‘executed criminal’?”
He made a face, and sighed.  “I understand,” he said meekly.  “So.  I’ll stand
court.  But what’s my… punishment, exactly?”
“Eight years in prison.”
“Fuck that.”
Danarius nodded.  “Plead guilty, spare my friend the judge a headache, and
you’ll lose your left hand instead of prison.”
Shaislyn blinked, and actually laughed as if it were a joke.  “No thanks.”
“I’ll have a healer re-grow it for you.”
He gave a cocky smile.  “I’ll pass, thanks; I’m kind of attached to my hand.”
Danarius was not amused.  “Run, and you’ll be executed.”
Shaislyn searched his face, looking for any hint of relent, but saw none.  He
groaned.  “C’mon, that shit will hurt.”
Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “So will execution.”
“Can’t you do anything for me, Danarius?”
He snorted.  “I did.”
He groaned, looking down at his hand.  “Does it have to be my left?  You know
I’m left-handed, right?”
The magister sighed.  “The right then.”
Shaislyn glanced down at his hands.  “How long will I be one-handed?”
The other mage shrugged a shoulder dismissively.  “A few hours maybe.”
He clenched the fingers of his right hand, then relaxed them, imagining what it
would be like for a blade to cleave through flesh and bone and leave him with a
bleeding stump.  He wondered, too, what it would be like to have it regrown. 
Did it hurt?  “You’re sure she can do this--the healer I mean?”
Rianda was quite a skilled healer.  He had seen her credentials; this was more
than within her ability.  “Yes; she has before.”
“What was the end result?”
“It looked just like the original.”
“I’m skeptical.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Think I’ll pass.”
“You’ll be a wanted criminal.”
Shaislyn groaned.  “I hate you.”
“If you prefer to be executed, it can still be arranged.”
“I get it, all right?”
“See that you don’t miss the hearing.”
            Shaislyn nodded absently, falling silent as they walked toward
Danarius’ study.  Danarius gave an order to a passing servant, and the man left
in a hurry.  The magister went to his desk.  “These are the papers I want you
to plant,” he said, touching a small bundle.
            “’Kay,” the apostate said.  “So, about that food you mentioned…?”
Danarius gestured toward the door.  Shaislyn turned around in time to see a
cart being pushed into the room, laden with food.  Shaislyn fell upon it before
the servant had even removed the lids.  The older mage sat at his desk,
rereading another document idly while he waited for the half-elf to slow down
his eating.
“Since I’m not allowed to sleep, I better get going,” Shaislyn said around a
mouthful of bread.  He walked up to him, lifting the bundle off the desk,
taking another bite of the roll.
            “Before you go, I have something for you,” the magister told him,
walking around to the other side of his desk.
            The half-elf cocked his head to the side.  “Like what?”  When he
saw the document Danarius lifted from a drawer at his desk, he sighed.  “Am I
planting that, or just delivering?”  He stuffed the last of the roll into his
mouth.
            “Reading,” he corrected him, and handed it toward him.
            Curiosity piqued, he grabbed it, and looked at it.  He had to
reread the first paragraph twice before he understood it, and was afraid that
he did.  He was not afraid of what it meant, but he was afraid to jump to
conclusions about what it meant.  He read through the rest of the first page,
flipping to the next.  “What is this?” he inquired.
            “Not very long ago, you were upset that no country considers you to
even be a person.”  He gestured to the papers.  “Tevinter does.”  A pause.  “I
didn’t even forfeit your status as an apostate.”
            “Not yet,” Shaislyn laughed, but stared at the papers somewhat
reverently.  He set them back on the desk, biting his lip.  It wouldn’t make
people hire him.  It wouldn’t make people get over their prejudices.  But it
was something.  He was a citizen of the Imperium, and that was
something—Soporati by default.  It meant he could own a house, land even.  It
meant he could get married, in that unlikely event.  It was actually the most
precious thing anyone had ever given him.
            The last time he had been this close to being a real citizen
anywhere, he had been a slave and that was just being able to label him as
something.  Even living in the alienage in Seheron, he had discovered, they had
not been able to classify him as a citizen.  Not even when they did a census,
he had not been counted.  He had been a child at the time and had not
understood, but his mother had admitted the truth of it to him.  She had said
that the man collecting the papers from them had sneered when she had asked
about Shaislyn.  He had said, “We can’t count half an elf and half a human.”
            “How did you manage to do this?”
            “I’m a magister,” he said, as if it explained everything.  Maybe it
did.
            “Why?” he whispered.
            Danarius shrugged dismissively.  “Think of it as a gift.”
            “Thank you,” he murmured.  A detailed map and the documents in
hand, Shaislyn, still eating, left as if in a dream.  He was a citizen.  A real
citizen.  Common peasantry, since Danarius had left him his apostate status,
but it was something.  It was more than something.  It was more than anyone had
ever given him, more than anyone would ever give him, outside of Jameson’s
books anyway.  Technically, Shaislyn was Liberati, but he would never speak of
it; those documents, like so much else in Seheron, had burned, and no liberated
or escaped slave was going to admit that status.  No, if they could pretend to
be Soporati, they would.
            He still liked his first form—the little sparrow that had saved him
time and again.  That form which was so useful for spying and fitting into
small places, but for distance travel he much preferred either a raven or a
mighty eagle.  The eagle was better at gliding, and he liked gliding, riding
the wind and not having to flap a wing for hours.  High above the world,
everything just seemed peaceful.
            He watched a flock of geese ahead, and his eyesight was so
spectacular as to observe much of the goings-on below as well.  He passed over
forests and fields, rivers and lakes.  The Tevinter Imperium was a beautiful
country, he mused.  Beautiful forests, rich farm lands, a nice climate—and one
of blood magic and slavery.  But, he knew, the only one to openly oppose the
Qunari.  The only one not to enslave mages to the Chantry.
            He supposed, with a sad feeling in his heart, that every government
had problems.  He had been to many countries, after all.  Antiva had beautiful
leather workings and the most feared assassins in the world, but their
governments were a farce at best and so it was run by greedy politicians and
often just whoever was the most feared.  Rivain had fantastic ships, exotic
women, and great craftsmanship, but a lot of them were pirates, thieves and
ruffians—a crowd he did not mind so much, except he was a foreigner there and
looked the part in every way.  Ferelden was another beautiful
country—especially in winter when the snow covered everything like a blanket,
except it smelled like dog and the food was terrible.  Orlais was gorgeous as
well and its cities breathtaking, the Cathedral there a work of the highest
art, yet the Templars there behaved like common thugs towards mages.  The Free
Marches were also quite lovely, and he liked the high mountains and the sea,
but there was that problems again with the Templars, and each city-state had
its own rules and guidelines, which were irritating.  The Anderfels had been
all right as far as the people and the customs even if they were a bunch of
religious zealots, but he had not liked the desert at all.
            And so it was that he always returned to the Imperium.  He simply
saw no other option.  His mother was probably right when she insisted he join
the Circle.
            Caught up in his thoughts, when he heard the creature roar it
caught him unawares.  He looked up, and saw in the distance a young dragon,
hovering low, burning something in a rocky field.  It roared again, as if in
triumph, as it landed.  He winged toward it, curious, diving down a little
lower to see it.
            As he neared, he saw that it was greedily tearing into the smoking
carcass of some poor farmer’s cow.  He wheeled over it, watching, trying to
study it.  It was so unlike any other animal, he could not even use another as
a base.  His first inclination was to think it must be most like a lizard, but
as he drew near, saw that wasn’t so at all.  And then, perhaps a bird—it did
fly after all.  But it wasn’t like a bird either.  If he learned to take the
form of a dragon, he would have to watch it the way he had watched every other
animal for the first time.  Countless study, knowing its every sound, its every
habit and action, and he knew he did not have the time for it.
            And watching that creature for so long was incredibly dangerous.
            He heard bones snap as the dragon bit into them.  He would be but a
quick bite to the creature, juvenile or no.
            He flew on, knowing he had best put as much distance between it and
himself as possible.
 
            The door closed with a soft click, and Aveline sat back down in her
chair, staring at the report on her desk.  She had just finished giving a
thorough verbal thrashing to the guards responsible for guarding the vaults. 
How could a fire of that size get so large before anyone had even smelled the
smoke?  Of course she hadn’t believed them when she heard their rebuke.
            They were just lucky that not all those documents were lost.  The
tax collectors were even now in fits, and many of the homeowners as well, now
scrambling to find the documentation for their homes.  Tax documents were lost,
the older catalogues of payment and many other papers were destroyed before it
had been put out.
            The night it happened, even a couple of the Templars had come to
investigate.  Of course, it was too late to tell for sure, at that point, if a
mage had indeed caused it.  But the Knight Commander was insistent that it must
be an apostate.  But she saw blood mages everywhere.
            That morning, Aveline and she had had rounds—again.  They were
always fighting, and neither woman would back down.  If Aveline dared to, the
city would be in the Templars’ unforgiving hands, and she simply refused. 
Their little discussion had began with the fire.  Meredith had, naturally,
insisted that it had to be a blood mage.
            “How else could someone sneak past a guard, set fire to the vaults,
and escape—all without being seen or caught?” the woman demanded.
            “It’s been a day,” Aveline had argued right back.  “Whoever did it
only hasn’t been caught yet.”  An accident had been ruled out almost
immediately.  The vault had ventilation shafts but no windows—nothing large
enough for a person to fit through, and one door that had a guard outside it,
and a bolt that was found to be secure.  And even if it were a mage, how did
theyget past?  The guard who was guarding it didn’t even have the key.  There
was no evidence of the lock being picked either, the door locked when the fire
was discovered.  The key to the vault was in the tax collector’s office, which
had been, again, found locked down to its windows.
            And Meredith would only continue to accuse blood mages, and Aveline
would only continue to point out the facts and the evidence.  “We can’t jump to
conclusions about anything.  Whatever damage was done was annoying, but
whatever they were doing, it just destroyed property records.  Look at
disgruntled homeowners.”
            And still with the accusations, until Aveline snapped, “No one got
in through that door.  There is no other way into the vault.  If—If anyone got
in, it was through the ventilation shafts, and no one could ever fit through
those.”
            Meredith only left when Aveline agreed, tacitly, to having the
guards posted to the door that night tested for signs of blood magic tampering
with their minds.
            The entire thing made her angry, and even more angry when it was
proven, beyond doubt, that her men were, of course, free from any such
tampering.  There weren’t even any leads to follow--just a freak fire that had
destroyed some old documents. 
Chapter End Notes
     Way to send mixed signals, Hawke.
     Yes, adults act like that. Source: Am an adult. Can confirm.
***** Love *****
Chapter Summary
     What is love, anyway? You can't touch it, can't pick it up and
     explain it to someone. Fenris struggles with the same question.
            Aveline heard an impatient knock at the door.  She frowned,
wondering who it could be—and on her day off no less!  She hoped it was a
personal matter, and not a work-related one.  The last thing this city needed
right now was a crisis.
            She raked her fingers through her hair as she got off the sofa, and
the person at the door knocked again.
            “I’m coming!” she complained.  She heaved a sigh, but was in no
rush to get to the door.
            “Aveline!” a familiar voice complained from the other side.
            She frowned.  “Isabela?”  She opened the door, greeted by the
Rivaini pirate.  She stepped aside, letting her in.  She did not wipe her boots
on the matt as she stepped past her.  “I appreciate you knocking this time,”
Aveline commented.
             “Well, last time I saw a little more of you and Donnic than I
liked,” she laughed.
            She let the door swing shut.  “I do appreciate it, Isabela.”
            She nodded absently.  “I need to talk to you,” she said, getting
right to the point.
            Aveline’s eyebrows arched in surprise.  “Something the matter?  Do
you want some tea?”
            In the kitchen, Aveline put the kettle on the stove, and she sat
down across from Isabela at the table.  The woman fidgeted in her seat, making
faces as if she didn’t know where to begin.  Aveline cleared her throat, and
she looked up.  “What’s this about?”
            Isabela let out a flustered sigh.  “Fenris,” she muttered.
            Aveline cocked her head to the side.  “You’re not pregnant, are
you?”
            She laughed.  “Oh, I wish it were that simple!” she said honestly. 
She leaned back in the chair.  “No.”  She blinked.  “Fenris talks in his
sleep.”
            The guard captain wondered what this could really be about.  “If it
bothers you, you don’t have to sleep with him.”
            She made a face, and stared down at the table.  “He has
nightmares.”  She looked up at Aveline.  “There’s nothing I can do except wake
him—and I know how he’d feel if he knew I knew.”
            Aveline’s eyes softened.  Isabela was just worried about their
mutual friend.  And here Aveline had been expecting something else entirely. 
“Nightmares?”
            She shrugged a shoulder absently.  “I don’t know—he’s cried a
couple times.”  She flinched.  “I can’t stand to see it—so I wake him up,
pretend he wasn’t talking in his sleep.  I don’t know what else to do.”
            The other paused.  “I don’t think there’s much else you can do,”
she told her.  “Except be there for him.”
            Isabela seemed sad for a moment.  “I just… feel helpless.  I can’t
do anything for him, and I’m afraid to bring it up.”
            The other nodded her head in agreement.  “Bad idea—that.  He won’t
take it well.”
            She kind of smiled.  “No, he wouldn’t.”  She frowned, remembering
the bits he had said.  Fenris was her friend before he was a lover, and it hurt
to hear him say some of the things she had heard him say.  She liked to joke,
tease, and go on, but only when it wasn’t hurtful.  She liked to feign
ignorance, or Fenris would know how much she really knew.  If she stopped
suddenly, he would get suspicious.  So she liked to tease him, ask if she could
oil him up so he would glisten and things like that.  If Fenris knew the kinds
of things she had heard spill from his lips, she didn’t think there would be
any salvaging their relationship.  And, frankly, the sex was too good to give
up.
            The pirate sighed.  “It’s not only nightmares though.”  She stared
up at the ceiling, and opened her mouth to continue.  The kettle let out a loud
whistle, and Aveline rose.  Isabela waited until her hostess had prepared the
tea and honey and sugar.  While they waited for the tea to steep, the pirate
continued, “Fenris is in love with Hawke.”
            “Everyone but Hawke knows that,” Aveline agreed.
            The other smiled crookedly.  “It’s cute, isn’t it?”  She stirred
her tea, lost in thought for a moment.  “He says it a lot in his sleep.  It’s
sweet.  But I feel bad for him—because Hawke loves Anders.”
            Aveline shrugged.  “It happens.  It’s not even unusual—he’ll get
over it.”
            She looked back at her.  “Do you think so?”
            The redhead frowned, a suspicion lurking in her mind.  “Probably. 
He has to.  I’m honestly more concerned about his nightmares than his
unrequited affections.”
            “Do you think I should say something?”
            “About the nightmares?” Aveline asked, growing concerned that
Isabela might.
            She shook her head.  “About Hawke.  You think if I just told him,
point blank, ‘Hey, Fenris is in love with you’—what do you think would happen?”
            “Nothing,” Aveline said bluntly.  “Awkward tension—for everyone. 
Fenris especially.”
            Isabela made a face.  “You’re really saying the best I can do for
the poor boy is nothing?”
            Aveline raised an eyebrow, leaning forward.  “You’re not in love
with Fenris, are you, Isabela?”
            She gave her a flat look.  “I’m in love with his sexual prowess,”
she said pleasantly.  “He makes a decent friend, and I enjoy his company—which
is why I care.”
            “Some people have gotten married for less,” she teased her.
            Isabela straightened.  “I’ve never felt so insulted.”
            Aveline laughed.  “Fine.  You don’t love Fenris.”  She dropped a
sugar cube into her tea and stirred.  “But maybe mention the nightmares—don’t
tell him he talks in his sleep—but maybe talk about things he could do about
them?”
            The other nodded.  “Maybe a medication.”  She snorted a laugh. 
“Hell, maybe just more alcohol.”
 
            Fenris went to Hawke’s mansion—he was slowly working through the
library actually—and saw them.  That is to say, he saw Anders with his back to
the railing, Hawke with his arms wrapped around him, and they were kissing. 
Probably didn’t even notice him.  As a matter of fact, Hawke probably did not
even known he was there, as the elf had gone straight to the library, where he
worked his way through another thick volume.  He was a couple hours into its
inky depths when Hawke wandered into the library, finding Fenris curled up in
an armchair like a contented cat.
            “What are you reading?” he asked him. 
Fenris tilted the book so Hawke could read the title.  “I don’t know how you
can stand to read history books all the time,” the mage confessed.  Things had
been strained between them since that day at the beach.  Hawke was treating it
as if it never happened, and Fenris supposed that that was for the best,
really.  Nice to see that, if he had told Anders, there was no hard feelings
between the two mages.  He almost wished there was.  Was that petty?
            “It’s comforting to know that some people have lived a more
difficult life than my own,” he said without looking up.  Not having his own
past often made him curious about other people’s pasts too.  History,
biographies, accounts of people’s lives—he devoured it.  History was a
fascinating concept to him, the patterns and the mystery involved in it.
            There was some silence for a bit, and Fenris went back to reading,
until Hawke spoke again.  “So.  How long does it take to get from Seheron to
Kirkwall, anyway?  Where all did you go?  Or did you just get lost?”
            Fenris looked up, and thought about telling him to mind his own
business, except that the man was staring at him, and he felt something low in
his stomach churn.
            He set the book down and walked over to a large atlas book that
Hawke kept—and likely had no idea was here; he spent very little time in the
library.  Fenris lifted it out, and flipped to a map of Thedas.
            He set it down on the table and beckoned Hawke over.
            He pointed to the city in Seheron that the Qunari had attacked. 
“Seheron:  This was the city my master abandoned me in.”  Hawke laughed. 
Fenris said nothing, because he had felt abandoned then, but he let Hawke think
he was being sarcastic.  He trailed his finger along the map, along the
coastline, and stopped, hesitating, and then moved his finger away from about
the area he knew that wreckage of a city to be.  He could not remember the
city’s name any more.  He stopped at another place, and swallowed hard.  It was
only his best estimate, and that somehow made it worse.  “This is…”  He stared
at the spot on the map.  Not even a place with a marker.  Had anyone burned the
bodies?  Buried them?  Or had they been left to rot out in the sun?  His heart
felt heavy.
            Hawke touched his arm gently.  Fenris stared down at the map,
remembering all too vividly the feel of the mage’s caress on his skin—but also
the way the blood from the dead Fog Warriors had stained his hands.  “It’s
okay; you don’t have to tell me anything.”
            But he was only saying that because he knew why Fenris had fallen
silent—or at least had some idea.  He moved his finger away from it, trailing
along the paths he had taken alone, trying to remember.  He stopped at the town
he had met Annalkylie, but said nothing about it; he had promised, after all,
whatever that meant to anyone.  He trailed his finger along to the cove they
had met the smugglers at.  “I stowed away on a smuggler’s ship, and they
decided to keep me.”  He forced a rueful smile.  “We stopped here, in Seere.” 
He pointed to a place in Rivain, and trailed his finger along the coastline, to
a place in Antiva.  “And Rialto.”  He wound his finger along to all the other
places they had stopped, and gone, and trailed it all the way up to Rivain
again, close to Tevinter, stopped in a small cove by the Arlathan Forest.  He
was silent again, and he knew that Hawke was trying to guess what had happened
there.  Fenris didn’t want to talk about it though.
            He said instead, “I left.”  He snorted.  “Nearly died in the
forest, too.”  He didn’t mention the hallucinations he had had.  Or
demons—whatever they had been.  He trailed his finger along the map.  “And I
stopped here, and here…  And then I came to Kirkwall, looking for Danarius.”
            “And whatever was in that chest,” Hawke commented.  Still curious
after all this time?  “What was in the chest anyway?”
            Fenris looked at him, aware of how painfully close they were, yet
so, so far apart.  What if they kissed?  Just once?  Would that be so wrong? 
He didn’t know, and that was the worst part.  But Hawke certainly felt
otherwise.  “It was…”
            “Hawke?” a familiar, irritating voice called.  Fenris stepped away,
and turned.  He walked away from Hawke when Anders entered the room.  “Can I
talk to you about something import--Oh, you.”  The distaste in the mage’s voice
was plain, but the feelings were mutual.
            “Be nice,” Hawke snipped, but he said so with a warm, adoring smile
that made Fenris seethe when he looked back at him.  “What do you need?”
            Anders could see both of them from doorway, and smiled lovingly at
Hawke, and Fenris felt like part of that was to pique the elf’s rage.  Maybe it
was, maybe it wasn’t.  Either way, he wanted to hit him.  It spoke volumes of
his self-control that he did not.  “Ah, actually, could it be more private?”
            “I’ll leave,” Fenris volunteered, and started to walk past Hawke.
            Hawke said, “No—it’s fine.  We’ll just go to another room; you were
here first.”
            Anders blinked.  “Well…”  He seemed suddenly reluctant as the elf
and the human were at a stand-still.  “Hawke, just meet me at my clinic
sometime, all right?”
            The mage sighed, and shrugged.  “All right.  Are you going now?”
            Anders nodded once.  “Yeah.”
            Hawke brushed past Fenris.  The elf took a step back, watching
Hawke walk over to Anders, his gaze flitting once to his backside before his
eyes shifted back toward Anders, who wasn’t even looking at him.  “Not without
a kiss from me, you’re not,” he corrected him.  Fenris turned his back when the
two apostates embraced, and tried not to hear it.  They were standing in the
doorway, and he couldn’t just slink away like he wanted to, so he watched the
cold fireplace instead.
            Some days, he wanted to tip off the Templars about Anders, though
Anders was frequently insistent that they knew anyway and possibly just didn’t
want to cause problems with the Wardens or something.  All the same, the Knight
Commander would happily take an apostate, even if the Grey Wardens disliked
it.  Even if it outraged them, he thought.  But…  What would Hawke do?  Fenris
couldn’t bear to see the mage heartbroken, and he would never overcome the
guilt of causing Hawke pain.  Besides… what would happen if Hawke loved Anders
enough to go to the Tower with him?  He would lose him forever.  And Hawke
would hate him if he ever found out, no matter what the outcome would be.
            “Can we get a kitten?” Anders was asking Hawke, who only laughed
and kissed him again.  Fenris wanted nothing more than to leave, but a quick
glance over his shoulder affirmed that they were still at the top of the
stairs.  “Merrill said that there was a cat in Lowtown that had kittens.”
            “You’re so cute…”
            “I’m serious,” the mage complained.  “I’d really like a tabby…” 
They started whispering to one another, occasionally laughing, and kissing.
            As Anders turned to go, Hawke said, “I’ll think about it.”
            Anders made a face, and waved vaguely as he left.  Hawke turned
back around, and when the elf looked, he had kind of a wistful look on his
face.  “Well, I’d better go see Merrill.”  His lips were curved into a small
smile, and Fenris could guess what he was up to.
            Fenris sighed, and watched him go.  Try as he might, he couldn’t
get back to the book.  He was anxious anyway; Varania was supposed to be coming
in a couple of weeks.
 
            Shaislyn flitted back and forth from one ship to another. 
Danarius’ ship trailed behind the other by a day, and was the more luxurious of
the two but he by far preferred his mother’s company, which didn’t say much
because she still hated him.  He flew to the shore and stayed there most of the
time, thus.
            His mother asked him to go check on his uncle, which he did.  He
flew all the way to Kirkwall, and looked into the matter.
            He remembered that he was supposed to have collected a gaatlok
recipe, and never had turned that in to the Bonny Lem.  He wondered how that
had panned out?
            After he dropped in on Fenris and made sure that he seemed to be
well—anxious looking, even a little depressed—and lonely—but well enough.  Was
that the beginnings of guilt Shaislyn was feeling?  Why?  Maybe…  Perhaps, if
he could just talk to Fenris…  No, that was absurd.  He deserved what was
coming to him; he was a terrible person, who had done horrible things.
            He brushed it aside and moved on, down to Darktown.  He haggled a
bit with the fence there, asked him if someone ever got that recipe during
their discussion of business.
            “In a manner of speaking,” he replied with a shrug, scratching his
grizzled jaw.
            The half-elf raised an eyebrow.  “Oh?”
            “Thought they had stolen it,” the man said with a laugh.  “Stole
something else instead.”  A pause.  “Say, I have another inquiry about the
powder, though.”  He frowned a little.  “If you can get it…”
            “A bit harder with the Qunari gone,” Shaislyn admitted with a
shrug.
            “So it’ll pay more, because I can charge more, you know what I
mean.”
            The half-elf nodded.  “See you around.”
            He flew back to check on his mother, saw that she was well, and
took off again to check on the rapist who was his father, tell him that nothing
was amiss and all that—maybe borrow a pen and parchment; he needed to write
something.
            What he found when he got there was… not what he had been
anticipating.  The elven healer would not let him in his room, and she, for the
longest time, would not tell him why.
            He badgered her, and threatened her, and eventually she conceded to
explain the situation to him.  “The magister is ill,” she said bluntly.
            “You’re a mage, and a healer—do something about it,” he said,
pointing at her accusingly.
            She looked pained.  “Not like that—it’s his heart; I can’t do
anything about it.”
            Shaislyn blinked.  “His… heart…”
            She sighed.  “He’ll be weak for a couple more days.  It takes time
to recover.”
            “We’ll be in Kirkwall in almost two weeks.  Will he be well by
then?” Shaislyn inquired.
            Her eyebrows raised.  “Depends on what you mean by ‘well’,” she
countered.  Her arms crossed, her hair blowing in the sea winds.  “He has a bad
heart, and what he really needs is to be at home.”
            “Has this happened before?” he asked gently.
            She hesitated before she admitted, “Just once before.”
            Shaislyn looked past her, at the door dispassionately.  You just
need to live long enough to put pen to paper and set my mother on the right
course.  That’s all.  “I see,” he said, and slipped away.  He asked her
frequently about his recovery, and she seemed anxious but cheerful all the
same.  She assured him that he would be fine, and just needed to rest.
            A squirrel wriggled under the magister’s door one night, and a
teenager sat in the chair in the dark, and watched the man who had sired him,
and thought about what it meant to be alive.  The magister looked weak and
frail laying in the bed, doing nothing but breathing and sleeping like any
other person.  It was difficult to believe that he could be anything other than
a magister, but there it was.
            He sat for a long time, and considered his own mortality, before he
could sit and think about it no longer.  He began rifling through the desk, and
came across what he sought.  He sat in the dark, and wrote.  At the time, he
never would have thought he could have memorized the recipe.
            “Were you worried about me?” a voice inquired, sounding half-
mocking.
            Shaislyn did not look up.  “If you die, this entire thing is pretty
pointless, isn’t it?”
            “What are you writing?”
            He stared at the letters on the page, and continued.  “A recipe,”
he said blankly.  “For a friend—asked for it.  I’m great at cooking.  Mixing
things, all that.”
            “One day, you might even speak in full sentences when you’re
lying.”
            “I wasn’t lying.”  He frowned.  “The truth is so much more fun
anyway.”  It was partially true.  By the time he had recovered the recipe, the
uprising had happened, and he had thought it prudent to leave as soon as
possible.
            Shaislyn finished, and looked at him.  “Are you feeling any
better?”
            A slight roll of his eyes.  “I’d be better if that damned woman
would stop barring me from leaving the room--and eating.”
            He nodded once.  “She’s just doing what’s best for you,” he said. 
“She seemed concerned.”
            “About her pay, maybe,” he grumbled.  “Light a candle, would
you—it’s dark.”
            “Oh,” Shaislyn blinked, and a flame formed above his upturned
palm.  He cast about for a candle, and found one on the desk.  He sent the
flame into it.
            Danarius watched him do this, and frowned at his form.  “Lay your
palm more flat when you do that—it’ll keep it steadier.”
            “My palm is flat,” Shaislyn complained.
            “Do it again.”
            The boy sighed, and upturned his palm, a new flame springing to
life.  The magister frowned at him in disapproval.  “Your fingertips are
curled, and your wrist isn’t bent far enough.  Flatten your fingers and bend
your wrist back a bit farther—yes, like that.  See?”
            Shaislyn grudgingly replied, “I guess that works better.”  He
frowned.  “But it’s not comfortable.”
            “Form a bowl with your hand, as if you were drinking from it,” he
went on.
            The half-elf sighed and did that, a bit surprised when the flame
rolled in on itself—just as bright but a smaller flame.  “I can’t do a whole
lot of magic,” Shaislyn heard himself say.  “For a mage, I mean.”
            “Because of your vision spell?”
            “Exactly,” the teenager replied, looking at the tiny flame in his
palm.  “I mean, if I were to do a Harrowing, I would fail.”  He stared hard at
the fire.  “Mother wants me to join the Circle, but that means I have to do a
Harrowing--I’ve never even seen a demon, and what hope do I have in the Fade
against one?”  He was quiet for a long moment.  Even in the Imperium, it was
important that they knew which mages could control themselves and which could
not; they did not want to release abominations out into the general public. 
“Which means I’ll get the brand, won’t I?”
            “No.”  Danarius stared at him as Shaislyn extinguished the light in
his palm.  “You only have to say ‘no’ to the demon when it happens.  You’ll
have any magic and weapons you already have with you in the Fade, because
you’ll believe you have them.”
            “But you’re a blood mage; you didn’t say ‘no’,” Shaislyn was quick
to point out, putting the cap on the bottle of ink he had been using.
            “You don’t really needto summon demons every time you use blood
magic.  That’s a good way to get possessed—and the Magisterium does not condone
possession.”  Danarius looked at him for a long moment.  “And furthermore,
everyone says ‘no’ at the Harrowing.  It kept the Templars happy.”
            Shaislyn actually laughed.  “The Templars in Tevinter are a joke.”
            “In a way,” the magister agreed.  “Used to find apostates, same as
any other country all the same—and sort of a private guard.”  A pause.  “Are
you afraid of the Harrowing?”
            Shaislyn was quiet a moment.  “The only reason I know what it’s
like is because I read books I wasn’t supposed to even know about,” he said,
and kind of flinched.  “My mother wants me to join the Circle, and I feel like
that’s going to be the end of my freedom, and maybe my death.  Or the end of my
mind at least.”  He looked pained, and scared suddenly—not a mage or a
swordsman at that moment, just an ordinary scared teenager.  “I’m not much of a
mage.”
            “You don’t have to be,” his father told him.  Not the magister, or
the slave owner, not even the man—but his father.
            Shaislyn looked at him, and didn’t know what to say.  He stuttered,
and looked back down, and swallowed.  “Really?”
            “You just have to prove that you can rule your own magic, not the
other way around,” the other mage told him.
            Shaislyn nodded thoughtfully.  He knew he could do that; he had
been nothing but the master of his own magic since he was a child, and
completely at peace with it since childhood.  “I mean, I would never not want
to be a mage.”  He blinked.  “I’m happy being a mage.”  He gave a crooked
smile.  “But, my mom thinks she’s an awful mage, but she’s great at entropic
spells, and those are actually pretty amazing, and difficult to learn.”  He
sighed.  “And other mages are good at sculpting, or combat, or healing, or all
these other things.”  He snorted a laugh.  “I use it to see, and I can turn
into a dog.”  He rolled his eyes.  “So basically, all of you can change the
world, and I can read a book, or play fetch.”
            Danarius looked at him, and seemed wistful for a moment.  “I don’t
know—a lot of people would give up their whole lives for the chance to fly
once.”
            Shaislyn kind of smiled.  “And many have tried.”
            “It’s been the dream of humanity for centuries to fly.”
            Shaislyn rose.  “I’m not human,” he objected, snatching his recipe
off the table.  He stopped, and turned back toward him.  He swallowed.  “Would
you have wanted me, had I been completely human?”
            Danarius was silent, and Shaislyn bowed his head.  “It would make…
the politics much simpler.”
            The boy looked at him, pained with things he could not name.  His
mother hated him, and his father rejected him because of the same heritage he
had forced upon him.  “I… need some air.”
            But when he left onto the deck, the sky was dark and he couldn’t
see the stars to navigate, so he stayed the rest of the night, sleeping in the
hold.  In the morning, he was on deck to watch the sunrise, and stiffened when
his father joined him, his fingers curled tighter over the rail.
            “Would you have been happier had I taken you from your mother when
you were an infant?  Let her go on to Seheron without you?” he asked, as if
Shaislyn had never walked away from their conversation.
            He looked down at the water, and briefly contemplated just throwing
himself into it.  “Would you have at least pretended to care about me?” he
whispered.  Like my mother never did?
           “Your mother never did, did she?” the magister said, rather than
reply.  Had he read his mind?  Blood magic could do that, but Shaislyn didn’t
think that was the case this time; he felt like it had become obvious last
night during their conversation.  Shaislyn noticed, and chose to say nothing. 
It seemed appropriate.  The half-elf’s stomach twisted.  He had pointed out,
casually, a few times that his mother disliked him or even hated him, but he
didn’t think Danarius had really believed him about that until their last
conversation.  The magister sighed.  “I should have kept you.”  He looked out
at the sea.  “I never should have let you go to Seheron.”
            The boy looked at him.  “You should have taken my sister and I away
from my mother when we were born,” he said quietly.
            “Perhaps,” he agreed.
            Shaislyn leaned his hip against the rail, frowning in thought.
 “Aren’t you… apprehensive--at all?”          
Danarius frowned.  “Why would I be?”
            The young mage shrugged a shoulder, gesturing with the other hand
as he spoke.  “Fenris killed Hadriana.  What if he does kill you?”
            The magister was unfettered by the idea.  He had come to terms with
the possibility long ago, and when it came down to it, it wasn’t the worst way
to die.  … Or even the most likely.  “Then he kills me.”
            The teenager’s expression bordered between a confused frown to a
scowl, and settled on a scowl.  He really does look like me,Danarius thought to
himself, mildly amused.  How had Fenris, who had spent three months with the
kid, not noticed?  “You don’t even care?” Shaislyn demanded.  No, it was when
he was making facial expressions that he looked like Danarius; an angry scowl,
when he smirked, or rolled his eyes.  When he was sad, quiet, when he smiled
shyly, that was when he looked the most like his mother.  Danarius could even
see some of Leto in him, when he held his swords, the way he would walk.  When
he laughed…  Danarius had never seen him laugh, not truly.
            Danarius shrugged a shoulder dismissively, glancing at him
sidelong.  “No matter the outcome, it will be preferable to dying old and
toothless in bed.”
            The other mage stared at him, baffled.  “Even if he rips out your
vital organs?” he reiterated.
            The magister only shrugged noncommittally, as if he truly did not
care.  “Then what I created will destroy me.  There are worse things.  I
trained him to be ruthless, and I wanted him to survive.”  He frowned a little.
 “When I recreated him, I instilled in him a strong will to live--if he
interprets it as slavery meaning death, he will act upon it.  If he kills me,
then I have been my own undoing, and I will accept that.”
            Shaislyn was quiet for a moment, considering what he knew about the
Ritual.  There had been so much death involved in it, so much pain.  His uncle
had nearly died going through it, and then slept in a coma for weeks
afterwards.  A strong will to live might have been the only thing that had
motivated him to do so during that time.  Of course it had been a good idea,
but it still seemed cruel to force an integral aspect of a person’s personality
upon them against their will.  Or maybe Leto had always had a strong sense of
will, and when Danarius took everything away from him, he had left that one
piece of who he had been, and Fenris had clung to it like a lifeline.  Shaislyn
almost wanted to respect the mage, though, for taking responsibility for his
own actions, even knowing that his actions might result in his death.  “I could
think of fewer worse ways to die.”
            The human was quiet a long moment, saying nothing.  The magister’s
fingers started to curl around the rail, then stopped.  The magister flinched
from the movement, and glanced down at his hands, studying them, a sadness
lurking in the depths of his ice blue eyes.  The half-elf looked away, thinking
about the older mage’s last heart attack, how mortal he had looked.  He bit his
lower lip for a moment.  Wouldn’t he rather die in combat, or even an
execution, than from something like that?  He didn’t want to grow old and
deteriorate, and watch his body fall apart.  Perhaps the man who sired him
didn’t want to either.  Furthermore, he would have to retire without Fenris,
and he knew that Danarius, like Vanessa, like Jameson, wanted to die as he had
lived.  It was still stubborn as hell, but Shaislyn respected him for it,
against his better judgment.
            “That’s what you want, then?” the half-elf inquired, his voice
soft.
            The magister’s gaze trailed away from his hand, setting his palm
back against the rail.  “We can’t live forever, Shaislyn, and I’d rather lose
my life because of my life’s work, than die in bed.”
            He smiled crookedly.  “What do you have against dying in bed?”
            Danarius glanced at him sidelong, his thoughts on how his mother
had died.  Watching her waste away had been one of the worst things he had ever
witnessed.  Roschelle had died in bed, lost to childbirth, her face frozen in
pain and fear.  Hadn’t Shaislyn’s grandmother, too, passed away in bed?  “It is
very undignified,” he said instead.
            The half-elf snorted.  “So is having your throat ripped out.”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “How would you like to die, Shaislyn, if you
could choose it?”
            The younger mage grimaced in thought.  “Suddenly,” he said
decidedly.  “A few seconds of pain, maybe.  And I’m terrified of getting old,
so while I’m still young-ish and active--Oh, damn it.”
            Danarius laughed.  They were more alike than either of them would
ever admit.
            Shaislyn’s lips twitched into the beginning of a smile, his face
heating as he came to terms with his own error.  Then he frowned, glancing
away.  “I’ll… meet you in Kirkwall.  Try not to have another heart attack.” 
Shaislyn pulled himself up, onto the rail.
            “Shaislyn?”
            The half-elf glanced back at him.  “What?”
            “Take care.”
            He felt a little uncomfortable, and like he wanted to trust him
because he was his father but he couldn’t because he had raped his mother.  He
wanted someone to care about him—anyone.  He wanted to be accepted and loved,
and wanted above all because he never truly had been.  He wanted that
acceptance from anyone, and was afraid of it at the same time.  But he still
wanted it more than anything.  “Yeah,” he said before he threw himself off of
the railing, an instant of falling toward the sea, a moment of sheer bliss as
his magic wrapped itself lovingly around him, and excitement as he winged
toward the shore.
 
            The door opened, and closed.  “You never came to visit me,” Anders
complained.
            Hawke looked up.  “You’ve been gone for days,” he whined.
            “I’ve been busy,” Anders said.  “It’s flu season.  Anyway—I guess
it’s not so bad; I wouldn’t have had the time.”
            Hawke picked up the sleeping ball of fur beside him on the bed.  “I
got you something.”  It wouldn’t make up for what Hawke had done at the beach,
but Anders wasn’t looking for gifts to amend that wrong; they had already
reconciled.  This was just an ordinary gift.
            Anders had his back to him as he set down his staff, and shrugged
out of his coat.  “I hope it’s your cock,” he answered bluntly.  “Hell, I would
love to—“
            “Mrowr?” the cat inquired.
            Anders whirled around, eyes lighting up with obvious delight as
Hawke presented him the little grey tabby.
            The kitten yawned.  It fussed a bit in Hawke’s expectant arms.  The
apostate looked at the healer, eyebrows raising as he waited for a reaction. 
Anders grinned, hurrying toward him.  He scooped the kitten out of Hawke’s
arms.  “Oh, she’s adorable,” he said, cuddling the kitten.  The cat seemed to
generally accept the abuse-worship with the kind of strained tolerance a god
would have for its most devout followers.
            Hawke kind of smiled.  “I haven’t named her yet,” he said.  “I
wanted us to name her together.”
            Anders laughed, scratching her ears affectionately.  “Oh, I love
her,” he cooed at the little tabby. 
            Hawke just smiled adoringly at his lover, so wrapped up in
something so simple and innocent as a kitten.  No mages, no Templars, no
Qunari, no Justice…  Just Anders, being Anders, with a kitten.  He wished life
could always be like this.
            Hawke raised his hands, clawed and bitten.  “I gave her a bath when
I brought her home—well, Sandal and I did anyway.  I don’t recommend trying it
again.”
            “Did you get her any toys?” he inquired, the kitten now resting
comfortably in the crook of his arm.  She seemed quite content there, peering
out at the world with crystalline blue eyes.
            “Yes, yes.  She’ll be very spoiled,” Hawke answered, but his smile
was more for Anders than for the cat.  He just looked so happy, and it made him
happy to see him happy.  Was that what love meant?  “So, what do you think we
should name her?”
            “Hmm,” Anders said as he thought, and sat down beside Hawke.  “Ser
Pounce-a-Lot was my last cat’s name.”  The kitten was purring contentedly as he
pet her.  “But he was a boy cat.”  He smiled a little.  “Did I ever tell you
why I named him that?”
            Hawke cocked his head.  “No, you didn’t.”
            He kind of smiled.  “When I was a kid, at the tower, I would draw
pictures in the margins of the books I was supposed to be studying.”  Hawke
laughed.  “I drew…”  He chortled a laugh.  “One of them was a little flip-comic
I made in the corner of the pages--of a Templar getting mauled by a tiger that
I named Ser Pounce-a-Lot.  Because he was always pouncing on Templars—and
eating them.”
            “I love you,” Hawke informed him, and kissed him until the cat
complained of this intrusion.  “What shall we name her?”
            Anders looked down at the kitten again, who was by now trying to
climb out of his arms.  He set her down on the bed beside them, and watched her
chasing after their shadows on the bed.  “I’ll name her ‘Warden’.”
            Hawke was silent as he tried to understand what he meant, then
laughed when he finally understood the joke.  “Because she’s grey.”
            He nodded seriously.  “And the Commander of the Grey Wardens in
Fereldon is taking care of Pounce-a-lot right now.”  A pause.  “He’s an old
kitty, these days.”
            “I thought you said the Wardens made you get rid of him.”
            Anders made a face.  “Slight exaggeration.  Those bastards said I
couldn’t pack him around with me anywhere, and I had to leave him at the Keep.”
            “The Deep Roads is hardly anywhere for a cat anyway!”
            “The Deep Roads are also terribly lonely and… well, depressing.  It
was nice to have the cat.”
            The apostate fell silent as he considered the wisdom in that.  The
Deep Roads had been a horror.  Any modicum of comfort was a welcome sight. 
Hawke looked at Anders, feeling a slight tug of a smile on his lips.  “So after
your friend then?” Hawke asked him.
            “Yeah,” he said, with a small smile, then it faded.  “Hawke…  I
need to tell you something.”
            Hawke looked at him, and the smile on his face died when he saw how
grave Anders looked.  “What is it?”
            “It’s about… the Wardens…”  He seemed pained.  “I can’t tell you
everything, but…”
            “Why not?  I thought you left.”
            The mage just shook his head.  “No, I really can’t.”  He sighed. 
“But anyway… it’s about the Calling…”
            Hawke looked at him, clearly confused.  “The ‘Calling’?”
            “I don’t… know exactly.  But…  One day, I know I’ll return to the
Deep Roads.”  He looked up, at Hawke.  “For the last time.”
            The mage suddenly seemed worried.  “Anders, you don’t mean--?”
            The other laughed.  “Not now!  Maker, no.  But… One day.  Years
from now, I think—I hope.”  He sighed as Hawke wrapped an arm around him.  “But
one day I will.”
            The mage’s hand slipped from his shoulder to slide his hand into
his, and squeezed it affectionately.  “Why?”
            Anders looked pained.  “Even if I fully understood it, I couldn’t
tell you,” he said with a sigh.  “But in the Deep Roads…”
            The kitten chose that moment to bound onto Hawke’s lap, and then
lunge for a loose string on Anders’ tunic.  Both of them laughed, and the
previously grave topic was left alone, until they laid in each other’s arms,
the kitten prowling around the room safely on the floor.
            “What were you saying about the Deep Roads earlier, Anders?” Hawke
asked him, running his fingers through the other mage’s disheveled blonde hair.
 It had fallen out of the tie he usually kept it in some time ago, between a
kiss and a caress—sometime after a layer or two of clothing had fallen to the
floor.
            “Nothing,” the other lied.  “I don’t want to talk about it right
now.  Just hold me.”  His eyes slid closed.
            Hawke kissed the top of his head as the other fell asleep.  “No
matter what, I’ll always be with you,” he told him.  He didn’t know if Anders
heard him, because he didn’t reply, not even to say something corny or silly. 
Maybe he was already asleep.
 
            Fenris had found a book about the different races of Thedas in
Hawke’s library—an old, musty tome that could use some airing out.  Some of it
was obvious, some less obvious.  There was an entire chapter on half-breed
children, and he thought about Feynriel—and Shaislyn.  The book considered them
to be “born human” but that wasn’t completely true.  Both of them looked more
human than elven, yes, but their breeding was still very much apparent.  And
both mages, he mused.  Elves bred only slowly, and with great difficulty,
always being pressured to have children.  A male elf and a female human were
extremely unlikely to reproduce—ranging in the uncanny field.  A female elf and
a male human somewhat more likely, according to the book.  The book seemed to
suggest that the breeding problem lay primarily with the male elves.
            He felt like rolling his eyes.  The Imperium had caught on to that
idea quickly; it was why they had multiple male partners for their female
slaves.  He shivered a little at that.  Somewhere, right now, a girl was
getting raped by the men she had to work and live beside, because of someone
else’s orders.
            Chance of sterility, he remembered, looked at the lyrium in his
palm.  He sighed inwardly.  It didn’t make him feel like less of a man
exactly.  More as if… another part of his life was robbed from him.  If he…  If
he could ever find a woman, and marry her, and try to make a real life with
her, there was a very real chance that they would never have children.  He
didn’t need that exactly, but…  Family.  He wouldn’t mind having a family, a
real family.  Someone to care about, and be cared about in return.  Someone he
was important to, to protect, and love.
            Love, he thought, staring blankly at the page.  It was such an
abstract concept—love.  So foreign, so intangible.
            He paused for a long time before he resumed his reading, turning
pages, trying to stop thinking about love, and the daydream of a real family,
of belonging somewhere.  He had a sister somewhere, he reminded himself.  That
would be enough—that would be more than enough.
            The book mentioned, much more briefly, human and dwarven half-breed
children, which were even rarer.  The social stigma, for a dwarf, was even
worse than that for an elf or human.  It said that such things were possible
but so rare that there were no documented cases of such.  There were a few
sentences about Qunari, and it was only that it was unknown, and Fenris knew
why.
            Guiltily, he thought about Zekiel, who had performed the taboo of
coupling with someone not of his race.  The Qun did not condone sex for
pleasure, and outside of race least of all.
            Fenris heard the door to the library open, but he didn’t look up. 
It might be Orana, or Sandal, or even Bodahn—maybe Hawke.
            He heard footsteps down the stair, angry stomping footsteps—or
maybe just clumsy ones.  Sandal?  He looked up, and twitched.  It was Anders,
his face drawn into a glare.
            “You need to leave,” he snapped, pointing accusingly at Fenris.
            The elf blinked.  “Hawke said I could come and go as I wished—and
this is his house.”
            “I live here too,” Anders hissed.  “And I’ve tolerated you coming
and going, but no more.”  His arms crossed.  “I want you to leave, and you’re
not welcome back.”
            Fenris dropped the book on the table, rising from the chair. 
Instinct demanded that he argue, that he plop back in the chair and demand to
know what Anders intended to do about it.  But that was childish—beyond
childish.  It would be immature and petty to do, and worse, would drag Hawke
into it.  And he didn’t know what he would do if Hawke sided with Anders on the
matter.
            “That was sudden,” he muttered.
            “Hardly.”  Anders quaked with barely controlled rage, but there was
no sign of Justice.  Must not have to do with mages or anything.  “Hawke told
me about what happened on the beach.”  Fenris froze.  Had he really expected
Hawke not to say anything?  “And while I forgive him, the fuck were you
thinking, Fenris?”
            The elf held his head up, lips pressed together to keep from saying
anything.  Saying anything—anything at all—would only make this worse.  He
walked past him, intent on leaving.  This conversation did not need to
escalate.  Took you long enough to come to a decision on that, Anders.  But
it’s only been a few days.  Had he just been waiting for the right moment?
            Anders turned as Fenris passed.  “What is wrong with you?  You left
him.  It’s too late for second thoughts, elf.  You had your chance, and you
blew it.”
            Fenris whirled back to him, angry.  The lyrium flared with his
temper.  Anders did not back down.  “I love him!” he barked, the lyrium fading
when he realized it was true, and his face turning red when he realized he said
it aloud.
            Anders’ eyes narrowed.  “So do I.  And he loves me.”
            Don’t you think this is hard enough as it is?  He wanted to
scream.  He wanted to throw one of the chairs against a bookcase and watch the
books tumble to the floor.  The truth hurt, more than any wound he had ever
sustained.  It hurt more than a collar around his neck and the tinkling of the
silver chain.  It hurt more than getting on his knees for his master, more than
the whip.  More—even—than when he had killed the Fog Warriors, and he had never
thought something could hurt as much as that.
            “Get out, Fenris,” Anders whispered.  “You’ve hurt Hawke enough,
and your petty jealousy is disgusting.”
            He knew that too.  The truth was a bitter taste in his mouth, a
painful thing to swallow.  He had hurt Hawke enough.  His jealousy was
disgusting.  It even disgusted him.  “I love him, Anders,” he whispered,
staring downwards.  Slowly, he looked back at him.  “And if you ever hurt him,
I will kill you.”
            Anders’ temper cooled.  He knew that Fenris had accepted it, at
least.  He knew that Fenris was backing down.  “I love Hawke,” Anders answered.
            Fenris stared at him, wondering why he thought Anders was hiding
something.  He walked away, back out into the streets, puzzling over what
Anders had said.  There was something… wrong.  If you ever hurt him, I will
kill you.  I love Hawke.  As if a proclamation of love was all there was to not
hurting someone.  Maybe it was all there was to it.  How could he ever have
known?  The only person he had ever loved, he had hurt.  He had pushed him
away, and only continued to hurt him.  Maybe he just didn’t know anything about
love.
***** The Dalish *****
Chapter Summary
     Varania gets to Kirkwall. Shaislyn spies on Fenris, and Fenris
     berates Merrill for her life choices. Merrill chooses to be
     vindictive, and withholds information from Fenris.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
                Shaislyn sauntered down to Darktown, and was annoyed, briefly,
to not find the fence where he usually was.  He did some inquiries, and
eventually knew he had to wait.  Not really one for sitting around and waiting
for people, he wandered up to Hightown to do some breaking and entering, and
removing of various expensive items.
                He preferred to look around as a bird, and did so, but noticed
that there were a lot of guards out.  Since the uprising, the guard had been on
tight patrol.  Maybe this wasn’t a good night for something like what Shaislyn
had in mind.
                Did he dare risk going to cause some mischief at the local
Circle?  Bad idea; Knight Commander Meredith, he had heard, was a bitch with a
stick shoved so far up her ass that it was a small wonder she could speak past
the end of the stick poking out her mouth.  He wondered if he could manage to
seduce one of the Templars…  There was some mild sport in that, anyway.
                Bored, he fluttered back down to Lowtown and wandered about in
the form of his birth, wondering vaguely if any of this would ever affect the
way he aged.  In fact, most disturbing, since the animals had shorter life
spans than himself, it might actually speed up his aging.  Or maybe his body’s
aging stopped while he was an animal…  His head began to spin, and he felt like
it was infinitely better not to think about it.
                Even if it did speed up his aging, he wouldn’t give it up.  How
does one give up flying?  He had no idea.
                He found himself in a bar half an hour later, chatting up the
barmaid, who of course had heard it all and everything else before, but was
good enough to humor him.
                He watched the rest of the bar, and laughed when a man tried to
drunkenly serenade another patron, who only rolled her eyes and shoved him off
of his barstool and swaggered past.  She leaned against the bar, calling for
the bartender for more whiskey.
                Shaislyn looked, but not in a way that anyone would notice, at
the length of her legs, and her very exposed chest.  Nice to look at it, but by
the way she swaggered about and acted, probably very used.  He looked back at
the rest of the room, enjoying the sights, the sounds, the smells.  There was
always so much to see and experience in places like this.  He wished he could
adjust his hearing the same way he could adjust his sight.  Hearing was so much
more useful than simple vision, after all.
                Now, why hadn’t he ever thought of trying to find a spell like
that?  Probably, too busy maintaining the one for his vision!
                He noticed a dwarf at another table with a tall mug of ale that
seemed scarcely touched.  What the dwarf was primarily looking at were
papers—something Shaislyn knew to often be more valuable than gold or
trinkets.  Sometimes, people would whisper things to him.  Sometimes, they made
faces when he spoke back and smiled.  Other times, they seemed pleased, and
still other times even upset.  All the while, money seemed to flow in both
directions—always more toward the dwarf.  He wondered who he was.  Had he seen
the dwarf somewhere before?
                And that woman, too?
                He couldn’t recall exactly…
                Someone leaned against his table, and he made himself look up,
a little startled.  The woman smiled down at him.  “Haven’t seen you around
before,” she said, her lips pursed into a smile that could be cunning or
welcoming, or both.
                “No, I guess not,” he replied, returning the smile in kind.
                “What brings you to the Hanged Man?” she inquired, sitting down
across from him.
                “Not many other places to go to at this time of night,” he
said.
                She wasn’t at all deterred by his evasive answer.  “How’d you
get to Kirkwall?” she inquired.
                Innocent enough question, but one he dreaded all the same.  Had
any ships come in today?  Was it safe to say it was a ship?  He couldn’t say he
had flown.  Was it safe to say he had walked?  Or maybe it was best to just be
cryptic?  “What makes you think I’m new in town?”
                She laughed.  “That accent, for one.”
                He rolled his eyes.  It was hard to miss, wasn’t it?  Tevene
was his first language, and he spoke the Trade Tongue well, but the accent he
had never been able to lose.  “Fine.”  He smirked.  “I was dropped out of the
sky on a ball of flaming cheese.  You did see the crash site, didn’t you?  It’s
that smelly Orlesian cheese—I think I still smell like it.”
                She laughed good-naturedly.  “You’re all right,” she told him,
before she left for more drink.  She looked so familiar, and that bothered
him.  Where had he seen her before?  It was driving him absolutely mad. 
Where…?
                The woman walked over to the dwarf, said something to him, and
the dwarf looked toward Shaislyn—very briefly.  No one else would have noticed,
in fact, but it was Shaislyn, and he could see everything he wished.  And those
two bothered him.
                Then he remembered.  He had seen the woman with that man Hawke,
and Fenris, in Darktown once before.  He had seen the dwarf when Fenris killed
Hadriana.
                All the colour drained from his face.  He needed to get out of
here—now.
                Moreover, this was supposed to be the meeting place.  Maybe he
could create some reason for Hawke to go on an excursion—maybe get those two
out of the bar for a couple of days—even a day—for the trap to be laid
properly, without rousing either of their suspicion.  He would need to stalk
the bar for a couple more days to see.
                He kicked himself inwardly.  He had talked to one of them. 
Hell, that had been dangerous.  He had better avoid people for a while.  No
need to rouse suspicion early.
                He went down to Darktown, contradictory to his decision to be a
ghost of sorts.  The fence was there this time, and Shaislyn handed him the
scroll.  “It’s here,” he told him.  Never mind that there was one ingredient
missing, and another badly misspelled.  It didn’t hurt to be cautious.
                The man blinked, and unrolled it briefly, and scowled. 
“Everything is in that damned Qunari language,” he complained.
                “Qunlat.”  Shaislyn shrugged.  “You didn’t ask for a
translation, did you,” he pointed out.  “But that’s it.”
                “What am I supposed to tell the client?” he demanded.
                The half-elf raised an eyebrow.  “Tell them they never asked
for it translated, and that it’ll cost more to have it done in secret.” 
Shaislyn grinned, pointing to himself.  “And you know someone who can do it.”
                And then the old fence smiled, nodded.  “That’ll do.”
                “I’ll be back in a few more days then, with the translation.”
                “I’ll see you then,” he said, and paid him for the work done. 
Shaislyn pocketed the coins and walked away, debated on going to the Blooming
Rose, and decided he would rather go talk to his mother.  They came closer by
the hour, and it would be no time at all before they were actually in the city;
he was feeling apprehensive about it.
 
                Varania waited in the hold with the few other passengers,
listening to the sway of the ship and the sailors running about on deck.  It
was stuffy, and boring, just like she remembered every time she had been on a
ship.  Shaislyn had come to visit the evening before, but he never stayed
long.  She tried not to think too much about what she was doing.
                Besides, everything would work out in the end, wouldn’t it? 
She had made certain of that.  Still, when the ship docked, and the sailors
continued running about, she felt worried, her stomach tying in knots.  It was
almost another hour before the sailors opened the doors and ushered them out. 
Varania walked amongst the other passengers, looking around at the unfamiliar
surroundings, the carvings on the walls that made her skin crawl.  It was a lot
like the Imperium, she relented.  Just no incense.
                And no slaves, she reminded herself.  Well… soon there would be
a few; the magister had a few slaves with him, and if she counted Fenris…
                She tried to think about something else, and it wasn’t so hard
to do with a new city.  She wondered which way to go, and finally settled on
the same direction as everyone else.  She started making her way away from the
docks, up the steps.  Someone fell into step beside her, wearing a dark hood to
mask their features.
                “Hello, Mother,” Shaislyn said.  She started to turn her head. 
“Don’t look at me.”  A pause, and the creeping feeling came back.  “We need to
be very careful.  I’ll walk ahead of you, and I’ll walk slow.  Just follow me
to the Hanged Man, and don’t try to talk to me.”
                They had discussed this, she remembered.  When he visited her,
it was always in relative secrecy, and he was always hooded.  He was afraid of
inciting suspicion, of course, so it was the best course of action.  But the
entire thing left a sour taste in her mouth.  It was so deceitful, and wrong. 
She hated it, but what could she do?
                Besides…  it was all true; Leto had won her freedom and what
had happened?  Nothing good.  She had been miserable, and this was her one
chance to escape her own misery.  Leto had had his chance.  He had chosento
become Fenris and be a slave all his life.  It was decided.  She wished, if
Fenris remembered nothing else, he should at least remember that and just… just
go back to serving wine and sleeping on silk pillows.  That was what he was
supposed to be doing.  He had agreed to be a slave the rest of his life;
Danarius had even showed her the contract, which he had read to Leto upon
winning the competition.  Running away like this was really just violating the
terms of the contract.
                In a way, his violating it, even unknowingly, meant that, if
Danarius had wanted to, at any time over the past several years, he could have
killed Varania or Shaislyn, or both of them.  Or, if it pleased him, enslaved
them, and it would be completely within his rights.
                “Remember that,” the magister had said, pulling the old slip of
parchment back to him when she had finished with it.  “I let you and your son
live—in relative peace and freedom.  And I didn’t have to.”  He kind of
smirked.  “Fact of the matter, Varania, I’m completely within my rights to
reclaim you, and then I could force you to bait my pet.”  A pause.  “But I
won’t.”  He cocked his head to the side a little.  “Even if you refuse,
Varania, I still won’t.”
                Because this works out so much better for everyone, she thought
miserably—and moreover she wasn’t so sure why she was miserable.  If he had
simply caught her, said she was a slave again because Leto had violated the
contract, would she scream to him to run when she saw him?  Or would she obey
her master?
                She knew Shaislyn would not be so easily enslaved, which would
make him a fugitive and on equal grounds with Fenris.  No, she thought, as she
followed him.  He would enslave himself to keep her from harm, which was almost
worse.  Just like Leto.
                But Danarius had not enforced that part of the contract.  He
hadn’t even threatened to; simply mentioned that he could, and hadn’t.  And
never had, she remembered.  Maybe he wasn’t as terrible as she wanted to
believe.  And at the same time, he had raped her.  But he had saved her
mother’s life later, and her own.  Even if Leto had done something in exchange
for that, the fact still stood that he had done it; and he must have offered
the trade, because Leto never would have begged something like that from their
master.  But he had raped Leto too, she remembered with a sick feeling in her
stomach.  And probably Fenris as well.
                But she wondered… had the rape been in exchange for her life? 
All those years ago, her brother disappearing the night her twins were born,
coming back so solemn, and looking like he had been crying, sick for a while
afterwards…  He would never have left that night if he had a choice in the
matter.
                It had been a sick, twisted kind of kindness, she thought
placidly.  To tell you they could save your dying sibling, but you had to
submit to your own rape for them to do it.  But he was their master; he didn’t
have to have helped.  The twins were his children too, but he didn’t have to
help.  He had let so many other slaves die, after all.  And they died all the
time to sickness and childbirth.  Had he ever offered the same thing to anyone
else?  Maybe he had, but…
                He can’t be all bad, she insisted to herself.  It was evil of
him to do, but he was our master.  If he wanted to rape Leto, he could have at
any time.  He didn’t have to do anything more.  And that was the sad truth of
it.
                Still, Varania pulled herself from her muddled reminiscing of
her past, and looked to the future as she followed her son several paces in
front of her.  When she lost him, he would wait, and smoke tobacco, and act
nonchalant until she was near enough, and then he would continue on, as if
simply resuming his course.
                She could be a magister one day.  That would mean everything—it
would make all the difference in her life.  Everything she ever wanted, she
would have.  And anything she ever wanted, she could have.  It was a real
chance at a better life, the best offer she had ever had.  And in a few days,
the deal would be sealed.
                Shaislyn paused, snuffing out the stub of his cigar.  He
glanced at a building pointedly, and stretched, and she noticed he pointed at
the sign, and turned and walked considerably faster away.  She looked at the
sign, and blinked a little in surprise.  Well, that was the place.  And they
even had a room available.  Shaislyn was waiting inside it, but neither spoke
until the door was locked.  She sat down, fidgeting anxiously.
                “Everything will be fine,” Shaislyn promised her.  “Just stay
here.  He cocked his head a little.  “I’ll let you know how things are going.”
                She frowned.  “How is…”  Then she lowered her voice.  “How is
the magister getting into the city?  If you’re so concerned about people seeing
us, they’ll notice the ship.”
                He shrugged.  “They’re switching ships in Ostwick tonight, and
coming in disguised as a trading vessel.”  He smiled encouragingly.  “So don’t
worry about it.”  He grinned.  “And you’re going back to Minrathous in a
cabin.”
                She smiled a little, and laughed nervously.  “Should I try to
contact… my brother, do you think?”
                He bit his lip a little.  “I would wait until tomorrow—they’ll
be here tomorrow evening.”
                She looked down and confessed, “If I have to meet him… without…
without them here—before the… trap… is ready, I don’t know if I can pretend…”
                Shaislyn sat down beside her.  “If he does come here early,
just cry a lot and hang off of him while reminiscing about your childhood or
something.”  He quirked a smile.  “He won’t suspect a thing.”
                The redhead stared down at her hands.  “I don’t think I can
talk to him one day, and then go through with this the next,” she whispered.
                “Ah,” Shaislyn said, and frowned a little.  “I’ll… see what I
can do.”
                But he apparently didn’t need to worry about it.  When he went
to go check on the runaway slave in question, he wasn’t in the manor.  Hawke
wasn’t in town either, and he almost gave up looking, but he saw Fenris as they
were walking out of the city gates.  He looked at the other two with them—one a
Dalish elf, which was interesting to him, and the other that woman from the
tavern.  Good—she was gone.  That left the dwarf to consider though, and he
remembered that at the last moment.  He winged back, and looked around for the
dwarf, but didn’t see him either.  Absent?  Why?
                It took nearly two hours, but he eventually found the dwarf in
the merchant quarters, in heated debate over something.  He would be there for
a while.
                He flew back and caught up to Hawke’s little party.  He
followed after them, trying to figure out where they were going so he could
have some idea as to when they would be back.
                He followed them for a while, until he was satisfied that they
were definitely heading somewhere with a purpose.  The Dalish girl is kinda
cute, he mused.
                Bored, Shaislyn flew back toward Kirkwall, reasoning that he
could go back later.  He headed to Darktown, and talked to the fence for a bit,
handed over the translated recipe, this one sealed in an envelope.
                “It’s dangerous,” he said with some regret.
                “I could copy it,” the fence said, looking at it.
                Shaislyn’s eyes narrowed.  “We would have the bloodiest wars
known to Thedas if you did.”  And I will kill you if you try.
                The man laughed, and waved him off, but Shaislyn hid nearby in
an animal form, a mangy cat, and watched until a man came to collect the
envelope, griping about the cost, and then hurried off.  No copies made, and
the original recipe he had given the man he had fool-proofed.  Still, he did
wonder about the man.  He stalked after him, curious, but always staying just
out of sight.
                The man was blonde, and tall—human.  He walked through a door,
and didn’t entirely close it when he went inside.  Shaislyn followed him.  The
room was empty, but well-lit for Darktown.  There were tables set up and… was
this the clinic he had heard about?
                The man looked around the room again, nervously.  His demeanor
changed when he saw the cat.  He knelt, holding his hand out.  “Here, kitty,”
he called.
                Shaislyn stayed a distance away, hesitant.  He took a look at
him, a long, good look at him.  He looked familiar…  Had he… seen him
somewhere?
                “Come here—it’s okay,” the man continued to try to coax him.
                Shaislyn was only suspicious.  Where…?  Had it been…?  He felt
his fur bristle.  This man was at Hawke’s estate before.  Just like that, he
turned and bolted through the door—just a skittish cat.  He bolted around the
corner, and caught his breath.  Cats were not meant for long runs.  He
sauntered to a dark corner, waited a bit, and changed back, then made his
escape of Darktown.
                Hawke had contacts everywhere, didn’t he?  He wondered what
that man had wanted with the recipe, then decided it was really none of his
business what he did with it, so long as he didn’t give it to the world.
                Well, he had better go see what Hawke was up to.
 
                Fenris glanced back at Isabela.  “You’ll get left behind,” he
warned her.  She stared up at the sky, a hand up to shade her eyes.
                “I swear I’ve seen that bird up there all day,” she said.
                “I doubt it’s the same bird,” he commented, conscious of Hawke
and Merrill walking ahead of them.
                She frowned, taking a step forward, a bit reluctantly.  She was
suspicious by nature.  “What if it is?” she said.  “I think it might be. 
Look—it’s the only one.”
                “It’s just a bird,” Fenris said, annoyed.
                “What are you doing?” Merrill called back.  Hawke had stopped
and was scowling back at them.
                Fenris rolled his eyes.  “Isabela thinks we’re being stalked by
a bird,” he informed them.
                The two mages looked up, and Merrill pointed at the bird. 
“That one?  Can birds follow people?  Do humans train birds to do that?  Why?”
                “Let’s go,” Hawke called.
                Isabela looked flustered, but caught up to the others.  “When I
was in Fereldon, I met a witch from the Wilds,” she began.
                “Like Flemeth?” Hawke said thoughtfully.
                A pause.  “No.”  Then, “She could transform into animals…”
                “I didn’t know magic could do that,” Merrill commented.
                Hawke frowned at her.  “You saw Flemeth do it.”
                Merrill blinked.  “But she’s Flemeth.”
                “Good point,” he conceded.
                Fenris sighed, irritated.  He was already annoyed that Hawke
had dragged him out here—to help Merrill of all people.  Worse, to help Merrill
get something to assist her in her blood magery.  Hawke owed him a couple of
drinks for this bullshit.  He was suspicious that Isabela had helped herself to
a couple of drinks that morning.  “It’s just a stupid bird,” he insisted, with
feeling.
                “But don’t crows usually fly in groups?” Merrill inquired,
developing a sudden interest in the crow.
                “I think they do,” Hawke agreed, frowning up at the sky.
                The bird circled again, and started to sail away.  Fenris felt
pleased by this.  “Look—it doesn’t matter; it’s leaving.”
                Isabela frowned suspiciously.  “Strange that it’s leaving once
we all start staring at it,” she muttered, even as the others began to walk
away.  It was a long walk to the Dalish camp, and Merrill and Isabela chatted
casually the whole way.  Fenris would like it better if Isabela and Merrill
were not such easy friends, but everyone else seemed to think the blood mage
was relatively harmless.  Ha!  Just wait and see—something disastrous would
happen, and they would all lament being friends with her…  And then he could
sit back and say “I told you so”.
                Merrill and Hawke went and spoke with the Keeper, and Fenris
glowered at all the Dalish going about their lives.  One of them was
complaining about what an awful hunter he was.  As if that were the worst thing
in the world.  He hated watching them… and a part of him envied them.  They had
everything so many of the elves didn’t have.  They would take in city elves,
sure, but theirs was not a lifestyle everyone would want.
                Isabela had wandered off to the craftsman, watching him make a
bow with interest and asked him about their steel working.  He paced,
occasionally glancing at Hawke.  Merrill kept making faces, and nervously
glancing downwards.  He watched a sparrow peck at the grass nearby, and looked
back at them, feeling impatient.  The sooner this whole mess was over, the
better.
                He didn’t miss some of the looks that the Dalish gave
Merrill—disgust and distrust.  He felt like that was necessary, but he did
wonder why.  They hadn’t looked at her like that a few years ago.
                He watched two children run by—barefoot.  A boy carrying a doll
raised over his head, laughing while a redheaded girl chased after him,
screaming at him to give it back.  He looked back at her, sticking his tongue
out, and tripped over a stone.  She tackled him, fists flying and the boy
dropped the doll in the attempt to defend himself.  She snatched it off the
ground, and continued beating him relentlessly, calling him all kinds of
childish names.
                He frowned at the sight, and felt like…  Had he seen something
like that somewhere before?  He couldn’t really remember…
                “Hey, stop that,” one of the Dalish called to the two children,
trotting up to them.  The girl reluctantly got off of him, hugging her doll
close to her.  “What have you to say for yourself?”
                “He started it!”
                “She’s lying!”
                “Am not!”
                The Dalish pulled them away to admonish them in relative
privacy.  He guessed he could have seen children fighting anywhere,
really—realistically speaking anyway.  At any rate, Hawke waved to him that
they were finished, and moved on.  As Fenris looked back, he saw the Keeper
walking away from the camp, and the sparrow fluttering off.
 
                Shaislyn was choosy about his hiding place to change on the
mountain, but did find a place.  He stretched, and felt hungry.  Did he want to
hunt or forage?  Hunting was more fun, he decided.
                The wolf padded through the forest, looking, sniffing,
listening.  He was a in a good mood; the sun was warm, the trees were fragrant,
and he was young and strong.  His ear twitched, and he changed directions, then
bolted quickly around a hedge, teeth snapping.  The rabbit went limp in his
jaws—it was a young spring rabbit, and its meat was tender.  He lapped at the
blood casually, and looked up, a low growl emanating from his throat.
                The wild dogs were smaller, scrawnier, but there were two of
them.  The wolf snarled.  The dogs growled, and the wolf lunged forward, all
teeth and claws.  In a few seconds, the dogs were running, and he trotted back
to his kill.  He licked it clean, and bounded off to find a sunny patch to
sleep.  He hadn’t slept much lately.
                He slept lightly, half obscured by a berry bush in the shade,
and woke some time later.  He climbed to two feet, and surveyed the area,
deciding he should get going.  A raven took to the air, and went to check on
Hawke and company.  They were still wandering around on the mountain, but
climbing back down, deed done apparently.  Merrill looked upset about
something, and he wondered what it could be.  Fenris had a nasty, half-smug
expression adorning his face, and Merrill seemed to be shocked and appalled at
what he was saying.  Isabela kicked him in the back of the knee for one
comment, and smacked him in the back of the head for another before she hugged
the Dalish mage, who was near-tears by the time Fenris was done saying whatever
it was he had to say.
                Yet another reason Shaislyn had for disliking the man; there
was never a good reason to make a girl cry like that.  He wondered if he could
manage to shit on his head…
 
                “Oh, hell,” Fenris swore.  Isabela giggled.  Merrill smiled
weakly, and would have laughed if she wasn’t so close to tears.
                “You deserved that,” the pirate said.
                Hawke looked back.  “What—Oh.”  He laughed aloud.  “Well, at
least it’s not your head.”
                “I hate being out in the forest like this…” Fenris muttered.
                “Here,” Hawke said, offering him a handkerchief.
                The elf snatched it, making faces as he wiped off the bird scat
from his shoulder.  The bird in the tree made a noise that sounded a lot like a
chuckle to him.  It fluffed its feathers contentedly, and scolded them for the
intrusion.  “You’re just as likely to get shat on in the city,” Isabela said
amiably.  “More likely, in fact.”
                “I hope you’re happy,” he muttered, glaring at Merrill as if it
had been her fault.
                “I think you deserved it too,” she said, giving him a look that
promised to shove him off the nearest cliff if he were so mean to her again.
                “Agreed,” Hawke added, nodding pleasantly.  Fenris scowled at
all three of them.  “Y’know, I’ve been quiet listening to you talk to
Merrill—but you’re an asshole.”  Isabela laughed, but then Hawke looked
concerned.  “Is something bothering you?”
                Fenris sighed, scrubbing furiously at the feces.  “Aside from
the bird shit?” he said sardonically.
                Hawke blinked.  “Well… yeah.”
                Fenris hesitated, then stopped.  He handed Hawke back the
handkerchief.  “We can talk about it later, all right?”
                Hawke looked like he might want to argue, then stopped, and
shrugged.  “Okay—fine.”  A pause.  “I’ll… come visit you sometime—sound good?”
                “Yeah,” he muttered under his breath before they moved on.  The
black bird chuckled again, and he scowled back at the stupid animal.  He
thought about what Isabela had said, about mages being able to shapeshift into
animals.  That just sounded terrifying.  He already didn’t like being outside
in nature, and the idea that a deer or a bird or whatever could actually be a
mage was one he did not relish.  “I hate crows.”
                Merrill blinked.  “Why?  Crows never did anything to you, did
they?”
                He pointed at the crow in the tree.  “That one did.”  The bird
chortled again.
                The Dalish raised an eyebrow inquiringly.  “It’s a raven,
Fenris,” she said flatly.  She pointed as the bird stretched its wings.  “Look
at it.”
                He glanced at the bird, but one bird looked much the same as
another to him.  But it did look pretty big for a crow, he had to admit. 
“Whatever,” he muttered.  Hawke turned and led the way down the path.  The bird
continued to scold them for a moment longer before it flew off.
                “What’s the difference between a crow and a raven anyway?” he
muttered, half to himself.
                Merrill accepted the distraction from her own troubling
thoughts.  “Ravens are bigger, and smarter too I think.”  She paused.  “Did you
know that ravens are called wolf-birds?  Wolves and ravens actually get along
very well—they’ll even play together.  Oh, but I was talking about the
differences between ravens and crows—Well, there are their cries…”
 
                Hawke wasn’t sure if he should be offended or not.  Fenris
“knew they weren’t friends”.  What the hell did that mean?  A few years ago, he
had said, “Maybe this is what it was like to have friends.”  Now they weren’t
friends?
                He almost left it at that—frustrated and annoyed—but he turned
back as his fingers touched the front door.  It was like trying to begin an
argument again after it was already lost, but he marched back up the stairs
anyway.
                “Excuse me,” the mage said, glowering at the elf, who frowned
at him.  He shook his head a little.  “No.  In fact, fuck no.”  He crossed his
arms in a manner that he hoped was intimidating.  “What the hell?”
                Fenris stared at him for a moment.  “What?”
                Hawke made a face.  “Since when were we not friends?” he
demanded.  “Because I sure would have liked to know we weren’t.”
                The elf looked pained, then looked away, uncertain as to what
to say or how to address this scenario.  “I…”
                Hawke ground his teeth, frustrated.  “Or did you decide that we
can’t be friends, just like you decided that we can’t be lovers either, because
it’s too damn hard for you.”  Hawke stared at him, and Fenris stared downwards,
and said nothing.  “But you can sure as fuck bang Isabela, and you don’t have
any fucking problems.”  The mage was silent as that sunk in for both of them,
and he realized how much it hurt.  It wasn’t fair that Fenris could be with
Isabela, but not him.  “Say.  Something.”
                His eyes flicked upwards once, then back down, reforming into
old habits when he was distressed.  He looked very much like he wanted to just
slink away from this conversation.  “I… don’t know,” he said, more because he
could feel Hawke’s eyes glaring into him than because he knew what to say. 
“I’m sorry…  I just don’t feel as though--”
                “Sorry?” he demanded, infuriated.  “Sorry?”  “Sorry” just
didn’t cut it for Hawke.  How could Fenris say something like that?  He had
been ready to confess how he felt about him; that he loved him, years ago.  And
Fenris just left him like that, with the sheets still smelling like their
encounter.  And never mind how much the rejection stung.  Never mind how he had
felt when he learned that Fenris had been with Isabela.  Sure, he was happy
that he was happy.  And Hawke wasn’t jealous, per se; he had Anders.  And he
loved Anders to pieces.
                But Fenris had been first.  And he would have still been with
him, if he hadn’t walked away from him.  Apparently, the elf could sleep with
Isabela, but not with him.  Hawke wondered if that had ever really been the
problem, or if it were just something else entirely?  How could he ever know? 
How did he know he was even telling the truth when he already felt betrayed? 
He felt like their entire relationship was a lie, if Fenris didn’t even
consider them to be so much as friends.
                “Hawke, I didn’t mean—“
                “Fuck you,” he hissed acidly.  “And go to hell.”  It was hard
to look at him.  Fenris was staring at him, eyes as wide as gold coins, partway
unbelieving in what Hawke was saying, and partway just shocked to hear it.  And
still looked cute as hell, didn’t he?  He felt like a part of him would always
love Fenris.  He had even confessed as much to Anders, who had, grudgingly,
accepted it, so long as it was never acted upon.  Accepted it, because a part
of Anders would always love Carl; and so the two had come to an agreement of
sorts upon the matter.  But it was so much harder when the other person was
alive, and nearby, and staring at him like that.  “You don’t think about the
way you treat others, do you?  You don’t think at all.”
                Fenris’ eyes flicked to the floor, fingers curling slightly. 
“Danarius used to say that,” he whispered.  “Something like it any way.”
                “I don’t care about Danarius,” Hawke said.  “I don’t care about
how awful your life used to be.  I am tired of hearing about it.  How long has
it been, Fenris?”  The elf looked up again.  “How long has it been since you’ve
been a slave?”
                Fenris stared downwards, at his hands this time.  “About ten
years,” he admitted with some reluctance.
                “Get over it,” Hawke snapped.  “Bethany died, my father died,
and my mother.  And you remember how she died—that was terrible.  Carver is
only alive today because of Anders.”  He stared at him, pained.  “And I haven’t
seen him in years.  And I don’t bitch about it.”
                The elf looked up at him, angry, shooting to his feet.  “That’s
not the same,” he argued.  “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
                Hawke snorted.  “I know that he enslaved you, and probably beat
you, and sexually abused you.  I’m telling you that it’s been ten years since
then, and you need to get the fuck over it,” he snapped.  “Move on with your
life.”
                The elf was silent for a moment, and Hawke saw that his words
had stung.  Fenris knew he needed to take Hawke’s harsh advice, but didn’t know
how to start.  “How do I do that?” he demanded, sounding hurt.  “How do you
just get over that someone put you on a leash like an animal?  You tell me.”
                Hawke stared at him, his fingers clenching, then unclenching as
he fought down his rising temper.  “I feel sorry for you; I do,” he confessed. 
“And for the longest time, all I ever wanted in the world was to hold you and
try to keep you from feeling any more pain.”  He paused, because his own
confession hurt.  “But all you have done is hurt me.  Every time I reach out to
you, you hurt me for trying.”
                Fenris stared at him, looking for all the world as if he were
lost.  Unable to defend his actions, he didn’t know what to say, except, “When
I was with you, I remembered who I was.”  The person he loved more than
anything was angry with him, was yelling at him, and the things that he said
hurt.  Worse, they were true.  “And then I forgot again.”  He swallowed, but
his throat still felt dry.  “You don’t know what that’s like.  I was happy when
I knew who I was,” he cried.  His eyes were wet, and he refused to blink for
fear the liquid would spill.  “And then I forgot who I was, and I don’t even
know why I was happy.  And content.  And I felt… peaceful.  And I don’t know
why.”  He stared at Hawke, unable to properly convey the true gravity of what
it had been like.  “What if it happened again?”  He was quiet a moment.  “I
couldn’t bear it.”  The liquid in his eyes threatened to spill.  “Hawke…”
                “But Isabela is something else.”
                “I don’t feel that way with her,” he insisted.  “I’ve never
remembered with her.”  He stared downwards, and held his tongue from what he
had been about to say.  Telling Hawke how he felt about him now would only make
this worse.  So much worse, because Hawke was with someone else, and the
situation was already awkward.  He knew he needed to say something more, but
for the life of him, did not know what.  I love you, Hawke.
                “That’s great,” Hawke snapped.  “If we can’t even be friends
according to you, then go meet your sister on your own.”
                “Hawke…”
                The mage turned.  “I don’t care.”
                A short pause as the mage started to walk out of the room. 
“I’m afraid it’s a trap,” Fenris insisted.
                Hawke did not look back.  “I don’t care,” he repeated himself. 
“Go get caught.”  A short pause.  “Your master can deal with you.  I don’t
care.”
                Fenris was shocked to silence, but before Hawke had quite left,
he said, “Hawke, he wants to kill me.”
                “I don’t care.”
                And he was gone, and Fenris sat staring at the empty air that
Hawke had occupied moments before.  His mouth felt dry, his lips cracked.  He
dampened his lips with his tongue, swallowed.  He looked down at his hands. 
What have I done?
                He wanted to meet his sister; he did.  More than anything.  He
just felt like…  Qarinus was pretty far from Minrathous, though, he reminded
himself.  But what disturbed him was that she had been in Minrathous the past
couple of years—a tailor, she had said.  But Danarius was in Minrathous, and it
just made him nervous.
 
                Fenris stared at the door to the pub, stared so intently that
other people avoided him as if he were an unattractive statue.  The door opened
occasionally, and he caught glimpses of the interior, but he didn’t know what
Varania looked like, so he couldn’t be sure he saw her in those glimpses.
                He finally worked up the nerve to go to the door.  Now was the
moment.  This was the time.  His sister was behind this door.  Maybe the key to
his shadowed past, maybe a memory if he saw her face.  Maybe he would know
her.  And maybe he wouldn’t, but maybe she would know him—or who he used to
be.  What was his name?
His fingertips rested on the handle.  His heart pounded against his ribs, blood
gushing through his body.  The lyrium surged with the terror of what lay beyond
the door—both the possibility of it being a trap, and the possibility that it
really was just his sister.  He didn’t know, right now, which would be worse.
                He walked away.
                I could handle a trap, he thought, downhearted.  I could fight
my way out, and it would be no different than yesterday—not really.  If she
really is there, though, it would be different.  And I’m not sure which is more
terrifying.
                He had dreamed last night.  He always had vivid, confusing
dreams, but usually they were the normal sort—endless stairs and things like
that, and he usually didn’t remember them well.  But last night, he had dreamed
that he had laid in the grass in the sun, and instinctively, he knew it was
Minrathous.  A girl had sat a short distance away, in the shade of a low wall
he knew to be the wall around the slave compound.  She had an old knife in her
hand, and was whittling at something.
                She had grinned to herself, and held her hand out to him,
showing him what she had made.  It was a little wolf carving.
                He had, of course, immediately looked at the carving he had
when he woke.  Had it been the same one?  Furthermore, did it mean anything? 
Was it just a dream, borne of fantasy and what he wished were true?  Or… had he
left those carvings there for himself to find?  Had they been his?
                He had to know, and who to ask?  Varania might know, but he was
a spineless coward and couldn’t face her on his own.  What if it were a
trap—and worse, what if she were really there and it wasn’t entirely a ruse? 
Did he have the heart to fight, if his own sister betrayed him?  Hawke had told
him to go get caught, and if the man he loved didn’t care, and his sister did
betray him, he didn’t know what he would do.
                So he walked away, his thoughts on the wolf carving.  He looked
at the house Hawke used to live in with his family, when they had all been
together, and realized he was walking to the alienage.  Merrill lived in the
alienage.
                He recalled that she knew about the carving.  She had to; the
way she had paled when he said where he had found it.  She knew something about
the carving.  Until today, it hadn’t seemed important.  Whatever she knew, she
hadn’t wanted to talk about it.  And, yes, the carving was his, but if it made
her uncomfortable, he was not going to press the matter, but now things were
different.  He still worried, though, and even felt a growing sense of
apprehension about asking her.  What if she did tell him something that
revealed even a shadow of his past?  What if it did make him remember
something?  He felt sick at the idea.  Every time he had remembered something,
it had come at a cost.
                Maybe he should not have been so cruel to her.  He flinched a
little at that.  He wasn’t sorry about it, exactly, save that now she might not
want to help him.  But Danarius, the bastard, had trained him well; he could
fake all the proper affects of sincerity and apology if he must to get what he
desired.  And Merrill was dense when it came down to it; she likely would not
know the difference.  He might as well try.
                He passed by the gates to the alienage, and couldn’t help but
look around.  Dilapidation, despair.  He looked up at the vhenadahl, and
wondered what his life meant, what the little carving meant.
                Merrill had a piece of that puzzle, if he could but obtain it
from her.  Out of options, he trudged through the alienage, trying not to think
about the stench of the sewer, the way the tall buildings blocked much of the
light.  He tried not to think about so many people crammed into such a small
space.  Slavery was worse.  He had never seen the alienage in Minrathous of
course, but he had walked through the one in Seheron City with Shaislyn, back
when he had met the Fog Warriors.  It hadn’t even had the tree.  In fact, the
only thing growing there had been the overflow from the sewers, and the
occasional weed.  Kirkwall wasn’t as bad as many others.
                Merrill’s house wasn’t as bad as many others, for that matter. 
There were families crammed into one-bedroom apartments, and he had heard that
in Orlais, there were ten thousand elves crammed into one small section of the
city, the buildings blocking out so much light that they did not see the
sunlight until noon.  One of Merrill’s favourite things to ask him was if he
cared about the plight of their people.  Of course he cared.  It would be so
much easier if he didn’t.  If he could look at what humans and dwarves took for
granted and not be jealous, life would be easier to bear.  But he did look at
the humans in Lowtown—miserable and filthy and depressed—and knew even they
were better off than most elves he knew.  Nothing would ever change, would it?
                He knocked on Merrill’s door, wondering if he shouldn’t just
walk right in.  Merrill had done that, but then again, if she had knocked, he
would not have likely heard her.
                “Coming!” she cried.  “Ow!”  He heard something being knocked
over, and a loud noise as the girl fell on the floor.  He sighed and opened the
door, looking down at Merrill.  She had tripped over a chair, and was sitting
on the floor, grimacing.  Her hands were wrapped around one of her bare feet. 
She flinched, and looked up at Fenris.  “Why does a stubbed toe hurt worse than
a broken bone?”
                He shut the door, and righted the chair.  He extended a hand
out to her.  Helping her now would help him later.  She flopped into the chair,
grimaced again.  “You never come to visit,” she said.  “Why are you here,
Fenris?”
                He made a face.  “Can’t I have just been nearby and dropped
in?”
                She raised an eyebrow.  “I seem to recall, quite vividly, that
you have never been down here before—save when Hawke first met you.  And you
hate me.  So you must want something.”
                He flinched.  This was not going well.  Maybe he should sit
down; he’d look less imposing.  He took a deep breath, and sat across from
her.  “I really was just wandering through Lowtown.”  He made a face. 
“Honestly?  I’m too afraid to go into the Hanged Man and meet my sister.”  He
tried to smile.  “Which means I can’t visit Isabela or Varric, so it leaves
you.”
                She nodded agreeably.  “Sounds plausible,” she admitted.  “And
you only hate me slightly less than you hate Anders, so why not come to berate
me for my life choices.”  She glanced at her mirror.  Fenris’ eyes tracked
hers.  A chill ran up his spine when he looked at it.  There was something very
unnatural about a mirror that held no reflection.  His eyes shifted away from
it, but he still felt like something otherworldly was watching him through the
glass.
                He had to do something to put her off edge.  He should have
brought her something—snacks, cake, tea—something!  How could he get her to
tell him what she knew?  “I…”  He grimaced, and took another deep, calming
breath.  “I wanted to apologize.”
                She scoffed.  “For years of telling me I’m a horrible person? 
And, despite that I’m cheerful and nice to you, and almost never have I said a
single unkind word to you, you still…”  She ground her teeth, her hands balling
into fists.  He had never seen her so angry.  He shouldn’t have come here.  His
gaze flitted to the door, wondering if he shouldn’t just leave.  “You were
happy that the Keeper died, because another mage died—only sorry that she died
for me.”  Her eyes filled with unshed tears, but tears of rage, not sadness.
                How could he diffuse this situation?  “Merrill, I don’t know
what to say—I need your help.”
                She calmed, biting back the tears, bottling her rage, but it
was just under the surface.  Tread lightly.  “With what?” she said, with enough
heat to burn.
                His gaze flicked to the floor, and without looking at her, he
removed the little wolf carving from his bag.  He placed it on the table.  She
glanced at it, and flinched when she saw it, paling a little.  “I think I knew
the person who made this,” he said quietly.  He looked at her.  “I think they
made it for me.”
                She lifted the little figure from the desk, tenderly as if it
were very valuable.  “What are you saying?”
                He sighed, flustered.  There wasn’t any other way except to
tell her his entire theory.  “I think that, before I lost my memories, I put
this somewhere—somewhere I would find it.”  Which would have to mean…  I knew I
wouldn’t remember anything.  The theory made him cringe inwardly.  Or maybe he
had only been hiding them, somewhere he could retrieve them later.  Or what if
he had known he would lose his memories?  What did that imply?  Danarius would
know.  Danarius would know everything.  Varania might even know.  He looked
pleadingly at Merrill.  “If you know anything about it…  Anything at all…”
                She looked at the carving, and smiled.  Just as her tears had
been of rage, her smile was of sadness.  She ran her thumb almost lovingly
along the wolf’s face, down its neck.  She knows, he thought, his heart
pounding in his chest.  She knows.
                She looked up from the figure, and set it back down on the
table.  Her lips pressed into a thin line.  “I’m not telling you anything, you
bastard,” she said, rising to her feet.  She even managed to look imposing. 
“Get out.  I never want to see you again.  Never ask me for anything again—get
out!”
                He stared at her, wanting to be shocked and angry, but somehow
too crestfallen to manage it.  She was angry, the tears filling her eyes again,
and why wouldn’t they?  He picked up the carving, and left, no closer to having
discovered its meaning than he had been before.  But, no farther either.
                Maybe…  If he could go to the Dalish, they might be able to
tell him.  Just because Merrill refused didn’t mean they would.  That would
have to wait, though.  He was reluctant to go so far alone, for the same reason
that Merrill had been reluctant to first go to Kirkwall alone.  Maybe Isabela
would go with him.  But that would just lead him back to the Hanged Man, so it
had to wait.
 
                Merrill glared at the door after Fenris had gone, shaking with
her rage before her despair consumed her.
                She dropped back into the chair, covering her face with her
hands as she wept.
                The carving was Dalish, that she knew for certain.  Even if the
wolf didn’t look elvhen-made, which it did, each craftsman had a special mark
on it, each clan their own symbols.  And that one—that one she had only seen
drawings of.  The Arlathan Dalish had been all but destroyed years ago, and
that little figure might be all that was left of the clan.
                It was badly made, as if by one inexperienced, but maybe it had
been a childhood friend of Fenris’.  He was the right age, she lamented, and
wept anew.  She wanted to tell him; truly she did.  But she didn’t.  It
wouldn’t matter to Fenris.  It wouldn’t make him care more, and it wouldn’t
make him less coldhearted and cruel.  It wouldn’t make him see the good in what
she was doing.
                What did he care where he had come from?
                She tried to stop her crying, but couldn’t.  The Arlathan
Dalish had been attacked by slavers and destroyed.  A few had been taken, she
had heard.  Fenris could very well be one of the enslaved Dalish, and he just
didn’t know.  He would have been a child, but…  If he were one of those Dalish,
he had been through so much, and that little carving was proof of those
bloodlines.  Could it be true?  It was possible, she conceded.  How else could
he have come to possess that carving?  He had said that “he had left it for
himself to find”.  Which meant he had had it for a long time.  Someone had made
it for him, someone definitely of that clan.
                She also knew it was entirely possible that he wasn’t Dalish;
just a slave that had befriended one.  The first possibility definitely seemed
more likely to her, but the second was not impossible either.  It all seemed so
sad.
                Maybe he did deserve to know the carving’s origin, but not from
her.  He had done nothing to deserve her telling him, and she felt completely
justified in withholding the information.  He was unspeakably cruel to her when
she had been nothing but kind to him, so why should she tell him?
Chapter End Notes
     I actually don't think Merrill is 100% in the wrong here. I wouldn't
     want to help someone who was openly cruel to me either. Nor do I
     blame Hawke for lashing out at Fenris. I'd be pretty offended if
     someone I considered to be a good friend said something like that.
     Though, Hawke doesn't really mean any of what he said; he's only
     human, and we humans have a tendency to say things we don't mean when
     we're angry.
***** Betrayal *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris meets Varania and confronts Danarius.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Isabela sat on the lip of the desk, long legs dangling over the
edge, a bored expression colouring her features.  Varric sat like a merchant
prince of Antiva on a stuffed leather chair, ever-patient and sure.  Hawke
paced restlessly in front of the fireplace like a caged lion.
            “And you’re sure there actually is an elven woman staying there?”
Hawke asked again, for the third time in so many words.
            Isabela rolled her eyes.  “Red hair, green eyes.  Looks a bit like
Fenris, even,” she said with a shrug.
            Varric kind of laughed.  “How can you tell?  All those elves look
alike to me.”
            The pirate smirked.  “I’ve spent a lot of… personal time with
Fenris.”
            “More than I needed to know,” the dwarf commented.
            Hawke would have ordinarily been at least amused at the banter, but
his mind was elsewhere.  “And no one else suspicious?”
            Isabela snorted.  “Just the normal suspicious,” she said with a
shrug.  “Thieves and thugs, you know.”
            Varric was silent a moment, considering.  “There was a group of men
that came in the other night,” he began, then considered.  “Rivaini
mercenaries.  A couple Tevinters in there too, but I don’t think slavers.”
            “You’re sure?” Hawke pressed.
            Isabela shrugged.  “Mercenaries, a couple bounty hunters, and
sailors.  Same old,” she insisted.
            “Bounty hunters?” the mage reiterated.
            The other two glanced at one another, then back at Hawke.  “Doesn’t
mean they’re after Fenris,” Isabela said with all due seriousness.  “Doesn’t
even mean they’re looking for someone.  Their ship just docked is all.  I
talked with one of them—looks like they’re on their way home.”
            The apostate felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders. 
“Then why’d they stop?”
            She shrugged again.  “Ship repairs.  Supplies.  Women.  Nothing
suspicious—that’s normal.”
            Varric raised an eyebrow.  “I’ve tried to talk to the girl, but she
barely leaves her room, and she won’t talk to anyone.”
            Isabela nodded in agreement.  “About the same—she’s shy,” she
admitted.  She frowned.  “I’ve heard voices in her room before though.”
            Varric glanced at her.  “Doesn’t mean much.”
            “But I’ve never seen anyone but her come and go.”
            “Also doesn’t mean much,” Varric pointed out.  “Neither of us watch
the door all the time, and why should we?”
            Isabela shrugged again, and glanced back toward the mage.  “Well,
Hawke, what do you think?”
            Hawke swiped his hands through his unruly hair.  “I think Fenris is
an asshole and doesn’t deserve our help.”  He sighed.  “But I refuse to prevent
him from meeting his family, and I know he won’t go alone.”
            “Too scared,” the pirate scoffed with a roll of her eyes.
            “Like you?” Varric countered.
            She frowned.  “That was different.”
            “It’s exactly the same,” the dwarf pointed out.
            The Rivaini pirate made a face, hopping down from the desk.  “Are
we going?”
            “Yeah,” Hawke said, gazing up at the ceiling.  “Let’s go see if
Fenris isn’t too drunk to come with us.  But don’t you dare tell him where
we’re going.”  He frowned.  “He’ll probably decide to run off.”
            “You think he’ll be too nervous?” Isabela inquired, following Hawke
out of the library.
            “Wouldn’t you be?” Varric said.  “You know nothing about your
family except that they’ve been living in the same city as a very rich,
powerful man that wants you dead:  What would you think?”
            She laughed.  “Point taken.”
 
            Shaislyn watched the manor, safe in his camouflage even from the
Templars that passed by.  He pecked at the ground, preened his feathers, flew
out of the way of noisier passersby like the rest of the flock of crows, and no
one paid him any mind.
            But when the door opened, he looked up and cocked his head to the
side.  He fluttered off the street, landing on a rail to get a better vantage
point.  He picked at his flight feathers as he watched the door.  Hawke left,
and the dwarf and the Rivaini woman followed him.  The two rogues were engaged
in some kind of banter, and Hawke was quiet.  It was hard to read facial
expressions as a bird; their eyes were not made to discern facial expression. 
He could tell when someone was upset by their posture and body language, but
reading faces was not something he could do, even if he had better learned
facial expressions as a child.  Even so, Hawke looked distracted.
            The man walked down the street, and Shaislyn followed at a
distance, sometimes circling, sometimes pecking at the ground, sometimes just
waiting, but he knew where they were going once they went down a particular
street, and he waited there.  He watched them enter the decrepit mansion, and
waited.
            Danarius paid taxes on it, he reminded himself, and would laugh if
a bird could laugh.  His throat, instead, made a chortling sound.  He paid
taxes on it to not make Fenris living there an issue, to keep it from being
repossessed by the city.  It needed some work done, and Danarius had even said
that he would do it, except for the issue that Fenris would be more than a
little suspicious of that.
            After all this was done, and Fenris was sitting in the hold,
reflecting on all the wrong choices he had made, Shaislyn planned to go down
to… visit.  He wanted to look him in the eyes and demand to know why he had
murdered so many people.  Demand to know why he felt justified when he tortured
people.  And when the elf could not answer, he wanted to hit him.  That desire
kind of scared Shaislyn.  He was always detached about such things before.
            He hated slavery.  He hated oppression.  He hated seeing the weak
hurt by the strong.  He had killed people, and stole, tricked, and lied.  But
torture?  And betrayal?  That, he had never done.  He was always dispassionate
about the killings before.  It was just something that needed to be done.  It
had nothing at all to do with his temper, or to prove something.  If he was too
angry, he left.  If a boy had mocked and ridiculed him for being half-elven, he
had always been able to walk away.  He knew he could kill them if he so
desired, and that was enough.  He never needed to prove it, not to anyone.  And
if he acted upon such desires because he was angry, he had no business holding
the swords.  He had no business being a mage.  If he could not master his own
temper, how could he master himself?
            But Fenris…  That boiled his temper, and made him want to hurt
someone, a particular someone especially.  And he hated Fenris for making him
angry enough to let his temper take hold of him.  One hit, he told himself,
promised himself.  One punch to the face, and I’m done.  The rest of what I am
doing to him is worse—much worse, even if it is what he deserves.
            And he would content himself with that.
            He waited, and followed them at a distance until he was sure that
they were headed for Low Town.  He flew off ahead of them, knowing there was
little time to prepare.  He went to Varania first, and told her to get
downstairs.
            His mother was worried.  She was worried that Fenris wasn’t coming,
worried about the whole thing.  Worried that if he did come, he would realize
what was going on.  And, most of all, she was scared that he would kill her.
            “I’ll be right there,” Shaislyn promised her.  “If he comes near
you, I’ll kill him.”
            She looked at him, doubtful.  “I don’t want you to hurt him,” she
had said.
            He looked at her, blinking slowly.  “If he tries to hurt you, I
will kill him,” her son reiterated.  She pursed her lips, but nodded in
assent.  The pair left the small room, his mother headed down the stairs, and
he went to the back room, where Danarius waited.  The room was not what the
magister would be accustomed to, but it had been large enough to accommodate
him with most of his niceties.
            “Today, my uncle might kill you.  How do you feel?” Shaislyn asked
him, his tone cheerful.
            “You don’t have to sound so excited about it,” he admonished him.
            He cocked his head to the side a little.  Danarius assumed it was
some animalistic trait, but it was actually a remnant habit from before he had
learned the sight spell; he cocked his head to listen, turning his ear more
toward who he was talking to.  “You don’t need some kind of signal, do you?”
            “No,” he said, though did not offer as to the reason.
            Shaislyn was silent a moment.  “I’m headed downstairs,” the
teenager announced.  Danarius watched him go, and leaned back in his chair.  He
had dreamed about Roschelle last night.  He almost never dreamed, but this one
had felt so real.  He had been disappointed to wake and find it was only a
dream.
            Danarius watched his hand shake, flinching when he flexed his
fingers.  The pain lanced upwards, through his arm all the way up to his
shoulder.  No matter the outcome of today, it had to be better than retiring
and dying decrepit in bed.  He leaned back in the chair, flinching again as his
heart burned in his chest.  It smoldered, then flared to life again.  It felt
like he was being stabbed in the chest.  He heaved a shuddering breath, then
another, determined to keep breathing despite that every pull of his lungs felt
like another dagger through his chest.  Or perhaps, because of that.  Pain was
good; it meant he was still alive.  Every time he had had a heart attack, and
came fatally close to death, any pain at all was welcome.  The second time, he
had woken, his eyes still closed, he had wondered if he had died.  The sights
and sounds, the aching in his hands, that had all served to tell him that it
wasn’t so.  Not yet, anyway.
            It was really only a matter of time.
            This wasn’t a dangerous heart attack though--just an ordinary pain.
 He didn’t know what he would do if he had a real heart attack right now.
 Stall, he supposed.  Varania would have to play the loving sister for a day,
and convince him to come back tomorrow, at least.  He didn’t think even the
best actress could keep up such an act for the two week minimum it would take
for him to recover.
            His heart smoldered in his chest, as if threatening to erupt.  His
hands shook as his fingers gripped the arms of the chair.  The action caused
fresh rivulets of pain to lance up his arms.  It was an effort to relax in the
chair, to let the pain ride itself out.  It was hard to sink back into the
chair and let the pain take him, to let it lance and burn as it would.  It was
instinctive to fight pain, to rally against it and what it meant.  Once he let
go of the desire to fight, and let the pain consume him, it traveled through
him easier.  It was really just like the Ritual.  All pain, truly, was like the
Ritual was.  You were afraid of it, and wanted it to end, but it will not end
until it is finished, and would travel so much more freely once there was
nothing in its way.
            I don’t think I’ll see Minrathous again, he mused, his eyes sliding
closed as the pain continued up both arms and his heart blazed in his chest.
 And that isn’t so bad, is it?
            Roschelle had spent her childhood summers in Kirkwall.  She had
wanted their child to spend time here too.  It was important that a child see
differences in other countries and cultures, and appreciate their own.  
The stabbing pain in his chest finally made him flinch, made breathing too
difficult.  He stopped, unable to breathe.  When he dared pull breath again, it
came at a great cost.  A fresh wave of pain washed over him, engulfing him.
 His eyes squeezed shut against it, and he felt himself withdraw inwardly.
 Fenris was close.  Very close.
            Through the exquisite pain, he could almost see Roschelle again.
 He could almost hear her voice, feel her touch.  He willed more of it,
welcomed more of it.  He remembered the way the sunlight had caught in her
nutmeg hair, the laughter echoed in her chocolate eyes.
            All he had to do was stay here.  All he had to do was let the pain
consume him and his will to live, and let it claim him and he could see
Roschelle again.  His eyes closed, willing it to be the last time.
            The light in the void glistened, near, and the presence waited.
            His thoughts drifted from Roschelle to Varania, relying on him.  He
thought about Shaislyn, who was finally starting to reach out to him.  From the
dead, to the living.  Not yet, Roschelle.
            He pulled on his link with Fenris, drawing the lyrium to a soft
glow.  Outside, Fenris attributed it to his tumultuous mood.  The blue healing
light spilled out of his hands, and twisted around his body, following the pain
to its source.  His breathing eased, and the pain ebbed with the light.  His
eyes opened, and faintly he could smell daffodils.
 
            The teenager careened down the stairs two at a time, and wondered
if they had come in yet.  He asked his mother, and she shook her head.  Maybe
they had stopped somewhere along the way—shopping or some other errand?  Not
everyone rushed everywhere, he supposed.
            He calmed, and stepped away from his mother, wandering to the other
side of the room.  The door opened, and his stomach tightened, heart pounding
furiously in his chest.  This was it.  This was the moment—He scowled, then
cringed.
            Templars.  Out of uniform, but definitely Templars, by their
weaponry, out for a drink.  He swore loudly.  Now what?  Templars could easily
ruin the entire trap, and gladly.
            He ran his hands through his hair, trying to think of some way to
lure them away.  He almost laughed at that.  He was the perfect bait to lure
Templars.
            They sat down, and called for a round.  The barmaid was filling
mugs, and Shaislyn walked over to them, trying to think of what to do or say. 
Maybe he didn’t need to say anything.
            He stopped at their table, and touched it, palm flat, wrist bent. 
With a thought, the wood smoked, then the fire spread—quickly.
            The three Templars leapt to their feet, but Shaislyn was already
running.  His vision abruptly shut off and not by his own will, but his hands
were already on the door.  He heard people shouting, and the three were chasing
after him.  Good.
            He ran from the door, the Templars close behind him.  In the
tavern, Varania had risen to her feet, trembling in terror for her son, her
stupid apostate son.  She had known they must be foreign Templars—Tevinter
Templars had no special abilities like that--the moment she had felt her magic
nullified, and knew why Shaislyn had done that; he had to lure them away.  But
surely he could have done something else?  Anything else?  This was incredibly
dangerous!
            Outside, Shaislyn ran blindly, listening, knowing that if he ran
far enough, he would be able to use his sight again.  People stepped out of the
way sometimes, but he ran into one—two—people, and he could not lose the
Templars in the crowd, despite his efforts.  He crashed into a third person,
this one large enough that he stumbled back.
            “Hey!” the big man complained.
            Shaislyn shot past him.  He careened through the market, knocking
something over, and nearly ran into a wall.  He flew around a corner, and ran
into someone else.
            “What--?”
            “Stop!” a Templar cried.
            The teenager did not hear the rest of whatever the man had said. 
He flinched.  His skin had bruised from the man’s armor.  Though it was
dangerous to keep running blind like this, he could not slow.  He pushed past
the man and kept running.
            Hawke watched the Templars chase after the boy.  “Another apostate
on the run from Templars?” he wondered to himself, feeling annoyed, though not
with the apostate.
            Isabela glanced after him.  There was something funny about the way
he ran, as if he could not see where he was going exactly, and was relying
almost entirely on memory.  “He looks familiar…”
            Varric nodded.  “Wasn’t that kid at the bar a while ago?”
            “He should have skipped town,” she commented with a shake of her
head.  “Stupid kid.”
            “They’ll catch him eventually,” the dwarf sighed.
            “Good thing Anders isn’t here,” Hawke mused, halfway to himself. 
“Or he would insist we get involved.”
            I hope they make him Tranquil, Fenris thought with disdain,
checking to make sure he hadn’t stolen anything when he had ran into him.
Shaislyn tried to remember the layout of the town, but it was hard to do when
he did not so much as have a walking stick.  It felt like the Templars were
only just behind him, but he couldn’t tell until one of them shouted.  If they
just kept quiet, he would have no idea they were there; that was why the
blindness was so dangerous to him.  In a sense, he could tell someone was
chasing him by the sound of their swords slapping against their back or their
thigh respectively, the number of feet chasing after him.  But, in a crowd, it
was difficult.
He skidded around another corner, one hand out to touch the wall.  He ran, one
hand out.  He touched a wall, and turned.  He was trapped.  He stood panting. 
This was a dead end, and his magic still wasn’t working.  He took a gamble and
sprinted from his hiding spot, dashing down the other direction.  The Templars
gave themselves away again with another shout, but he could tell they were
farther back this time.
            He felt his magic back at his command, and smiled; enough time had
passed.  Vision renewed, he turned just in time to avoid running into another
wall, and he raced down an alley.  The Templars were still just behind him, and
could do that trick again at any point, especially if they guessed he was
blind.
            One twist and turn after another, running wildly down the streets,
at this point just trying to get away.  He figured they had been “lured” far
enough away by now, and they would have to go report him no matter what.  He
would have to avoid Kirkwall for a while, but he did not intend to come back
anyway.
            He looked ahead, at the docks.  And he didn’t have a sea-faring
form.  Still.
            What could he do?  They were too close behind him; he couldn’t seem
to lose them, and they had naked steel in their hands.  They would kill him,
not catch him.  Damned Kirkwall Templars…
            His heart raced as he ran, trying desperately to think of what he
could do.  If he turned into a bird, here, they would see, and were too close. 
They would activate that odd ability again, and he would just fall to the
ground.  Where did that leave him?
            He looked around, wondering what he could use.  He dashed to the
side, around a corner, up a flight of stairs, and, no where else to run, ran to
the end of the pier.  He stopped at the edge, and looked back at the Templars,
who had slowed now that their quarry was cornered.
            “No where left to run, mage.  Come back quietly, and we’ll give you
a trial,” one of them promised him.  The other two laughed, as if it were a
joke.
            His vision shifted back to the water.  He still had no fish form. 
Why had he never amended that?  Why?
            But if he dove in, how well could an eagle or a gull fly completely
wet?  He guessed that a gull would be the safer bet, as a lighter bird that
could also swim.
            The Templars were coming closer.  He held up his hands.  “I give
up,” he said, over exaggerating his Imperial accent as an idea occurred to
him.  It was something his mother had once told him.  “It was stupid; I thought
I could taunt you.”  He started coming toward them, dragging his feet
sheepishly.  It was so he could get a running start and jump, but he wanted to
set them at ease as much as possible.  “I’m an Imperial, and I guess I’m a
little arrogant; the Templars in the Imperium can’t do what you can.  I just
wanted to see it.”
            At that, they paused, and looked at each other uneasily.  “Circle
mage?” one inquired, his tone becoming conversational.  Their weapons lowered.
 This would create a problem for them, he realized.  The Tevinter Circle would
not take too kindly to one of their own being imprisoned in a place like
Kirkwall, and they had to be careful.
            Shaislyn smiled broadly.  “Magister’s only son,” he replied,
suddenly pleased with himself.  “Minrathous Circle.  I’m a long way from home.”
            Now they looked downright uncomfortable.  They whispered one to
another, and Shaislyn felt frustrated that he couldn’t quite hear them from
here, and he didn’t know how to read lips either.  He had no doubt, though,
that they were trying to guess the validity of his story.  One turned and
looked at him, arms crossed.  “What’s your father’s name?”
            He smiled pleasantly.  This was exactly the sort of thing he should
have done before.  He was just a disruptive, ornery teenager testing the law. 
“Cillian Danarius, magister of the Minrathous Circle.”
            Now they looked even more uncomfortable, and the half-elf felt
nothing but pleased.  They whispered again, trying to decide what to do with
him.  Some agreement was reached, and they collectively sighed, sheathing their
weapons.  “We’ll make a report to Meredith, and, kid, you’re still coming with
us.  We’ll set you up in a guest room until we get word from your family.  Once
they pay for damages, we’ll arrange to put you on a ship back home.  And don’t
cause problems again.”
            Shaislyn did his best to look sheepish.  “Sorry,” he muttered,
kicking at the ground.  “It was dumb.”  Then he brightened.  “Oh, but my
mother’s actually at the pub—the Hanged Man.  She’s meeting my uncle.  I don’t
want to disrupt them, but we could just go directly there.”  He walked between
the Templars, but kept an eye on their sheathed weapons.  He decided to play
the role of the disrespectful teenager.  “Um, or, could I just pay you?”  He
flushed.  “I really don’t want to bother my parents with this.  I swear I’ll
pay the bar too—really.”
            The Templars laughed.  One of them clapped him on the back.  “Kid,
you fucked up.”
            Shaislyn swore, and acted sullen.  “C’mon, I’ll be in so much
trouble.  You don’t even know.”
            They laughed again.  “Not as much trouble as you would be in
otherwise, trust me,” one of them said, and not kindly.
            “I think you’re buying us a round, though,” the third one
commented.
            Shaislyn was inwardly relieved, but a part of him suspicious.  What
if they were only doing this to arrest more mages, and make them all Tranquil
before the Imperium even heard about it?  No, he still needed to get away from
them.  He tripped himself going down the stairs, and the Templars watched him
fall coldly.  They walked by him, and watched him pick himself up.  He
muttered, and pretended to act like an arrogant rich boy, scoffing at them, and
generally acting shocked.
            Then he broke and ran, back up the stairs, down the pier, and did
not hesitate.  He dove into the water, conscious of the surprised Templars
behind him.  He swam.  He held his breath as long as he could—longer.  He swam
desperately, surfacing once, and back down again, trying to swim farther out. 
He surfaced again, head just breaking the waves, and swung his vision back
toward shore, looking for the Templars.  One of them was running back, likely
to report the incident to their superior, and another was yelling at the people
on the docks, the third climbing into a boat to come after him.  Shaislyn kept
swimming.  With a boat and strong oars, they would be upon him in moments.  He
swam desperately, and hoped he was far enough.  He could not keep doing this;
not only was it bad for his swords, swimming in boots was not something that
was meant to be.
            He reached for the surface, and froze, his vision going dark.  All
that was left was a black void all around him.  It was a place that had never
seen light, never seen day, nor night.  It was just a void of nothing, and yet,
at either end, there was light.  They blazed, and coalesced around each other,
their rays gracing the other.  Then one engulfed all that Shaislyn could see
and knew, blinding him to everything but its light.
            His lungs burned, and he couldn’t move.
            When it dimmed, it had eclipsed the other one, snuffed out its
light.  No, it had consumed it utterly, destroying all of it, taking it into
itself.  The subservient light had engulfed the master light and taken it for
itself.  It wasn’t subservient any longer; it was its own master.
            Or… was it?  He could sense a distant light was somewhere in the
nameless black, but could not tell where, no matter how he looked.  With his
back to the single light, he could sense it, just out of reach but there and…
waiting?  No, he thought.  Bound.  It can’t move on.  The lights were made
together, forged together, and they must be snuffed together.  And so one would
wait.  Either the light would go out in this place, or this place would
collapse upon itself.  Either the second light must fade, or this place must
fade, for the first light to completely pass.  With this place gone, it would
free both lights to go on as they must.  But the place stayed, and the lights
stayed.  Shaislyn’s lungs felt like they were on fire.
            He broke the surface gasping, still continuing to swim farther
out.  He took a deep gulp of air, and chose a form.
            He struggled, and stayed on the surface, his feathers wet, but he
hoped not too wet to fly.  Had anyone seen that?
            He looked about, trying to judge if anyone were looking at him. 
People were.  Sailors were pointing toward him, and shouting.  The light from
his transformation had caught their eye.  But they had been looking, hadn’t
they?
            He had to fly.  The Templars were in the boat, and coming for him. 
Once they were within range, he would be swimming again, and blind this time.
            He spread his wet wings and beat furiously at the air.  It resisted
him with every beat of his wings, but he was airborne, struggling to fly, out
of the water.  His wings beat furiously, and every foot gained was a bitter
battle with nature, but he was escaping.  He struggled and strained with the
effort, but once he was high enough to glide, and the winds were warm, he knew
he was safe.  He took a wide, wide circle, watching them struggling to find him
amidst the other gulls.
            He flew back toward Kirkwall.  They should have caught Fenris by
now, he assumed.  He had better go see how things had gone; his mother was
bound to be in tears.
 
            Varania stormed angrily from the pub, the heels of her shoes
striking against the earth.  She had never, in her life, been so angry.  Her
brother—no, not her brother but Fenris who was no brother of hers—he had wanted
to kill her.  And maybe that was in his rights.  Had she not betrayed him?
            No, she thought in fury.  He had betrayedher.
           The contract burned in her mind, both of them.  Her brother, for an
apprenticeship that would change her life for the better.  Now she was even
worse off than she had been before.  She had no job, no home; she had nothing. 
She had passage back to Minrathous, but that was all.  What would she do once
she was there?  Starve, she imagined with despair.
            One contract’s fulfillment would have landed her amidst the
magisters.  But Leto’s contract, that one meant that, by law, she was a slave
again; he had broken it.  And, since Danarius was dead, that would mean that
she belonged to his next of kin, and that meant…  He had mentioned his family
once before.  What was his nephew’s name?  Agasius Danarius, who would be her
new master from now on.  She wondered what kind of person he was.  But if she
did not go to him, she would be deemed a runaway.  She would go to him, present
him with the contract.  What else could she do?  Surely slavery was better than
starving on the streets.
            Shaislyn, too, by rights, was Agasius’ slave as well.  Fenris, too,
would also belong to Agasius.  Though Agasius, after all this time, might just
let him go except that he had killed the magister, so he would probably just
amend the bounty to “kill on sight”.  It really put her son and her brother on
equal grounds, if Shai chose to run rather than submit.
            Shaislyn, though, was worse off for it.  She knew he had no
friends, no family other than herself.  And now, no homeland.  He could not
return to the Imperium if he would not submit to slavery.  What would her
wayward son do from now on?
            That she was worried about him was a bit shocking at first, for she
had never truly worried about him before.  She had been concerned, but it
wasn’t the same thing.  Was this affection she was feeling for him at last,
after all these years?  She had told herself, before, that she had not worried
so much about him because he was out of her hands anyway, or that he was strong
enough to look after himself.  But had that been true?  She had worried about
Leto every day, even when she knew both those things were true for him as well.
            Fenris, she imagined, would be no different than before.  He would
be happy as could be now that Danarius was dead.  The bastard.  She hated him.
            “Mother?” her son cried, wriggling his way through the market
crowd.  He was dripping wet.
            She frowned, wondering what he had done to evade the Templars to
get so soaked.  “Shai, you’re drenched.”
            He pawed at his mop of curls self-consciously.  “Yeah.  How’d it
go?” he asked, though his tone was cautious.  He may have guessed her mood.
            She wanted to cry.  “He killed him.”
            The boy paused, brow wrinkling in confusion.  “Danarius… killed
Fenris?”
            Varania shook her head.  “The other way ‘round.”
            His jaw dropped, then closed.  He started to speak, then stopped. 
“Oh, Maker…”
            “Ripped out his fucking heart,” she cried, her voice breaking for
everything it meant she had lost.  She swiped at her eyes and covered her face
for a moment.  Not for loss of the man, no, but for loss of the magister.
            Shaislyn was soaked to the bone, or he may have tried to comfort
his mother.  “Hell,” he whispered.  He moved closer to her nonetheless.  “What
do we do?”
            She stared at him, and another tear rolled down her cheek.  “If
Leto ever went back on his contract—if he ever ran away—then Danarius… his
family now… you and I…  The terms of his contract…”
            Shaislyn was quiet for a moment.  “I see.”  He bowed his head
briefly.  “Danarius never collected on it, but Agasius might.  Better to see if
he does, and since we know about the contract, not giving ourselves up would
mark us as runaways—and apostates for that matter.”
            Varania hugged her son even though he was dripping water.  He was
shocked for a moment before he returned the embrace.  “What do we do?” she
sobbed.
            He hugged her fiercely.  “We have two choices, Mother.  Three,
really.”  He sighed, letting go.  “Go back to Tevinter and face Agasius
Danarius, or turn ourselves into the Kirkwall Circle—which might mean death or
Tranquility by the way—or, go live somewhere secluded and just be apostates.”
            She shook her head a little.  Kirkwall was not even an option to
her.  “I can’t live your life, Shai.  I can’t run from Templars and live as a
vagabond.”
            He hugged her again.  “I know, Mother.”
            “Will you come with me at least as far as Minrathous?”
            He nodded against her cheek.  “I will.”  He let go of her,
conscious that she was getting wet.  He stepped back.  “I’ll go see about
collecting Danarius’ body—it should go back to Minrathous.”  He sighed again. 
“Maybe we can leave on his ship if we are just escorting the body.”
            Varania left the arrangements to him, and went to the docks to talk
to the hired sailors.  They agreed to the terms, and Varania was set to go back
on the ship prior to this mess anyway.  They left at nightfall.  Danarius’ body
was wrapped in linens and stored in salt for the voyage, but the hired men had
to be burned, their ashes brought back in little urns or satchels for their
families.
            Shaislyn commented that Danarius had heart problems—said that he
had a heart attack on the voyage, so it was a bit ironic that Fenris had ripped
out his heart.  “He probably would not have lived much longer anyway.”
            Varania glanced at him.  “Maybe long enough to make me a
magister.”  Her eyes watered.  Now they would never know.
            Varania was right back where she had started.  No, not quite; now
it was worse.  Her mother was dead, her brother might as well be for all that
was left of him, and she was right back in slavery where she had begun her
life.
Chapter End Notes
     I thought about just writing the entire scene (the confrontation,
     etc) from Varania's perspective, but then realized it was redundant;
     you know what goes on in that scene. Shaislyn, therefore, seemed like
     the obvious choice.
***** Grief *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris is struggling over Varania's betrayal, and Hawke is worried
     about him. Varania and Shaislyn are desperately trying to find a way
     to escape slavery.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            The manacles chafed at his wrists, his arms hanging slack.  The
post against his back was worn, and at one point, even carved into tortured
shapes of slaves, to remind whoever was thus shackled of their fate, he did not
doubt.
            The air in the hold was stuffy, and it was dark.  It was just cold
enough to be uncomfortable but not exactly cold.  He could smell the salted
meats, listened to the creak of the ship, the squeaking of the rats. 
Sometimes, they would run over his feet, and he would jump and long desperately
to get away from the vermin, but couldn’t.  Even if he could break the
shackles, he wouldn’t.  He was too downhearted to try anyway.
            The ship skipped over the waves, the rowers hardly given a moment’s
reprieve.  And why would they?  They were slaves too.  He could hear the whip
above him, sometimes, echoing down in the hold.  They spent their lives
shackled to their bench, let up to walk to their pen once a day at sundown,
when they were replaced by the night rowers.  He listened to their footfalls,
the way their heavy chains would clink, the way one of them occasionally cried
out in pain when the whip fell across their back.
            Once, it would have made Fenris angry.  Now, it just made him
cringe.  Varania had come down to see him once, crying, and apologized, but
kept her distance all the same.  It had been two days, by the slaves’ shifts,
and Danarius seemed inclined to let him sit here.  He could stand, and relieve
some of the aching in his arms and wrists, but the shackles only chafed in
another direction, and the shackles were not positioned high enough to be
comfortable standing, and too high for sitting.
            Sleeping was almost impossible, and when he did nod off, it was
only moments before a rat would nibble at his toes, or the boat would tip in
one direction, and he would wake startled with either.  He imagined that, if he
could cry—once, long and hard—he would feel better about the entire situation. 
But he couldn’t, no matter how much he might want to.  The tears just wouldn’t
come, and he only felt numb.  Hawke had brought him all right, but to abandon
him when he needed him.  Like Fenris had abandoned him when he needed him.  The
elf wanted to say that it wasn’t the same, but… 
If Hawke wanted him gone, there were better ways.  If he had told him he wanted
him to leave Kirkwall, he would have.  It didn’t have to be like this.  Or
maybe Hawke had wanted it to be like this.  Anders would be pleased, he
imagined, yet he couldn’t even be angry about that.
            He looked up when the door opened, and was expecting one of the
slaves with water, but he cringed, and looked down when he saw the figure above
him.  He counted every footfall as the man descended into the dark.  The blue
orb of light floated above him, the door closed behind him.  Danarius stood in
front of him, glaring down at him.
            Fenris stared at the floorboards, flinching.  Danarius had had him
whipped—one lash for every year he had been gone.  It was fair.  It was more
than fair; it was even lenient.  Even the seawater dumped on his back—and it
had stung!—that was lenient too.  The way Danarius’ ring cut across his face
when he slapped him was also lenient.  But it wasn’t all of his punishment. 
No, not by half.  His master had told him what he would do to him when they
arrived back in Minrathous.
            “Fenris.”
            The elf shifted, but said nothing, unsure if he was supposed to say
anything.  The chains clinked.  His bare back brushed against the wooden pole,
and he flinched when the open wounds  scraped against the wood.
            “Can you imagine, even for a moment, how displeased I am with you?”
            He cringed again.  “No, Master.”
            A pause.  He took a step toward him.  “Look up at me.”  Fenris
tentatively lifted his head, staring up at him timidly.  He wanted to run, to
hide, but it was too late—far, far too late.  He had known how angry his master
would be when he sullenly followed him from the bar.  He had expected the
whipping, expected a great deal of punishment.  “Do you have any idea how much
money I’ve lost hunting you down, you stupid elf?”
            He flinched again, but more at his tone of voice than the insult. 
He expected his master to slap him, or have him whipped again, or any number of
other unpleasant things.  It was worse that he did not; it left Fenris guessing
what he would do.  “No.”
            “I will extract every copper penny from your hide, pet, and you
have a very steep debt.”
            He bowed his head again.  “It is your right, Master,” he answered
quietly, letting him know that he consented to his will fully.  Fenris listened
to the chains clinking above.  It’s night again, he thought.  His master’s hand
ran through his hair, almost tenderly.  He brushed over his scalp, held a lock
of hair between his fingers.  His master pushed his head up.  “Please,” he
begged him when he saw his master’s nakedness.  “Please, not this, Master…”
            “Is it very difficult, Fenris, for you to be my slave again?” he
asked him, his hand running through his short hair.
            His eyes squeezed shut.  “Please, no.”  His member brushed against
his lips, and something in him broke.  He had never been free, had he?  He had
always been his slave, disobedient only because his master wasn’t near.  His
lips parted, and pulled him into his mouth, accepting his master as dominant
over him.  It was how it had always been, hadn’t it?  Danarius just hadn’t been
around, that was the only difference.
            His master’s hand ran down the side of his face, his thumb
caressing his cheekbone.  It was different than before.  Before, he hadn’t
known what it was like to do this and want to do it.  He hadn’t really known
what sex was, because he had never done it.  But now he knew, and it hurt that
he knew the difference.  It hadn’t been as bad before.  He had never associated
sex with a pleasant memory, never associated it with something he had enjoyed. 
He had done this before and enjoyed it, and that seemed to make doing it now
hurt more.  Knowing that there was a difference, that it mattered, was so much
worse than his previous ignorance.  It tainted his good memories, made them
bitter.
            He heard a clicking noise above him as the lock pinning the
shackles to the post opened.  His wrists were still bound by the chain, but at
least no longer pinned above him.  He lowered his arms a bit, his wrists still
over his head as he dutifully worked to bring his master to orgasm.  Once he
did, it would be done. 
            He pulled back for a moment, swallowing his own revulsion, lowering
his hands into his lap.  He went back to him, without a word, using his hands
this time too.  Danarius pushed into his mouth, down his throat.  He gagged
once impulsively, and relaxed, breathing deeply through his nose.  He let it
fill his throat, fill him.  His life was not his own, and it never had been. 
It wasn’t even supposed to be.  It was against the natural order of things,
wasn’t it?  He was a slave by nature, and a slave by design—everything Danarius
wanted.
            His master stepped away from him and he gasped involuntarily when
he felt him brush against his tonsils, back out of his lips, dripping and still
hard.  He looked down, hands in his lap, watching him cautiously, even when he
knew what was going on.  Danarius touched the back of his neck, running his
fingers back up his hair.  “I have something for you, pet.”  The magister
dropped something in front of him, and he opened his eyes to look.  He wanted
to cringe away from it, to run, to at least shrink back from the small piece of
leather.  He stared at it.  It was a perfect twin to the one he had tossed into
the sea in Seheron.
            He cringed, and lifted it from the floor, the chain between his
wrists clinking with the movement.  His eyes closed in defeat before he hung
his head in submission.  Slowly, he lifted his hands to his throat.  Fenris’
eyes slid open when he felt the leather touch his neck.  It was like his arms
were moving and he had no control over it.  He fought down a desire to wheel
away when it circled around his neck, the soft, supple leather brushing against
the lyrium.  The chain touched his skin, getting in the way when he went to
buckle it.  The leather threaded through the metal buckle, and he fastened it. 
Absently, the moved the collar slightly, checking to see if it wasn’t too
tight.  The small metal ring in the front of it hung against his chest where a
leash could be attached, one of his fingers touching it, his heart pounding in
terror of what that collar meant.
            A collar, to Fenris, meant slavery:  It was a tool of subjugation
and servitude.  You put a collar on something to control it, to establish
dominance over it.  You leashed an animal, or a criminal.  Or a slave.
            He would be lucky if Danarius ever let him take it off again.
            “Kneel.”  Fenris shifted, kneeling properly on one knee, perfectly
obedient.  “You know what you are.”  He said nothing, eyes fixed on the
floorboards, the collar heavy around his throat.  “Fenris.”
            He flinched at his tone of voice, half-expecting him to slap him. 
The blow never came.  “Your slave, Master,” he said, every word choked out of
his throat, every word painful to say.
“It’s been such a long time, pet.”  His hands trailed down his back, dragging
across the open flesh, making the elf squirm.  “You do remember, Fenris, who
your master is.”
            “You, Master,” he whispered, his stomach twisting into a knot just
to say it aloud.  “It’s only ever been you.”  But it was also like a weight had
been lifted, a mantle of responsibility taken off of him.  His life was not his
own, would never be again, and it meant he didn’t have to worry any more, or
think, or anything.  It was somewhere close to relieving.
            “Not that Hawke fellow?”
            He shook his head numbly.  The metal ring on the collar around his
neck brushed against his skin.  It felt so much heavier than it was.
            “Did he ever bring you to his bed, pet?”
            Fenris was reluctant, but didn’t know how to keep from answering. 
“I went… willingly, Master.  I wasn’t his slave…  I had thought…  I had
hoped—that we were friends.”  And I destroyed that relationship too.
            “Oh, Fenris,” he whispered, touching his shoulders.  “No one else
wants you, Fenris—my beautiful, perfect wolf.”  He stared down at his hands,
and shook, because he believed him.  It may have been Fenris’ fault, but Hawke
had gone to Anders.  And no one else had raised a finger when Fenris had gone
with Danarius, had they?  They had just consented to Hawke’s decision, despite
that Isabela and Varric had been…  Well, maybe he still didn’t know what a
“friend” was supposed to be.  “You’re broken, my little wolf.  You’re half-mad,
and you don’t even act like a man most of the time, pet.”  A pause and his hand
traced the lyrium on his shoulder, pushing him to lean forward a bit more. 
“But you are so beautiful.”
            Fenris was quiet while his master healed his back, the cut across
his cheek.  He pushed him still further, and the elf fell to all fours, the
mage working at healing where the whip had lain across his legs, over his ass. 
When he spoke, his voice rattled in his throat.  “Am I beautiful, Master?”  He
bit back a sob.  “Am I broken?”
            “Yes and yes, pet.”  When Danarius cupped his face, his slave
leaned into his touch.  The magister would abuse him, would use him and
manipulate him, maybe even lie to him, but at least he wanted him.  It was more
than Fenris could say about anyone else.  “You are mine.”
            “Yes,” he whispered, and gasped when his master took him.  He
flinched, shaking, and stayed still, his forearms flat against the floor.  His
forehead touched his hands.  He felt like he should cry, but he didn’t.  There
weren’t any tears left.  He had cried an ocean of tears in his life, and there
just weren’t any more.  And why should he feel a need to cry?
            He bit his lower lip, willing to stay quiet, to make no sound at
all.  It wasn’t that bad, he tried to tell himself.  He’ll stop eventually. 
Eventually…
            He was pushed over, onto his back.  The chains clinked, and
Danarius plucked the chain between his wrists, lifting it over his head,
pinning Fenris’ wrists to the floor.  “Open your eyes, pet.  I’ve let you look
away from this often enough.”
            His eyes opened, and Danarius hit him when he tried to look away,
so he watched.  There weren’t any other options.  He had to do whatever he told
him to do.  He had thought that he had hated it when he took him from behind,
but now he realized that that had been a blessing.  Not having to see his
master sweat and push, and enjoy the act had been a blessing.
            He had liked watching Hawke.  He had loved it.  He had loved the
way his eyes would darken with lust, the way his jaw would set as if making
love was the most serious of tasks.  He had liked watching his muscles tense
and flex, watching him gasp and moan.
            Fenris flinched, cringing, then opened his eyes
again—quickly—before Danarius noticed.  He whined, but the blood from the tear
made it wetter, easier to push deeper into him.  “Master, you’re…”  You’re
hurting me.
            “Don’t complain—I don’t care if you’re hurt.”
            He had never done this before.  Danarius had never hurt him like
this before, never treated him like this.  His thighs tensed, and he thought
the tear must have widened, but his mouth clamped shut.  I can endure.  I’m
stronger than this, and I can endure.
           It was so hard.  He had used to think that he would have preferred
it if Danarius had beat him bloody and abused him like that other magister had
when he had raped him, because his master had always made him feel as breakable
as a porcelain doll before.  His master had slaked his lust on him before many
times, but never hurt him when he did it.  He used oils, and prepared him, and
was gentle.  Was it because he had ran?
            Fenris had ran, and he would never grant him that kindness again? 
He was terrified of what that meant for him, for his future.  He bit his lip
until he felt it bleeding.  He gasped, his whole body trying to tense, wanting
to push him away, to make it stop.
            “Pet, if you stop tensing…”  He pushed into him, as far into him as
he could go.  “It won’t hurt as much—and if you try to close your legs again,
I’ll beat you bloody.  Do you understand, you stupid elf?”
            “Yes, Master,” he whispered, pulling his legs farther apart, and he
just accepted it the way the shore accepts the way the waves beat against it. 
Without the waves, it wasn’t a shore, but only sand and rock.
            Danarius wasn’t just his master.  He was everything.  Everything…
            Fenris’ eyes opened wide, and he shivered, and shook, and even
though he was awake now, he could hear his master’s voice, feel his hands on
him.  He flew from the empty bed, shivering, but not from cold.  Sweat clung to
his naked body, his lower lip trembled.  He stared at the bed, and could not
shake the feel of his master’s touch.  He felt the subtle weight of the collar
on his neck as clearly as he felt the floor under his feet.  His hand went over
his neck, half-expecting to feel the tooled leather of the collar.  His throat
was bare.
            “Thank the Maker,” he breathed.
            You’re mine,the voice whispered in flawless Tevene.
            The lyrium brightened with his temper, washing over his body.  The
rage consumed him.  “I’m not yours!” he screamed into the empty mansion,
looking around wildly for…  A ghost, an image—something.  There was nothing
there.  Nothing but dark, lonely shadows and faded wealth.  “Not any more,
Danarius—damn you, and go to hell!”
            But that was how it would have been, had Hawke not chosen to
fight.  He would be Danarius’ pet forever.  Or…  No, Danarius had hinted that
he hadn’t wanted to kill him; he had been amused at the idea, even more amused
that Fenris had believed it.  What was that thing that Danarius had told him
once?  If he believed it were true, it would be, or something like that?
            He heard, dimly, the magister laughing.  He screamed in an effort
to drown it out.  He had something in his hands, and he threw it—with all of
his might—against the wall.  The vase shattered, but the laughter had stopped.
            The lyrium guttered and receded, leaving him shaking, but not with
his anger; with fear.  He shivered and tried to sleep again, but couldn’t.  It
was just a dream, but it had felt… so real…
            Danarius was dead, he reminded himself.  Dead, and that was the end
of it.
            The lyrium was bound into his soul, seared deeper than any mortal
wound.  He would carry the lyrium with him into the Fade when his soul passed
on, evidenced when Hawke had brought him into the Fade, and he had betrayed him
there.  Danarius had been the one to weave it into him.  What if…  Could his
master’s soul linger on?  Unable to move on, because he had bound a piece of
himself to Fenris?  And when the elf dreamed…
            He shivered again.  He didn’t think he would be sleeping much
anymore.
 
Shaislyn whispered, "I'm going to kill him."
Varania swallowed hard.  Despite everything, she still did not want her brother
to die.  He was her brother, her only brother--by blood if by nothing else.
 Leto had done so much for her, or tried to, but the reality of it was that the
person she knew as her brother had “died” a long time ago, and if she had ever
needed evidence of that, it was that Fenris was so radically different from
Leto in every way.  She looked down for a moment, and then back up at her son.
 "Shai..."  Her eyes watered.  Was this the last time she would see him too?
 Fenris had killed everyone who had gone after him--everyone.
He took a deep breath, eyes closed for a moment, then opened again.  "I can go
when he’s alone--I won’t attack him with that Hawke person around.”  He made a
face.  “I’ll wait, until he’s… drunk or asleep.  I’ll kill him.”  The way his
jaw set told her that Shaislyn would do more than merely kill him, given half
the chance.
Varania flinched at the conviction in his voice.  Leto had used to sound like
that sometimes too, and she knew how stubborn he had been.  “Shai, it’s too
dangerous, and it won’t change anything.  Just let it go.”
He made a face, pacing back and forth in the room--which was difficult,
considering the room was only about six paces wide.  "I want him to suffer," he
whispered.
Varania stared at him.  Revenge was a dangerous path to stray down, and she did
not want to see him venture upon it.  With Leto gone, she realized, Shaislyn
was all she had left.  Too late, she knew that she did not want to lose him.
 “I don’t want to lose you, Shai,” she said aloud, and knew it was true.  He
stopped, still as a deer in the forest.  “Shai, we have lost everyone.  I don’t
want to lose you too.”
She saw anger twist across his face, then grief, leaving only heartache in his
eyes.  “You wait seventeen years to tell me you care about me.  And mean it.”
“I’m sorry, Shaislyn,” she whispered.
He stared straight ahead, unmoving.  “I know.”  He blinked, his arm reaching
up, fingers touched the griffin over his left shoulder, and she knew what he
was thinking about.
She was quiet as she watched her son.  “Please, Shai, I don’t want you getting
hurt.”
His teeth clenched, and he resumed his pacing, his arm falling away.  “I can
take him.”
Varania wanted to slap him, wanted to shake him and scream.  He hadn't been
there, though.  He hadn't seen what Fenris did, what he could do.  "Please,
don't try.  If you love me, Shaislyn, don't try.  You won't kill him; you'll
just get killed."
By the set of his jaw, she knew he wanted to argue, except raising their voices
was dangerous.  The sailors might be listening, and suddenly all the world was
dangerous to both of them.  "It's his fault that we’re both going to be
slaves."
"Don't...  Shai, please..."  She swallowed hard.  “Shai, listen; it’s not worth
it.  What will you get out of revenge?”
He stared at her, and a silence fell over them.  She understood his desire, but
she could not endorse it.  He finally sighed.  "I’ll… let it go.  For now.”
She breathed a sigh of relief.  "Thank you, Shaislyn."
            The half-elf paced back and forth in the room, and came to a sudden
halt.  “Danarius gave me papers that made me part of the Soporati class--
they’re in Minrathous,” he said slowly.  He considered that, wondered if there
was any tangible evidence left that could challenge that.  Danarius had
obviously done something shady to authenticate the documents.
            “You’re Liberati,” Varania reminded him.  He looked up at her.  She
crossed her arms.  “It wouldn’t be hard to prove; you were a slave to the
Imperial army.”
            He had almost forgotten that.  He swiped his hand through his hair
in thought.  “Hell,” he muttered, and resumed his pacing.  “Didn’t those burn?”
            “Sometimes there are multiple records,” she said.  “In Minrathous,
probably, but Qarinus is a good bet too.”
            He snorted.  “Imperials and their paperwork.”  He chewed on his
lower lip in thought.  “I’m sure Danarius took that into account.  I’m sure he
would not have done anything to jeopardize that status.”
            She shrugged, sighing.  “He might have; you wouldn’t remain
Soporati for long; you’d be Laetan when we got back.”
            He stared upwards.  If Varania went back into slavery, they might
look up the breeding book to determine if Shaislyn would have to be enslaved to
Agasius Danarius too.  Even if by some miracle he didn’t, they might discover
what had happened in Seheron.  He pinched the bridge of his nose in thought.
 “Mother, when was the tourney--the one Leto won?”
            She snorted a laugh.  “Which one?  He won many tourneys.”  She made
a sour expression.  “There’s a reason Danarius favoured him so much; he won him
a lot of money.”
            He made a face, knowing his mother still suspected his desires to
kill Fenris.  She was, again, subtly warning him that it was a bad idea.  “The
last one.”
            She made a face.  “I’m…  Not sure.  Before you were born--a couple
months before.”
            His eyebrows rose.  Not being born a slave, in this instance, might
be all the difference here.  “I just need to find documentation of the Tourney,
the documentation of when Danarius freed you.”
            Her heart skipped a beat.  “You wouldn’t have to come with me,” she
said, doing her best to keep her jealousy out of her voice.  Slavery, at this
point, was very uncertain to her.  True, it couldn’t be much worse than an
alienage, as she was a mage regardless, but she didn’t know what Agasius
Danarius would do with her.  He could even have her made Tranquil, out of
spite, and there was not much she could do about it.
            He frowned.  “I’ll try to find the documents.”  He sighed.  “Maybe…
 maybe I can find something to get you out of this.”  He flinched.  “Even try
to buy you out of slavery--I’ll do anything I can, I promise.”
            She looked away.  “We don’t have any other options.”
            He started toward the door, and stopped.  “I need to get to
Minrathous.”
            She frowned.  “Why?”
            His mind was racing.  “I’ll join the Circle.  I’ll see if I can get
them to appeal it.”  He took a step forward, then a step back, thinking hard.
 He took a deep breath.  “Maybe I can come to some kind of agreement--any kind
of agreement.”  He pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought.  “Maybe
Agasius will be reasonable.”
            “I doubt it,” Varania muttered darkly.
            He ignored her comment; it was counter-productive.  “And if he’s
not, maybe I can find someone who is.”  He bit his lip for a moment.  “You’re a
Laetan Circle mage, in line to be an apprentice to a magister.  Most of the
paperwork was even drawn up.”  He sighed, and paced back and forth as he
thought.  “And I’m…”
            “An apostate.”
            “Not for long.”
            She sighed, struggling for a moment to explain the politics of the
Circle to him.  “Shai, you’ll be a Laetan Circle mage with no money, no power,
and a reputation for theft and subterfuge.  Believe me, the Magisterium and the
Circle might find you useful, but not trustworthy; you’ll have a hard time.”
 It was so much more complicated than that, but how could she explain it
properly to him?  He knew nothing of politics.
            He made a face, started to say something, and stopped.  He blinked.
 “No.”  He stopped his pacing, his head jerking up.  “Danarius was going to
name me his heir after you.  It wasn’t finalized, but I can find the paperwork.
 And he made me a citizen, so I have that too.  I have enough--I might even be
able to claim Altus bloodlines.”
            Varania blinked slowly.  The possibility had never even occurred to
her.  “His family will oppose it,” she reminded him, before he got too hopeful.
 “And they have the money and the power to see that it never happens.”
            “Why?” he demanded.  “Danarius was going to go through with it.
 Signatures are even in place--a notary, witnesses.  It just hadn’t been
filed.”  He breathed a noisy sigh.  “Maker.  That’s my fault.”
            “Shai?”
            He raked his hands through his hair.  “If I wasn’t so stubborn…  I
should have joined the Circle.  If I had only joined before we left, this
wouldn’t be such an issue.”  He swore.  Varania scowled.  “Iwould be named his
heir.  I could just get back to Minrathous and free you immediately, hassle
free.”  He slammed his fist into the wall.  Varania flinched at the sound it
made.  “Damn it.”  He sighed, leaning heavily against the wall.  “It’s all my
fault.”  He stared downwards.  “I would be his heir, end of story.  Why didn’t
I…?  Hell.”
            “You couldn’t have known, Shaislyn.”
            He shook his head.  “He could have died on the crossing alone--he
had a heart attack.  He could have died then, and it would be the same.  I even
thought about it.  I just…  Why didn’t I just…?”
            She touched his shoulder.  “Shai, it’s not your fault.”
            He looked at her, and said nothing as he continued to blame
himself.  Hadn’t he always blamed himself?  Hadn’t Varania inadvertently taught
him to blame himself?  He stepped away from her, withdrawing inward, not
meeting her eyes.  “I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing again for something he
could not have known, could not have anticipated.  But he was always
apologizing for things that were not his fault.  “I…  I have to fix this,” he
sighed.  Before she could say anything, he opened the door and all but ran from
the room.
 
Isabela meandered up the stairs, and found Fenris sitting alone on the sofa,
staring blankly at the cold fireplace.  She hadn’t seen him since the incident
with his sister, thinking that maybe he would come around on his own, but it
had been three days, and she figured it would be best if someone went to talk
to him.
It wasn’t just about sex, though she did adamantly believe that a romp in bed
might do him some real good.  “Hello, Fenris,” she said brightly, smiling with
scarcely concealed lust.
He glanced at her once, then looked back at the fireplace.  “Hello, Isabela.” 
His voice was hollow, flat.  A voice devoid of life.
She decided to ignore it, for the moment.  “How are you feeling?” she inquired,
sitting down cross-legged on the sofa’s arm.
He did not look at her to respond, “Alive.”
She peered at his face.  His eyes were sunken, cheeks a little ashen.  He
looked like he hadn’t slept since the Hanged Man.  “You don’t look very alive. 
You look more dead.”
He sighed.  “What do you want, Isabela?”
The pirate frowned.  He was more broody than usual.  Maybe she should just go… 
“Fenris, I’m your friend; I really just wanted to see how you were doing.”  She
cocked her head to the side.  “And maybe have sex, but I can see you aren’t up
for that.”
He made a face.  “I haven’t slept in days; I’m exhausted.  I…”  He shook his
head.  “I just want to forget all about Varania.”
Isabela hesitated.  “You don’t mean that.”  He didn’t respond.  She uncrossed
her legs, fidgeting.  “How about some rum?”  He shook his head, but otherwise
said nothing.  She sighed, staring down at the floor.  She slid over to him,
sidling up beside him.  He barely noticed her.  “Fenris, I know what it’s like
to have family stab you in the back—it sucks.  But you have got to believe me
that it gets better.”
He thought about her life, everything that she had told him.  Her mother had
married her to a man that used and abused her—selling her off, in her words
“like so much furniture”.  Had that been a betrayal?  Yes, he supposed it was. 
Isabela had not wanted the marriage, and her mother had forced her into it
anyway.  Her only option had been to run from it, and she had, his death being
her only real option and chance at a real life.  They weren’t that different. 
And he didn’t even know Varania, so maybe it wasn’t as cold-hearted as what
Isabela’s mother had done.
“I don’t,” he said honestly.  “I feel like I can’t trust anyone.”
Her golden eyes softened for a moment, then she smiled.  “Then you’re finally
learning how the world works,” she said brightly.  “You can’t trust anyone—not
completely.”
“Not even you?” he teased, but his heart wasn’t really in it.
She laughed.  “Especially not me.”  She raised an eyebrow.  “Now, how would you
feel if we got you out of those pants, hmm?”
Minutes later, he was naked from the waist down, the Rivaini woman kneeling on
the floor in front of him, her touch like a gift from something divine.
Fenris leaned his head back against the sofa, taking a long, deep breath. 
Isabela ran her hands up his bare thighs.  It was more uncomfortable than
usual—maybe that was because he was so tired; he didn’t know.  It was always
uncomfortable when something touched the lyrium, but usually in situations like
this, lust won out over pain.  Or he had just learned to associate one with the
other when he was aroused.
She bent her head between his legs, her fingers caressing him.  He opened his
eyes, watching her.  The lyrium surged brightly, and he moaned, his fingers
digging into her hair.  She looked up at him, then back down.
His back stiffened.  A whore house—a Rivaini whore, and he had kept asking her
to stop, and she wouldn’t…  And after… after…
Fenris pushed her away, trembling.  “Not right now,” he told her, his eyes
wide.  “I can’t right now.”
She paused, sitting back on her heels.  She licked her damp lips, frowning. 
The lyrium flickered, then dimmed, wilting with his arousal.  “Fenris…?”
            He shook his head.  He had never told her.  It had never been an
issue either.  The two didn’t even look alike.  But it had been the last time
Danarius had raped him.  He flinched.  He hadn’t even thought of it as rape. 
He had thought he was past all this.  He had thought…  No, he realized.  This
isn’t something you get over; you just learn to live with it.
He had had to trust Danarius when he was a slave; there hadn’t been any other
choice.  He had trusted him with his life, with his every action, his every
whim.  He had to.  Danarius had never earned that trust, so had never exactly
betrayed it. 
Hawke had told Fenris that he didn’t care if Danarius killed him.  Maybe the
mage had just been angry when he spoke, but the words had stung, and that left
his trust broken too. 
Varania--he had wished with everything he had that he could find family and
peace in her.  And, maybe, even love.  He had wanted so badly to love his
little sister, to meet her and for her to hug him and tell him how much she had
missed him.  For her, too, to betray what little faith he had put in her was
heartbreaking.
Was there no one in the world he could trust and believe in?  Maybe that was
why he wanted to believe in the Maker and Andraste.  Maybe that was why he
listened to Sebastian, and wished he could find the peace that the priest had. 
He was jealous of Sebastian, for being able to believe in something so un-
provable and unbelievable that gave him so much peace and satisfaction.
“I need to be alone,” he whispered.
Isabela hesitated, and left.
 
Aveline grumbled to herself as she paced down the street.
            “Your boyfriend won’t let you visit your friends?” she had asked
Hawke skeptically.
            Hawke shrugged.  “I don’t want to talk about it, but suffice it to
say that if Anders were a god, he’d be the Maker, and cannot tolerate the
existence of other deities.”
            Aveline snorted a laugh.  “I like the analogy.”
            Which is why I’m here, she thought darkly.  Not that she was very
much against trying to help Fenris.  Rather, she wanted to see him back to
“normal” as much as anyone else, but she would have preferred to take him out
to clear out slavers or something.  This was a little beyond the call of duty,
as it were.
            And, moreover, she was certain that killing people he hated would
at least be therapeutic for him.  She smiled to herself.  She’d go visit for a
bit, ask him to go for a bit of a walk—someone had mentioned a possible slaver
camp outside the city; it was worth a look, and she didn’t think Fenris would
mind.
            At least, it would be easier if he would come.  It would be much
more difficult if he refused, but it was worth a shot.
            She rapped on the door and showed herself in.  “Fenris, if you’re
doing anything embarrassing, please stop it,” she announced loudly.
            He walked out onto the inner balcony, his hands resting lightly on
the banister.  “I’ll stop dancing then,” he said.
            She laughed.  “Can you dance?”
            “Better than you,” he said pleasantly.  She started walking up the
stairs.  She had expected moping of epic levels, legendary brooding.  This was…
odd.  He leaned against the rail.  “Especially in all that armor.”
            Well, he didn’t seem as broody and depressed as she had
anticipated—but maybe that was an act.  Or maybe…  She frowned as she got close
to him.  “Fenris.”  He looked up.  “No—look at me.”  Her eyes narrowed as she
advanced on him.  His pupils were dilated, the black almost completely having
swallowed the green.  She sighed.  “You’re on drugs.”
            His lips curved into a smile.  “Want some?”
            She raked her hands through her hair.  “Why?”
            He crossed his arms, and laughed, as if it were funny.  She felt
like hitting him.  “It doesn’t hurt,” he laughed.  “Oh, I should have tried
this years ago—it’s amazing; it doesn’t hurt.”
            “Fenris, why would you do this?” she asked him again.  She knew he
wasn’t exactly law-abiding, but this was illegal—very illegal.  And what if he
took too much?  “You could die.”
            He swung his head to look back at her.  “Because I can’t feel the
lyrium.  Maybe because I can sleep when I’m high.”  He laughed, and covered his
mouth with his hand.  “Oh, I wish you could’ve seen the look on Danarius’ face
when I killed him.”  He laughed again.
            Her fingers curled into a fist, then she took a deep breath, and
let it out slowly, lowering her arm.  “Fenris…”
            He turned towards her.  “Aveline.  Your name is very pretty—I never
told you.  Did I?  I don’t remember.”  He laughed again.  “But I don’t remember
anything!”
            Maybe if she hit him, it would sober him a bit.  She reached toward
him.  “Fenris—“
            He took her hand, and pulled her toward him, his other hand falling
to her hip.  She glared at him.  “No, I lead.”
            “Fenris…” she complained as he stepped back, then forward.  “You
said you’d stop dancing.”
            “I’ll stop dancing if you stop yelling at me—is that fair?” he
inquired.
            She stared at his face, wondering how long it would be before the
high wore off.  She sighed.  “Fine.  I’ll stop yelling at you.”
            He let go of her, and bowed low—graceful and practiced.  He skirted
by her, into the next room.  He danced on his way there, and he was humming. 
It was the weirdest thing she had ever seen.
            “What’s that tune?” she asked, her voice gentle.
            “I don’t know—Someone used to sing it to me,” he said.
            She rolled her eyes, following after him.  “Who?”
            “My mother, I assume.”  She froze, wondering if he even knew what
he was saying.  He looked back at her, stopping in his tracks.  “She’s dead.” 
He started humming again, then said, “I wish I knew the words.”
            “Maybe Varania knew the words.”
            “No, she can’t sing,” he said, dismissing the idea immediately. 
“She can’t dance, can’t draw, or make up stories, or use her imagination, but
she can memorize facts, oh, and also she can be a massive cunt.”  He skirted
over the window, throwing it open to let in the breeze.  “She’s still more
talented than I am.”  He whirled back to her.  “I am good at killing things
though.”
            Aveline pursed her lips, irritated.  “Fenris, drugs aren’t the way
to cope with what Varania did.”
            He stopped, the wisp of a smile on his face fading.  “What would
you know about it?” he asked.  He strode back toward her.  “You don’t know what
this is like.”
            “I’ve lost people who were important to me—we all have,” she said,
her voice taking on an edge she had not intended.  “It’s not over.  Give it
some time.  Try to understand her.”
            His temper rose.  “Her?” he demanded.  “She sold me out for… for a
job offer!”
            Her jaw set.  Isabela had related to her the event in its entirety,
but she still had not been there to witness it.  “Isabela said that Varania
told you that you freed her from slavery—“
            “She also said that I wanted the lyrium in my skin—and she deceived
me and betrayed me to Danarius, so why should I believe anything she told me?”
            Aveline bristled.  “Because she told you that because she wanted
you to know—she could have just left without saying anything.”
            His eyes narrowed.  “Isabela needs to shut her damn mouth.”
            “Did you ever think that life might have been very difficult for
her after you freed her?  You ever thought that maybe it was her only way
out—out of… poverty.  For all we know, she was living in the street.”
            Fenris stared at her.  “That’s not an excuse!”
            Aveline straightened.  “Maybe she knew what she was doing was
awful, but she also thought it was the only way she’d ever see you again—did
you think of that?  Maybe she thought she could take care of you.”
            “Get out,” he snapped.
            Aveline started to say something, then stopped.  “Fine.  If you
want to be embittered and miserable your entire life, then go ahead, Fenris. 
Push away everyone who reaches out to you and keep alienating yourself, because
that’s obviously the right thing to do.”  She turned and left, stomping down
the stairs.  The door slammed on the way out.
 
Hawke leaned back in the chair, his eyes straying to the drying ink on the
parchment.  First, he would write this letter to Carver, then he would go see
about Fenris.  Both Isabela and Aveline had commented that Fenris seemed to be
in a downward spiral.  He reached for the pen, and stopped, pulling his arm
back.
No--no he couldn’t go to Fenris.  He remembered Anders, how hurt he had been
when he had admitted that he had kissed Fenris at the beach.  He flinched.
“How could you?” the apostate had asked him.  Hawke hadn’t been able to answer,
not without getting defensive, so he didn’t dare say a word.  He had spent over
an hour apologizing in a variety of different ways, and Anders hadn’t talked to
him in two days, just disappearing down to Darktown and hadn’t come back.  When
he did, he told him it would be best if he just stayed away from Fenris.  Hawke
had told him it would be impossible, and they had eventually come to the
agreement that Hawke would ask Anders first if he spent any time with Fenris,
and absolutely not to spend time with him alone.
It had seemed extreme, but Hawke understood.  Anders did not want to put the
temptation in front of Hawke again.  Anders didn’t want to jeopardize their
relationship, and neither did Hawke.  Besides, Anders had relented and didn’t
ban Hawke from Fenris, per se.  He just didn’t want them to spend time alone. 
Given their past, it wasn’t an obscene request.
Though it galled him, he needed a chaperone.
The apostate stared up at the ceiling.  “Maker.  What am I, five?” he
muttered.  Isabela would refuse; she would hate to get involved in this
melodrama.  He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.  Obviously, not
Anders, unless he wanted to see them both try to kill each other.  Varric. 
Varric was always a good choice for diplomacy.
He frowned.  But not always for personal matters, he thought, tapping his head
against the back of the chair.  He’ll say “no” on principle.
            Varric was a great friend—an all around great guy.  But personal
matters?  Fenris hurt over what had happened to his sister?
            Varric was betrayed by his brother too.  Maybe he would be more
understanding than I am giving him credit for.  I can ask.
            Satisfied, he picked up the pen again, and began on his letter.
 
            Varric stared at the contents of his mug, watching the ripples in
the ale.  Hawke stared at him expectantly, almost hopefully.  The dwarf looked
up at him.  “I’ll go up with you to Hightown, and see if we can talk to him,”
he said slowly.  “But I think Fenris would rather talk to you alone.”
            “Aren’t you two friends?”
            Varric shrugged, propping an elbow on the chair’s arm.  He was
friends with everyone.  “We drink and gamble, and sometimes we even talk.  Of
course we’re friends.  And I enjoy the elf’s company.” 
            He frowned.  “I’m glad you stopped him from killing Varania.  That
wouldn’t have made this better for him.”
            Varric took a sip of his ale, and set the mug back down.  “I wanted
to kill Bartrand—he even deserved it.  But when I saw what happened to him—what
that idol did to him…”  He shook his head.  “That wasn’t the man I wanted to
kill.  Same face, that’s all.”  He sighed.  “What’s become of him now—that’s
worse than death.”
            Hawke frowned, wondering what Varania had done.  Back to being a
servant, he supposed, if that had ever been true.  “I don’t think Fenris feels
that way about Varania.”
            “Give him a few weeks, Hawke.  Let him grieve—that’s my advice to
you,” he said with a decisive nod.  “I’ll go with you to talk to him, but let’s
leave him alone for a few more days.  He’s a man, not a little girl.  I’ll
invite him down to the Hanged Man again, let him know he still has friends,
whatever he chooses to believe.  Eventually, he’ll come around on his own.”
            Hawke frowned.  “What if he doesn’t?”
            Varric made a face.  “Then we sit him down and hash this out over a
few pints of ale, or maybe something stronger.  Give him a few more days at
least though.”
            The apostate considered, then nodded.  “You’re right.”
            “I just think pestering him right now is going to do more harm than
good.”
            Hawke almost laughed; Varric was right, and it was so simple Hawke
hadn’t thought of it.  Fenris was testy when it came down to it, and just as
likely to get mad that they were prying and trying to help, which would only
make the moping more extreme.  And, if the elf settled down and got better on
his own, so much the better.
 
            Shaislyn had alternately locked himself in Danarius’ study and the
library.  Books on lineage laws lay open, tabbed and bookmarked.  He needed his
mother here.  She had been studying this crap--he was in over his head and he
knew it.  He sat in a chair, his elbows on the table, head in his hands.  He
stared down at the words on the page, wishing with everything he had that he
had sat in on more of the lectures, that it would just make sense.  None of it
made sense.  It was just a bunch of legal jargon, and he might as well be
reading another language.
            I speak four languages fluently and none of this makes sense, he
thought with some sarcasm.
            He glanced at his notes at his left side, and sighed.  Most of it
was just a list of references, hasty scribbles when he needed to reword
something.  He had half a mind to burn it down--at least the library.  How did
politicians do it?  And to think, his mother liked this crap.  He stared at the
books and sighed, giving up for the time being.  He needed to go pester the
Circle again anyway.
            He opened the big floor-to-ceiling window and leaped outside.
 There was an instant of falling before his magic surrounded him, and he was
flying.  It was so much faster to fly around Minrathous than walk, the way the
city twisted and turned.  Up in the air, he could see the pattern the city
made, but he wondered how many of the residents knew that the oldest buildings
and streets were in a very particular, very old, spell form.
            He landed in an open window in the Circle Tower.  “Tower” was
somewhat of a misnomer, though.  It was closer to a palace, and the Templars he
was not at all afraid of; they were closer to a personal guard to the mages, a
private police as it were and they treated even the lowliest apprentice
respectfully.  He had come in through the library, and an apprentice was
staring at him with distaste.  He fluffed his feathers, and the apprentice
rose, maybe to try to scare him back out the window, except that Shaislyn
changed back in the same instant.  The kid immediately sat back down.  “Shit,”
the Laetan kid muttered.  “You have to stop doing that.”
            “I will,” he promised with a superior smirk.  “As soon as everyone
else stops using magic all the time.  Not my fault that’s what I’m good at.”
            “It’s not the same,” he argued.
            The half-elf made a face.  “It’s exactly the same.”
            “What’s exactly the same?” an elven girl inquired, peering around
the corner.
            Shaislyn smiled sweetly at her.  “If you guys can set curtains on
fire all the time, I should be allowed fly around the building.”
            “Shitting on books,” the Laetan kid laughed.
            The elven mage smiled shyly.  “You’ll just end up carrying letters
back and forth, I guarantee it.”
            The moment Shaislyn had gone to the Circle, he hadn’t bothered to
hide his abilities.  What was the point any more?  It had quickly become the
gossip of the Tower and all the younger mages wanted to learn the talent.  He
wondered if not hiding it had been a good idea.  Then again, they had
questioned him on his abilities while they decided which mage he should
apprentice under, and he had to tell them.  “Yeah, I do that already,” he
muttered.  “See ya.”  He excused himself quickly and left the library without
further incident.
            He had to wait to be able to talk with the First Enchanter, who was
often easier to access than any other higher-ranking mage.  One of the Senior
Enchanters walked by him, and she stopped when she recognized him.  “Oh!  Are
you here about who you’ll apprentice under?”
            “Yes and no,” he said.
            She stopped, clasping her hands behind her back.  “Well, I think we
finally worked that out.  We’re glad you came to Minrathous, Shaislyn.”  She
smiled, and not at all in a way that he liked.  He knew that look, but he had
been expecting it.  In fact, he had been relying on it since he had seen the
look on their faces when he had confessed his abilities.  They saw profit in
him.  Well, good.  If he could prove he was useful, it would be easier to save
his mother.  She might have said more, but the door opened, and he looked up.
            “Shaislyn?  You can come in now,” the First Enchanter’s assistant
said.  Shaislyn followed him inside, and he led him to a second door.  Shaislyn
stepped through, closing it behind him.  They exchanged brief pleasantries,
talked about Shaislyn’s future apprenticeship, how quickly he should be able to
reach his Harrowing.
            “I’m looking forward to it,” he said without enthusiasm.  “But I am
more curious about the review of my request?”
            The other frowned for a moment, then brightened.  “Oh.  That.”  He
shrugged.  “Everything is in place, but it will take some time to clear, and
understand that the family will fight it, given…”  Shaislyn knew what he was
about to say by the way the man’s eyes roamed over his face.
            The half-elf sighed.  “Right.  But there’s nothing else I can do
except to wait for it?”
            He nodded.  “You have to wait for the review.  The Magisterium is
still in debate.”
            He was unimpressed.  “It’s been a week.”
            “And it is a very sensitive issue.”
            His lips pressed into a thin line.  “My lineage can be proven.  My
father even agreed upon it.  I have the documents, and witnesses, and a
notary’s seal.  What more do I need?”
            The First Enchanter raised an eyebrow.  “Realistically, Shaislyn?
 You did all the right things.  Realistically in Tevinter politics, there was
nothing you could do.  Between you and I, the notary will likely be dead by
week’s end.  The witnesses will deny it, and questionable doubt will be cast on
the papers.”
            Shaislyn shot to his feet, exploding in anger, “I look like that
family.”
            “Too elven,” the mage said with a disregarding shrug.  “And they
can’t approve it just based on that, and they can’t approve it even if you can
prove your bloodlines; that would mean every bastard child born could claim the
title.”
            He made a face.  “I don’t want the titles, or the money, or assets,
or anything.  Just the bloodline.”
            He leaned back in his chair.  “That’s the one thing the family will
fight you the most for.”
            Shaislyn stared at him.  “I am an Altus mage, like it or not, andI
want the damned name.”
            He shrugged.  “Marry an Altus girl.”
            He made a face.  “Very funny.”
            The First Enchanter sighed.  “Shaislyn, I want to help you; I do.
 But getting angry won’t do anything.  It is what it is.  Sell your ability.
 Make a name for yourself.  Rise to the ranks; I’ll even help you.  The most
you can aspire to is to marry into it--marry a second daughter, one without
magic.  You’re a mage, and you may even be able to prove your lineage, even if
you can’t claim the title, so it’s not impossible for you, but it will be
difficult.  If that is what you want, this is how you have to play the game.”
            He glanced away, frustrated.  “The rules need to change.”
            The other regarded him loftily.  “I just gave you a perfectly
plausible way for you to claim Altus bloodlines, Laetan.”
            He stared at him, realizing what had already happened.  “You were
bought off too.”  He turned around and left.
 
            Shaislyn staggered back to his mother’s tiny cabin, knocking
haphazardly on the door.  She opened it immediately, and he half-fell into it. 
She caught her son, pulling him gently inside.  She helped him to the cot, and
he sat down heavily.  He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
            He handed her a small package of papers, falling back against the
bed, breathing hard.  “I appealed to the Circle, and the Magisterium,” he
whispered, his voice hoarse.  “Just like you wanted:  I’m a Circle mage now.” 
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  He swallowed.  “It took a lot of
arguing and convincing, but it was decided I wasn’t born a slave, so I am
exempt.  I tried, for you too, but…  Nothing I could do.”
            She took his hand in hers.  “It was all you could do, Shai.  I’m
proud of you.”
            His eyes slid closed, and a wisp of a smile touched his lips. 
“Really?”
            She combed his curls back off of his face.  “Yes, Shai.  You did
everything you could.”
            He took another deep breath.  He had to tell her the rest. 
“Danarius had paperwork drawn up to name me part of his bloodline. 
Unfortunately, they were signed but never filed; he had to wait until I was
part of the Circle.”  He swore, loudly.  “Why didn’t I do that before?”  He
sighed; no use crying over it now, he guessed.  “I’m still trying to get it
through, and I’m getting mostly opposition to it, especially since he is dead,
but we did have a few witnesses and a notary.”  He groaned inwardly.  “But
Agasius is opposed to it.  If it goes through, I might be able to claim you.”
            “And my brother?” she whispered.
            He made a face.  “Yeah, him too.”
            And Shaislyn would just free her immediately.  She almost asked why
he was being so heavily opposed, but then fell silent.  Shaislyn was half-elven
and his mother Liberati; of course the family opposed it.  He may gain some
ground because Varania technically also qualified as a Laetan mage, but it
couldn’t help much.  She realized he had fallen asleep.  He had flown all the
way to Minrathous, frantically dug up as much evidence as he could, and made an
appeal.  She imagined that both joining the Circle and appealing to the
Magisterium took a great deal of time, and then he had flown back and found
her.  Her son was exhausted.  She had more questions, but she supposed it had
to wait.
Chapter End Notes
     Fenris is a little fucked up at the moment. He just needs Hawke to
     cuddle him... naked... after lots of sex. :p
     The politics in this story I think are really important, but they
     were the hardest parts to write! I've studied the Dragon Age Wiki
     pages, scouring it for info on their politics, culture, etc. I hope I
     did a decent job, and I haven't mucked up anything too badly! I guess
     the goal is that it at least makes sense in the story line. When I
     find anything in there that I feel could be significant to the plot,
     or that I accidentally contradicted, I do do my best to go back and
     amend it, hence all of my constant editing.
     And sorry about the weird formatting--I write some of this while I am
     not at home on Google Docs, and other parts I write on Word, and the
     formatting ends up... weird...
***** The Rains of Anger *****
Chapter Summary
     Sebastian and Hawke stage an intervention. Fenris apologizes to Hawke
     for his actions.
            She stared at the blank piece of parchment in front of her.  There
was so much she wanted to say.  A number of expletives came to mind, toothless
threats.  She could write volumes on her hatred, yet no words came forward.
 There was nothing Varania thought she could truly say.
            I hate you.
            “Hate” wasn’t large enough a word to get the point across though.
 She thought of other words in its place:  Loathe, despise, would be pleased if
you died slowly and in pain.
            Would she though?
            She sighed.  No.  It wouldn’t make amends.  No one could make
amends for something by dying, and repaying a wrong with a wrong wasn’t justice
either; it was just vengeance.
            It wasn’t what I wanted, Fenris.
            Please forgive me, Leto.
            If she could have had everything that she wanted, it would be to be
a magister--rich, powerful, she could have everything she had never had, had
never had the opportunity to have.  Shaislyn could be a Circle mage, like she
wanted of him, and he could leave his illegal activities far behind.  She’d
like to see that.  Fenris, she would like to simply see safe.  If he hated her,
at least she would know he was safe.  But, more than that, she could have had
her brother back--or, rather, what was left of him.  Maybe she could have
studied the memory loss spell.  Maybe there was even a way to reverse it and
she could have him back--really have him back.
            Danarius had commented that if he really hated her, he could always
erase his memories of everything, wiping out every memory of his freedom.  He
had liked that idea, because it played very nicely into his scheme to make
Fenris again a subservient slave.  Shehad liked that idea only because she knew
she couldn’t bear it if he despised her.
            I’d have taken care of you, she dreamed of telling him.  I never
would have let Danarius touch you.  If it meant I never left your side, I’d
never let him near you.  I would have protected you.  I don’t care if you’d
hate me, and never forgive me; I’d still protect you.
            Like you protected me.
            She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.  Everything she had
ever wanted had turned to ash in her hands, slipping through her fingers.
            In the end, she could only think of one thing to say to him:  I’m
sorry.
 
            Hawke pushed open the stained wooden door, and jumped back.  He
caught himself smiling, watching the two children--seven and five years of age-
-rush past him.  They were giggling as they chased one another.  A tired mother
called out to them to “please settle down” and they windmilled to a halt, still
giggling.
He turned from it, stepping into the clinic.  The first thing he noticed about
Anders was that he looked tired; his shoulders were hunched, and he looked like
he hadn’t been eating well.  He made a mental note to have Bodahn bring him
down some food.  “Working hard?” he asked, concern edging into his voice.
Anders looked up at him, sitting down heavily in a battered chair.  It squeaked
under his weight.  “Yeah,” he answered, rubbing his temples.
Hawke walked up to him, leaning against the nearby table.  “Haven’t seen you in
a while,” the apostate commented.
Anders grunted.  “I’ve just… had a lot to do.”
“With the preparations for that ritual?” he inquired.
His brow furrowed.  “What?”
He must be exhausted, Hawke mused.  “Don’t tell me you drug me through a sewer
for no reason, Anders.”
He blinked, understanding flooding his features.  “Oh--that.”  His eyes darted
away, flicking downwards.  “It’s… just been more difficult than I thought.”
Hawke touched his shoulder sympathetically.  Anders leaned his head against his
arm, sighing.  “Do you need any help?” he asked him.  “I’m bad at that kind of
thing, but--”
“No!” Anders said, rising to his feet suddenly.  Hawke frowned.  The other
looked at him, flinching slightly.  “I mean--Sorry, no.  I can do this myself--
really.”  He hesitated.  “I need to do this on my own, Hawke.”
The Champion of Kirkwall crossed his arms.  “If you say so, but I’m here for
you, all right?”
Anders gave a tired smile.  “And you have no idea how comforting that is.”
Hawke embraced him, kissing his lips.  “I miss you.”
“It’s only been three days.”
He kissed his neck, his fingers running along the front of his coat.  “Three
days is a long time.”
His tongue lapped along his neck, and he inhaled deeply of the other’s scent. 
Anders shivered, his fingers twining into Hawke’s tunic.  His eyes opened—he
didn’t remember having shut them—and spied the door.  “The door is open…”
“We can shut it.”
“Hard to argue with that logic,” the other apostate commented.  “I’ll get the
door—you get all of that armor off.”  Anders wormed out of his grasp, and Hawke
watched him adoringly.
“I love you,” he told him as the other turned back toward him.
Anders kissed him, deep, passionate, a feeling of wholeness and belonging
welling in his chest:  Love.  “I love you,” he breathed.
 
“I need to ask your permission for something,” Hawke commented, swiping sweat
from his brow.  Anders was sprawled partway on top of him, on one of the sturdy
oak tables.  Under Hawke, was a collection of their clothing.
Anders closed his eyes, nuzzling against his shoulder.  “For what?”
He hesitated.  “I…  Don’t be mad at me--I need to talk to Fenris.”
The Grey Warden, irritated, sat up, the fuzzy afterglow of sex fading quickly. 
“About what?”
Hawke flinched.  Maybe he should have waited a bit.  “Isabela says he hasn’t
been sleeping, and he seems really upset.”
Anders rolled his eyes, climbing off of the table.  “He’ll get over it.”
The other apostate sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the table.  “And
Aveline says his method of ‘getting over it’ is getting high.”
Anders paused briefly, lifting his pants off of the table.  “Tell him to go
stick his head in a manure pile,” he said decidedly.  He made a face,
flustered; he couldn’t find his underclothes.  He dropped his pants back on the
table, and picked up his coat, and tossed that on top of his pants.
Hawke slid off of the table to the floor.  “If I tell him that, can I also ask
him about how he’s been doing since that episode with his sister?”
Anders muttered something under his breath that Hawke didn’t hear.  “No.”
 Anders’ jaw set, tossing his other clothes on top of the growing pile, but
still couldn’t find his underwear.  “That bastard has been trying to sabotage
our relationship since we got together.  So no.”
Hawke groaned inwardly.  Now what? “Are you looking for these?” he inquired.
Anders turned toward him, and sighed when he saw Hawke raise the small garment
on two fingers.  He reached for them, and Hawke, grinning, pulled them back,
away from him.  The mage came toward him, and Hawke danced away from him.
 “What if I have a chaperone?”
Anders considered, staring at his underwear partially concealed behind his
lover’s back.  “Okay.  Bring Sebastian.”  He held his hand out, expecting Hawke
to give it back to him.
Hawke scowled.  “I was thinking Varric.”  He dropped the underwear into his
waiting hand, stealing a kiss as he did so. 
Anders kissed him back briefly, and turned from him as he wriggled back into
his clothes.  He nodded in thought.  “Varric is very diplomatic, and he and
Fenris get along--but if this is a counseling and talking about his problems
talk, Sebastian is a better choice.”
And will use the opportunity to try to convert Fenris to the Chantry, he
thought.  Yet, he could think of no flaws to Anders’ argument.  “All right--
I’ll ask him.  Deal?”
“I still don’t like it, but all right.”
The pair dressed hurriedly; Anders had to get back to work.  “Hey,” Hawke said
as he turned to leave.  Anders lifted his head.  “I love you.”
He smiled softly.  “I love you, Hawke.  More than anything.”
 
Sebastian walked beside Hawke, listening to the apostate explain everything
that had happened in the past couple of weeks.
“Wait--wait,” Sebastian said, pausing.  They resumed walking.  “He’s… taking
drugs now?”
“Don’t ask me where he got them.  Isabela denies all blame.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes.  “Naturally.”
Hawke raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t blame her--I don’t think it matters where he
got them anyway.”
“True,” he agreed.  “I hope he’s sober when we get there.”
“I know I’m cheating a little when I ask this, but…  Can you let me go in
first?  Give me five minutes—please?”
Sebastian hesitated.  “Five minutes.  I’ll be counting.”
Hawke clasped his shoulder in camaraderie.  “Thank you.”
 
I should be happy, Fenris thought.  But I’m not.
            Danarius had been so much a part of his life, a constant threat and
fear--but at least a constant.  Aveline’s husband, Donnic, came by--inquiring
about their weekly card game.  Fenris declined; he lied and said he wasn’t
feeling well.  Donnic had laughed and said, “It’s probably from your leaky
roof.  I can teach you how to fix it sometime.”
            Isabela had been by again too.  She had wrapped her arms around his
neck and leaned in to kiss his lips.  He had pushed her away without saying
anything.  She had shrugged, ran her fingers up his arm suggestively.  He made
a face at the way her hand felt against the lyrium.  It was irritating when
anything touched it--even clothing, water, a strong wind even.  It only really
reacted to Danarius’ touch.  It had been particularly sensitive since he had
died.  Maybe that was just his mood.  He sincerely hoped so--if the man’s life
had been shielding him from pain…  Maybe from madness?  That was terrifying to
consider.
            She had ultimately left, no hard feelings.  Said she would buy him
a drink later if he came down to the Hanged Man.  He didn’t want to go, but he
nodded and accepted that anyway.
            Fenris was drinking—just a bottle of cheap wine, some Orlesian
vintage.  It tasted like grape juice and vinegar, but he drank it anyway.  He
kept the bottle away from him, only sipping out of a small wine glass, and the
bottle was placed strategically on the other side of the room; it made drinking
it even more of a chore, and he had to decide how much he really wanted more of
the grape-flavoured vinegar.  So far, he had drank little over half of the
bottle, and was beginning not to notice the taste.
            He stared at Hawke, across from him, who had so far said very
little outside of a greeting.  Fenris raised his glass.  “Orlesian wine tastes
like grape juice and vinegar, but do you want any?”
 “I’m fine, thanks.”  Hawke hesitated.  “Do you want to talk about it?” he
asked him, his voice gentle.
            Fenris finished the contents of his glass, setting it down on the
table, without a coaster.  There were rings on it from his continued neglect of
the furniture.  “You could have warned me we were going to the Hanged Man
before you drug me through Lowtown,” he muttered.
            “I could have,” he agreed.  “Would you have come?”
            “Fair enough,” he said.  He started to say something more, but fell
silent instead, staring down at the lyrium in his hands. 
            Hawke frowned, looking at him.  “Does it hurt--more than usual, I
mean?”
            He looked up.  “Why do you ask?”
            “You seem distracted,” he said, shrugging.  His lips pressed
together.  “And I worry about you--that’s all.”
            His eyes flicked back downwards.  “Worry--about me?”  Did that mean
that, despite their argument from a few days ago, Hawke cared about him enough
to worry?  Idiot--that’s why he’s here.  That’s why he drug you to the Hanged
Man.
            “Yes, about you,” he confirmed, his tone bordering on irritated
that Fenris was questioning his concern.  “You’ve locked yourself up in here,
you don’t talk to anyone--of course I’m worried.”  He stopped, and looked
genuinely concerned.  “Are you all right, Fenris?”  The elf didn’t answer,
staring at the lyrium as it rushed through his skin, burned against his flesh,
coursed through him.  “After everything that happened…  I just…”
            “I’m fine,” he lied.  “Danarius is dead--I’m… peachy.”
            Hawke looked at him.  “You don’t seem that happy about it.”
            He sighed.  “If it had just been Danarius--if all the letters from
Varania were a ruse, and she hadn’t been there--if she never existed at all--
I’d be fine.  I’d be just fucking fine.”
            The apostate stared at him.  No, you wouldn’t be, he thought, his
heart sinking.  You destroyed one of the biggest parts of your life--bad part,
or no; he made up a large part of who you are.  Fenris, you would not be
fine. But, perhaps, he would be better than his current state.  “That night I
met you--were you ever scared that Danarius really was here?”
            He looked up again.  “I was terrified that he might be,” he
admitted, his voice soft.  “Do you want to know what should have been in that
house in the alienage the night we met?”
            Hawke wondered how much it would hurt Fenris to tell him, or if
Fenris would be better for having told him.  He supposed that Fenris was the
one who had offered the information.  “Only if you want to talk about it.”
            The elf leaned back in the chair, staring up at the ceiling.  “I
wanted so badly to know who I used to be.  Years ago, Danarius had me bring him
a book…  Slave owners keep tallies of their slaves--they’re listed by name and
date--their skill set.  I once… dared to ask him if my name was in the book.”
            Hawke flinched.  “I take it that didn’t go so well for you.”
            He raised an eyebrow.  “He punished me--severely.  But he did
answer my question.  I guess it was worth it.”  He closed his eyes.  “I got an
answer, anyway:  My name was in that book.  Fenris and…”
            “Leto?” Hawke guessed, remembering the name Varania had called him.
            Fenris flinched just hearing it.  “I don’t remember the name,” he
whispered.  “It doesn’t sound familiar.”
            He blinked, trying to imagine how hard it must be for him.  “You
still want to go by ‘Fenris’?” he asked him, the words just tumbling out of his
mouth before he could stop them.
            He looked at him.  “I don’t know who ‘Leto’ is,” he admitted.  He
stopped.  I don’t know who ‘Fenris’ is!  He shook away the memory.  Had he
known?  Had he…?  “It doesn’t matter.  Whoever he was, he’s gone.”  It hurt to
say it aloud, but he needed to do it.  It wasn’t me--whatever he did, whatever
he thought or believed in, whatever family he had--it isn’t mine; it’s his.
 The thought was almost comforting.  Varania wasn’t truly his sister; she was
Leto’s sister.  Varania had not betrayed Leto, he realized.  She can’t; he’s
gone.  It wasn’t his loss; it was Leto who had died.  He hadn’t lost anything;
he had been borne of Leto’s passing.  He had been born into slavery, bred for
it, shaped by it.  He had been born into emptiness.  But it still hurt.
Hawke was at a loss for words.  He wanted to hold him, tell him everything was
going to be all right.  But he couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t say that
without knowing.
Fenris stared at the wine glass.  “Magic has taken everything from me.”
The apostate looked pained to hear him say that.  “There was a point in my life
where I would have agreed with you.  When I discovered Gascon had lied to me
and we found out what happened to my mother.  I wondered if I were evil.” 
Fenris looked up at him.  “I wondered if it were not all my fault somehow.  As
if I were guilty of what that man did by association.”
The elf didn’t know what to say.  “Hawke, that’s not true.”
The man nodded.  “I know.  But I questioned myself for a long time afterwards. 
I wondered if the Templars weren’t right.  I wondered if mages shouldn’t just
be locked up, or just killed.  I questioned everything about myself.”  He
paused.  “I think I’d still be questioning myself if not for Anders.”
Fenris stilled.  And he hadn’t been there for  him.  Fact of the matter, Anders
had been.  And maybe that was best.  Anders had been the one to make Hawke
regain his self-confidence and trust.  Fenris knew that he would not be that
person for Hawke.  He couldn’t be.  If Hawke had ever come to Fenris doubting
himself, doubting his restraint on his own power, doubting his ability and the
core of who he was, could Fenris ever hope to make him whole again?  If Hawke
had come to Fenris full of doubt asking him if the Templars were right, what
could Fenris ever say that would not make things worse?
“I’m glad you have him,” the elf whispered, and Hawke barely heard him.
Fenris heard the door open, listening to the footsteps.  The armor meant it was
either Donnic off a shift, Aveline, or Sebastian.  He guessed Donnic—that was
most likely, but the footfalls were different.  He straightened in the chair
when he saw Sebastian, his eyes narrowing.  “I think I’ll get another glass,”
he decided, getting an idea of what was going on.  He slid from the chair,
lifting his glass.  He listened to Sebastian sit down beside Hawke as he
poured, carefully.  Concentrating entirely too much on the wine, it didn’t
slosh nor bubble.  He sat the bottle back down, sipping at it as he stalked
back toward his chair, then remained standing, irritated.
Sebastian said, “Fenris, please sit down.”
The elf looked from one to the other.  “Is this an intervention?  Maker, I’m
fine.”
The two humans glanced at one another.  “Fenris, you’re not fine,” Sebastian
stated.  He sat straight-backed, even regal-looking in the faded splendor of
the manor.  Somehow, the dilapidated state of the place only made the man look
more poised.  “When’s the last time you’ve slept?”
“Last night,” the elf said, self-satisfied, taking another sip.
“And the last time you were high?”
He set the glass down on table.  “Funny how those things coincide.”
Sebastian nodded.  “I see.”  He pursed his lips together as he considered his
next move.  “Why the drugs?”
“I like sleeping,” he said honestly.  He fell into the chair across from them.
 “And it completely gets rid of all the pain I feel.”
“That’s hard to argue with,” Hawke commented.
Sebastian shot him a withering glare, then he looked back at the elf.  “Fenris,
we can’t trust you if you’re going to behave like this.”
He made a face.  “But you trust me when I’m in pain?”
“You’re sober when you’re in pain.”
“And that makes me more trustworthy?” he demanded.
Hawke said quietly, “I don’t want to see you be self-destructive.”
Fenris looked like he wanted to argue, but fell silent, busying himself with
the wine.    Sebastian knitted his fingers together.  “It isn’t healthy, and
all you’re doing is alienating the people that care about you.”
The elf scoffed at that, grinding his teeth.  Hawke quickly added, “And aren’t
the drugs expensive anyway?”  He paused.  “Fenris, you are stronger than that,
and you don’t need to rely on it to help you.  That’s why you have friends.”
He was quiet, then his teeth clenched.  “And how long will it be before I can’t
trust any of you either?” he demanded, rising to his feet.  He glared
accusingly at Hawke.  “You told me to go get captured and killed by Danarius,
so why are you pretending you care?”
“I always cared!” he insisted.  “Sometimes, people say things they don’t mean
when they’re angry--and I’m sorry I said that, really.”
Fenris’ eyes narrowed, disbelieving.  Why should he believe what he said?  Why
should he believe what anyone said?  If his own sister had lied to him,
betrayed him, who in the world could he trust and believe?  He tried to remind
himself that Varania was not his sister, per se, but it was so theoretical and
philosophical that he had trouble believing in it.  “Why should I believe you?”
Hawke stared at him.  He wanted to shake him, to demand to know what he thought
about all these years of friendship and companionship.  “We’ve known one
another for years,” Sebastian said, beating Hawke to it.  “You should know if
you can trust us.”
“So, what you’re saying is, because I didn’t know Varania, I never should have
trusted her, and all of this is my fault?”
Sebastian bristled.  “No!  That’s not at all what I’m saying.”  He took a deep
breath, backpedaling.  “Fenris, all we are saying is that we care about you,
and we don’t want to see you hurt yourself.”  He looked genuinely concerned,
and that was what irked Fenris the most.  “Please believe us.”
“Why should I?” he demanded.
Hawke looked up.  “Because if something were to happen to you, I’d lose one of
my best friends,” he confessed.  “Please stop.”
Fenris slowly set the glass down again, looking back at his hands.  The three
were quiet.  “You’re really worried about me?”
The apostate’s lips pressed into a thin line.  “Fenris, you could take too much
of those drugs, and die.  Or what if you just turn into one of those people
that is never sober?  You don’t do anything any more, you just get high or
drunk?  Fenris, you wouldn’t be you,” he told him.
The elf was quiet a long moment.  He wanted to say that wouldn’t happen, but he
didn’t know the future.  And it was comforting to know that Hawke cared about
him, at least enough to worry about him.  “Well, I’m out anyway,” he said
quietly.  “I’ll… avoid it.”
Sebastian was openly relieved.  “Good.  Fenris, I’m happy to hear that.”
Fenris sighed, but chose not to say anything.  Hawke hesitated before he said,
“Do you want to try to write to your sister?  At least ask her why?”
The lyrium blazed.  His teeth gritted.  “She’s a bitch—that’s why!” he hissed. 
“I never want you to mention her again!”
“Fenris—“
“Get out!”
Sebastian took a deep breath.  “We’re here for you if you ever need to talk,”
he said, and ushered Hawke out the door.  Safely on the street, Hawke glanced
at Sebastian.
“What are you going to do with that letter?” he asked him quietly.
Sebastian looked at the simple envelope.  “I’ll hang on to it until he’s ready
for it.”
Hawke smiled crookedly.  “I’m glad Varric gave that to you—I’d be too tempted
to open it.”
Sebastian shrugged a shoulder.  “Whatever Varania wanted to say to Fenris, it’s
only for Fenris.”
The clouds overhead were moving fast on a southern wind, heavy and grey with
water.  It would be raining by nightfall.
 
            Isabela had been busy—some minor mishap with “one of my girls”, she
had said.  Varric and Aveline both ended up tangled up in the mess somehow too.
 Fenris didn’t have to go today, but he was tired of waiting, and wondering. 
He couldn’t ask Hawke, and Donnic was working today, so it left Sebastian. 
Which, of course, wasn’t a bad thing, but if he wanted his conscience pricked,
he did a good enough job of that himself, thank you.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Fenris said to Sebastian.
            “Certainly,” he replied peaceably.
            “Sebastian?  Thank you—for caring enough about me to try to stop me
from hurting myself, I mean,” he said.
            The priest gave a satisfied smile.  “I’m glad you came around.”  He
paused.  “Have you thought about what we talked about?”
            Fenris glanced at him.  “About finding the Maker in my life?” he
said, his voice dripping sarcasm.
            Sebastian ignored his tone of voice.  “Yes.”
            The elf snorted in disdain.  “You know, when I was left behind in
Seheron, watching Danarius sail away, I noticed a lot of people there.  Some
were good, some were bad, some were children or elderly.  Some had good
intentions.”  He thought of Annalkylie.  “Others not.”  He looked up at the
sky, watching a wheeling hawk as it hunted.  “But they were still only people
and circumstances.  The Maker wasn’t there, but there were a lot of people.”
            “A piece of the Maker can reside in every individual’s heart, and
He can work through them.”
            Fenris’ mouth twisted into a frown.  This was why he often got
tired of Sebastian.  “Fine.  Through the grace of the Maker, I have thus far
managed not to strangle you.”
            Sebastian chuckled good-naturedly.  “And?”
            He sighed, and thought about it.  “And nothing,” he said
decidedly.  “If there is a divine creator, it is clear that he doesn’t care
about us, and I have no cause to thank him for anything.”
            “Oh, Fenris…”
            His eyes narrowed.  “Or if there is a Maker, it is abundantly clear
to me that he is a human god.”
            “There are many texts—mostly out of print and very old texts—about
elves, you know.  Most of them were destroyed with the Dales, but—“
            Fenris did not want to fight, not right now.  “Humankind’s actions
have ordained that elves are not welcome in the Maker’s eyes.”
            Sebastian’s mouth opened, then snapped shut in shock.  “That’s not
true,” he said, his voice gentle but Fenris detected the edge in it.
            The elf looked back at him, pained.  “It’s not?  Then why are there
alienages?  Why can humans enslave us and think nothing of it, and then worship
their Maker when it’s done?  Why are so many elves beaten and abused just for
being elves?”  He paused.  “It’s because your religion has ordained that we are
not welcome, and we are allowed to live as lesser beings only because of your
‘kindness’.  Sebastian, when there aren’t any more alienages, and I can go an
entire week without some human treating me disdainfully because I’m an elf,
I’ll consider the Chantry.”
            Sebastian looked away, pained.  “But all of that is because…”
            “Because an Exalted March destroyed the Dales because they didn’t
want to worship a human god—humans hated the thought of us being free so much
they invented an excuse to destroy us.”  He glanced at him.  “I don’t just read
words when I’m reading history texts, you know, Sebastian.  And the more I
learn about it, the less I will ever believe in your Maker.”  He was quiet a
moment before he continued, “But I do appreciate that you care enough about me
to worry about my soul, and I know that you just want to bring me the same kind
of peace that you have.  For that, I am not angry with you for your… continued
advances at shoving Chantry doctrine down my throat.”  He took a deep breath,
then his eyes narrowed, and his jaw set.  “And it is because I have learned so
much about history, and the world, that I realize why slaves are kept
illiterate.  I realize why so many elves in general are kept illiterate; humans
don’t want us to learn anything, because it’s harder to control us when we know
better.”
            “You’ve been keeping that pent up for a while,” Sebastian
commented.
            He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.  “Yes.  I guess
so—I’m sorry I took it out on you, Sebastian.  You aren’t the one doing this.”
            “We’re here,” he said, unnecessarily.  The Dalish guards let Fenris
in, and almost made Sebastian wait but they negotiated, and they let them both
into the camp.  Things were oddly quiet, and the Dalish watched the outsiders
with suspicion, and he had no doubt many recognized him from the last time he
had been here.  He cringed inwardly at the thought.  With Merathari gone, he
supposed the next best person to ask about the carving would probably be their
crafter.  The man was sitting at a work bench, his elbow propped against the
table, watching his apprentice carve etchings into a bow.
            “Can I ask you something?” Fenris asked.
            The man glanced up at him.  “Seems like you just did.”
            He took that for assent, and removed the little carving from his
bag.  He set it down on the bench beside him.  The apprentice looked up out of
curiosity, then back at his work.  The crafter picked it up off the table to
get a better look.  He tilted it, and found the mark Merrill had looked at.
            The Dalish said, “Well, it looks familiar, but it’s difficult to
say; normally, I’d direct you to our Keeper for clarification on things like
that, but I can’t.”
            Fenris bristled.  “It’s not my fault she died.”
            The man nodded amiably, but his eyes were sharp as knives.  “No,
you didn’t possess her, and she didn’t die for you, but you were there and you
certainly did nothing to help the matter, did you?”
            His teeth gritted in anger.  “I never condoned what Merrill did.” 
Sebastian put his hand on his shoulder, a gentle reminder to calm down.  With
effort, Fenris stepped back.
            The Dalish crafter was annoyed more than concerned about Fenris. 
“But you didn’t stop her either.”  He set the carving back down.  “I think
you’re done here.”
            The lyrium brightened, and Fenris opened his mouth to give him a
piece of his mind.  Sebastian stepped quickly between them, swiping the figure
off the table.  “Thank you for your time—we should be going.”  He hauled Fenris
bodily away from the table, half-dragging him out of the camp.
            “What are you doing?” Fenris hissed once they were well away from
the guards.
            Sebastian stared at him.  “Did you not notice how every Dalish
there was staring at you?”
            Fenris calmed, but with effort.  “Oh.”  Sebastian handed him back
the figure.  He looked at it again, and sighed, putting it away.  His eyes
flicked downwards.  “Sorry.”
            The priest only sighed, and they started the walk back to
Kirkwall.  “That was a bit disappointing.”
            “I don’t know what I was expecting.”
            “Merrill really won’t tell you?”
            Fenris shook his head.  “She knows something, but she’s angry with
me, so there’s nothing I can really do about it.”  He sighed.  Before this
misadventure, Sebastian had asked about the why of it, and Fenris thought that
he owed it to him to tell him the story.
            “Can I see that carving again?” Sebastian asked, feeling a bit
uneasy.  Fenris handed it back to him, and the other looked it over.  He
sighed, reaching into his bag.  He shoved something into Fenris’ hand.  “Varric
gave me these—it’s from Varania.”
            He almost threw it before he even looked at it, but he stared down
at his hand.  A letter—a small slip of paper scarcely as large as his hand, and
a tiny walnut figure of a halla with broken horns.  The piece of paper, he put
in his belt for the moment, and he looked at the halla—a halla he knew very
well.  “I thought Danarius would have destroyed this.”
            “Does it mean something to you?”
            He wanted to say no, but he realized that it did mean something. 
But what did it mean?  Obviously, that it had been found, and somehow Varania
had ended up with it.  What did it mean that she had given it back to him,
though?  “Yes.  I’m just not sure what.”
            He wished that Merrill would just tell him. 
            When he got home, he didn’t open the letter.  He slipped it inside
the Chant of Light, and left it alone for the moment.  He couldn’t tolerate
whatever she had wanted to say to him right now. 
 
Fenris was dripping wet and shivering by the time he made it to Hawke’s manor. 
The rain was coming down in buckets and had been for several days, and he
thought he had to be mad to be out in it.  He swiped his feet on the matt, and
Bodahn offered to get him a towel.  He accepted this, standing in the foyer,
dripping, until Bodahn came back with a couple towels.
“There’s a fire in the library,” he offered.
Fenris pulled a towel from him, drying his face.  “Thank you, Bodahn,” he told
him, running it over his dripping hair too.  He stopped, looking at the dwarf. 
“Is Anders here?”
Bodahn shook his head, depositing the other towel on the desk.  “No, he
shouldn’t be back for a couple more days—Hawke asked me to keep bringing him
meals.”  He made a face.  No one liked venturing to Darktown every day.
Good, the elf thought.  “Is Hawke here?”
Bodahn shook his head.  “He went to the Hanged Man, but I imagine he will be
back soon—he’s not really one to stay out too late these days.”
Fenris thanked him, and when he was sufficiently dry as to not drip all over
the place, he headed to the library.  He took some time to find a volume he
wanted to read, eventually settling on what turned out to be a rather
interesting volume about the history of the Grey Wardens.  A note inside told
him that it was a gift from Carver.  At least the man seemed to be enjoying
being a Grey Warden.
Fenris heard the library door open, and the heavy footsteps meant the person
was wearing shoes.  He assumed Bodahn, or even Sandal.  Orana was much quieter
when she walked.
“Fenris?” Hawke asked.  The elf looked up.  “You haven’t come over in a long
time.”
His eyes flicked back to the book.  Hawke started down the steps.  “Anders
forbid me to come over.”
Hawke blinked in surprise.  This was the first he had heard of that.  “Oh…”  He
hesitated.  “Well, we can see how that worked out.”
Fenris snorted.  “Indeed.”
Hawke sat down in the chair opposite him.  “What brings you here?”
He looked back at him.  “The manor was cold,” he said.  “It has a leaky roof,
so it’s damp.  I am also out of reading material, and I can’t sleep.”
The apostate cocked his head to the side a little.  “Can’t sleep?”
He turned the page of the book.  “I have nightmares,” he admitted.
Concern furrowed Hawke’s brow.  “What about?”
Danarius raping me.  “I don’t really remember them,” he said instead.
“Anything I can do to help?”
Fenris glanced at the fire, watching the flames flicker and dance.  “A drink
maybe.”
Hawke nodded, standing up.  “Sure—You like brandy, don’t you?  I’ll be right
back.”
“Thank you.”
The mage glanced back at him.  “Sure thing.”
Fenris looked back at the book, shifting in his seat.  When Hawke got back, the
mage set the two glasses down.  He put a taste of the brandy into each glass,
and offered Fenris one.  It was decent brandy—not the sort of thing he could
find in Danarius’ liquor cabinets, but not Lowtown quality either.  The elf
drank it immediately, and requested a bit more that time.  Hawke sighed, and
poured in more brandy.  It bubbled and sloshed in the bottle.  Fenris made a
face.  “One day, I’ll show you how to pour alcohol,” he said with some
distaste.
Hawke scowled.  “Why does it matter?”
“Aeration.  Decanting.  It’s complicated; suffice it to say, it’s about flavour
as much as presentation.  Thanks, though.”  Satisfied, Fenris sat with the
glass in one hand, the book in his lap.
Hawke was almost stupid enough to ask him why he knew so much about pouring
alcohol, and then fell silent:  Fenris had already told him why.  “What are you
reading?”
“History of the Grey.  That book Carver gave you.”
“Oh.”  Hawke flinched.  “I never even opened it.”
Fenris smirked.  “I’m sure he’d be pleased to know that.”  He paused, looking
up.  He sighed, and set the book down on the table.  “May I apologize for my
behaviour the other day?”
Hawke raised an eyebrow, nodding, as he knew quite well what this was about. 
“You may.”
The Tevinter fugitive paused.  “Then I’m sorry,” he said softly.  “You were
trying to help me, and I rejected your help.  I know you just wanted to help
me, and I am sorry I got angry.”
Hawke nodded.  “Apology accepted.”  He smiled.  “You have a terrible temper,
Fenris.  You and Anders are more alike than either of you will ever admit.”
Fenris made a face, disgusted at the idea, but Hawke only laughed.  “So. 
Sebastian and Aveline both know how to ride—horses, I mean.  How would you feel
if we all went out together…?”
“Since you and I aren’t allowed to be alone anymore?” Fenris laughed, taking
another long drink of liquor.
            Hawke emptied his glass, and splashed in a bit more liquor. 
“Anders has a good point.  You’re very attractive, and if I weren’t happily
committed, I’d do unspeakable things to you.”
            Fenris watched him, feeling blood rush to his face, and to lower
places.  He shifted, and laughed.  He reminded himself that the apostate had
been out drinking earlier, and then was drinking even more now.  Fenris stood
up, finishing off the brandy.  He set the glass down and intended to go.  Hawke
raised his glass to his lips, and Fenris caught his wrist, pulling the glass
back down.  “You’ve had enough,” he told him, his voice soft.
            Hawke stared at him, measuring their closeness.  If he leaned
forward, he was close enough to kiss him.  “Of you?” he laughed.
            “That too.”  He pulled back, just a little, pulling the glass from
his friend’s hand.  He set it down, turning from him.  “I don’t want to
apologize again because you forgot about it.”
            Hawke rose from his seat, stepping behind him.  “Wait,” he said,
catching him by his arm.  Fenris looked back at him, stilling.  They looked at
each other.  The fire cracked and popped.  Outside, the rain poured.  “It’s
miserable outside.  You could… stay.”
            There were a thousand things Fenris knew he should do instead.  He
should push him away.  He should step away.  He should go home.  He should
remind Hawke about Anders.  He should tell him “no”.  He should…
            He turned stepping into his arms, catching his lips fiercely in his
own.
            They kissed savagely, hungrily.  There was nothing romantic or
sweet about it; it was bruising and filled with years of pent-up lust and
desire, a communication that could only manifest in physical form.  Fenris
helped Hawke out of his armor, dropping the heavy things to the floor.  It was
loud, but they barely noticed the clamor.  He shoved Hawke back into the chair,
kneeling on the floor in front of him.  He bent, his lips against the tip of
his swollen member.  Hawke gasped, biting his lower lip.
            He had forgotten what Fenris could do.  He had forgotten how Fenris
knew to use the flat of his tongue, the tip of his tongue, to swirl the head in
his mouth.  He had forgotten how he licked and nibbled, the way his eyes would
open slowly and look up at him, his lips against the base of his member.  It
was the most submissive look he had ever seen on Fenris, and at the same time,
the most in control.  Oral sex was a submissive gesture in many cultures, and
yet, he could bite down until his teeth met one another, and Hawke would be
entirely at his mercy.  He liked that.
            Fenris pulled his head back, and Hawke knelt to kiss him, liking
the taste of him on his lips, the reminder of the things the elf was more than
willing to do.  “You’re wearing too much clothing,” the apostate whispered.
            The corners of his lips turned into a seductive smile.  He at first
started to remove a gauntlet, then stopped.  He kissed him again.  “Watch
this,” he whispered.  The lyrium engulfed him.  Hawke watched him, their lips
almost touching, as Fenris transformed into, for all sakes and purposes, a
ghost.  He looked like a spirit come to life.  An apparition of an earthly
desire.  He had seen him do it many times before, but he had never been close
enough to touch him when he did it.  Desire demons had best change their
form,he thought.  They have it all wrong:  This is what the embodiment of pure
lust looks like.
            He reached out, as if to touch him, and Fenris blinked, all colour
gone from him, nothing but a shade of glowing blue.  The only part of him that
looked real was the lyrium.  He tried touch a vein of lyrium on his neck.  His
hand passed through him, into him, as if he did not really exist.  Hawke drew
back, alarmed and worried that it might hurt Fenris.  Fenris gave no indication
that it had hurt him.  In fact, Hawke wasn’t certain Fenris could even feel
him.
            A loud noise made him jerk back, and the glowing dimmed.  Fenris
knelt in front of him naked, a pool of his clothing and armor around him.  He
smiled up at him.  “It takes effort for that not to happen,” he confessed.
            Hawke laughed aloud, and kissed him, hard.  Fenris pulled him down
onto the floor.  As the pair kissed, Fenris rolling on top of him, Hawke kicked
his armor out of the way.  His belt was shoved under the chair, and something
fell from a pouch.
            “Move your ass up here—I want to deep throat you.”
            Fenris’ eyebrows arched in surprise.  “When did you learn how to do
that?”
            “Shut up,” Hawke suggested.  “Ass up here, now, elf.”
            “Yes, ser,” he said sarcastically.
            “Don’t make me spank you.”
            Fenris bit his lower lip, fingernails digging into his sides.  He
leaned over him, on all fours, straddling him.  He kissed him again, unmoving. 
He grunted when Hawke actually hit him, moaning when Hawke’s hands slid over
his ass, gripping him tightly, then hit him again.  “Harder,” he whispered in
his ear.
            Hawke hit him hard enough to hurt his hand.  He flinched, but
Fenris moaned, his tongue pushing into his mouth.  His tongue brushed against
his, sucking on his tongue the same way he had sucked on his penis.  The
apostate wanted something else in his mouth.
            “Now, Fenris,” he hissed against his lips.  The elf pulled away and
climbed over him.  Hawke lifted his head, drawing him into his mouth.  It
wasn’t the best position for it, but he could do it from here, if he moved
slowly.  Hawke had learned how to do this with Anders.  He had wanted to learn
how, and Anders had been very, very patient.  It took either not having a gag
reflex, like Fenris, or else having a very patient and understanding lover to
learn.  Hawke had learned with Anders, and a bucket, for when he had to vomit
or just dry heave.
            He liked the shape of Fenris’ cock.  He liked the way he was cut. 
He was well-formed, visually pleasing; he liked the way his balls felt in his
hand.  He liked the way he felt against his lips, slipping past his teeth.  He
liked the way he rubbed against the roof of his mouth, sliding back farther. 
He liked the way his skin felt against his tongue, the dim taste of lyrium.  He
liked the way he felt as he slid to the back of the throat, taking deep breaths
around him.  Fenris shivered, looking down at him, eager and anxious.
            Hawke swallowed, pulling him in deeper, accepting more of him into
him, desperately wanting him inside him.
            “Maker,” Fenris whispered.  Hawke liked doing it, but more than
that, he liked pleasing Fenris.  He liked listening to the way he breathed, the
way his back twisted.  He liked the way his muscles flexed under his hands. 
Fenris pulled back, out of his mouth.
            Hawke gasped, but glared at him.  “I wasn’t done with you yet.”
            “It’s not fair when I want you in me too,” Fenris whispered,
rolling over.  Hawke took him back into his mouth, pushing him back into his
throat as if he had never left it.  Fenris knelt between his legs, licking
along him, kissing him, nibbling along the foreskin.  His hands covered him,
playing with the foreskin—something he didn’t have, so a constant source of
curiosity to him in other men.  He had yet to receive any complaints about his
curiosity.
            He tugged gently, kissing and sucking.  He moaned, feeling Hawke’s
hands run up his thighs, massaging his ass.  One of his fingers circled around
his anus, and he gasped when it penetrated, the tip of his finger, and slowly
in deeper.  The more of his finger Hawke pushed into him, the more of Hawke
Fenris took in his mouth, trying to match the movements as best he could tell. 
His hand snaked between his legs, gently massaging his testicles, making slow
infinity signs over them with his thumb.  Fenris’ hand then shifted back
further, mimicking what Hawke did to him.
            Hawke finally couldn’t take it any longer.  He pulled his head
back, coughing.  Fenris stopped, smiling softly.  He didn’t think less of him,
nor would he dream to mock him for it.  Instead, he was flattered and pleased
that Hawke had gone past what was obviously his limit in an effort to please
him.  He rolled off him, turning back around.  He knelt over him, and kissed
him, his leg slipping between his.  Hawke pulled him down over him, wrapping
one of his legs around him.
            He’s done this often, and learned to really enjoy it, Fenris
thought, but it was fleeting.  Gone was the hesitation of the last time they
had lain like this.  Now, the apostate was eager, wanting him, unflinching even
when he pushed into him, craving more of him even when he had filled him. 
Fenris gripped his thigh, his other hand tight against his hip.  He couldn’t
remember ever wanting something, or someone, more.
            “Fuck, I love the way you feel,” Hawke whispered.
            The elf licked one of his nipples, sucking on him, pulling gently
with his teeth.  “You feel amazing,” Fenris gasped, grunting with the effort of
pounding into him.  “Hawke, can you…?”  He flushed.  “Roll over, on your
knees?”
            The apostate did not even hesitate.  He did not question him, even
though he knew.  He did not draw attention to it; he shifted, and Fenris moved
to mount him.  He liked it, and he liked that Hawke liked it.  Hawke pushed
back against him, grinding into hips.  Fenris kissed his shoulders, his hands
running along his back.  One of the apostate’s hands helped to balance him when
he rose enough to kiss him.
            It doesn’t have to be a submissive position, he realized.  Smiling,
he kissed him back.  I love you.
            His arms wrapped around him, holding him tight as he kissed him. 
Hawke’s free hand touched the back of Fenris’ head, gentle and tender.
            And the position doesn’t have to be about dominance either.  It can
be just as tender and loving as I want it to be.  Damn, I love you, Hawke.
            His heart pounded in his chest, sweat beading on his skin.  He
pulled away from his kiss, sucking on the apostate’s neck instead, biting his
shoulder, pounding into him hard, harder.  Hawke gasped, falling away, on all
fours.
            He couldn’t seem to touch enough of him, to kiss enough of him. 
They twisted, Hawke moving, pulling Fenris with him, down on top of him. 
Fenris pushed back into him, kissing him with everything he had.  He had missed
being with a man, someone who understood from experience his body.  Isabela was
skilled, but she was still a woman.  A woman didn’t really know what it was
like, but he liked being with a man because a man did.  More than that, though,
he had missed Hawke.
            Hawke sat up, and crushed his lips in his, hard enough to bruise. 
“You are amazing,” he told him, and kissed him again.  “You’re
beautiful—fucking gorgeous.”  Another kiss.  “And you’re strong.”  He nuzzled
against his neck.  Fenris’ arms wrapped around him tightly, moaning when Hawke
rocked against him.  “And you’re smart.”  He kissed him again, hard.  “And I
love you.”
            Fenris’ eyes fluttered open, and he didn’t even know what to say. 
He moaned as Hawke pushed against him, and started to say something, but the
apostate, drove him onto his back.  Hawke writhed on top of him, rising and
falling over him.
            “In me,” Fenris breathed.  It had been so long.  Too long, since he
had been with a man.  Hawke leaned down, and kissed him.  He pulled himself off
of him, and with some shifting, he was between his legs.  Fenris, ever
impatient, commanded him, “Now!”
            “You’re not ready,” Hawke told him, sucking on two fingers.  Fenris
stared at him, debating on pinning him down and riding his cock anyway.  Hawke
pushed his finger against him, and had intended to ease into him, but the elf
pushed against him so eagerly, he almost couldn’t.
            “Hawke…” he complained.
            The apostate watched him sweat, watched him moan, and push against
his fingers.  Fenris’ hand ran down his chest, down the lyrium to his dripping
cock.  His hand ran along the length of it, his thumb twisting over the tip. 
Hawke stared at his hand, watching him touch himself.  Watching him made
Hawke’s hand drift over his thigh, gripping himself in one hand.  Fenris
watched him, his eyes dark with unbridled lust.  One of his legs brushed
against his arm, his hand continuing to stroke himself.  “Harder,” he
instructed him, his voice coming out ragged.
Hawke obliged him, pushing into him deeper, harder.  Fenris moaned, writhing,
moving against him.  “More?” the mage asked him.
Fenris looked at him.  “You know what I want,” he gasped.  He stared pointedly
at Hawke’s lap, and back at his face.  “I want you inside me.”
Hawke pushed his fingers deep into him, as far as they would go.  He twisted
his arm, moving his fingers in ways he couldn’t move his dick.  Fenris gave a
shuddering, twisting moan, so loud it was almost a scream.  “I am.”
            “Hawke!”
            The human felt he had no choice but to kiss him to silence.  “Be
patient, you,” he chided him, driving hard into him.  A desperate moan escaped
Fenris’ lips that made things low in Hawke’s stomach turn.  He pushed in a
third finger.  The elf’s hands gripped his shoulders, his fingernails biting
in.
            “I want you,” Fenris told him.  “I want your Blighted dick in my
ass right now.”
            “Impatient, aren’t we,” the apostate whispered against his ear, his
other hand steadying himself.  He pulled his fingers out of him, pressing
himself against him.  Fenris’ eyes were wide.  He panted with need.
            It was everything he wanted, everything he had ever wanted, or
dreamed of.  It was the feeling of hope, and love, and being wanted and
needed.  His arms wrapped around him, needing him desperately.  He pushed his
face against Hawke’s neck, inhaling deeply.
            He felt so good.  He never wanted another man—or woman for that
matter.  He only wanted Hawke.
            A tear rolled down his cheek, and it could have been mistaken for
sweat.  It rolled over the lyrium on his chin, dripping down his neck:  It
wasn’t meant to be.
            He loved Hawke.  He adored him.  He could petition the Chantry to
have the man deified; he loved him.  He would follow the man to the ends of the
earth, into the pits of hell.  He would do anything for him.
            But he couldn’t do this again with him.
            He had thought…
            The lyrium glistened, and he moaned, and the pair kissed.  Sighs
and screams alike passed their lips.
            It was what Fenris had thought he wanted.  He wanted Hawke, but he
knew, now, he couldn’t have him.
            He knew who Leto was.  He knew Varania.  He knew his mother.  He
knew every detail of his life, every painful detail.  So many memories that it
had been easier not to remember.  And memories that made the things he knew
more painful.  He knew everything, and the worst part was knowing that he would
forget again, and soon.  He remembered them, and remembered himself.  It wasn’t
the peace and joy he had known before.  It was anger, sorrow, regret, and a
world of tragedy and suffering.  It would all fade to nothing again soon.  It
was almost comforting to know that as a certainty.  Yet, he was glad to know it
wasn’t truly gone too.  Why was it sex that brought this out for him?  Why was
it that it was sex with Hawke?
            Because I love Hawke, he thought.  It’s what makes sex safe with
Isabela or a whore, but terrifying with Hawke.
***** I'm Sorry *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris tries to make amends for his actions and realizes that freedom
     means responsibility and hardship, and that he must behave
     accordingly.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Hawke made a face, shifting.  Had he fallen asleep on the floor? 
Why?  Someone was lying partway on top of him.  He assumed Anders—that was
usually how it went.
            “Anders?” he murmured.  He was conscious of being naked, and the
fire had long-since gone out.  His eyes slid open.  He blinked several times,
trying to adjust to the near-darkness.  There were candles that had burned low,
the coals of the fire cold.  Why was he in the library…?
            His eyes opened wide.  The library.  He looked down at Fenris,
still and relaxed, and by his breathing, he must be asleep.  He stared up at
the ceiling.  “Maker, Anders…  Oh, Andraste, holy bride of the Maker—what have
I done?” he whispered.
            Fenris shifted; he must have woken him.  The elf raised his head,
and looked at him.  Fenris sat up, rubbing at his eyes.  He was as naked as he
was, and he didn’t have to guess what had happened; he remembered most of it,
though he had drank more than intended.
            Hawke stood up, biting his lip.  “Shit,” he whispered.  “Shit.”  He
found his underwear on the floor, and pulled them on.  He started hunting for
the rest of his clothing.  “Shit.”  Hawke paced back and forth, mostly just
swearing. 
Fenris sighed desolately, watching him.  “Are you going to tell Anders?” he
asked, his voice soft.
            Hawke looked back at him, in nothing but his underwear, his
trousers in one hand.  “I… I have to.”
            The elf looked at him.  His memory left him aching, just like the
last time, but at least it wasn’t the horrible shock it had been last time; he
had expected it.  It left him disappointed and feeling empty, but not exactly
miserable.  Hawke, please don’t go…  “He’ll be angry.”
            “He’ll be even more angry if I don’t tell him.”
He stared down at his hands.  “Say you were drunk, and I took advantage of
you.”
“I’d be lying.  I mean, I was drunk, but… Fuck.”  He struggled with his
trousers.  “It takes two.  This wasn’t just you—I…  Damn it.”
Fenris’ eyes narrowed.  “Then tell him you love me.”
Hawke flinched as if he had been struck, and Fenris didn’t miss it.  “I didn’t
mean…”  He didn’t know what to say.  “I do love you—I just...  I love Anders.”
I know you love Anders.  And Fenris knew that Hawke cared more for Anders than
he did for him.  And Fenris…  All I do is hurt the people around me, and that
is not what I want for you. He didn’t know enough about love, about caring
about someone else.  All he had ever known was tragedy, death, hardship—how can
any of that form love?  He didn’t even know enough about love to say, for sure,
if he really loved Hawke.  But his desire for him he knew.  He wanted to be
with him more than anything, and it hurt to see him with Anders.  He wanted
Hawke to be happy, more than anything, and he was afraid he could not make him
happy.  Was that love?
            Fenris’ jaw set.  He remembered Anders, all his love and devotion
to Hawke.  The way he looked at Hawke, the way they had never seemed to fight
or argue, and were blissfully in love, and had been for years.  He rose, and
began dressing.  He did not look at him.  He flinched, and said, “Hawke, it’s
fine.  I don’t love you.  I just want to have sex with you.”
Hawke froze, staring back at him.  He seemed confused.  “But…”
            Fenris stopped.  He stared at him, directly into his eyes, his
heart hardened.  “I don’t love you,” he said again.  “You’re amazing in
bed—that’s all.  Or on the floor, respectively.”  Please don’t hate me.  I
couldn’t bear it if you hated me—but I’d never forgive myself if Anders left
you heartbroken, and I can’t—I don’t know how—to fix you.  But Anders does, and
I don’t think this will hurt you as much as Anders leaving you.  “I like you. 
And I like the sex.”  I like the sex, and your voice, your lips against mine
and your arms around me.  I like your skin against mine, and being close to
you, and I wish I never had to leave your embrace—I feel safe there.
            “Then see a whore,” Hawke snapped angrily.  “If you wanted to get
laid, see a whore, Fenris.  You…  I cheated on Anders.  I’m going to lose him.”
            Fenris watched him, the emotion in his eyes.  Hawke looked at
Anders in a way that he had never seen him look at him.  He loved Anders.  “If
you don’t tell him, you won’t lose him.”
            Hawke was aghast.  “I can’t lie to him; I love him.”
            The elf was quiet as he pulled on his tunic.  “Like you love me?”
            “You left me!” Hawke snapped.  “You said you couldn’t be with me,
and then you keep doing this shit.  What do you want?”
            “You,” he whispered, sliding into one gauntlet, then the other. 
Dressed, he looked back at Hawke.  “All I’ve ever wanted was you.”
            “Do you love me?” Hawke demanded.
            Fenris turned away from him, and flinched.  “No.”
            Hawke was stunned, and all he could do was watch him go.  He fell
into a chair, staring at the treacherous glass of brandy, still sitting on the
table where he had left it.
 
The rain had let up to a drizzle outside, the lightest it had been all week. 
The streets in Lowtown were muddy, wide, deep puddles he had to skirt around. 
Darktown was even worse, and there was no option except to walk, on his toes,
through the mud—and he had no doubt it wasn’t completely mud.  Fenris stepped
up to the clinic, wiping off his feet as best he could on the boards.  He
pushed the door of the clinic partway open, peering inside.  It was barely
light enough for the elf to see the shadows in the room, and he couldn’t tell
if the mage were inside.
“Anders?” Fenris called.  He heard a door open, and a light flickered.  Fenris
blinked, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the light.
Anders stopped, the sphere of bluish light hovering over his hand.  “Oh—it’s
just you.  Can this wait until morning?” he asked in a whisper, yawning.  He
was still dressed, even his boots.  Had he been awake at this hour, or just
fallen asleep in his clothing?
Fenris shook his head.  “No—I need to talk to you.”
Anders was not amused.  “Keep your voice down,” he hissed, stepping closer.  He
gestured to a dark figure on a cot.  “I have a kid here sleeping off the flu.” 
He tilted his head.  “C’mon then.”  Fenris followed him to a back room Anders
usually kept locked.  The room was small—more a large closet than a room.  It
had a small cot stuffed into one corner, a table beside it, a creaky chair, and
rows and rows of shelves, each shelf filled with bottles, jars, horns,
satchels, little bundles of herbs and plants and all manner of other things.
            On the desk, in an open skin, was a small pile of grayish-looking
sand, a mortar and pestle, and various other tins and bottles.  The desk
boasted one drawer, and Anders hurriedly removed a piece of worn parchment from
the desk, sliding it into the drawer.  He locked it, and turned back toward
Fenris.  “What’s that?” Fenris wondered, looking at the pile of sand.
            Anders blinked, and the orb of light flew up to the ceiling. 
“Nothing—It’s nothing.”  He went to the desk, folding up the skin.  “I’m making
something…  for someone—that’s all.”
            Fenris dismissed it.  “Look…  I…”  He stopped, staring down at the
floor under his bare feet.  “I’m sorry, Anders.”
            Anders looked back at him.  He turned toward him, leaning against
the desk.  “What did you do?” he demanded.
            Fenris looked up.  Looking at his face made it harder.  He hadn’t
thought it would be this hard, but he knew what he had done was wrong.  He had
to do something.  He loved Hawke, and he had to do something.  He took a breath
and let it out slowly.  “I went to Hawke’s library last night.”  He guessed it
was almost morning.  He looked up.  “Hawke wasn’t there—“
            “I told you not to come over!” Anders hissed venomously.  “I
fucking told you—“
            Fenris stared at him.  “I know.  And I’m sorry.”  He paused.  “Can
I go on?”
            Anders gritted his teeth.  “Can you?”
            The elf shifted, looking away from him.  “I…  Hawke had gone out to
the Hanged Man.  I didn’t care—I really just wanted to read for a bit.”  He
paused.  “And I wanted to apologize to Hawke.  He and Sebastian came over a
couple days ago, and…”  He hesitated.  “I got angry.  I thought I owed them
both an apology.”
            Anders shrugged.  “So…?”  His heart hammered in his chest.  Fear
made his blood rush through his ears.  Fenris had come to Anders to apologize
for something.  What had he done?
            “Hawke was drunk when he got home,” Fenris said quickly, before he
lost his nerve.  Anders froze, his every fear coming true.  Tentatively, Fenris
looked up at him.  “It was my fault, not his.  He was drunk, and I…”
            The blood drained from Anders’ face.  His hands were shaking.  No,
no, no…  “What did you do?” he whispered, but it was rhetorical.
            Fenris bit his lower lip, agonizing over whether or not he should
go on.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.  “Anders, he loves you.  It’s not his fault;
it was mine.”
            Anders fell into the chair, staring numbly ahead.  It felt like his
entire world were breaking.  His eyes fell to the skin on the desk, then slid
closed.  Nothing felt real.  This couldn’t be happening.  It just couldn’t be…
            Fenris stared at him.  “Anders, I don’t want you to be mad at
Hawke—he was drunk; he didn’t even know what he was doing…”
            Anders’ gaze shifted toward him.  “Oh, I have no doubt it was you,
Fenris.  Why can’t you just leave it alone?”  He rose from his seat, angry. 
“Why do you have to destroy everything?”
            Fenris looked back at him.  “Anders, I know I fucked up.”  He
paused.  “I love him.”  Why could he admit it to Anders, but to no one else? 
Maybe because Anders loved him too.
            “Did you tell him that?” Anders asked, his voice flat.
            The elf shook his head, staring down at the floor.  “I told him all
I cared about was the sex.  I told him I just wanted to fuck him.  He’s
terrified of losing you—he doesn’t care about me.”  He looked back at him. 
“Anders, I don’t care if you hate me, but I don’t want to see him unhappy.”
            Anders said nothing, remaining silent as the horror of the
situation rolled over him, and his grief and hurt consumed his heart.
            Fenris wondered how much longer he could keep all of these lies
up.  He wondered how much of it Anders saw through.  “Anders, I understand if
you’re angry, but be angry with me—not Hawke.  He loves you.”  He remembered
Hawke, his lips on his.  The apostate telling him that he loved him.  Stupid
things said during sex—that’s all.  A lot of people say stupid things they
don’t mean during sex.  Or when they were angry.
            “He had sex with you!” Anders exploded.  “You… Blighted whore!  You
fucked him!”
            Fenris held his tongue.  There were things he wanted to say, awful
things he wanted to say.  He wanted to tell Anders what they had done, tell him
all the things Hawke had said.  But it was immature, and would defeat his
purpose.  It would feel good, and righteous, but it would be very fleeting, and
it wouldn’t make this better.  “Anders…  Do whatever you need to do.”  He
looked down, and back up.  “If you need to hit me, I’ll let you.”  He stared at
him, suddenly desperate.  He didn’t want Hawke to lose the person he loved. 
“If you need to beat the shit out of me, I’ll let you.  But please…  Please
don’t take this out on Hawke.”
            Anders’ fingers curled into a fist.  Fenris saw him.  He wanted to
react, wanted to block the blow, but he didn’t.  He saw his arm fly toward him,
and he stayed still.  He remembered all the times Danarius or Hadriana had
slapped him, and he stayed still.  Anders’ fist connected with his jaw, hard
enough to knock him back against the door.  His head slammed—hard—into the
wooden frame.  He flinched, and when Anders advanced towards him, seething with
barely controlled rage, he only looked back at him.
            Anders’ hand touched the bruise he had made on his jaw.  Fenris
felt the healing magic dance over him.  He stared downward, knowing he had
deserved the blow.  Probably the one true time he had really deserved it when a
mage hit him out of anger.  Danarius used to heal him oftentimes when he hit
him too.  The man’s fingers fell to Fenris’ neck.  He peeled back the collar of
his tunic, his lips pressing into a thin line.  “Isabela’s, or Hawke’s?” Anders
asked, tapping against the dark mark on his neck.
            Fenris wanted to lie, and say it was Isabela, but he felt like he
had lied enough to Anders.  “I think Hawke’s.”
            Anders hit him again, healing the bruise just as quickly.  He
touched the mark on his neck, and it was gone.  “Any other places?”
            Fenris stared at him.  “No,” he lied.
            Anders nodded, and swung his fist again.  That time, Fenris fell to
the floor, his head spinning.  “If I ever see you again, it’s too soon,” Anders
muttered, turning from him, as he cast one last healing spell.  It swallowed
Fenris for a moment, every bruise, every mark of passion, every scratch, healed
and gone.  It didn’t take the pain away.
            The elf looked up at him, up at the mage he had let hit him. 
Danarius had done much worse to him.  For once, Fenris felt like he had truly
earned each of the three blows.  “I’m sorry, Anders,” he whispered.  And I’m
sorry, Hawke.
            The walk back to Hightown was long, and it gave him a lot of time
to reflect on his actions, and the consequences of them.  This was what freedom
was.  It was having to be responsible for his own actions, having to face their
consequences.  It wasn’t easy; it was difficult.  It meant doing things he
didn’t want to do, saying things he didn’t want to say—it meant doing the right
thing when the wrong thing might be easier.
            He didn’t like Anders, and he loved Hawke, but that didn’t make
what he had done last night right.  This was how he had to fix it.  He had to
take responsibility for his actions.  He had to stop running from every problem
he had, and learn to face it.  He wasn’t a slave anymore; his actions and
decisions were his own.  He had to live with them.
 
            Shaislyn had run out of options, which is what had brought him
here.  He followed the servant down the long hall of polished cherrywood, past
a room with olive drapes and green-veined marble tile, past rich tapestries,
over thick rugs, and up a staircase made of redwood.  The room the servant
brought him to was the master of the house’s solar.  The door, like the
staircase, was redwood, intricately carved knotwork decorating it.  Shaislyn
imagined the hours of work put into the door, some poor slave bent over the
task, hungry, tired.
            The handle was carved to imitate a dragon’s claws, and when he took
a step back, away from the door, he saw the pattern.  The dragon rose out of
the knotwork like mage’s fire, the twists and turns of it making the pattern of
its scales, its flared wings, its snarling fangs.  Flames spilled around it,
from it, consuming it and becoming it, creating and destroying.
            The servant made a face.  Peasant, the man thought snidely, and
opened the door for their odd guest.
            Shaislyn passed through the belly of the beast.  His boots echoed
on the polished hardwood, and then were muffled by the carpet.  He looked down,
at the carpet.  It was so large as to nearly cover the room, the polished
hardwood its frame.  He imagined the slaves who had woven it, inch by inch,
thread by colorful thread.  Above, was a glass ceiling, the steel latticework
in a starburst pattern.  Rather than tapestries, statuettes, or any other sort
of decoration, there were plants.  They squatted in their pots, well pruned and
cared for but never free.  Birds in cages chirped prettily at the far end of
the room, by the enormous window.  The furniture matched the floor perfectly,
accented by the drapes and the rug.
            An expensive room, built on the backs of slaves, like everything
else in the Imperium.  His gaze fell to the man in the chair, sipping tea.  The
man looked at him coldly, saying nothing.  Shaislyn strode forward, determined
not to linger in the doorway like a timid servant.
            “I want you to acknowledge my father’s wishes,” he said
immediately.  “Cillian Danarius.”
            Agasius’ cold stare turned into a cold smile.  “There’s no proof
that isn’t a forgery.  The notary died in a fire I’m afraid--unfortunate
circumstance, that--so many of his documents were lost.  The witnesses, I fear,
are quite unreliable too.”
            His eyes narrowed.  “Your doing,” he accused him.
            Agasius looked at him.  They had the same hair, and many of the
same features.  “You have no tact or social graces,” he said pleasantly.  “You
would tarnish the name anyway.”
            “I only want the damn title to keep my mother out of slavery,” he
hissed.  “Give me that, and I’ll drop the case.”
            The mundane head of the family was unfettered.  “You’ll drop both,”
he said, keeping his tone pleasant.  “Pursue your own interests, slave.”
            “What?”
            He smiled, lifting a small file from his desk.  “The originals in
Seheron burned, but you’re technically still property of the Imperial army.”
 Shaislyn’s heartbeat seemed to fill his ears, blocking out everything.  He was
still a slave.  “Now, if you agree to let the matter go, I’ll give you these.”
            His eyes narrowed.  “Cillian Danarius made me a citizen.  I have
the documents.”
            “He wasn’t your master.”
            His fingers curled into fists.  Those papers could destroy
everything.  He was already a member of the Circle, but it would colour his
social and political life forever; he’d never amount to anything, even if the
Circle did not immediately send him to Seheron to fight.  In the best case
scenario, his Soporati citizenship documents would help him and he might be
able to argue for Liberati status, but he might as well be a slave for all the
good it would do at that point.  He’d never be able to help his mother.  He let
his anger go with a deep breath.  Agasius had beat him, and he knew it.  But,
if those were the only copies...  “Are those the only copies?”
            “No,” he said serenely.  “You’re a mage; you could set them on fire
right now.”  He cocked his head to the side, perhaps guessing that this was
exactly what Shaislyn had in mind.  “But, sign an agreement to abandon this
futile effort, and I’ll give them to you.”
            “How do I know you only have two?”
            “My part of the agreement will nullify those documents.”
            Then it wouldn’t matter.  Shaislyn turned from him, but not to
leave:  To pace.  He paced from one end of the rug to another, thinking.  If he
didn’t do it, Agasius was going to sabotage him.  If Agasius felt especially
vindictive, something might even happen to his citizenship documents, and he’d
be a slave to the military again.  He bit his lower lip as he thought, trying
to decide what he could do.  There wasn’t anything he could do.  If he tried to
fight it, Agasius could see him back on an Imperial leash, and very easily.
 The remaining option would be to abandon the idea of rescuing his mother and
become an apostate again.  Worse, he would be a wanted criminal:  Thievery,
subterfuge, and a runaway slave.  His bounty may even be close to Fenris’.
 Tevinter, a former refuge, would become a very dangerous place for him to be.
 He turned back to Agasius.  “Let my mother go, and I’ll agree.”
            “No.”
            Shaislyn glared at him.  “It means nothing to you.  Let her go.”
            “I’ll sell her to you,” he said, a smile spread across his face.
 “You can either sell yourself to me--I’ll send you straight to the Grand
Proving; you can fight until you die.”  Shaislyn stared downwards, at the rug.
 Damn bastard, he thought.  “Of course we’ll have to do something about your
shapeshifting ability--can’t have you getting away.”  All colour drained from
the half-breed’s face.  “Or, if you prefer, you can buy her back.”
            He raised his head.  “How much?” he asked, his voice quiet,
defeated.
            A slow smile crept across Agasius’ face like a snail over a
flower.  He named a figure.
            Shaislyn exploded, outraged.  “I can buy half the army for that!”
            “But it’s what she’s worth to you.  Now, you can take it, or I
won’t sell.  I’ll take payments, if you please, but you’ll have to put down a
deposit of 50% for me to keep from selling her.”  I’ll just steal it, he
thought.  And a good portion of it from you, you bastard.  Agasius smiled.  As
if he could read his mind, he added, “And if you’re caught stealing again—and
you will be, because you’ll be watched—you’ll be executed.”
            His heart felt like it had dropped down to the floor.  Theft was
how he had gotten by all his life.  How could he…?  “I can’t…”
            “No?  Then you had best hurry.”
            They argued over the contract, but Shaislyn gave up when Agasius
would not budge on the price.  He lowered it not one copper penny, and all of
his other terms were solid.  Worse, Agasius was just as happy to walk away from
the deal, and leave Shaislyn a runaway slave with a bounty on his head.  Not
knowing what else he could do, he signed, relinquishing any claim he had to the
bloodline.  What was the alternative?
 
            Varania heard a knock at the door, and her spirits flew.  Shaislyn?
 Her heart pounded in her chest.  Was he returning in defeat--or triumph?  Had
he succeeded?  She flew to the door, unlocking it.  She started to ask, and
then saw the tired, defeated look on his face.  She stepped to the side,
letting him in.  She knew when he wasn’t using the sight magic, because he kept
his fingertips against the wall, moving slowly.  He sat down heavily on the
bed, eyes unseeing.
            “I’m sorry.”  His voice came out in little over a whisper, broken
and defeated.
            “Shai, you tried,” she started to say.
            He shook his head.  “I’m too late,” he whispered.  “We needed to do
this while Danarius was alive--I’m too late.”
 
            The stairs creaked in complaint as one foot after the other
traveled down them.  It was still somewhat early in the morning, and the pub,
for the most part, was empty.  There was a handful of stragglers left behind
having a breakfast of greasy sausage, watery potatoes, and oily eggs to try to
clear up a leftover hangover before they drug their sorry behinds into work
late, many of them rehearsing what they would say to their bosses.  The truth
would be the wise thing, but a lie would sound better.
            Varric was surprised to see Fenris, sitting alone at the bar,
staring forlornly into a pint of ale as if it contained all of life’s secrets. 
If he drank enough, it would divulge a few of those secrets to him.
            “Why here so early?”
            “I just got back from the Chantry,” Fenris muttered.  “Sebastian is
busy.  So I thought I needed a drink.”
            Varric watched him sip from the mug, and set it back down, but
mostly the elf stared at it.  His eyes looked hollow, and he actually smelled
like sex.  Strange—Isabela had been here all night and he had never seen
Fenris.  Varric guessed it wasn’t his business if Fenris went to whores
though.  Nothing wrong with that.  Frankly, he would prefer it if Fenris plowed
his way through the brothel rather than abuse drugs.
            The dwarf sat down beside him.  “How many have you had?” he asked
amiably.
            He shrugged a shoulder.  “Fifth one—now.  Or something.”
            The bartender, apparently having heard him, piped up, “Sixth,
actually!”
            Fenris nodded to him.  “Thanks for counting,” he said with some
sarcasm.
            “One of us has to—and your limit is about ten before you can’t
walk, so drink it slow, elf,” he said, not in an unfriendly manner.  Fenris
nodded weakly; he had spent a lot of time here, and he supposed it wasn’t out
of the question that the man knew how much he could drink.
            Varric raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t you think you should slow down a
bit?  It’s a bit early for that.”
            Fenris glanced at him sidelong, knowing when he was being judged. 
He picked up the mug, looking away from him.  He took a long swallow and set it
back down.  He stared at the mug.  “I had sex with Hawke last night.”
            The dwarf let out a low whistle.  No wonder he was drinking. 
“Hell,” he swore.  “You make some shitty decisions.”  Fenris only nodded. 
Varric watched him for a moment.  A fly landed on the counter, and walked
across one of the elf’s fingers.  Fenris watched it, but made no move to scare
it away.  He only stared at the insect as it paused at a joint in his
gauntlet.  The fly flew off.  The elf sighed.  “So.  What are you going to do
about it?” Varric asked, as Fenris was unforthcoming with furthering the
conversation.
            He picked up the mug, raising it slightly.  “I toast to Hawke’s
relationship with Anders—may Anders forgive him, and I hope they are very happy
together.”
            The other was not impressed, and wondered how much of that was
sarcastic.  “Are you really getting over Hawke?”
            He drank again, and set it back down, staring at him.  “I’m not; I
just realized last night that even if Hawke didn’t love Anders, it won’t work
between us.”  He paused.  “He called me ‘Anders’ this morning—I guess it was
still dark, but ‘morning’… whatever--when I woke up—I think he was half-asleep,
but you get the point.”
            Varric flinched, and nodded with sudden understanding.  “Ah.”  He
paused, wondering if they should really continue this line of conversation.  He
looked at his posture, judged his overall demeanor.  He considered Fenris’
rational decision to stop pining over Hawke.  No, this conversation was best
left where it was.  He refused to get involved.  “So, do you mind answering
this, because I’ve always wondered—when you’re in bed with another man, how do
you decide who is… on top?  I mean, I’m assuming it’s Hawke; he’s taller than
you.”
Fenris rolled his eyes, clearly irritated, but not at the question; at his
ignorance.  “First, there’s a power struggle and one of us has to assert our
dominance over the other.  You know, like dogs.”
Varric got the idea that he was being mocked.  “Is that so.”
Fenris nodded and continued, “Then, the dominant one gets to choose.  And…
believe me, Varric, it isn’t awkward just because he’s taller than me.”
Varric stared at him.  “Hmm.  But don’t you… get… shit on your dick?”
Fenris smirked, and laughed softly.  “It’s best not to think about it.  But if
you’re planning on sex, cleaning out is a good idea.”
The dwarf stared at him.  “I really don’t want to know.”
The elf’s smirk widened.  “Two fingers and some soap.”  He gestured to
emphasize his point.  “Usually this ends in masturbation though.”  He gestured
again—a familiar gesture to every male in the pub.
His hand covered his face.  “I said I didn’t want to know.”
“Now tell me how you prefer to masturbate.”
“I think I’ll be going now,” the bartender said, and found something to do at
the other side of the room.  Fenris was dimly amused.
Varric, for once, was temporarily shocked and at a loss for words.  He
recovered quickly, however.  “I… see.  This is more than I really needed to
know about you, Fenris.  Or your sex life, for that matter.”
The elf smirked.  “One day, Varric, you’ll find yourself in bed with another
man, and he will plow your ass into the mattress—“
Varric got up, turning around.  “I think we’re done here.”
Fenris continued on, “And you’ll fucking love it.  When he hits your prostate
for the first time though, make sure you’re not standing, because your knees
might buckle.”
Everyone in the bar who had heard laughed.  Varric rolled his eyes, shooting
Fenris a nasty glare.  He heard the elf chuckle as he walked away.  Who would
have ever thought that discussing masturbation and sex was a great way to get
people to leave him alone.
 
            In the library, he had said.  Anders hoped that was true.  He hoped
it was just the library, and not the bed he slept in with Hawke.  He walked
inside, spying Orana mopping the floor.  She stopped when she noticed him,
nearly dropping the mop.
            “Anders!” she exclaimed.  “Um, the floor is still wet over here…”
            “I won’t walk on it,” he promised her.  “Could you leave me alone
for a minute?”
            She hesitated, and put the mop back in the bucket, and started to
walk past him.
            “Orana, actually…”  She stopped, turning back toward him.  “Did
you… Did Fenris come over last night?”  He could be lying, Anders thought
desperately.  Fenris could be lying.  He could be trying to make me believe it.
            She hesitated.  “I never saw him,” she admitted.
            He paled, just a little.  “Did you… hear anything?”
            She looked distinctly uncomfortable.  She stared down, at the
floor.  “A…  A little bit…”
            He didn’t need to ask whatever she had heard.  “Oh...  Thanks,
Orana.”
            The elf that used to be a slave nodded, and turned, leaving
quickly.  He looked at each chair, each table.  Every surface was suspect.  Had
Hawke kissed him here?  Had they undressed there?  Did it happen here?
            Why?
            Miserable, he sat down heavily, praying that nothing had happened
in this particular chair.  He guessed it didn’t matter.
            He stared at the object, hidden in a sackcloth bag and small enough
to be concealed in his coat, in his hands.  No, it really didn’t matter.  He
sighed, and moved the object away, hiding it.
            On the table sat a tiny carving.  He had never seen it before, so
he lifted it off the table.  It was very old, carved from a smooth, buttery
wood that he assumed must be walnut.  It was carved into the shape of a dog,
badly, as if the carver were new at the craft.  Or was it supposed to be a
wolf?
            Little wolf.
            Maybe it was supposed to be a wolf.  Maybe it was Fenris’.  He rose
from his seat, slipping the little figure into his bag at his belt.  He went
for a long walk, back down to the docks, staring out at the sea.
            He turned, looking in the direction of the Circle Tower.
            He could just ignore all this.  He could walk away.  He could try
to ignore Justice, and the wrath he felt at injustice.  He could try.  He had
used to be able to.
            He could just walk away, go back to Fereldon.  The Grey Warden
Commander would welcome him back with open arms.  Smile and ask him where he
had been for so long, catch him up to speed on everything that was going on. 
He could see it all so clearly.
            He would leave Kirkwall on the next Ferelden-bound ship.  He would
make his way to the Keep.  They would ask him who he was, and he would smile
and laugh, say he was a Grey Warden, explain who he was.  Nathaniel would be
pleased to see him.  Sigrun would ask him to set something on fire.  Oghren
would get him a stiff drink, and demand to be told the story of the Qunari
invasion in Kirkwall, while grumbling about missing a good fight.  Velanna
would cross her arms, and give him that famous scowl, demanding to know how he
could leave her, while complaining that she knew nothing about healing.
            Maybe he would see Alistair on his next visit.  Alistair, he had to
say, was by far his favourite Templar—the only Templar he had ever met that he
liked, for that matter.  They had a similar sense in humor and often had each
other in stitches if they were alone for too long.
            And maybe the world would keep going.  Maybe children would
continue to be ripped from their parents, outcast from society.  Maybe
terrified people would continue to be thrown into cages and trapped, living
like animals.  Maybe they would continue to be beaten, starved, a brand pushed
against their foreheads to take away everything they are and have ever been, to
take away any future they might have ever had.
            Which is when he knew that even though he wanted to let it go, to
throw the thing he had made into the sea and forget about it, he knew he could
not.
            It’s not too late, he reminded himself again.
            But he stared at the Tower.  No.  It is too late.  Too little, too
late.
            I’m so scared, he thought as he walked back to Hightown.
            Hawke was home when he got there, pacing in his room.  The cat
slept on the rug by the fireplace.
            The apostate turned toward him.  “Anders, I have to tell you—“
            Anders wrapped his arms around him, and kissed him to silence.  He
was quiet as he tugged at his clothing, every time Hawke tried to say
something, he kissed him.
            Hawke finally pulled away.  “Anders, I can’t…  I need to tell you
that…”
            “I don’t care—whatever you’re going to say, I don’t care,” he told
him, his voice soft.  He went to kiss him again, but Hawke moved his head away.
            “You will care.  If you’d let me tell you, you’d care,” Hawke tried
again.
            Anders shook his head, and kissed him, feeding magic into the
kiss.  He had read about the spell in the Ferelden Circle, and everyone had
tried it.  He had never needed to use it on Hawke; he was always eager.  But,
just this once, he wanted him to shut up and hold him, so he used the spell.
            It had been discovered by accident in somewhat compromising
circumstances about two hundred years ago by a promiscuous Tevinter mage with a
blood fetish.  They had discovered a non-blood magic, “safe” version, and
Anders, being an over-eager teenage boy, had tried it with a couple different
and just as eager girls.
            It felt good to be held, to be wanted, and loved.  It felt good to
be desired, and to desire.  It was comforting, and safe, and as the spell wore
off—it didn’t last long—Hawke didn’t stop.
            Anders woke two hours before dawn.  He washed off, and brushed his
hair.  Hawke was asleep in bed, dead tired.  He smiled softly.  And he better
be after what they had done.
            Anders dressed, and remembered the carving in his bag.  He removed
it, looking at it again.  I’m glad you won’t be alone.  If you decide to hate
me for what I am going to do, I’m glad you won’t be alone.  Fenris loves you,
and if you hate me, he’ll be too happy to be there for you.
            It hurt to think about, to even imagine.  But he was comforted,
too.  He didn’t want Hawke to be alone.  He wanted him to be happy, more than
anything.
            Anders looked at the man he loved, and with all his soul, he wanted
to crawl back into bed with him.  It would be easier if he did.  He wanted to. 
Just ignore all the hardship and cruelties in the world, all the injustice and
the despair, and crawl back into his arms where he was happiest.
            And that would be selfish, he thought to himself.  People were
miserable, cold, hungry, wet, tired, terrified—and he wanted to crawl back into
his lover’s embrace.
            He couldn’t do that.  He couldn’t do that anymore.  He had had a
few precious, beautiful years of happiness.  He had tasted what love was like,
and he knew it was horribly unfair that so many people in the world would never
feel it.  So many people never had that.  He wanted to give them the chance
they had never had, a chance he had almost never had.
            He leaned over the bed, kissing him softly.  He whispered, “I love
you.”  He touched his hair, longing to hold him, just for another hour.
            Hawke’s eyes fluttered open, sleepy.  “Come back to bed,” he
breathed.
            “I’m sorry,” he answered.  But not for not being able to come back
to bed.  I’m sorry for everything.  I’m sorry for hiding this from you, and I’m
sorry I tricked you.  I’m sorry.
            “Mmm—Anders, don’t go.  I want you to stay.”
You have no idea how hard this is. “I’ll see you later,” he promised him.  “I
love you.”
            Hawke lifted his head, and kissed him again.  “I love you too,
Anders.”  His eyes closed, and he fell back into bed.
            Anders felt his eyes water, and he took a step backwards, and was
gone quickly.  He stared up at the sky.  It would be a beautiful day.  He took
a deep breath, holding back the tears that threatened to spill.  He blinked it
away and took his first step forward.
            I love you, Hawke.  I’m sorry.
Chapter End Notes
     I feel like Fenris has made real emotional and psychological
     progress. It's taken a while, but he's learned and is even seeking to
     correct the behaviour.
     He is also learning what love is: Sacrificing your happiness for the
     sake of the person you love.
***** Answers *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris begins looking for answers to questions he has had for a long
     time, with varied results.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            It was the second best kiss he had ever received.  A nameless kiss
that wiped away everything, took his breath away, made his heart race.  A kiss
that was passionate and filling—No, he wasn’t a teacup filled with tea; it
flowed out of him, filled his heart and soul to bursting and there was still so
much left.  It was a kiss that defined the word, a standard to live up to. 
Nameless, wordless communication of simple and impossible phrases.  It was an
embrace that meant every word, every sentence left unsaid.  Longing, of what
might have been, what could be, and what wasn’t.
            It ended, just like that.  Hawke said nothing, but pressed a small
object into Fenris’ hand, and the look in his eyes was all Fenris needed to
understand, yet still he felt content.  The apostate turned from him, and his
chosen three companions fell into step with him.
Hawke felt Anders staring at him, distinctly unhappy.  He looked back at him.
 “Will you ever forgive me?” Hawke asked him quietly.
Anders was silent for a long moment.  “I don’t have room any more to demand you
beg forgiveness,” he said softly.
Hawke shook his head.  “Yes you do.”  He flinched.  “I slept with him.  I
kissed him goodbye just now--and I know you’re angry.”
Anders nodded dimly.  “Yes.”  He cocked his head to the side, looking at him.
 “But it was the last time, wasn’t it?”
Hawke reached his hand out toward him.  Anders hesitated, and took it.  “Yes.”
“I love you.”
Fenris looked down, at the wolf carving Hawke had handed back to him.  He
sighed, pocketing the figurine.  He couldn’t believe he had forgotten it.  He
also could barely believe that Anders had not decided to destroy it out of
spite, but he was glad he did not.  He remembered, for a moment, every kiss he
and Hawke had shared, every embrace.  His favourite of them had been the first
of them.  You always remember the first—and the last.
He felt some amount of sorrow as he watched Hawke depart, watched a brief
moment of closeness between the two apostates.  Carver and Aveline followed
close behind them, their twin disapprovals almost palpable, even if they were
for different reasons.
Isabela looked up at Fenris.  “Are you angry that Hawke chose Anders?”
The elf shook his head.  “No.”
She cocked her head to the side quizzically.  “No?  You aren’t angry that he
left you behind?”
He shook his head again, and the corners of his mouth curved into a slow smile.
 “He left me here with you.”
She returned the smile in kind.
“Hey, you two lovebirds, we have incoming,” Varric called, aiming Bianca at a
shade.  The bolt hit home hard, and Fenris sighed, as if this were the greatest
of chores, reaching for his sword.
“I would use a different term,” Isabela commented, bringing her daggers to
hand.
“It doesn’t describe our relationship,” Fenris agreed, swinging the sword down
against a ravenous corpse.  The blade cleaved through bone, and smelled
abominable.  He stepped quickly away from it, trying to avoid the shower of
blood.
“Drinks later?” Isabela asked everyone.  There was a general chorus of
agreement that drinks would definitely be needed after this.
 
            The dawn came the next day.  Fenris didn’t know why he had ever
doubted.  Meredith had become… a statue of red lyrium, and the Templars, what
was left of the loyal ones, tried to keep everyone away from it.  It wasn’t
difficult.
            The aftermath was… tremendous.  Repairs would take years, and that
was only the buildings.  So many people had died, and there had been a moment
when he had held his breath when he heard people demand a purge of the
alienage.  Why?  Humans made up all kinds of reasons to kill elves.  They
thought there might be apostates in the alienage—true, Merrill was there. 
There might even be more now, but too many innocents would die.  When humans
led these “purges” they often killed anyone.  Fenris was only surprised they
didn’t kill everyone.  Fenris had went to Aveline after he had been accosted on
the street, demanding something be done—and soon.  He was about to start
camping at the alienage door—he felt he had to do something.  And it was only a
matter of time before Tevinter slavers saw fleeing refugees as fodder.
            Hawke and Aveline had put a stop to the idea of a purge, and
Aveline arranged patrols to watch the roads for slavers.  Fenris was happy to
assist with that.  Without Aveline, Kirkwall might fall apart.  There were few
people Fenris respected quite so much as Ser Aveline. 
            Many places in Lowtown were a disaster, and Hightown had fared a
lot better.  Fact of the matter, the alienage had tightly shut its doors and in
many ways, that had kept a lot of the looting and killing out—likely another
reason for the demands for a purge.
            Fenris had completely forgotten about the letter his backstabbing
little sister had sent to him.
            One foggy midmorning some weeks later, someone came by and told him
that Varric had something for him.  That must be the package he was expecting.
            Shortly after Meredith’s death, he had become curious about the
effects of lyrium on the body—a personal interest.  Seeing that statue had been
horrifying to him.  He had asked a few Templars, and done some independent
research too.  His conclusions were startling, and troubling.
            He had no doubt that his memory loss happened during the Ritual,
the pain of it wiping away everything he was.  But was it only the pain?  It
was entirely possible that it was the lyrium.  One of lyrium’s main side
effects was memory loss… and madness.
            Troubled, he had decided that what he really needed right now was
to learn about the Ritual.  Maybe, just maybe, it would be entirely possible to
remove the lyrium.  He wondered what that would be like.  What would he look
like?  Would it leave scars?  Would it relieve the constant pain he felt?
            It was a pleasant daydream, an exciting one, but also kind of
frightening.  It would mean he wouldn’t have the power he did now.  It would be
his sword skills alone, and while he knew he was an excellent warrior, he had
never had any reason not to rely on the abilities the lyrium gave him.  Not
having it would be… strange.
            He went down to the merchant’s guild and picked up the package from
Varric directly, but didn’t stay long.  He went back home instead, and opened
the brown paper containing the book.  He smirked down at the leather cover.  It
was Danarius’ published piece—detailing the entire Rite.  He had to mark
passages he didn’t understand, or needed clarification on.  It had been
translated into the Trade tongue, which was good because he spoke Tevene
fluently, but he couldn’t read it.  Much of it he really needed a mage to
interpret for him all the same.
            The diagrams were easy.  It looked like Danarius had drawn up plans
for a female body too.  And, as he looked at the other diagrams, he had male
and female elf and human both.  He supposed that it would have depended wholly
on who the magister had chosen.  Or, if Varania could be believed, who had won
a tourney.  He wished there was a way to verify that.
            The book did mention previous experiments, but only briefly, and it
certainly never gave name to them.  It mentioned the number of slaves who had
died for it, and it made him feel sick to consider that people had died so that
he could live his life in pain.
            Beyond that, he really couldn’t understand the Ritual, though he
did try.  He studied other forms of magic and theorem in an attempt to make any
sense out of the book.  It was horribly fascinating the way watching a cart
overturn was fascinating, but useless to him because he wasn’t a mage.  He
could read about it, but he didn’t really understand it.
            Feeling hopeless, he finally went to Hawke about it.  Anders was
there, and sat quietly in a chair, watching them as if he expected the elf to
do something.  What he expected though, Fenris had no idea.  He did his best to
ignore him.  “I need your help, Hawke,” Fenris confessed immediately.
            Hawke nodded, long used to hearing those words.  “Everyone does.”
            The elf glanced down at the book in his hands.  “Danarius published
a book about the Ritual several years ago,” he began slowly, opening the
volume.  He flipped to a marked chapter, of the diagrams.  “Varric got the book
from the Imperium…”
            Hawke’s eyes widened, looking down at the diagram of the male elf. 
One of his fingers touched the blue ink on the page.  Every mark on the diagram
was exactly how he remembered it on Fenris’ body.  Anders looked up.  Fenris
wanted to roll his eyes.  “This is--?”
            Fenris nodded.  “Yes, and I’ve read it, but I don’t really
understand it—“
            The apostate pulled it from his hands, eagerly turning the pages,
fascinated.  Anders rose from his chair, walking over to them.  He peered over
Hawke’s shoulder curiously.  Fenris’ lips pressed into a thin line, irritated. 
Mages!  “Oh, Maker—look at that.”  Fenris glanced at the page.  It was another
diagram, this one in red ink, and was meant to be on the floor of a hexagonal
room.  In real life, the diagram would have been created in someone’s
lifeblood—it would have needed to be a killing blow, preferably to a major
artery.
            What room did he know of that was hexagonal?  He always had assumed
that the Ritual had occurred in Ath Velanis, but he couldn’t seem to actually
recall a hexagonal room there.  He had certainly not been in every room in the
Tower there; Danarius had only been into a few rooms.  Maybe that room was in
Ath Velanis, and he had just never seen it.  How could he ever know?  He
wondered if it even mattered.  Danarius’ library was actually hexagonal, if all
the bookcases were gutted out of it.
            He froze, blinking as he considered.  The stained glass was leaded,
filtering light and Danarius had once told Hadriana that the glass sealed
spells inside the room, and also kept them out of the room.  A dark room, fear
and death heavy in the air, blood…  So much blood…
            “But how--?  It would need to be stabilized…” Anders murmured. 
Fenris was pulled from his thoughts by the mage’s words, and was, for once, not
angry about it.  He shivered.
            “How did he suspend the soul…?  This is impossible…”
            “Clearly, it wasn’t,” Fenris interjected, but neither paid him any
heed.
            Anders considered.  “It’s possible—look you’d have to anchor it
from the Fade.  It mentions a blood link.”
            “What’s that supposed to mean?”
            “I don’t know—I’m not a blood mage.  Maybe it mentions it somewhere
else in the text.”
            “Do you think we should ask Merrill about it?”
            “I hate to, but that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
            Fenris sighed in annoyance.  “I think I’ll be going.  Let me know
when you are finished with it.”  He didn’t think either of them were listening
to him, but Hawke did wave vaguely when he left.
 
            Merrill had been sitting, scarcely moving except to take a sip of
clear water from a crystal cup, for almost two hours.  Orana was dusting the
library in the background, and Hawke and Anders were going over diagrams.
            Orana jumped when Merrill snapped the book closed.  Hawke turned
toward her.
            She uncurled from the padded armchair like a cat, her bare feet
slipping down to the carpeted floor.  “It’s impossible,” she said.
            Anders sighed.  “I knew it.”
            She was genuinely frustrated.  “That shemlen left things out of
this book,” she said, raising the leather-bound copy slightly.  “What’s the
‘blood link’?  What’s its connection to Fenris?”  Frustrated, she dropped it
down on the table.  “And how much blood was used?  It’s terrible, and I feel
like something is missing from it, but I don’t know what.  All the pieces
connect.  Everything makes sense.”  She bit her lip in thought.  “It’s
perfectly put together—and that’s what’s so infuriating!”
            Anders frowned.  “What do you mean?  So much of it doesn’t make
sense.”
            She rolled her eyes.  “If you had ever tried to communicate with
spirits, or use blood magic, it would make sense to you, Anders,” she said
peaceably.
            Hawke crossed his arms.  “So how did he suspend Fenris’ soul?”
            Merrill waved the matter off.  “The entire thing is right there,”
she said.  “He explains it very thoroughly.”
            Anders was confused.  “But it’s impossible.”
            She shook her head.  “No.  When we dream, our soul wanders the
Fade.  The Rite would have failed with a Qunari or a dwarf; they don’t dream.” 
She paused to gather her thoughts.  “But elves do.”
            “He didn’t put him in a coma,” Anders pointed out.
            Hawke groaned.  “Fenris was in a coma for six weeks after the
Ritual.  He told me.”
            Anders blinked in surprise.  “Shit.”
            Merrill nodded.  “That makes sense; Danarius induced a coma. 
That’s probably why he survived.”
            Anders shook his head.  “But the how of it—that’s not…”  His voice
trailed off as Merrill shook her head.
            “Blood magic, in higher function, is to manipulate the minds of
others,” she said slowly.  Her eyes widened a little.  “I’ve never—I’d never—“
            Hawke raised a hand.  “We know, Merrill.”
            She calmed.  “Well, I mean to say, rather than tweak Fenris’
memories or rifle through his thoughts, he induced a very deep sleep.  But
that’s only the first step; he had to keep the soul where he wanted it to go. 
If Fenris had dreamed—and he would have—he might have died.  So Fenris’ soul
had to go somewhere Danarius had already planned on him being.  He would have
had to…”  She struggled for a moment.  “The second diagram, the one on page
108, that one is probably the mage’s link to the Fade.  He would have had to go
into the Fade to keep Fenris’ soul in one place.”
            “That’s the blood link one,” Hawke said.  “So what’s the link?”
            Merrill shrugged.  “He never says.”  She hesitated.  “Maybe a blood
relative of Fenris’, or even just someone he had an emotional bond with.”
            All three mages were quiet for a long moment.  “Is it wrong that
this is fascinating?” Hawke wondered quietly, and they could not help but
chuckle.
            “I’ve been wondering how he can live with all that lyrium in his
skin for years,” Anders muttered.
            Hawke glanced at him sidelong.  “Not without negative
repercussions; it’s why he’s curious about it, and wants to get rid of it.”
            Merrill nodded.  “I don’t know very much about lyrium,” she said
with some regret.  If she knew more about the substance, she would have an
easier time understanding the book.  “But I do know, from the book, that
Danarius was worried about sterility, memory loss, and brain function.  There
was even some question of if he would wake at all.”
            “Paralysis, too,” Anders chimed in.  “There’s a fair amount of
lyrium around quite a few nerves, and chakra points.  Removing it would be just
as much risk.”
            Merrill nodded.  “The skin also isn’t just under the lyrium,” she
said slowly.  “The lyrium is burned into his skin, and the layer of skin under
it is very thin, if it is even there at all, and much of the lyrium sits
overtop of his nerves.”  She paused.  “It’s why he’s in pain all the time.  And
also why it reacts to his mood.”
            “Well, I don’t think Fenris cares so much about being sterile, but
he might care about paralysis, memory loss, and brain function,” the Champion
commented.
            Anders leaned against the desk.  “I don’t think there is a way to
remove the lyrium—not without killing him.  I mean, I’ve seen him get cut by a
knife before in battle.  The skin around the lyrium is damaged, but the lyrium
is fine—not even a cut.”  He shrugged.  “I don’t think you can just cut it
out.”
            “But magic might…”
            Merrill shook her head.  “It would effectively skin him,” she
pointed out.  “Burning it into him nearly killed him, but trying to remove it… 
Even if it were possible, he might end up bleeding to death before we could
hope to heal him.”
            Anders thought about it seriously for a moment.  “If the lyrium
goes all the way to the muscle, removing it could kill him.”  He sighed.  “If
we somehow found a way to remove it, it would take hours.  He’d have to stay
still while we removed it piece by piece, and healed it as we went.”
            The three looked at each other.  No one liked that idea.  Fenris
would probably even decline it.  The pain of having his flesh flayed from his
body would be more than anyone could bear, and he would have to endure hours of
it.
            Hawke looked up.  “How does his hair grow overtop of the lyrium? 
There’s lyrium on the base of his skull, and behind his hairline.”
            Anders glanced at Hawke.  He had a blank expression on his face,
and he raised one eyebrow.  “Well.  Have you touched any of the lyrium?  Did it
feel like skin?”
            Hawke flinched.  “It…”  He thought about it.  “It did.”  They
sighed, back to where they were.  “Which means…”  He flipped open the book
again, hunting to a page.  “Vessels… construction…  Here!”  He looked up. 
“Cryptic wording, but ‘lyrium carried in flesh’.  It’s poured metal, but he
can’t just dump it on him and expect it to have the same effect.  I can’t cut
my arm open and pump lyrium into my blood and expect it to do the same thing as
Fenris.”  Hawke considered and turned the page.  “It’s a liquid.”
            “So is tattoo ink,” Anders pointed out.
            Merrill thought about it.  “When smiths melt iron and go to shape
it, they have to pour it into a mold,” she said slowly.
            Hawke pointed at her eagerly.  “The lyrium still feels like skin
because it’s sitting in a mold made out of his skin.”
            “That is disgusting,” Anders commented.
            “It’s disgusting that someone thought it was okay to do this to
someone else,” Hawke agreed.  He thought about when the lyrium was dimmest,
when Fenris was calm.  It was always still visible, but that was because it
would shine through anything.  “It’s not sitting on top of his skin—it just
always looks like it because we can see it.”  He left out that the skin kind of
felt different over the lyrium too.  “It’s why his hair can grow overtop of
it—the skin is just thinner over the lyrium.”
            “It’s interesting, but it doesn’t really help us,” Anders pointed
out.  He yawned.  “It’s late.”  He kissed Hawke’s cheek gently.  “Night.”
            Merrill felt herself blush, and look away.  They were so cute
together like this.  It was sweet.  She found herself suddenly missing her
home, her family.  She was so very tired of the alienage, with its sewer and
cramped spaces.  She longed for a wide open sky, surrounded by grass and trees,
completely alone without a soul for miles.
            She looked back at the pair, so safe and at home in one another’s
arms.  They were home, in the place they were happiest, where they felt they
belonged.
            I want to go home, she thought.
 
Chapter End Notes
     Sorry this is taking me so long! I really do work on it almost every
     day, and rest assured, I know where I want it to go. :)
     That being said, thanks, guys! Readers keep me motivated. ^-^
***** The Weight of Sin *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris confronts his fears, leaving him to wonder at the difference
     between justice and vengeance. Isabela admits to a past wrong,
     prompting Fenris to consider what must be wrong with someone to cause
     harm to an innocent.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            The warm Tevinter sun spilled across the carpets.  Windows were
open to let in a cool sea breeze, which was welcome in the heat of the summer.
 The manor was quiet.  Fenris walked along the carpet, each footfall exact and
almost silent.  He knew where he was, and with that knowledge came the
knowledge that he was dreaming.
            He felt himself relax.  It was just a dream.  It could only be a
dream.  He would never see Minrathous again.  Killing Danarius wouldn’t get rid
of the bounty, he was aware.  If anything, it would only go up; he was an
escaped slave all the same, and he had killed two magisters, which would earn
him the headsman’s axe if he were ever caught.  Danarius might have been able
to alleviate the punishment for killing Hadriana, but that one chance was long
gone.  It had occurred to him several days ago, and he did not regret his
actions, but it made him uneasy all the same.  He would never not have a reason
to run.  That was almost comforting though.  At least he knew nothing would
truly change.
            He saw his hand raise, and open a door.  He felt himself pulled in,
as if he didn’t have a will of his own, or perhaps something was guiding him.
 He knew this room too, but the image he saw now was sharper than the one in
his memory.  The wallpaper had also been changed since he had seen it last,
which was odd.  Now how could he have imagined that?
            His eyes fell to the window.  It was open, and Danarius was
standing in front of it.  The man turned, blinking.  It wasn’t the old man he
had killed; it was the young man Fenris could never have known, but
unmistakably the same man.
            “Come in,” he said, waving at him vaguely as the human stalked
toward his desk.  “Don’t linger in the doorway like that.”
            Fenris hesitated, and stepped inside.  It was just a dream, after
all.  He left the door open all the same.  He walked closer, stepping
carefully, as if the structure might crumble at the slightest misstep.
 Danarius, in contrast, sat down heavily.
            “You’re dead, Danarius,” Fenris said, feeling terribly glad to say
it aloud.
            The man sat down in the chair behind his desk.  “I would have died
anyway, Fenris,” he said, his voice oddly gentle, as if he were very much at
peace with his own death.
            Fenris scowled.  This was not what he wanted.  He wanted Danarius
to be angry and resentful of his death.  He did not want him peaceful and
happy.  He wanted him to suffer for an eternity.  “Of course you would have; we
all die eventually.”
            The magister looked at him, his expression sad.  “I had heart
problems, Fenris.  I would have given myself about five years, maximum.”
            Fenris could only stare at him.  He had thought he had killed a
magister, not a dying old man.  He slumped in the chair, wanting to be angry.
 Instead, he just felt vacant.  He felt oddly robbed.  Vengeance had been so
sweet, and suddenly felt sour.  “Hell,” he muttered.
            “Do you want a drink?”
            He took a deep breath.  “Do I have to pour it?” he asked snidely.
            The magister shrugged a shoulder.  “It would be appreciated.”
 Fenris did not miss the way he was looking at him.  Once, he would have shrunk
from the stare, and wanted to hide.  Now, he glowered, and only felt indignant
about it.
            Fenris could not say where the bottle and the glasses had come
from, but they were there, the bottle uncorked, the glasses full.  He plucked
one of the glasses off of the table and inspected the liquid inside.  It looked
like wine.  It smelled like wine.  The red wine was so clear that it might have
been stained glass.  Tentatively, he sipped it.  He expected not to taste
anything; it was a dream.  Instead, he savored the bouquet, the rich fragrance,
the way it ran down his throat.  Southern Tevinter, he guessed the vintage.
 But I can’t tell if it’s Gerovassilou or evenAgiorghitiko...  Maybe neither? 
It is just a dream.  It was… too vivid for a normal dream.
            They both sat in silence for a while, and Fenris had to ask, “Why
am I here?”
            The man didn’t look at him, instead examining his wine, as if
looking for imperfections.  There were none, not in a dream.  “I imagine,
because I’m here.”
            Fenris frowned.  “That doesn’t make sense.”
            Danarius kind of flinched.  “Yes it does.”  He hesitated, and
finally looked at him.  “I never told you the whole story, and, since I’ve
nothing left to lose, I might as well tell you now.”
            If he was here now, what about the last dream he had?  Had that
been as real as this?  No--no, it couldn’t be.  It just…  He looked up,
watching the way the other looked at him over the rim of his glass, and
suddenly felt cold.  It could have been.  But it hadn’t hurt him, not truly.
 It had scared him for a little while is all.  It was just a dream, he had
thought.  He shivered, as he realized that it hadn’t been entirely a dream.  He
glared at him.  There were so many things he wanted to say, most of it
expletives.  However, Fenris had questions that he couldn’t answer, that
Danarius might be able to.  It wasn’t as though he had done anything Fenris did
not think him capable of.  And, Fenris thought with an inward sigh, he hadn’t
exactly done anything new either.  “Fuck you,” he whispered, staring at the
wine.  Danarius had played off of his own fears, wandered into his own
nightmare and made it worse.  “Stay out of my dreams.”
            Danarius looked at him, puzzled.  “You came here,” he pointed out.
            The elf stiffened, indignant.  “This isn’t the first time you’ve
intruded on my dreams since you died,” he snapped.
            The man stared at him, clearly confused.  “Fenris, I can’t help
what you dream.”
            He studied his face, trying to guess if he were lying.  Danarius
had an excellent poker face, but he thought his confusion might actually be
genuine.  Or that was a lie too.  He was convinced that Danarius had lied to
him often.  Seheron was probably a lie too.  And that bit about his
grandfather.  Maybe even the tiny bit about his mother, and his childhood--all
of it was a lie to torment him!  “You’re denying what you did to me?”  He
stared at him, disgusted.
            The man was unimpressed.  “I have no idea what you are talking
about, elf.”
            It… really had been a dream?  It hadn’t--he hadn’t--?  “I dreamt I
was chained on a ship going back to Minrathous,” he whispered.  “And you beat
me, and raped me.”
            Danarius shrugged.  “I would have beaten you,” he said agreeably.
 “You would have deserved it too--all the money I spent on you.”
            He had ignored that last part completely, Fenris noticed.  “And
raped me after?”
            He sipped at the wine.  “Why?”
            The lyrium flared with his temper.  “Because you’ve always enjoyed
doing it.”
            The mage stared into his wine glass absently.  “You don’t believe
me when I say that was just your dream, do you?”
            “Why should I?”
            He shrugged.  “Fair enough.”  He did not even look up when he said,
“What position were you in?”
            His eyes narrowed.  “Why do you ask?”
            “I never wanted to look at you during it.”
            Fenris looked up.  The man from his dreams had said quite the
opposite.  He had implied that letting him look away had been a kindness
directed to Fenris.  The Danarius before him just implied that it had never
been for Fenris’ benefit, but for his own.  He was more inclined to believe
that, actually; Danarius didn’t care about Fenris’ benefit.
            He frowned.  “I’ve also taken great pains in the past not to hurt
you--did he?”
            Fenris flinched, and stared back at the wine cup.  “No.”
            “Then I would appreciate it if you didn’t blame me for things I
didn’t do.”
            Fenris’ lips twitched into a frown.  “But you would have.”
            He stared at him.  “Beat the shit out of you, yes.  Your sister
would have thrown a fit though, so even that’s debatable.”  He leaned back in
the chair.  “But not personally; my heart was too bad for something like that.
 Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack and die before you ripped
out my throat.”  He looked at him.  “I’d had a heart attack only a week before
you killed me.”
            Fenris didn’t even know what to say.  He had had a bad heart.  A
heart attack before he had come to Kirkwall.  This wasn’t…  He felt so robbed,
the sweet vengeance--what he had thought justice--taken away from him.  Like
everything else.  But, he noticed, Danarius did not deny that he would have
raped him; he had simply repeatedly changed the subject.  His teeth clenched.
 “Why am I here?” he demanded again.  He stared downwards, angry.  “Leave me
alone.”
            Danarius watched him, as if he were an insect under glass.  “You
could always have not come when I invited you in.”
“You have no right to keep interfering in my life like this.”
            Danarius sighed deeply.  “You’re my slave, Fenris.  You’ve been my
slave since you were three years old.”
            Fenris looked up, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry:  He had
used the present tense when he spoke.  Danarius had bound their souls together.
 He felt something cold grow in his stomach.  If he died…  What would happen?
 “What?” he said, cutting himself off at the first word.  Asking the entire
question, and worse, the answer to that question, was more terrifying than he
could put into words.
            The man only looked at him.  “You were three years old, off the
ship from Seheron.  Your mother was five months pregnant with your sister.
 Your father had died in Seheron.  That was about 30 years ago--or something--
when I received you from the slave merchant.”
            Fenris could not even look up.  He didn’t remember that.  Of
course, even if he remembered his past, who he had been before, he had been a
very young child.  He likely would not remember that anyway, realistically
speaking.  “Was I born a slave?” he asked quietly.
            “No,” Danarius told him.
            Fenris looked up.  “Why can’t I remember anything?”  It was a
question he had asked himself for as long as he could remember.
            “You consented to that,” he said, with some unease.
            Fenris twitched.  “What?”
            “You consented.  I asked you to sell your memories, and you sold.”
            He looked down, his eyes sliding closed.  This conversation was
already painful, and what he was about to say would only make it worse, but it
had to be said.   “You could be lying to me.”
            “Why?”
            He looked up again.  “Because you are cruel and sadistic.”
            Danarius sighed, and rolled his eyes.  “You don’t have to believe
me if you don’t want to.  Can you read now?  I can get the contract.”
            “How can I believe any of that is true?” he demanded.
            Danarius set his wine glass down, opening a drawer.  “If you ever
want to go back to Minrathous, I’ll tell you where to find it.”
“Are you really here?” he asked him, changing the subject because this one was
too painful.  How could he ever have consented to this?  Didn’t he know it
would leave him empty, confused, and alone?
            “I don’t even know if it’s really you, Fenris, or a demon taking
the form of a memory,” Danarius commented.  “If you’re really a demon, you are
more convincing than the others.  But that’s all anything else in the Fade is.”
            “Why are you trapped in the Fade, Danarius?” he inquired, tasting
the wine, trying to decide how much he could really trust him.
            Danarius stared at him, his eyes boring into his soul.  That had
been a stupid question.  He was trapped there because Fenris was still alive.
 He was a victim of his own ingenuity.  Fenris felt himself shiver.  If he
died… would he be his slave here too?  He couldn’t…  “I’m trapped here until
either you or Shaislyn dies.”
            “Shaislyn?” Fenris asked.  He hadn’t heard that name in a long
time.  What did that little brat have to do with anything?
            “He is the bridge between both of us,” he said placidly.  He
hesitated.  “He is your nephew, Fenris.”
            That, if nothing else, proved to Fenris that he could not have made
this up.  It was too farfetched for his imagination, and just likely enough to
be true.  “Varania’s son?” he said, his voice coming out a whisper.  All the
things Shaislyn had said tumbled through his mind.  My mother didn’t care about
me much.  Mama was raped.
            “Yes,” Danarius said slowly.  “And mine.”
            Fenris looked up, and felt his rage boil.  “You…  Not just me, but
her too?” he growled.  His teeth ground together.  “You…”  There weren’t any
words he could say.
            “Varania forgave me.  So did Shaislyn.  Why are you angry about it?
 You don’t even like Varania.”
            He didn’t know why it made him so angry, but he was outraged.  But
at least he knew that it wasn’t a dream, not exactly.  At least he knew it
really was Danarius sitting across from him, removing a document from a drawer
and placing it on the desk.  At least he knew he could not have made this up.
 Yet, it all seemed so obvious, didn’t it?  Shaislyn looked familiar to him
because he looked a lot like Danarius.  He wondered how he could not have seen
it before.  They even made some of the same facial expressions.  “You’re a
monster,” he whispered, echoing the words Shaislyn had screamed that day in
Seheron.
            “You think so?  People can say the same of you, pet.”
            Fenris looked back at him, his eyes narrowing.  “Call me that
again, and I’ll kill you again.”
            “How?” he demanded.
            The elf wasn’t sure.  He had been to the Fade before, and killed
demons, or what he assumed was death to them.  But could he kill a trapped
soul?  He wasn’t sure, but he would not lament the attempt.  Moreover, this was
a dream.  He wasn’t here the same way he had been before.  And he was only here
because Danarius had let him come, he was certain.  Fenris did not answer, but
smoldered all the same.  He would figure it out, he decided.
            Danarius pushed the document across the desk, towards him.  “You
couldn’t read at the time, but this is the document you signed; you can have a
look at it.”
            Fenris picked it up, taking his time to look over it.  The legal
jargon in it made his head spin, but he could still understand the gist of it.
 Towards, the end, he became angry.  “You manipulated me,” he said, the memory
coming to him of when--and how--his master had offered the deal.  He cringed,
his stomach twisting.  “You offered my family money so they could get out of
Minrathous to achieve your own ends.”
            Danarius was unfettered.  “A merchant also sets the price to
achieve his own ends, but you don’t accuse them of manipulation, do you?”
            “This is nothing like that,” he slammed the document down on the
desk, rising angrily to his feet.  He threw the cup of wine.  It went past
Danarius, hitting the wall behind him.  The man barely blinked when it
shattered, the vintage splattered against the wallpaper.  It dripped down the
walls like blood, pooling on the polished hardwood amidst shards of broken
glass.
            “Fenris,” he said, his voice taking on that no-nonsense tone that
made the elf stop.  “Calm down.”  Slowly, he sat back down.  “You had a
product.  I wanted the product.  So I bought it.  Your family took the money,
and put it to good use; they needed it.”
            He fumed, his jaw clenched.  “Why?” he asked once he trusted
himself to speak again.  He was getting all the answers he had ever wanted.  If
he got angry now, he may never get another chance.
            Danarius looked at him, his eyes the most compassionate Fenris had
ever seen them.  “I think you would have died if I hadn’t.”
            Fenris looked down at his hands, watching the glow of the lyrium.
 “Did I really want this?”
            The magister shrugged a shoulder.  “No one forced you to enter the
tourney to get them.”  He frowned.  “But, I suppose, pet, if you knew you were
going to be a slave all your life, wouldn’t you prefer to become something…
more?”
            The lyrium flared with his temper.  “I’m not your pet,” he hissed,
rising from his seat with malicious intent.  “And I told you--”
            “Daddy?” a voice asked from the doorway.  Fenris stopped, and
looked back toward the door.  A little girl, her hair in blonde ringlet curls,
peered at the two from the doorway.  Fenris looked back at Danarius, who had
walked around the desk.  Watching the little girl run toward him seemed oddly
serene, and he felt strangely powerless watching him lift the child off of her
feet, watched her little pudgy arms wrap around his neck.  He held her close
for a long moment.
            Fenris watched them, his eyes judgmental.  “Is she a demon?” he
asked curtly.
            Danarius’ eyes narrowed, then he sighed, defeated.  “I don’t know.
 Probably.  Or maybe she’s just another lost soul--I don’t know.”  But he held
on to her all the same, his eyes closed.  “This was all I ever wanted,” he
whispered.  “My daughter, and Roschelle.”
            The elf slowly sat back down, and looked away.  It was a false
fantasy, but let him have it, he supposed.  He sighed.  The girl leaned away,
looking at Fenris.  “Who is he?” she asked.  Her eyes were a soil brown colour.
            “No one.  Forget about him, darling.”  He set her down.  “You look
lovely.  Go show Mommy your new dress, okay?”
            “‘Kay!” she said.  She started to run back out the door and
stopped.  She turned around, her curls bouncing.  “I love you, Daddy.”
            “I love you too, sweetie.”
            Fenris rubbed his temples, as if he were in pain.  “When I wake up,
I’m going to vomit.”
            Danarius leaned against the desk, facing Fenris.  “Really.”
            Fenris looked up at him.  In the past, he had hated and feared
looking up at him, because of how Danarius would treat him when he did.  He
looked so much younger than Fenris had ever known him.  He decided not to
answer.  “She’d be older than that, you know,” he pointed out.
            He cocked his head to the side a little.  “I like her at this age.”
            “You’re older than that too.”
            “Age is relative, especially in the Fade.”  Fenris looked at his
hands, back at the lyrium, gently pulsating.  “She’d be about your age now,
actually.”
            Fenris looked up, peering at him quizzically.  “Is that why you are
so cruel to me?  Because I lived, and she died?”
            Danarius stared at him, and he looked pained.  “Yes.  And because
Leto looked like… someone else.  And because you had everything I wanted.  You
had your family, and I didn’t.  You were my slave, and you weren’t half as
miserable as I was.”
            Fenris’ fingers clenched.  “So you took it away from me.”
            “Yes,” he admitted.  The elf stared at him.  He thought it odd that
he wasn’t angry about it.  Rather, he felt oddly appeased--at least he knew
now.  So many questions he had had over the years, answered.  He hoped he
remembered all of this when he woke.  “I didn’t want you to be a martyr, and
that’s what you were, Fenris.”
            He looked away, staring straight forward.  “Because everything I
did, I did to help my mother and sister.”  Varania’s betrayal had stung when he
didn’t know her.  It was worse now.  How could she?  He had done everything in
his power to free her, and she just goes back to the man that raped her?  Why?
 He remembered what she had told him as he left, that freedom had not been a
release.  But he had still tried, hadn’t he?  She had said their mother had
died, that she had struggled since then.  But hadn’t he tried?  Hadn’t he done
everything in his power and more?
            He understood, now, why Danarius had not wanted him to remember.
 It was logical--horribly, maniacally, sadistically logical.  If he had
remembered, he would have done everything he could to protect Varania.  Begged
and pleaded and wouldn’t care what the man did to him for any news at all about
her.  He thought about the contract.  And he would have been, quietly, forever
satiated because he knew that he had done everything in his power to get his
family away from Danarius.  He imagined Varania, lost and alone in a world she
could barely survive in, their mother dead and her brother long gone, trying to
raise a son she didn’t love.  Of course she had been easily seduced by
Danarius’ promise.
            “Varania…” he whispered.  How could he ever tell her that he
understood?  He didn’t agree with her, but he understood.  Would he have done
anything different, in her place?  If the roles were reversed and he was alone,
Liberati and with a child, could he have done any better?  He liked to think
so, but he didn’t know.  Why hadn’t she just told him?  Why couldn’t she have
just told him how hard it had been?  Why hadn’t she just talked to him?  I
wouldn’t have cared.  If it’s my freedom, or her struggle, I would choose…
 It’s not selfish, is it?
            She could not have just left Tevinter if being Liberati was
difficult; she would be arrested for crossing borders illegally, and worse, she
was a mage; she would be taken to a Circle.  And the child?  He didn’t know.
            “Fenris…?” the magister inquired, reaching toward him, his
fingertips just brushing his arm.  Fenris wheeled out of the chair, away from
his touch.  The man’s hand fell away.
            “Don’t touch me,” he snapped.
            He crossed his arms.  “You looked troubled.”
            “Was all it took an offer to be your apprentice?  Was that it?” he
asked.
            Danarius laughed.  “If only it had been so easy,” he said, shaking
his head.  Fenris felt relieved to hear it.  “Shaislyn had to beg her, and even
then, she almost backed out at the last minute.”  He paused.  “But she and I
came to another agreement, and this is why she consented.”  He moved back
behind the desk, and removed another document.  He offered it to Fenris.  The
elf snatched it, and looked over it.  He slowly sat back down as he understood
what it meant.
            “You were going to free me,” he whispered, and wanted to cry.  He
had never even guessed…  His mouth felt dry, which was silly because he was
dreaming.  He looked at the second page.  Real freedom.  Not a runaway, but a
Liberati.  His sister would be a magister, and would have given him anything,
he realized with a growing sick feeling.  But it would come at a very high
cost.  He shivered as he remembered that dream of the ship, of what had
happened.  That would have been a reality, even if it were only part of it.
  He tore it in half, and threw it back at him, shaking with his wrath.  The
papers drifted lazily to the floor and the desk.  “You wanted to take
everything away from me all over again, enslave me, and then grant me my
freedom when it doesn’t mean anything.  I would hate Varania anyway.”
            Danarius stared at him, and shook his head slowly.  He walked to
him, his hand slid against his cheek.  Fenris stared at him, wondering why he
let him do it.  “Pet.  I had every intention of erasing your memories again;
you wouldn’t have remembered that she betrayed you.  It would have been easier
on you and she both.”
            He wanted to argue, tell him how much he hated him or how much he
had enjoyed killing him.  How could he just say something like that?  How could
he make something so awful sound so casual?  He didn’t know why he was so
surprised.  He shouldn’t be.  He pulled away from his touch, crossing his arms
angrily.  “Don’t touch me,” he hissed lividly.  “I’ve had enough of you
touching me.”
            Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “Could you blame me?  Why don’t you
spend twenty years agonizing over something and obsessing over it, and then
finally finish it--and it’s perfect, and beautiful, and everything and more
that you thought it could be.  Then you try not wanting to touch it and admire
it at every opportunity.”
            “I’m not an object,” he said with venom.
            “I never said you were, pet.”  His finger touched the vein of
lyrium by his lips, running down his neck.  Fenris visibly flinched.  “Maker,
but you’re beautiful.”  The lyrium glowed at his touch, responding obediently,
the way it was designed.  What did that mean?
            Fenris stepped back, away from him, well out of reach.  He
shivered, trying to shake the feeling of his hands on him.  “You raped me
before you did this to me too.”
            “You were lovely then too.”  He paused.  “Did you think it was very
cruel of me?”
            “I don’t see how it wasn’t cruel,” he countered.
            Danarius frowned.  “You’re my slave.”
            As if that was a reason for every atrocious thing he had ever done
to him.  Fenris stared down at the floor.  Maybe it was.  Danarius thought
nothing of slavery; he had been around slaves his entire life.  Why should he
have ever thought differently?  He thought of all the scathing remarks he could
say, how much he wanted to yell and scream and berate him.  “I’m leaving,”
Fenris said instead, walking toward the door, pulling away from him.  “It’s
been very… informative.”
            “I’m not finished,” the magister said, and the door closed.  Fenris
stood, wondering if he tried to open it, would it budge?  Could he phase
through it?  He looked back at him.  He wasn’t trapped exactly.  If he woke up,
that would be all there was to it.  He wasn’t trapped here.
            Fenris’ eyes closed.  “What are you going to do to me, Danarius?”
            “Sit back down, pet.”
            He slowly turned around, but stayed rooted to the spot.  “No.”  He
stared at his face, as if in rebellion.
            Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “Do you really want to do this,
Fenris?”
            The other’s confidence wavered.  He looked down.  “No.”  He
tentatively looked back up.  “Just let me go.  You and I both know that I have
to come back eventually.”  He flinched at that.  “Just let me go.”
 
            Fenris’ eyes opened.  He rolled, and sighed.  It was impossible to
say if he actually had let him go, or if he had only woken up.  Maybe a
combination of the two--who could tell?
            Sleeping was becoming terrifying, and because of his tendency to
talk in his sleep, to glow, and thrash, he didn’t want to sleep with Isabela.
 He just made up excuses about it, saying he needed to leave if they were out
somewhere together and never letting her stay over.  It was better that way, he
tried to tell himself.
            Shaislyn though…  He had never even imagined…  He had to know if it
were true.  How?  He would have to find him first.  Shaislyn might even know
and be able to confirm if the rest were true.  If Shaislyn would even help him.
 Danarius had hinted that Shaislyn had been in favour of Fenris’ capture, and
had begged his mother to consent.
            “My nephew,” he muttered.  And he had tried to kill him.  He closed
his eyes.  No wonder the kid hated him.  If Varania blamed him for how sour her
life had gone, Shaislyn might blame him too.  And Shaislyn had seen what had
happened with the Fog Warriors.  He didn’t think the boy would help him, to be
honest.  Worse yet, Fenris could barely blame him.
 
            At a loss, Hawke had agonized over that book and researched and had
come to no real conclusions.  Merrill had been a good person to go to, and she
had provided some valuable insight, but it still felt like things were
missing.  He understood how it worked, in theory, but he didn’t really
understand why.
“Do you know if Danarius happened to experiment on anyone else… before you?”
Hawke asked hesitantly.
“No, the book mentions experiments, but--”  Fenris stopped.  Vairin.  “I think
there is.”  He groaned.  “But he’s a slave in the Imperium.  Worse, he’s
completely mad.”
Hawke blinked.  “Why does his master tolerate him being mad?”
He shrugged noncommittally.  “He just doesn’t talk--he can; he just doesn’t.
 And he doesn’t really need to speak to work, I suppose.”  Fenris frowned in
thought.  Who else would know?
“Do you think he has more complete notes to this?  An… unabridged version?  Or
was this supposed to be read in conjunction with another book?”
Fenris began to say no, as he had never seen any such thing, then paused.
 Annalkylie had mentioned, briefly, that she had read those notes.  “Actually…
 He did have notes about it.”
Hawke brightened, then stilled.  “In Minrathous, I bet.”  He sighed deeply.
 “But it exists--that’s something.”
Fenris shook his head.  “Agasius…  Ah, that’s Danarius’ nephew—his heir--he
wasn’t a mage actually; he might have sold the notes, or even had them
destroyed.”
Hawke’s lips pressed into a thin line.  “Who’d be the most likely buyer?”
Fenris did not even think about it before he responded, “Either the Imperial
Chantry, or the Archon, I imagine.”  More people than that had been interested
in the Ritual, but those were the two that had pursued Danarius the most for
information about it.
Hawke’s hopes fell.  Getting those notes would be impossible.  “You sure you
don’t know anyone who might have copied them, or at least studied them?”
Fenris hesitated.  “I… might.  I don’t know if she’s still alive though--
I haven’t seen her since…”  He stopped, remembering a girl of fourteen summers,
grinning and making him promise not to breathe a word of her existence.  “When
Seheron was attacked, she never made it out of the city with the magisters…
 But I know that her body was never recovered; she might still be alive.”
Hawke hesitated.  “That’s a long shot.  What are the odds Varania knows
anything?”
“If I wasn’t so opposed to contacting her again, it’s not impossible.”
Hawke cocked his head to the side.  “Who’s the other girl?”
He let out a noisy sigh.  “Danarius’ niece.”
Hawke raised his eyebrows in surprise.  “I’m surprised you even consider her an
option.”
Fenris shrugged a shoulder dismissively.  “She was never cruel to me.”  He
sighed.  “Looking back on it, she tried to convince me to run away from
Danarius.”  He laughed without joy.  “I should have.”
“Would that have even been possible?”
He considered that day, the way the wind had been blowing, and the overcast
sky.  “No,” he decided.  “She would have been, at worst, executed for treason--
I would have been punished, severely.”  He paused.  “Andthey would have caught
us.”
“‘Us’?” Hawke wondered.
Fenris nodded dimly.  “She was trying to escape from a bad marriage.”
“Seheron is your only clue?” the mage pressed.
Fenris lied, “Yes.”
He shook his head.  “I’ll ask Varric to do some digging.”  He groaned.  “This
is going to be expensive.”
Fenris flinched.  “Sorry…  I’ll pay you back.”
Hawke laughed.  “You’re a walking stereotype,” he teased him.  He shook his
head a little.  “You’ve been a good friend.”
            “Hardly, but if you say so.  Do you want company down to the Hanged
Man?”  What was left of it anyway—alcohol was apparently an important commodity
in crisis.  They had rebuilt it enough to be useable, but little else.
            “It’d be nice.”  Fenris fell into step beside Hawke.  “What parts
are missing?”
            Hawke frowned.  “There’s a second diagram, really similar to that
hexagonal one—but the text makes almost no mention of it or what it’s for—it’s
really disturbing.  Merrill said it has to do with the ‘blood link’ but I can’t
find anything in the text about the ‘blood link’.  He left out huge portions of
the spell.  I’m amazed they let him publish anything.”
            Fenris considered.  Could it be Shaislyn?  Danarius had mentioned… 
“Do you think it’s possible that large portions could have gone missing either
in transit, or were lost when it was translated?”
            “It’s not impossible,” Hawke conceded.  “I think the translation
error is more likely.”  He sighed.  “Which means we really need to get a hold
of one of the Tevinter ones.”
            Fenris made a face, vaguely irritated.  “The language is actually
called ‘Tevene’.”
            Hawke blinked, looking at him.  “Oh.  I just thought it was called
‘Tevinter’.”
            The other was unimpressed.  “Happen to know anyone who can read
Tevene?”
            “Maybe Sebastian?” Hawke hazarded a guess.  “That’s not really an
option any more though.  I guess I can always find someone…”
            Fenris shrugged.  “I can try to figure it out—it’s been a while,
but I do know the language at least, and so does Orana,” he added.
            “I always forget the Trade tongue isn’t your first language,” Hawke
commented.
            The elf kind of smirked.  “You should have heard me when I first
started speaking it.”  He chuckled.  “My accent was terrible.”
            “Can you do an impression of it?”
            Fenris considered, and looked back at Hawke.  “No, it’s really
completely gone,” he said, in the thickest Tevene accent he could muster.
            “That was amazing.”  Hawke laughed.  “Oh, I love it.  Do it again. 
Say something else.”
            “Oh, Maker…”  Hawke goaded him all the way to Lowtown, and Fenris
decided to counter this by speaking only in Tevene.  Hawke alternately thought
it was funny, and thought it was annoying.  It was nice that Anders had to lift
his clause on Hawke and allowed him to spend time with Fenris.  He knew nothing
could ever come of it, but he did like spending time with the elf.  Anders had
not liked it, but given everything, he no longer worried.
            Varric and Isabela were at a table, swapping stories and laughing
about something.  The other two came in and sat down.  “Would it be possible to
get another copy of that book you got for me, this time in Tevene?” Fenris
asked, and his accent, for once, was much more noticeable than he had intended.
            Isabela laughed, hard.  Varric was only surprised.  The elf sighed
deeply, scowling at Hawke.  “What was that?” Isabela asked.  “No—was that your
Imperial accent?  Oooh, I like it.”
            “I blame Hawke,” Fenris muttered, swiping her ale off the table and
downing the contents.  He handed the empty cup back to her.  She scowled.
            “I was making him speak in Tevinter—“  Fenris shot him a scowl.
“Er—Tevene--all the way here--making sure he still remembered it.”  Hawke
sighed.  “I think large portions of that book are missing.  I’d really like a
Tevene copy so we can figure it out.”
            Varric groaned aloud.  “Hell, Hawke.  Do you know what finding that
was like?  Maker.  Fine.”  He shook his head.  “I’ll get my guy on it. 
Anything else?”
            Hawke shifted.  “Actually…”
            Fenris cleared his throat.  This time without the heavy accent,
“Any information you could find about Annalkylie Danarius—his niece—would be
appreciated.”
            Varric frowned.  “Why—Fenris, you aren’t going to try to kill her,
are you?” he asked, suddenly alarmed.
            He shook his head.  “No—I have no reason to, other than that she’s
a mage.”  He frowned.  “But if I’ve tolerated Hawke for this long, I suppose I
can endure.”
            Hawke punched him lightly in the shoulder.  Fenris smirked. 
“Anything you can tell me about her?” the dwarf wondered.
            Fenris hesitated.  “The Qunari attacked on her wedding day.  She
never made it out of the city with the magisters, but no one ever found her
body either, or heard from her,” he added quickly.  “Blonde hair, blue eyes,
Altus bloodlines.”
            “What’s ‘Altus’?” Isabela wondered.
            Fenris groaned inwardly.  “There are several different social
classes in the Imperium…”
            “Never mind,” she said quickly.
            Fenris was grateful not to have to explain it; it became
complicated, and he didn’t think outsiders would really understand it very
well.  These days, he considered himself to be a Kirkwaller more than Imperial;
he had been here about as long as he had lived in Minrathous, come to think on
it.  And he had been much happier here.
            “So… Fenris, she was last seen where exactly?”
            The elf blinked.  “Sorry—in Seheron; it was the night I…  escaped,
during all the mayhem.”  He glanced away, then quickly back.  Annalkylie had
escaped that night too somehow.  “The last I saw her was in the great hall, in
the castle in Seheron City.  She just… seemed to disappear.”
            Varric frowned.  “Kidnapping?”
            He shrugged.  “I imagine the Magisterium thought so.”  He
hesitated.  “She was betrothed to the Archon’s son, married him only hours
before.”
            “Poor dear died a virgin,” Isabela mused.
            He glanced at her.  “We don’t know if she’s dead,” he reminded
her.  He shook his head a little.  It would be so much easier if he wasn’t
bound by a stupid obligation not to mention that he knew she had been bound for
Orlais.  He hesitated.  “She had once mentioned that she had always wanted to
see the world—was always talking about wanting to travel.  She… mentioned
Orlais, specifically.”
            “If she did get away, why not go home?” Hawke wondered, brow
furrowed.
            Isabela shrugged.  “She saw an opportunity for adventure, and she
took it.”
            Fenris was glad that Isabela had come to that conclusion on her
own.  “Maybe she did go home,” the elf said instead.  “I don’t know.”
            Varric sighed, and nodded.  “I’ll see what I can find.”
            They got to talking of other things—women, sex, funny stories. 
They drank as they talked, and somewhere their conversation drifted to the
numerous stupid things each of them had done in the past.
            “When we were kids, Carver had this girlfriend—I knew she was
crazy, but this takes the cake:  She didn’t want him hanging out with Bethany
because, and I quote ‘I don’t want you around other girls’.  I told him to get
rid of her—I mean Bethany is our sister--but what does he do?”  Hawke laughed. 
“He has sex with her, then she gets even more crazy.”
            Isabela shook her head.  “Sex with crazy people is often the best
kind,” she said enthusiastically, and winked broadly at Fenris.  He made a
face.  “Not usually worth the baggage though.”
            Varric shot Isabela a judgmental look.  She shrugged.  He glanced
back at Hawke, shaking his head.  “You never stick your dick in crazy, Hawke.” 
Then he laughed.  “And what do you do?  You stick your dick in two of the
craziest people I know!”
            Fenris scowled.  “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Varric.”
            Hawke could only smile and shake his head.  “In my defense, they’re
both cute.”  Fenris glanced away.
            “Someone is clearly thinking with their smaller head,” Isabela said
amiably.
            “I don’t deny it.”
            To change the subject, the pirate said, “Did any of you ever play
that knuckle-coin game?”
            “Where you hit someone’s knuckles repeatedly by tossing coins at
them?  Yes, I played that when I was a kid,” Varric said with a laugh.  “Bloody
knuckles at the end of it.”
            “I never played anything like that,” Hawke commented.  “Poor
farming village—we didn’t have coins to flick at each other.”  Isabela and
Varric both laughed.  The mage gestured as he spoke.  “When I was a kid, we
played this game where everyone would stick their hands in a pile, and the
person with their hand at the bottom of the pile would swing a stick down—“  He
mimicked this with both hands.  “—As hard as they could.  The object of the
game was to make the stick-swinger hit their own hand.”
            “Why?” Fenris had to ask.
            “Because kids do stupid things,” he said, as if it were obvious.
            “Why aren’t we playing this right now?” Isabela asked, half-
jokingly as she swallowed another mouthful of ale.
            Hawke shrugged.  “All right, but everyone takes their gloves off or
this isn’t fair.  Isabela, you can swing the stick first.”  They went over the
rules a couple of times, as not a one of them was completely sober.  Their
extra rule was whoever got their hand smacked had to finish their drink and buy
the next round, ensuring that whoever was losing continued to lose.  Fenris was
accused of cheating on more than one occasion—the alcohol, combined with the
alarm of getting his hand smacked with the small wooden rod was enough to make
him phase, even accidentally, and the stick would just pass right through it.
            They played for a while, getting louder all the time, and each of
them had bruised knuckles by the time Hawke left.  Isabela left with Fenris,
and stayed for a sleepless night.  In the morning, they took a bath together,
and were discussing walking to a nearby bakery for breakfast.
“I got a ship,” Isabela said conversationally with a rueful grin.
“From that slaver, I remember.”  Fenris nodded, quietly displeased that they
had not just killed the man.  “Are you leaving soon?”
She sighed.  “No.  It got damaged a bit when Meredith lost her bloody mind.  It
needs repairs--and they’re expensive.  It’ll still be a while longer, I
suspect.”  She stared up at the ceiling.  “But, when she’s done, do you want to
come with me?”
He looked at her, and was at first inclined to say yes.  After all, he had had
a good enough time with the smugglers, until the end anyway.  “To where?”
She grinned.  “Anywhere.  Everywhere.  Wherever we want to go.”
Freedom.  True freedom; that was what that ship meant to Isabela.  But was that
what it meant for him, or would it be a way to shackle him to the sea?  What
was freedom, anyway?  An ideal?  A concept?  “I’m not sure.”
“It’s not like I’m proposing marriage,” she said matter-of-factly.
He snorted a laugh.  “I’ve had some bad run-ins on the sea, and you don’t
exactly have a perfect track record.”
Isabela laughed.  “Like what?  What run-ins?  Why is this the first I’ve heard
about it?” she demanded.
His lips pulled into a lopsided smile--an expression she thought made him look
cute.  He always looked good to her, but not always cute, like a puppy was
cute.  Oh, no, she thought with dread.  No, no, no.  He’s a friend--that’s all.
 “It’s never come up in conversation.”
“I told you the whole story about how Siren’s Call wrecked--the whole damned
thing.  And you didn’t think to mention any of your ship troubles?”
“Wasn’t my ship,” he pointed out.  “But we were caught in a storm, and the mast
broke.”
Isabela whistled.  “Hell.”
He nodded in agreement.  “Exactly.”
She cocked her head to the side.  “And?”
He blinked.  “Well, that’s how I ended up in Kirkwall,” he said, cutting out
everything that had happened between that moment and meeting Hawke.
One of her eyebrows rose.  “Really, now?  Something you’re not telling me?”
He stared at her.  “Yes.  But there’s always something you’re not telling me.”
She smiled.  “No, come on.  What happened?”
He made a face, and said, “I was caught by the bounty hunters--they had been
chasing us.  Good news is, the smugglers and I didn’t die.”  He made a face.
 “They almost got me all the way back to the Imperium, but they had a run-in
with pirates on the way back, and I got away.”  He hesitated.  “I… did some
things I’m not particularly proud of, in retrospect.”
Her demeanor softened.  “We all do.”
He raised an eyebrow.  “It’s not killing them that I regret, exactly.”  He
stopped, and looked down.  “Two of them were lovers.  When I killed one of
them, the other stopped fighting me and went to him.  And when I killed him
too, I pulled him away from his lover, and let them die out of one another’s
arms.  Why would anyone do something like that?”
She looked at him.  “You were angry, Fenris.  They were slavers, and taking you
back to Minrathous.”
“They were bounty hunters, that’s all.”  He shook his head.  “I tortured a
child.”
“What?” she demanded.
He looked at her.  “I think he was about eighteen--still a kid, really.  And I
tortured him.”  He paused.  “I cut off his fingers, promised him I’d let him go
when he told me what I wanted to hear.”  He laughed.  “I don’t even think it
was the truth; he was in pain and panicking.”  He flinched.  “He had sisters in
Minrathous.  I had killed his father at Danarius’ orders years before.  What
did I do?”
“You killed him?” Isabela asked quietly.
“Yes,” he whispered.
She looked at him; it was long before they had met, and many years ago besides.
 They all made mistakes, everyone did things that they were not proud of.
 “Back before Kirkwall, I wasn’t… quite the pirate I brag I was.”
He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.  “Oh?”
She made a face.  “I was… in debt to the Felicisima Armada.”  Fenris was
dubious.  “Ships are expensive, and I have to pay dues to the Armada--so
anyway, I was in some pretty steep debt, between the crew, the Armada, and ship
maintenance.”  She sighed.  “So when I was in Denerim…”  She flinched.  “I did
some things that are… illegal.”
He laughed.  “What kind of illegal?”
She stared at him.  She wasn’t laughing.  He wondered, with a sickening
feeling, what activities she meant.  “Loghain was conducting slave trafficking,
and sold many of the elves from the alienage to the Imperium to fund the war
effort.  The Armada wanted a piece of the pie, as it were, and I was in debt.”
All the blood drained from his face.  “But… you said…”
She stared at him, unflinching.  “We were sailing away from Denerim, and an
Orlesian ship saw us and gave chase.  We couldn’t get away; Siren’s Call was
too heavy.”  He didn’t like where this was going.  Not at all.  “I had to go
back to Denerim later on.”
“Don’t tell me any more,” he whispered.  While I can still pretend that this is
the group of slaves you freed.
She was quiet for a long time.  She rose, unflinching.  “They never made it to
the Imperium.  And you can make whatever you will of that, but I am not proud
of what I had to do.”  He looked up at her.  The question rested in his throat,
a cold lump of fear:  What had she done?  What had she done to outrun that
Orlesian ship?  “Goodbye, Fenris,” she said softly.
The world wasn’t the way anyone wanted it to be.  People thought of as friends
could just as easily be foes.  There was no such thing as a “good person” or a
“bad person”, he was beginning to realize.  He liked Isabela, admired her even.
 And yet she had done terrible things.  What had she really done when she freed
the other group of slaves?  Was that a lie too?  What had she done?
No, he thought.  What haveI done?  Have I killed people, people who were just
victims of circumstance like that boy I tortured?  He knew he had.  Each person
he had met weren’t good or evil; they were just people.  Whatever had gone on
in their lives to lead them to one decision or another, he wasn’t the person to
judge them.  He still believed that slavery was wrong, and he hated slavers,
but how many of them only saw it as a job--maybe a job they didn’t like, but
that wasn’t uncommon.  Maybe it was all they could do.  Sure, there were
probably plenty of them who genuinely didn’t care, or thought nothing of it.
 Was that even their fault, or was it society’s, for teaching them that it was
all right, that it wasn’t wrong?  What happened to a person to make them see
someone else as less than they are?
Chapter End Notes
     Unfortunately, I didn't make that part up about Isabela. I read it in
     the Codex (under Siren's Call, if anyone wants to look it up). It's a
     thing. I can't say I was too surprised that she never talks about it
     in the game. Her guilt over it might be part of her inspiration to
     free the other group that she actually talks about, but the Codex is
     very, very clear that she made the decision to throw them overboard.
     :(
     But when I read it, I knew I had to mention it.
     On another note, psychologically speaking, yes, there's something
     wrong with you if you have no compunctions about doing harm to
     others. It's kind of been a big, background theme of this story.
     Among many other psychological themes and whatever. Morals. Lying to
     people to make them happy, and repercussions for deception. That
     vengeance isn't justice (Anders, I'm looking at you). That people
     aren't evil. That people that believe they are doing the right thing
     are often more dangerous than people that know what they are doing is
     wrong.
***** Masquerade *****
Chapter Summary
     All life is a masquerade, parading the face we think others want to
     see, or the one we want others to see. Fenris contemplates leaving
     Kirkwall.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Hawke came home to the vinegar smell that meant Orana had been cleaning the
floors.  She did such a good job that the dark woods reflected the room like
the surface of a lake.  He really didn’t know what they had done before her.
He was a bit surprised when Bodahn told him that Merrill was wanting to see
him, and was still in the library if he had a moment.
Hawke hesitated, and changed clothes before he went down there.  He wandered
down the stairs, and asked for a glass of sherry.  He found Merrill in the
library, asleep with an atlas in her lap.
“Merrill?” he called gently.                                              
The elf jerked awake, the book falling to the floor.  She blinked slowly.  “Oh,
no!  I’m so sorry!”  She scooped up the volume.  “I didn’t mean…  Oh…”
He smiled, taking the book from her.  He set it down on the table.  “It’s fine,
Merrill—really.”  He leaned against the table.  “Are you all right?”
She shrugged a shoulder.  “I’m all right.  Are you?”
He nodded.  “All right,” he answered.  He tilted his head slightly.  “Make any
progress on that mirror?”
She sighed.  “Sometimes, I just want to smash it.”  She laughed to herself at
the idea.  “Actually, I wanted to ask you about the mirror.”
He was not terribly surprised; she had asked for help many times over the years
regarding that mirror that held no reflection.  After what happened last time,
though, he had thought she would not ask again.  “Do you need help with
anything?”
She hesitated.  “I can’t bring it with me when I leave.”
His eyebrows rose.  “Where are you going?”
Merrill’s gaze fell to the atlas beside him.  “We aren’t safe in the alienage,
and we are going to leave after—what was it called?  Wintersend,” she began. 
She hesitated, looking back at him.  “The alienage was never really home to me,
but I would feel… more like I was home if I go with them.”
Hawke paused, wondering what she meant.  “I thought you couldn’t return to the
Dalish.”
“I have no intent to.”
He frowned.  “And the mirror?”
She shook her head in despair, but an old one; she knew defeat when she saw it,
and she knew when it was time to give up the fight.  “I’ll never get that thing
to work.  I’ve been trying for years, and I’ve been thinking—a lot
actually—about what happened to the Keeper, and what happened to Orseno and the
rest of the Circle.”  She paused.  “So would you take the mirror?  Please—I
don’t know what to do with it, and I don’t want…”
Hawke breathed in relief.  “I’m proud of you.”
She looked up at him.  “Really?”
He nodded.  The relief he felt was overwhelming.  It was heartwarming to think
of Merrill going back to her old life—a life of family and friends, freedom. 
Over the years, he had watched her.  When they had met, she had been so full of
life.  She had seemed sad and lonely, but hopeful and bright, like a flower. 
Away from the sunlight and open air, in a filthy alienage, she had withered. 
Now, he hoped she would bloom again.  “I’m glad to see you going home—well,
whatever.  You know what I mean.  Is there anything else I can help you with? 
I’ll take the mirror if you want me to, but is there anything else I can do? 
Where will you go?”
She smiled warmly.  “We will probably stay in the Free Marches.  For a while at
least,” she promised.  “I know where to start.”
He asked her when she would be leaving her apartment.  She confessed that her
home had been partially destroyed in the riots, and while it was livable, she
spent a lot of time with her neighbors, and Hawke insisted she stay in his
extra room.  It had been his mother’s room, actually.  He had left it just as
it was for the longest time, Orana still changing the sheets as if she would be
back at any time.  But, well, it had been a long time, and he felt like if
Merrill could change her future by abandoning her past and orienting her goals,
so could he.
 
The bar was quiet tonight, likely owing to a street festival going on in
Lowtown; it was Satinalia, and three neighbors had had a party, and they
invited people who had also invited people, and soon it had melded into one
party.  Given everything, it was nice to see that people were still so
interested in maintaining their holidays—it made everything feel better.  As
if, though many had died, life could still continue, and people could still
laugh, dance, and make love in spite of it.
Fenris had walked by it on his way to the bar, but he was an elf, and even if
he had wanted to partake, he couldn’t.  Racism and social stigma would see to
that, and he knew it better than most.  Although, considering that Satinalia
was a festival in which most people wore masks and costumes, he could have made
it work anyway if he had wanted to go.  Isabela and Hawke had once forced him
into a costume and a mask and drug him along to a party like that.  The mask
had been stuffy and uncomfortable, the costume was freezing especially at this
time of the year, being the eleventh month, and that had soiled any appetite he
would ever have for Satinalia.
Not that Fenris particularly liked holidays to begin with.  He had always felt
like holidays were for friends and family.  He had friends now, but he often
still felt distant to them.  Their freedom came so naturally to them.  He
always felt, even just a little, like he was an outsider.  Not like he couldn’t
belong, exactly, but more as if he were unnecessary.  Holidays just made him
feel lonely.
He had come to Lowtown because, for one, he played cards weekly with Varric and
Donnic, but this time Varric had triumphantly recovered a copy of Danarius’
book, in Tevene.  The book sat on the table well within his range of sight. 
Donnic had left a short while ago, saying that he really had to get back to
work; Aveline had needed to pull in extra guards with the street party becoming
wild, just to make sure that things stayed safe.
“So you never told me how that wyvern hunt a few months ago went,” Fenris
commented, studying his cards.  Part of that was Fenris’ fault; he had traveled
to a neighboring city-state and been gone for several weeks.  The job had paid
really well, but it really had been incredibly dull, and then there was the
mess he had when he was returning to Kirkwall.  Getting back had been more
trouble than it was really worth—flooding had made him have to take the long
way around, and he had regretted going by the time he got back.
Varric blinked, then laughed.  “Oh.  Hell,” he swore.  He laughed again.  “Let
me tell you all about Tallis and the party.”
Fenris raised an eyebrow, listening to the story as they played cards.  Varric
had always been an excellent storyteller, and he understood it was embellished,
but it was still amusing to listen to.  Fenris had not met Tallis, but Varric
described her as being a Viddathari and quite loyal to the Qun.  He disliked
her already--why would anyone want to enslave themselves to anything like
that?--but listened intently all the same.  The hunt for the wyvern seemed
fascinating.  He laughed when Varric described how he and Anders had come to
rescue them from capture, and Varric chuckled as he told him how Tallis had
flirted with Hawke.
“How did Anders react to that?”
“His expression was priceless, but Hawke--gently--let her know he wasn’t
interested.”
Fenris made a face.  “It’s interesting that she did that though, if she really
is Viddathari.”
The dwarf was curious.  “How so?”
He thought about Zekiel.  He had not thought about the Fog Warriors in a long
time, but they were never far from his thoughts.  It was a sin he would have to
bear the rest of his life, and they deserved to be remembered.  “Many reasons,
the first of which is that Hawke is human, and Tallis is an elf.”  He explained
that in the Qun, it was, to put it lightly, frowned upon to have interspecies
relationships at all.  He went on to point out, “And in the Qun, you don’t
choose your mate either; it’s decided for you—Tallis, honestly, could have
gotten in a lot of trouble for something like that.  She would be reeducated
under their jurisdictions.”
Varric was surprised by this.  “Then I guess she should consider herself lucky
that she was alone.”  Fenris agreed.  Varric went on to describe what had
happened afterwards, how it had never been about theft and Tallis was actually
after a Qunari that had betrayed the Qun.
“Personally, I can’t understand how someone could not betray the Qun, but to
each their own, I suppose,” Fenris commented.  He dealt the next round of
cards.
“You do anything interesting lately?”
The elf considered.  “An old… acquaintance contacted me recently.”
Varric was intrigued.  “Go on.”
Fenris and Varric compared hands.  Fenris sighed deeply as he watched the dwarf
swipe the coins off the table.  “His name is Anastas.  I met him when I was
traveling to the Free Marches.  He hired me to guard his caravan--he deals in
artwork.”
The dwarf nodded thoughtfully as he shuffled the deck.  “Right.  So.  What’s he
want?”
Fenris shrugged.  “He heard that Danarius was dead, and offered to pay off my
bounty if I came and worked for him for a couple of years.”
The cards bridged perfectly, shuffled expertly.  Varric began to deal.  “Isn’t
that indentured servitude?”
Fenris laughed.  “He promised to pay me in the interim, but my wages would be
garnished to pay off the bounty.”  He sighed deeply.  “It is the best, and
easiest, way to get the bounty hunters off my back.”
Varric rearranged his hand.  “You’re just a wanted criminal now, aren’t you?”
He shrugged.  “Escaped slave, wanted criminal.  I did notice that the bounty
was updated to ‘kill on sight’, which is bothersome.  It would be much easier
if I took his offer.”
“Are you going to?” Varric asked gently.
Fenris considered.  “I liked Anastas.  He’s a Liberati--a former slave, and a
legal citizen of the Imperium.”  He was quiet a moment as the round continued.
 “And it’s hard sometimes seeing Anders and Hawke together.”
Varric nodded.  “Ah.”  He sighed, shaking his head.  “Isabela and Daisy were
talking about leaving too.  I guess this is the end of our little
group—probably safest that way; I’ve heard some… things about the Chantry;
they’re not too fond of what happened here.  Never thought you’d go back to the
Imperium, though.”
“It’s only a thought at the moment, and I really don’t want to have to dodge
bounty hunters all my life.  It’s just my best option right now.”
Varric nodded.  “I can understand that.  Still, I’ll hate to see you go, elf.”
“If I decide to go, he’ll be in Kirkwall in Wintermarch.  I suppose I have
plenty of time to think about it.”
He saw the door open behind Varric.  Isabela stepped in, flanked by two of the
girls she coached.  Isabela was carrying a painted mask, one girl had her mask
pulled up on her head, and the other was still wearing her harlequin mask. 
They were talking in hushed whispers as they stepped in.  Isabela locked eyes
with Fenris, once.  Uncomfortable, he made an excuse to leave.  He walked past
her with barely a glance in her direction.
 
Chapter End Notes
     That was the most British conversation ever (Merrill and Hawke--all
     right?).
     I'm doing some major editing right now to make this correlate more
     with Inquisition! No major changes--just really minor details. If
     things don't correlate, remember that it's under construction for the
     moment.
***** The Art of Language *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris seeks out answers, and he and Merrill finally see eye to eye.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Fenris sat on his bed, both the books open to the first page.  He had been
pleasantly surprised to find that many of the letters in Tevene were similar to
the common tongue.  There were a few letters he did not recognize, but he was
feeling much more confident now.  Knowing the language certainly helped.
 Trying to read it aloud helped more, and he could puzzle out what the word was
supposed to be.
Sebastian had been teaching him how to write in his free time, before he had
gone, and when he got the idea of what the letters were supposed to be, he dug
through the desk until he found an inkwell that wasn’t dry.  A quill that
wasn’t broken was harder, but he found one that would work, if he could find a
pen knife.  He tore apart the desk and still couldn’t find one.  Knowing it was
a bad idea, he very carefully used the blade on his sword, cut himself, bled on
the carpet, and sucked on his fingertip until it stopped.  But, the quill was
cut too, so it wasn’t a total loss.
            “Where was I?” he wondered aloud.  He picked up the books and
placed them on the desk.  He started on the alphabet he was working out.  He
hated writing.  Ink would get all over his hands, he smeared it constantly, and
he was the only one who could discern one letter from another.  Sebastian had
been hopeful.  Fenris preferred memorization, but this was more efficient for
the moment.
            He was careful, writing slowly, trying not to blot the ink on the
stained parchment, or worse, break the quill.  Reading, writing--fighting and
combat was so much easier.
            He was wrong about a letter here and there, but he eventually wrote
down the entire alphabet.  The grammar was the most difficult part.  For
example, in the Trade tongue, the sentence “Experimentation proved that laying
the lyrium over major arteries and veins resulted in death in some subjects,
and madness in others” would read one way.  In Tevene, the same sentence could
be said with, to put it bluntly, very different grammar.  In Tevene, the
subject of a sentence was more important than the verbs, making no
differentiation between “the subject” and “a subject”.  Sentence structure was
considered overall unimportant in Tevene, which was a bit different in the
King’s Speech.  It grew more complicated, and his Tevene was… rusty.  He could
read it, but sometimes sentence structure didn’t make as much sense as it would
have ten years ago.
            He spent a day or two intermittently reading it.  It got easier
with time, and he was relearning the grammar again quickly, but it was
sometimes still confusing.  Frustrated on one particular section--his former
master had written it so cryptically that he wanted to kill him all over again-
-he picked up the book and walked to Hawke’s manor.  A change of scenery might
help.
            As he walked, his mind tumbled over the things he had read, the
parts he had understood.  The diagrams were the easiest part of the book to
understand.  Diagrams were like a language of their own, each one having
meaning and context, if he only knew how to look for it.  It was hard for him
to see all the lyrium markings on his own body.  He could feel them, but it was
very different to see it on the diagram.
            He wondered, then, why there were four different diagrams.  Female
and male human; female and male elf.  Why?  Hadn’t Danarius chosen him?
            He thought of what Varania had said, of what the Danarius from his
dream had said.  Was it true?
            He froze mid-step.  It had to be.
            They couldn’t be lying, he realized, and felt cold in the early
winter breeze.  Danarius had published a book with four diagrams.  He hadn’t
even known if the “subject” would be male or female.  The story of the tourney
had to be true, thus.  Or what if he had only drawn the other diagrams for
people trying to follow his spell?
            He mulled that thought over as he walked.  Somehow, he didn’t think
so.  He wasn’t so certain as to why, but he really believed that each drawing
had been made with care and precision.  Each one was slightly different than
the other, the largest difference between male to female, but the elf and human
ones had different markings too.  He didn’t think it was a random design.  In
fact, the book was very clear that it wasn’t a random design.
            Each marking meant something, individually and as a whole, just
like language.  Parts of the book explained each curve and twist of the
lyrium—parts he thought were incredibly boring, because he already knew what
the stuff did—but there were whole sections devoted to the other three diagrams
that had not been used.  Why put forth so much work into something he hadn’t
used, had not planned on using?
            Unless Danarius truly had just held a tourney and given out the
“reward” to whoever won.  It would be easy.  An open tourney, slaves allowed to
compete.  It happened.  It wasn’t even that unusual; the slaves fought and
their master won.
            Was that why he felt so at home, when he killed that Qunari in the
sands of the Grand Proving?  He had fought and bled in those sands before.  I
was a gladiator, he thought, with a kind of dull peace.  It was like coming to
a conclusion he had really always known, and he found satisfaction in it.
            Knowing three languages helped in making him understand the odd
language and pattern of the markings; it was just like a different grammar. 
Each symbol had an individual meaning, but the true interpretation had to be
“read” together.  If a line had not been where it should have been, his
abilities very well might be completely different.  He remembered Hadriana once
commenting that she would like to know what would happen to him if he were to
lose a limb.  He shivered.  If he never found out, so much the better.
            He thought of his own abilities.  One of his favourite sections in
Hawke’s library was about fighting tactics and styles, many of them outdated,
but still very interesting to him.  And, he liked learning, so he read them. 
One of them he had spent a lot of time with—Spirit’s Revenge.  It was about a
fighting style called a “spirit warrior”, dating back centuries.  Summed up, it
was like blood magic but without being a mage.  The ability, unfortunately, was
nearly identical to what he could do.  True, he wasn’t a perfect image of a
true spirit warrior, and he had abilities that a spirit warrior didn’t, and
vice versa.  But it was very, very close.
            He tried not to think about the fact that his abilities, in
essence, were blood magic.  Was that why he had been so susceptible to the
Pride Demon?  He didn’t know.  He couldn’t just stop using the ability if he
wanted to, though; it was so much a part of him that it would be like deciding
he shouldn’t eat.
            The ability had been woven into his soul.  That was a hard truth to
stomach sometimes, that even his immortal soul was tainted by these markings. 
But this was why he was studying it, trying to find a way to end it.  Or even
just to find out if it were possible.
            He wondered what the other markings would have done to him, or the
race and sex they had been designed for.  Would each of them in turn have
slightly different abilities?  He wasn’t so sure how he would feel about coming
across someone with his own power.
            Bodahn commented that Hawke and Anders were out, but he was
welcome.  He went into the library, and poured over the book for a few more
minutes before he decided he couldn’t stand it any longer.  He picked up a
fiction volume and delved into the uncomplicated world of make-believe and
happy endings.
            He liked reading non-fiction.  History was fascinating, horrible
oftentimes, but fascinating.  He liked reading about different beliefs than his
own, different times, real people.  He always imagined what their lives had
been like, reveling in their triumphs and suffering with them in their woes.
 It was nice to know that he hadn’t been alone; there were many others that had
suffered through slavery and triumphed above it and found their way free.  It
left him hope for himself.
            Fiction was more fun though.  He knew there would be a happy
ending, more often than not.  Fiction was a safe escape to another life.
 Sometimes, an author imagined a world where magic did not exist, had never
existed.  It was difficult--almost impossible--for him to imagine, but it
sounded like a paradise.  No mages, no magic; there never had been any.  The
characters never even imagined what real magic was like, and how terrible it
could be.  They would still see something they could not explain and claim it
was magic, but it wasn’t, not in the author’s world.  He wondered what a world
without magic would be like.  No demons, no spirits, abominations, mages,
lyrium--would it be a world without sacrifice and barbarism?
            He thought of Danarius killing dozens of slaves to fuel the spell
that had cursed Fenris forever.  That never would have happened.  Why would
someone kill so many innocents if there was no magic?
            In the books, some people were just evil--they did it for amusement
or to terrify others.  But that was just a book.  People could be corrupt and
terrible without magic, but magic always made those things worse.
            “I brought you some tea,” Orana chimed brightly, her Tevene as
flawless as it had been when he first met her.  Fenris looked up as she placed
the tray down on the table.
            “Thank you.  You didn’t have to do that, Orana,” he said, but in
the Trade tongue.
            She flashed a smile.  “I like to make herbal tea.”  She made a
face, and switched to her second language.  “And Hawke never drinks it; he only
likes black tea.”  She crossed her arms, irritated.  “Would you believe he
would rather drink water?”
            He couldn’t help but smile.  She had changed so much over the
years, and it often made him feel elated.  “He’s Ferelden--they’re naturally
uncouth.”
            “And proud of it!” she exclaimed.  “He was feeling homesick
yesterday, and actually asked me to find Ferelden recipes.”  She scoffed.  “I
made him scones and little watercress sandwiches.  And he complained.  I told
him he can eat it or starve.”
            Fenris laughed.  It was so, so good to see her acting this way.
 She was so much like him.  They had both lost everything, suffered at the
hands of cruel magisters, and then free under not so dissimilar circumstances.
 He was glad to see the cowed slave gone, to be replaced by the young woman
before him.  His path had been harder than hers.  He had made terrible mistakes
that she did not, suffered through more pain than she had.  It was harder for
him, but seeing her was inspiring.  “Would you mind helping me with something?”
he asked suddenly.
            “Sure--what is it?”  She turned to the tea tray.  “Do you like milk
or sugar, or both?”
            “Sugar--just one cube, please,” he said.  She poured, stirring the
sugar in.  He rose, setting the book down on the chair.  He went to the table.
 “This is in Tevene.”
            She blinked.  “Oh, I can’t read Tevene…”
            He looked back at her.  “I can--sort of.  But I’m having some
trouble remembering the language, and it’s confusing.”
            “I still think in Tevene,” she laughed.  “If you want to read it to
me, I can help.”
            Reading aloud to Orana did help, enormously.  He understood it more
aloud, and what he struggled with, Orana grasped right away.  It helped him to
remember the language too, and a few hours later, they could carry on whole
conversations in Tevene and he rarely stuttered.
            “What are you speaking?” Hawke asked as he wandered in, Anders
shortly behind him.
            “Tevene,” Orana answered.
            “I’m working on the translation of that book,” Fenris said,
gesturing vaguely at it.  “But so far, there aren’t any major differences in
it.”
            Hawke sighed.  “That’s a shame, but keep at it.  Hey, Orana, what’s
for dinner?”
            She jumped up.  “Oh, no--the soup!”  She rushed past him, nearly
bowling into Anders.
            “How far along are you?” Anders asked, leaning against Hawke’s
shoulder.
            Fenris did not look at them.  “Around that cryptic section about
the way he refined the lyrium.”
            “The whole thing is cryptic--it’s infuriating.”  Hawke considered.
 “I wish Orseno was still alive; he’d be a great source for that part.”  He
made a face at Anders, who sheepishly slunk away.  “Maybe…  is there any way we
can write to one of the Circles, perhaps?  Or, hell, all of them?  Val Royeaux
would be a good bet.”
            Anders frowned in thought.  “Rivain would be a good idea--they
specialize in all kinds of strange magic.  I can write to the Ferelden Circle
too.”
            Hawke sighed.  “Writing to Minrathous would probably be the best
idea.”  Fenris only stared at him, and the apostate laughed.  “Of course we
won’t.”  He went to the desk, lifting the copy of the book.  “I can get that
chapter copied for you--I’ll ask Bodahn to take it to a scribe and we’ll send
it out.”
            Fenris couldn’t help but wonder if it would even do any good, the
Circles being in the state they were in right now.  It couldn’t hurt to try.
 It was somewhat infuriating that he had to look to mages for help, but what
options were there?  Who else would know anything about magic enough to
understand how to undo what had been done to him?
            Danarius, he thought, thinking of that dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream.
 He had slept since then, but he hadn’t dreamed.  Maybe Danarius was finally
leaving him alone.  Maybe his soul had been devoured by a demon.  Maybe what
little hold he had left on Fenris was fading.  He liked that last idea, and the
one previous it.  He would even settle for the first one.
            However, if he could dream, and speak to him again, maybe…  He
couldn’t hurt him any more.  He was certain of that.  Danarius had told him
that his nightmare had only been that--a nightmare.  The lucid dreaming he
could escape from, he was sure.
            Was it even possible to induce it though?
            I could have Anders make something for you.
            Fenris lifted his head.  “Anders?” he asked slowly.  The mage
glanced over at him.  For the first time, he found himself wondering what
Anders’ real name was, what his real accent had been before he had come to
Ferelden.  What kind of person is a mage before they know they are a mage?
 Kylie had been…  “I’m having trouble sleeping, and I only ask out of
desperation--and because I promised I wouldn’t take drugs…”
            Anders blinked, then nodded.  “Sure.  When I go back to the clinic
next, I’ll make you something.”  He paused.  “Or… is this more urgent?”
            Fenris lied, “I’m exhausted.”  He was tired, but only because he
only slept for short periods at a time.  That was habit, though, more than
because of his nightmares.  Running for his life for three years, and then
constantly on the alert for hunters for several more had left him habitually
waking frequently to check his surroundings.  Sleeping was dangerous when he
was being hunted.  He didn’t know if he would ever get used to sleeping through
the night.
            Anders sighed.  “After dinner.”
            “Do you want to stay?” Hawke asked.  Anders looked at him flatly.
 The other man pouted, and Anders sighed, rolling his eyes.  The silent
exchange over, the Champion of Kirkwall looked back at Fenris brightly.  “So?”
            “Ah…”  he hesitated.  “No.  Thanks.”  He excused himself quickly.
 Nothing better to do, he walked down to Lowtown.  He passed Donnic out on
patrol walking up the steps.  He waved vaguely, and continued on.  He didn’t
visit Lowtown as often since Isabela and Varric had left.  She had asked him to
come with her, but he hadn’t.
            With a kiss and a sigh, she had gone, just like that.  She still
wrote Merrill letters on occasion, he heard.  Hawke said that she and Varric
were doing something in Antiva—he had no idea what.
Fenris was bored.  Since Varric left, life just felt boring.  Isabela was gone,
Varric was gone, Sebastian was long gone.   Merrill was talking about leaving
too--it seemed like everyone was leaving.  And, he thought, just in time; he
was getting ready to leave too.  Anastas would arrive in Kirkwall in two weeks
or so, and then, he supposed he was finished with Kirkwall.  Varric, though,
had every intention of returning sometime soon, he had heard.
Hawke was surprised he even considered going back to the Imperium, but it was,
in all honesty, the best place to look into what he could do about the lyrium.
 Moreover, Anastas had eliminated the bounty.  It was just easier this way.
“Fenris!” a familiar, irritating voice called.  With a sigh, he turned toward
her.
“Merrill,” he answered flatly.
She stepped up to him, smiling brightly.  “I’m so glad I ran into you,” she
said immediately.
What could you possibly want from me?  He groaned inwardly.  “Is there
something you need?”
She shook her head, blinking big green eyes up at him.  “I’m leaving in a few
days; I just wanted to say goodbye to you.”
He blinked in surprise.  “To where?” he asked.  Stupid question—he knew she was
just running off into the wilderness.
“Just around the Free Marches.”
He nodded absently.  At least he wouldn’t have to watch her go mad with
possession and start killing everyone in the alienage.  She would be living
like the Dalish again, and he worried that there would be no one to strike her
down before she hurt someone all the same.  Certainly she had a destination
somewhere?  What did the histories call it—“The Long Walk”?  It didn’t do it
justice, but then, nothing in history had done an elf justice.  “Hauling that
mirror with you?”
She shook her head.  “I’m getting rid of it.  I’ve never been able to get it to
work—nothing I’ve done has done anything…  And I want… this to feel like home.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.  He hadn’t realized it would be this relieving to
hear that.  He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.  “Will you keep
performing blood magic?”
She shook her head again.  “I don’t see a reason to any more—and…  I saw what
happened with Orseno, Fenris.  I’m not blind.  I had thought—I’ve come so far,
I can’t give up now.  But I haven’t accomplished a thing in all these years.” 
She looked at him.  “So I thought, I’d go home—or something like home anyway. 
Our past is gone and maybe we can’t reclaim it anymore, but maybe we don’t need
to.”
He felt like laughing in relief; she was finally growing up.  It took her long
enough.  An image of a young girl, her red hair in braids, looking up at him
filled his mind.  Varania…  “I’m glad,” he told her, honestly.
She smiled.  “I thought you’d yell at me again.”
He frowned.  “Why?  You’re giving up everything I disapproved of.”
She shrugged a shoulder.  “I’m not Tranquil.”
He cocked his head to the side, scrutinizing her.  “Meredith taught me that
seeing evil in everyone around you makes you evil.”  He looked down at the
broken cobblestone under his feet.  “Danarius was cruel to me; so was
Hadriana.”  His eyes flicked upwards, back at her tattooed face.  “The
Magisterium is evil, but they’re not evil because they’re mages.  The magic
just makes it easier—it’s not the cause of it.  Danarius would have been just
as cruel to me if he were not a mage—I understand that now.”
Her eyes widened, filling with hope.  A smile spread across her lips.  “So…?”
He looked at her.  “It’s not exactly mages I hate; it’s cruelty.”  It didn’t
mean he didn’t hate magic though, but at least he had learned to differentiate
the two.  And it didn’t mean much of a change of his views either—mages were
still dangerous and should be under the watchful eye of the Chantry, at the
very least.  Left unchecked, he still believed that they would fall to evil; it
was just too easy for them not to.  It wasn’t the magic that did it, per se,
but it made it that much easier for them.  The world, and normal people, still
needed to be safeguarded from what they could do.
He loved Hawke, and he believed in him completely—which was why he had been
angry that he had sided with the mages, but he hadn’t left like Sebastian had. 
Hawke was a good man.  And, if Fenris met a hundred mages and each of them
turned out terrible, Hawke must be the one hundred and first, and there were
still more mages in the world.  So, not all of them had to be terrible, right? 
It would be like saying all humans were terrible, because humans had enslaved
his ancestors.  Logically speaking, by just a rule of numbers, there had to be
some, even a minority, of humans back then who had been against it.  There were
exceptions to every rule, especially when it came to people.
Her smile broke out into a grin, and she threw her arms around his shoulders,
holding him tight.  He cringed, and made a face, but hugged her back, and
pushed her away.  She was still grinning.  “Fenris, I’ll tell you about the
carving now—if you’re ready.”
He blinked.  “My wolf carving?”
She nodded, rocking back eagerly on her heels.  “It’s Dalish.”  Her fingers
laced together, and her countenance turned solemn.  “In the Arlathan forest,
there was a clan of Dalish elves.  They always came back to the forest, but
they traveled in wider circles than many of the other Dalish clans—they went
through Antiva, Orlais, and Nevarra.  When they were near Orlais, their Keeper
was taken away by Templars.  When they passed back through Nevarra, they were
attacked by Imperial slavers.”
His eyes widened, wondering what all of this meant.  He knew that he was from
Seheron, but where had the carving come from, then?  “Twice, they were attacked
by slavers, within a dozen years.  The last time, they either murdered or
enslaved all of them.”  She cocked her head to the side.  “If someone made that
for you, that person was from that clan.  Look on the right back paw—there’s a
little symbol on it—that’s how I know.”
There’s Dalish in the forest.  Aramael—had that been his name?—had said that,
before Fenris had killed him.  Aramael was Dalish, he realized, after all these
years.  A survivor of that clan’s massacre.
“Someone made it for me,” he whispered.
She looked at him.  “I’m sorry, Fenris.  I know it’s not much to go off of.”
He hesitated, and pulled both of the carvings out of his belt.  He looked at
each of them in his hand, old, familiar friends.  “I don’t think…  I need my
past.”  He hesitated.  “I need closure to it, but I don’t need it.”
She smiled at him, and her smile seemed sad to him.  “That’s how I feel—but
about our past, our history.”
“I’m sorry I was cruel to you,” he said, and for once in his life, he really
meant it.  Repaying cruelty with cruelty didn’t end the cycle.  Instead of
being cruel to her, he should have tried to listen to her—at least shut his
mouth and hear her out, and try to argue with her without insulting or yelling
at her, and have a real discussion.  He should have tried to understand,
because if he had understood, he might have been better able to stop the
dangerous path she was on.  Instead, he had driven her down it.  Everyone who
never tried to understand had driven her down that path, making her cling more
desperately to her choices, because no one understood and no one had tried to
help.  Hawke had only ever enabled her, in a distant, faintly disapproving
way.  Isabela never talked about it with her, and Varric didn’t either.  Fact
of the matter, no one in her life had ever stopped and listened and tried to
calmly reason with her.  They had just shut her out and left her isolated and
alone with her mirror and her magic.
She nodded.  “I know.”  She paused.  “But maybe I needed it.  Maybe if more
people had been opposed to what I was doing, maybe if more people had tried to
stop me, instead of enable me, things would not have turned out this way.”  He
left unsaid that he didn’t think that had been the issue; he felt like so many
people disapproving of her actions had led her to be only more rash.  If
everyone already hates you, why keep yourself from making them hate you more? 
He pulled Merrill out of the way of a cart passing by, and the pair started to
walk.  “Do you care about our people, Fenris?”
He rolled his eyes, but he knew what she meant.  “I wish I didn’t,” he
whispered.
She looked up at him.  “Is that why you never come to the alienage?”  Her voice
was quiet.
He sighed, and glanced back at her.  “Yes.”
She looked away.  “I misjudged you.  All this time, I just thought you were
selfish and didn’t really care.”  She shook her head.  “And you did.”  She
looked back at him.  “Are you going to go to Halamshiral?”
He knew what was going on in Halamshiral.  He had even thought, deeply, about
going.  If there was going to be an uprising, it will be there.  If elves were
ever going to rebel—really rebel, and do something about the way humans had
treated them for lifetimes beyond count—then it would be at the End of the
Journey… and maybe it wouldn’t be “the end” any more.  Maybe, it would be… the
beginning of something more.  “No.  I’ll be in the Imperium.”
She frowned.  “What will you do there?”
“Pay off my bounty.”  He sighed, looking up at the clouded sky.  “Trying to buy
as many slaves out of slavery as I can.”
She looked at him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, but she said
nothing.  “Perhaps we will want to be in Halamshiral.”  She sighed wistfully. 
“And maybe not.  You know, I really just want to go home.”
“Take care,” he said.
She started to walk away from him.  “You too.”
He wished he knew what it meant to want to go home.  He wished he knew where
“home” was.  “Wait,” he said.
She looked back at him, frowning quizzically.  “Did I forget something?”
He shook his head slightly.  “No.  Merrill?  What does ‘home’ mean—to you?”
Her emerald eyes softened.  “Family.  The Dalish don’t have a permanent home. 
But it’s when…”  She seemed to realize.  “It’s when you’re surrounded by people
that care about you, and you care about them.  It’s when… you feel safe, and
you miss it when you’re away.  And when you’ve had a hard day, you can come
back to it and feel…  comforted.  Like you aren’t alone.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, and watched her go.  Was that what home was?
He had never had that feeling.  Maybe he never would, and he would just have to
learn to be lonely.  Life can be lived alone.
 
Fenris stood on the dock, watching the sun go down and the ships sailing back
into port.  He should be going soon.  He thought of the fat-bottomed bottle
sitting at his stolen mansion in Hightown.  Anders had made it for him
yesterday, and he hadn’t quite had the backbone to drink it.  He was afraid of
confronting Danarius’ specter, and afraid of what it meant.  He knew he needed
answers, and he had tried to find them elsewhere.
Hawke had heard back from Orlais recently.  They said that one of their
Enchanters was looking into it, but they had some problems going on, and they
didn’t exactly have the time to devote to the research.  A week before that, he
had heard from Rivain, but not from one of their mages.  The Templar had
rejected the petition immediately, because studying a way to undo what had been
done to him would mean a mage would have to study the original spell, which
would mean studying blood magic.
He supposed he should have expected it.  They still had yet to hear from
Fereldon, but he was hopeful, or tried to be.
His best bet was probably asking Danarius, though.
Chapter End Notes
     Tevene is based off of Latin, so I just did some research on the
     grammar, etc. I swear I don't just make this up as I go!
     I also think it's interesting how a person's worldviews can change
     over time and over circumstances, and that's what is happening with
     Fenris. He's seeing the world as it is; he doesn't want to become
     Meredith, seeing only evil in mages and the people around him is just
     as dangerous as not seeing it when it's really there.
***** Dreamscapes *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris confronts Danarius in the Fade seeking answers.
Fenris was conscious of walking.  The first thing he noticed was that he was
walking, and couldn’t remember how he had gotten here.  Dappled sunlight shone
on the forest path.  A warm late spring breeze ruffled the leaves.  He was
following--no, walking beside--someone he thought he should recognize.  “Where
are we?”
            The man turned.  Boy, he amended.  Sixteen, maybe.  Human, but had
never seen facial hair.  “A forest.”
            He recognized his voice, and nearly kicked himself for not seeing
it sooner.  “I know that, Danarius.  I meant where--in what country is this
supposed to be?”
            Danarius briefly considered saying “the Fade” just to nettle him,
but instead said, “If my apparent age is anything to go by, I’d say Vinewood,
when I was about fifteen.”  He sighed wistfully.  “You were not even born yet.”
 He paused.  “I should see my sister.  Or the spirit masquerading as her,
whichever.”
“You have a sister?”  This surprised Fenris, as he had thought he had known his
family, but a sister had never even been mentioned before.
“Older, by about four minutes,” he commented.  “And she’s completely mad.”
   1.   Shaislyn was a twin too, and his sister is also dead. “I often thought
      the same of you.”
Danarius, to Fenris’ surprise, laughed.  “I never would have guessed.”
“You would have not been pleased.”
“No,” he agreed.  “But I mean it when I say that--she tried to set herself on
fire once.  She stuck her hand in a dog’s intestines…  Things like that.”
Fenris didn’t even know what to say.  He stopped, staring at him.
The dead magister looked back at him.  “I used to worry that, because she and I
were twins, that I was mad too.”
“You were,” Fenris said bitterly.
“No more so than you.”  He paused, looking down a slender deer trail, then
turned from it, continuing on the main path.  “I heard about what you did to
Hadriana, and to Lysander.  He was barely eighteen.”
“Age doesn’t grant any sanctity to life.  You should know that.”  All the
children that had died at his hand, at his word, as he stood idly by and
watched.  It was the only life they would ever have, something so indescribably
precious.  And so cheap, so wasteful.  They had barely tasted what it meant to
live, barely even knew what life was, before it was so cruelly taken away from
them--forever.  He died too quickly.
“You always had a weakness for children,” Danarius commented, his tone
disapproving.  Because I care, and you never cared enough, Fenris thought
scathingly.  The dead magister heaved a sigh.  “Did you know Hadriana had a
child?  A child who actually saw you kill her?”
The elf froze.  He had never known, never even guessed…  He cringed at the
thought of killing a parent in front of their child.  If he had known…  No, he
had been so consumed by his own hatred, his rage, would he have stopped?  Could
he have stopped?  Would he have even wanted to?  Or would he have wanted to
inflict pain on the child, too, simply because of who its parent was?  He
sincerely hoped not.  Whatever sins Hadriana had committed, a child--even her
child--did not deserve to be punished for them.
Fenris looked back at the dead man.  “How?”  They had combed the place looking
for her, looking for all the slavers.  How had they missed a child?  He thought
of Orana.  He should ask her, just to confirm what Danarius said.  He still
didn’t feel like he could trust him.
Danarius had a patronizing grin on his face.  “Well, when a man and a woman
love each other very much—“
Fenris thought about hitting him.  “They produce I child and then I kill both
the parents, yes, I understand that.  How is it that the child was there?  I
never saw it.”
The dead man seemed oddly disappointed.  “Hidden.  Doesn’t matter, anyway.
 Why’d you come?”
He paused.  “I need to ask you something.”
He sighed deeply.  “Then ask.”
Fenris didn’t miss the implication that Danarius had not promised to answer.
 “I’ve been reading that book you wrote about the Ritual you did to me.  Is
there a way--without killing me--that will get rid of the lyrium in my body?”
Danarius missed a step.  He looked back at him.  “I never designed it to be
possible to remove,” he told him flatly.  “If there is a way, I don’t know it.”
The elf was unsurprised, but annoyed nonetheless.  “You must know something.”
“I really don’t,” he snapped, and continued forward.  Fenris strode after him,
contemplating strangling him out of irritation.  He was almost certain it would
do no good, but it would relieve stress.
“You must be able to think of something--you designed it.”
“I have no interest in that.”
Fenris held his tongue, and kept his temper in check.  When he had calmed
enough, he spoke.  “I think you owe it to me to try.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
He couldn’t reign in his temper that time.  “You owe me everything!”
Danarius rounded on him suddenly.  “No.  No one owes you anything, Fenris.  The
world doesn’t owe you anything, and neither do I.”
“You took everything from me!”
“No.”  He stared at him, and Fenris felt some of his resolve whither at the
other’s conviction.  “Most of it, you did to yourself.”  He held up a finger.
 “I almost didn’t buy you; I ended up with you and your mother because of your
actions.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “You stabbed me and tried to kill me.  You
were three.  It scarred.”
Fenris actually laughed.  “I wish I remembered that.”  But that time, it wasn’t
so bitter.  Who remembered things from when they were three?  He wouldn’t
remember anyway.  He tried to remember a scar on the man’s leg, but couldn’t. 
Any time he had seen his legs that bare, he had not been studying him.  Rather,
he had been doing his best not to see him at all.
Danarius was not amused.  “The merchant just gave you and your mother to me.”
 He shrugged.  “I paid for you to learn the sword—do you have any idea how much
training a gladiator costs?  When I held the tournament, you were the one who
volunteered; no one forced you.  A requirement of the Ritual was that I had a
willing subject.  Or did you conveniently skip that part of the book?  It’s in
the second chapter.”
“You could be lying,” he said, but he doubted it.  It made entirely too much
sense.  He hadn’t really believed that part in the book, but then, he hadn’t
wanted to.  Hawke had tactfully never mentioned it, and maybe he had asked
Anders and Merrill not to as well.
He snorted a laugh.  “Ask Varania.  If I find your mother, maybe I’ll have her
tell you.”
Fenris stumbled.  His mother…?  Right, Varania said she was dead.  “Fine.
 You’re telling the truth.  What about everything else?”
“You also consented to having your memories erased, remember.”  He sighed.
 “And you knew very well what you were getting into when you won the
tournament.”  He waved vaguely at him.  “The one that earned you those
markings.”  He looked back at him.  “So, one could argue that, no, I don’t owe
you anything; I’ve given you a lot more than you ever care to think about.”
Fenris contemplated swearing at him, scream that he had raped him, paraded him
about on a leash, beat him, mentally abused him and made him believe he was
worthless and that no one would ever care about him.  He had not even allowed
his slaves the hope and peace religion would have brought them.  But isn’t that
what you did to slaves?  He was angry, but fact of the matter was, it was
pointless arguing with him about it.  It would be like trying to make Sebastian
denounce the Maker; he believed as he believed, and saw absolutely nothing
wrong with it, despite its glaring flaws.  Trying to argue would be a waste of
his time and effort.  Trying to argue would only rile Fenris’ temper and
accomplish nothing.  Arguing was not why he was here.
“So, if you want to complain about something I did, please complain about
something you didn’t consent to before I did it.”
Fenris rolled his eyes.  Danarius had a twisted view of the word “consent”.  If
he chose to debate the point, he wasn’t going to accomplish anything though. 
“You really have no idea where to at least start on a way to get rid of the
lyrium markings?”
“Why do you want to get rid of them?  They make you so powerful.”
He wondered if Danarius had always been this irritating, or if it was because,
at the moment, he was a teenager.  He had never really had a conversation with
him before, his previous dream aside.  “I’ve met Templars that are suffering
from its affects.”
Danarius glanced at him.  “Memory loss?” he inquired, his eyebrow raising
meaningfully.  “I suppose that was always a risk.  I had thought it wouldn’t
matter much; you’d never have to take care of yourself.  But we both see how
that idea worked out.  I hate to tell you this, Fenris, but you’re only
suffering the consequences of your own actions.”
Fenris glowered.  There he went again, telling him that he was better off in
slavery.  It disgusted him, and it was an effort to reign in his temper.  He
took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly through his nose before he
spoke.  “You did this to me.  Call it what you want, but if I had had any other
options, I would have taken them.”
“I don’t care to argue with you.”  The forest path opened to reveal the
Vinewood garden grounds.  There were sheep where he was expecting the
vineyard.  “Well.  Is there anything else I can tell you that I know nothing
about?”
            “No.”
“Good.  So you will abandon this foolish notions to undo the Rite?”
Fenris scoffed.  “Absolutely not!”
Danarius glanced at him sidelong.  “I think it would kill you.  Or worse.”
“Why?”
He snorted.  “You learned to read.  Or do you not actually care to study when
you read?  I prepared you for the Rite for weeks.  I fed you lyrium to get your
body accustomed to it.  Your body is addicted to the lyrium.  You’ll have to
consume it regularly, or you’ll lose your mind.  And your memory will go too. 
If you don’t want that to happen, leave it alone.”  He made a face.  “I took
very special care to make sure you wouldn’t go mad like the Templars do.  If
you want to undo it, you will still be addicted to the lyrium, and you may lose
your mind.”
Fenris despaired.  He was addicted to it?  He would go mad without it?  He
needed the damned lyrium to retain his sanity?  What made someone so perverse
as to think it was perfectly fine to do this to another person?  “There has to
be another way!  You have no evidence that I will go mad.”
“True.  I don’t.”  Danarius crossed his arms, and for the first time seemed to
seriously consider it.  “You know I like difficult magics.”  He sighed.  “Well,
the first thing you’d want to do is separate our bound souls.”
Fenris was eager for this.  “How?”
“You don’t happen to know two mages, do you—at least one of them a blood mage?”
He started to say no, then thought of Merrill.  “Yes.”
Danarius was faintly surprised.  “Ah.  Well.  There’s a simple blood magic
ritual for entering the Fade—kill someone, the blood mage performs the spell,
and the other mage enters the Fade.  I’d be only too happy to help,
actually—and we can separate our souls.  Since I died, I don’t have the power I
used to.  However, I still do remember how everything works.  So if we separate
each other, we’ll each be free of the other to—“
Fenris’ eyes rose in alarm as he realized where this was going.  “No.  No,
that’s not what we’re going to do.  I need to get rid of the lyrium.”
“The binding was a part of the Ritual; you’ll have to undo it.”
“Not until after I undo everything else.”  His link to Danarius was his only
hold on him, the only way he could keep antagonizing him for answers, and the
only way he could force him to do what he wanted him to do.  The leash Danarius
had put around Fenris’ neck went two ways.
“Well, give me some time to think on it.”
“Time is relative in the Fade.”
The mage’s arms crossed indignantly.  He looked very, very much a teenager as
his lips curved into a pout, brow furrowing in annoyance.  But he was quiet as
he thought about it, studying the lyrium.  “We’ll have to rip it out of your
flesh.”  He paused.  “It’s going to hurt, and it will be very bloody.”
The elf’s stomach twisted.  The scent of blood heavy in the air, sounds of
flesh tearing, moans from dead throats, an infant screaming…
Danarius’ eyebrows raised in alarm.  “Fenris, stop!  You’ll attract demons. 
Whatever you are thinking about—stop.”
It was like saying the words “pink elephants” and then telling someone not to
think about it.  He couldn’t.  The memory flooded his mind, and he felt the
Fade all around begin to shift, to change.  He could smell blood.  His eyes
squeezed shut, trying to will the tranquil forest again, but it didn’t come. 
He felt Danarius’ fingers against his temples.
“Open your damned eyes, elf,” the man spat.  Fenris stared back at him, at his
eyes.  His eyes had always been an intangible, off-limits place for Fenris,
somewhere he had never dared to look, because he had always had to be
submissive and subservient.  Now, he felt his eyes drawn there, unable to look
away, and a part of him was afraid—for only an instant—of the repercussions of
the simple action.  As he gazed at the pale blue of the magister’s eyes, he
felt himself calm, a feeling of peacefulness washing over him.  The scent of
blood was gone, and he heard birds chirping, the scent of evergreen.  His
eyelids fluttered a little, and he bowed his head as his heart slowed in his
chest.  Danarius’ hands fell away.
            The man’s face twisted into a frown as he stared into the trees, as
if watching for demons.  “It’s a spell of calm—you’re fine.  It’s used to calm
hysterical children.”  He heaved a sigh.  “Rochelle thought it would be useful
when she…”
            Fenris paused, and wondered.  Rochelle, his dead wife.  A woman
Fenris had never known, but he had seen the effects of her passing.  “Did you
love her?”
            Danarius glanced back at him, but didn’t answer.  He didn’t really
need to.
The living and the dead stood in silence, and Fenris knew he needed to steer
the topic back to the lyrium in his skin.  “Removing the lyrium--is there a
less painful way to do that?”
Danarius’ brow creased in thought.  “Depleting the lyrium, perhaps?  I designed
it to be self-replenishing; it’s why you’re linked to the Fade.  Sever the
link, and it will probably deplete with each use.  It’s just a theory though; I
would want to test it before I tried it on you.”
He wanted to experiment on living people?  “No.”
“Oh, since when did you become so squeamish?  Wouldn’t you prefer to know if
you will survive the process?”
He thought of all the people that had died so Fenris would live.  He couldn’t… 
“There must be another way.”  Danarius didn’t answer, and was wandering off. 
Fenris strode after him.  “What if the blood in the Ritual was just the blood
of some rats or something, and we put the lyrium on another rat, in small
amounts…”
Danarius actually laughed, as if he had said something funny.  “Ask your blood
mage friend why that won’t work.”
“She’s not my friend,” he muttered under his breath.  But he got the idea
anyway.  He would run the idea by Merrill regardless.  Danarius was a bastard
and wouldn’t tell him anything.  He didn’t see why it wouldn’t work.  “Didn’t
you ever practice on an animal?”
“Yes.  Forming the vessels that hold the lyrium in your skin, practice burning
it into their skin.  Not in making it functional, and I certainly never cared
if they survived it being removed.”
Fenris sighed, staring off at the Black City in the distance, an ever-constant
reminder of where they really were.  “You’re no help.”
“I think you have some ideas at least.”
            He scoffed.  “That I’m never going to get these markings off of my
body.”
Danarius seemed pleased by this notion.  “It’s really not my problem.  I
offered suggestions; you rejected them.”
Fenris had had enough of this.  “Danarius.  You figure something else
out—something that won’t involving killing people—and we both get what we want.
 I’ll be free of you, and your soul won’t be bound to mine any more.”
He shrugged.  “Or you could kill Shaislyn; that would sever our souls, I am
more than certain.”  He paused.  “It won’t help you get rid of the lyrium, but
it would help the matter, I’m sure.”
The elf glowered.  Even if he considered murder to be acceptable for this, how
could he even find Shaislyn?  “Think of something.”
He considered.  “Do you like killing slavers?  Bandits, thugs?  Things like
that?  What’s the difference between killing them in battle and using their
blood to fuel a spell?”
“Torture!”
“You’ve tortured people before and had no qualms about it then,” he said. 
“You’re such a hypocrite.”
The lyrium resonated with his mounting temper, but Danarius had turned and was,
again, walking away from him.  He wouldn’t be so angry if the dead magister
didn’t have an excellent point.  He was being hypocritical.  He had tortured
that kid.  He had tortured a slaver in a back alley in Kirkwall.  He had
justified it at the time, told himself it was to a good cause, and that the two
had deserved it.  He had slaughtered plenty of men and women—slavers, bandits,
thugs, Tal-Vashoth…  Fog Warriors.
Was there no difference between he and Danarius?
 
Fenris rolled out of bed, and sat up, looking at the bottle.  Just a spoonful,
Anders had said.  He had taken double the amount, and waking had been
difficult.  He still felt sleepy.  He stood up and stretched, shaking his head
a little.
We’re nothing alike, he decided firmly.  The difference was in the intent not
the deed.  The only similarity was that they had both killed and tortured.  He
tortured to be cruel.
He thought of a young man, in his early twenties, blood running from his lips. 
He didn’t have a tongue.  No, it had been cut out, the bloody bit of flesh
burned to cinders in a fireplace in front of him.
He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he knew with a cold certainty that
Danarius had tortured him, and he had made Fenris—no, Leto—he had made Leto
kill him.
I didn’t torture for the sake of it, nor as a display of power.  I tortured
because I needed the information.
He thought of the children Danarius had killed.  He thought of all the people
that had died for the Ritual.  He thought of all the people that died in the
coliseum for entertainment.  He had never killed for entertainment, or for his
own perverted ambitions.  When he killed someone, it was because they were a
threat to his life, or someone else’s well-being.
Intent did not change the deed, but it did sculpt the nature of it.  He killed
to protect; Danarius killed for his own ambitions.  If it weren’t for people
like Danarius, he wouldn’t have to kill.
Fenris breathed a little easier.  And may I never kill an innocent again.
It was a vow, a creed, a promise to himself.  Really, it was one he had made a
long time ago, but never put words to.  If someone didn’t deserve to die, they
should live.  And he should do his best to make certain they did.
Fully awake, he dropped back on the bed.  He felt better, but he still felt
lonely.
He thought about Hawke, at this early hour, probably in bed with Anders.  He
sighed, and then smiled.  But Hawke seemed so happy, and it made him glad to
see him happy.  It was hard to see them both together, but if he focused on how
happy Anders made Hawke, his jealousy calmed.  He loved Hawke.
Loving someone meant caring for their happiness, and he did.  He never again
wanted to stand in the way of Hawke and Hawke’s happiness.  And if Anders made
him happy, they had his blessing.
He supposed, where he was concerned, this is what whores were for.  Or maybe he
should try to meet new people once in a while.  It couldn’t hurt, could it?
He dismissed the idea.  He was leaving soon, what would be the point?  Besides,
whores were so much more professional, a sure thing, and with less emotional
baggage.
The Blooming Rose would be open again in a few hours.  He should go pay Wensley
a visit.  He hadn’t seen him in quite a while.
 
***** Jigsaw Pieces *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris sees some of the larger picture of his life.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Merrill listened with rapt attention while Fenris explained the
things Danarius had offered to him.  She did not comment or ask questions while
he was talking, but he could tell from the look on her face that what he was
saying was implausible.
            He stopped.  “What is it?”
            She made a face.  “You can’t…”  She shook her head a little.  “You
can’t use an animal’s blood in blood magic.”  She shrugged helplessly.  “It
would be like trying to replace sugar with salt; they look alike, but you
wouldn’t want to eat the cookies, would you?”
            He had come to like talking about magic with Merrill better than
Hawke or Anders.  Hawke and Anders both seemed more formally educated in magic,
particularly Anders, who had been a Circle mage.  In some ways, it was
advantageous, but they didn’t know how to explain things to him the way that
Merrill seemed to.  “It’s too different then?”
            She nodded.  “It’s why I use my blood when I use blood magic.”
            He considered this, his eyes involuntarily straying to her hands. 
Under the fabric on her arms, there were scars on her flesh—a series of short
cuts, marks on her fingers and her palms.  “But you could use someone else’s…”
            “A person’s,” she clarified, with some unease.  “Not an animal’s.”
            He frowned.  “A Darkspawn?”
            Merrill stilled as she thought about it seriously.  “They have
mages.  I don’t see… why I couldn’t…  I’ve never tried.”
            It would be impossibly dangerous to try to cage a Darkspawn or two
and experiment on them, especially something like this.  Anders would be the
only one who could go safely near them, and the problem with that is that it
was Merrill who would have to experiment.  “Perhaps it is too dangerous,” he
said slowly.
            Merrill seemed relieved that he had dismissed the idea.  “We’ll
think of something, Fenris,” she assured him.
            He rose.  “I need to go meet Hawke.”
            She bid him farewell and he left.  Merrill was leaving Kirkwall in
three days, but said she would stay in touch when she could.  She had left her
apartment in the alienage, and was staying at Hawke’s manor for the time
being.  It made it easier to talk to all three of the mages he knew when he
needed to.
Fenris found Hawke in the Lowtown market, where the mage had said he would be. 
Anders was just walking away, down to Darktown, and Hawke was looking after
him.
            “Hawke,” Fenris called. 
The man jumped, and turned toward him.  The apostate blinked, and the longing
was gone from his eyes.  He yawned.  “Nice to see you,” he said.  “Been a
while.”
Fenris shrugged.  “I’ve been busy.”  He paused.  “I was just talking to
Merrill—about the Ritual.”  He ran by his ideas with Hawke, about needing to
sever his link to the Fade.
“For someone who isn’t a mage, you can come up with some really interesting
theories,” Hawke commented.
Fenris looked away, uneasy.  “I wasn’t the one who had that idea.”
            Hawke came to the next natural conclusion, with some surprise;
Merrill was good at deconstructing how a spell worked, but she had few ideas on
how to fix Fenris’ problem.  “Oh, it was Merrill?”
            “No.  I did talk about it with her though—she feels like she could
perform the Ritual to get into the Fade, but we’d have to kill someone.  I was
thinking… perhaps a slaver or a condemned criminal, but I still don’t like it.”
Hawke sighed, and nodded.  “We’ll think of some other way.”
“I don’t even know if that will work, or just make it worse.”  They started to
walk up the steps to Hightown.  “My link to the Fade is like an anchor—what
happens if I lose it?”
            Hawke glanced at him.  Fenris was worried that if he phased after
the link was severed, he would not be able to come back.  “Maybe nothing.”
This was why Danarius had wanted to experiment.  He cringed at the idea.  He
couldn’t…  He couldn’t do the same things that bastard had done.  “I need to
know.”
“At what cost?”
Fenris shook his head, unable to answer.  There had to be some way.  It had to
be possible.  “I don’t know.”  He paused.  “You remember the ‘blood link’ in
the Ritual?  I think I know who it was.  I think they are part of my link to
the Fade, so if I were to kill that person, perhaps that would be all I
needed.”
Hawke was quiet for a long time.  “Would it be worth it?”
He thought about an eight-year old child with messy hair, blood dripping down
his arm and stumbling over bleeding bodies.  “No.”  He looked away.  “But it
might be my only option.”
The apostate considered.  Fenris wasn’t talking about vengeance upon someone
who had done him wrong; he was talking about outright murder.  “I’m not going
to judge you; I’m still with Anders after all he’s done—but are you sure you
want to consider that?”
The elf shook his head.  “No.”  He sighed.  “I’m just… desperate.”
Hawke was visibly relieved.  “How did you come up with all of this?”
Fenris glanced at him sidelong.  “When I induce a deep sleep, I can…”  He
hesitated.  “The lyrium binds me to the Fade, and… to Danarius.”
Hawke froze, and Fenris stopped, just ahead of him, looking back at him.  The
mage was shocked, and appalled.  He knew some of what the magister had done to
him.  He stepped toward him, protectively.  Fenris was dimly amused at that. 
“We have to get you away from him.”  Fenris looked up at his face, saw the
alarm in his eyes, the genuine worry.
The elf shook his head a little.  “He has absolutely no interest in me, and he
is just a lost soul now.  He only seems to want me to go away when I see him.” 
Lately, at least.  Maybe it had been an interesting quirk to him in the first
dream, but by the second, Danarius had lost interest in living in a dream world
and seemed to just want to pass on to whatever was next.  The magister was in
limbo.  Mages, he had read, were often trapped in the Fade in a way that other
people were not after they died, but Danarius seemed particularly trapped,
chained to someone still living.  Fenris felt like whatever “inconvenience” it
caused him, he deserved it and more.
Hawke did not back down, or look any less worried.  “He’s just tricking you.”
“I always consider that when I deal with him,” he agreed.  “But he doesn’t seem
to want our souls to be connected; it binds him—somehow.  I’m not certain as to
how it is affecting him; I never asked.”  Perhaps he should have; maybe it
mattered.  Trouble was, he didn’t particularly care.
Hawke searched Fenris’ sage eyes for even a hint that this was all a terrible
joke.  It wasn’t.  “Fenris, that man hurt you.  The things he did to you…  How
can you even consider speaking to him?”
Fenris looked back at Hawke, his expression sad.  “No one else knows anything
about the Ritual, and I’m desperate.”  He looked away, thinking about the
Templar he had met whose memory was fading like mist in the morning sun.  Was
that what would happen to Fenris?  How could he explain to Hawke how terrifying
that was?  The Templar could barely remember anything at all, even his own name
came and went.
Was this how it had been for Varania?  She had turned to Danarius because she,
too, was desperate?
Hawke looked torn.  “Be careful, please.”  He hesitated.  “I care about you,
and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Fenris almost rolled his eyes.  “I’m just dreaming, Hawke.”
The other was unconvinced, but he had to relinquish his point; Fenris was a
grown man and could make his own decisions, no matter how poor he thought they
were.
 
Hawke kind of liked his mansion so full of people—Bodahn and Sandal, Orana,
Anders, and Merrill.  All they needed now was a Qunari.  It was nice to see
humans, dwarves, and elves living in one place, under the same roof.  He could
tell that Merrill liked it too.  It was an ideal of unity and equality.  Maybe
it was too idealistic, but it was a nice idea.
On Merrill’s last night in Kirkwall, Orana cooked up a large meal, and Hawke
invited Aveline, Donnic, and Fenris over.  He missed Varric and Isabela, and
even Sebastian, but it was still nice to do.
Fenris and Merrill were getting along a lot better than they ever had before. 
He supposed that, since Merrill had given up blood magic, and started helping
him, he had decided to be more civil.  They weren’t friends exactly—years of
animosity had seen to that—but it was nice to see that they could carry on a
conversation without it ending in hard feelings.
Someone brought up Sebastian, and some concern over Starkhaven coming to attack
Kirkwall.  There hadn’t been any news as of the moment, but that didn’t mean
much.
“What will you do if Sebastian really does raise an army to kill you and
Anders?” Fenris asked Hawke.
The mage glanced over at Anders, and shrugged noncommittally.  “Run?  I don’t
know.”  He looked back at Fenris.  “You’ll be all the way on the other side of
Thedas though.  Would you drop whatever you are doing and hasten to my rescue?”
“I hardly think of you as a damsel in distress, princess.”
Hawke frowned.  “So you’d leave me to the mercy of a very vengeful Sebastian?”
“I’d attend your funeral.”
“Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.”
He smirked.  “I just don’t think I’d, realistically, make it in time to cleave
through Sebastian’s army.  I can promise to avenge you, but that’s as far as
that goes.”
“Thanks,” Hawke said flatly.  “Good to know I can rely on you.”
“Well, I still think of Sebastian as being a friend and I refuse to kill him—at
least until he hurts you.  I also disapprove of what you did that day--I just
don’t feel as strongly as he does.”  And I believe in you.  I don’t believe in
the Maker, but I do believe in you, Hawke.
Hawke groaned.  “The second I hear about Sebastian moving south, I think Anders
and I are leaving.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
Anders suddenly tuned into the conversation.  “Leaving to where, love?”
            “Satina,” he said with some sarcasm.  “That’s the only place I can
think of that Sebastian wouldn’t hunt me down to—I cringe sometimes when I
think about how we were friends, and now he wants to skin my hide and use it as
a flag.”
Merrill blinked in alarm.  “What?  Humans do things like that?”
Anders winked broadly at her.  “That’s what all our flags are made out of.”
            The elven mage stared at him, utterly appalled.
“Don’t tease her, Anders,” Aveline reprimanded him.
Donnic chuckled.  “Don’t worry, Merrill; it’s only the mentally disturbed
humans that do things like that.  We usually knight them and grant them
lordships.”  Aveline elbowed her husband.
Hawke frowned, leaning back in the chair.  “You know, I’m not sure anything
would have been much different if I had sided with the Templars.  I mean,
Orseno became an abomination anyway, and Meredith was already crazy, so it
isn’t wholly unbelievable that she wouldn’t have tried to kill everyone no
matter what we did.”
Anders looked down at the table.  “Do you think…”  He frowned a little, and
flinched.  “Meredith was completely mad.  Do you suppose, if I hadn’t blown up
the Chantry, that she still would have behaved like that?”
“Eventually—I don’t think that red lyrium helped the matter.  It probably just
would have taken her a bit longer to tip over the edge.  That woman was
insane,” Hawke assured him.  Anders was quiet.
Fenris spotted Orana.  She was kneeling down to Sandal’s height, talking to him
in a gentle voice.  Sandal nodded understandingly, and trotted off to bed.  She
rose, and looked back at Fenris when she noticed him approaching her.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said slowly.  She nodded for him to go on. 
“Did Hadriana have a child?”
Orana nodded.  “Oh, yes.  Little Lysander, named from his father,” she said. 
Lysander.  Was that a coincidence?
“Hadriana married?”
The elf shook her head.  “No.  I don’t really know the whole story, but I know
that she became pregnant, and the boy’s father had left the Imperium for
something, and died before he returned, but she had intended to marry him.”
Fenris twitched, just a little.  It wasn’t a coincidence.  He had tortured and
killed the father.  No fucking wonder she came after me.  No small wonder she
wanted to enslave me, or kill me.  “I… see.  And did Hadriana bring her child
with her to the Free Marches?”
Orana nodded.  “That was the whole reason she brought me; to watch Lysander.”
He paled.  “Did you ever see him in the caves?”
Orana considered, thinking hard.  It had been a tumultuous day, and years ago. 
The poor girl had been terrified.  “Yes—once.  Right after I saw you.  He was
running after you, and I caught him.  But…”  She flinched.  “I heard a
scream—this… terrible sound…  Like a demon…”
He couldn’t remember anything like that, but he had been in the midst of
battle, and he had been in so many, much of them just sort of bled together in
his memory.  “And?” he pressed.
She hesitated, clearly uncomfortable.  “He was in my arms, and I was
frightened, and I let go of him and ran—I thought he would run too…”  She
glanced away.  “But he didn’t.”  She looked back at Fenris.  “But I thought… 
the mercenary would have taken care of him.”
“Mercenary?”  After he had killed Hadriana, he had just left.  He needed to ask
Hawke if they had found anyone else. 
She shrugged helplessly.  “I don’t remember his name, or really what he looked
like.”
He nodded, dismissing it.  Just another slaver they had missed, he assumed. 
“Thank you, Orana.”
He turned back to the group.  They were talking about nugs—if they really made
good pets or not.  Anders commented that he had eaten one before, as a roast,
before another Grey Warden named Oghren challenged it to a drunken wrestling
match, and no one wanted it after that.
Fenris looked between Hawke and Aveline.  They had both been there that day. 
“Excuse me, princess?” he said, his tone light-hearted and teasing.
“Yes, peasant?” Hawke said agreeably.
“The day I killed Hadriana, you never did find anyone else in the caves, did
you?”
Hawke shook his head, but Aveline stilled, thinking.  “No, I thought we pretty
much cleared them out.”
Aveline was shaking her head though, and he looked to her.  “Varric thought he
saw another slaver running away,” she said slowly, trying to remember the
details.
Hawke’s eyebrows rose as he remembered.  “Yes.”  He flinched.  “I said I didn’t
care or something, if I recall.  And we just left.  Do you know if he got a
look at him?”
Aveline shook her head.  “I didn’t see anything.”
Fenris frowned in thought.  “Thank you.  So, what does nug taste like, Anders?”
“Ever eaten a rat?”
Chapter End Notes
     Thanks, everyone! I fixed a small problem from earlier (ninja edit!),
     and now I move onward with the plot!
     And, yes, the "excuse me, princess" was intentional and I salute
     Link's catchphrase.
***** Farewell *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris contemplates the meaning of his life, then goes to spend
     another night with his favourite whore.
            Fenris received word that Anastas had arrived in Kirkwall.  He met
with him, noted his receding hairline and extra wrinkles.  He showed him a few
of his paintings before they were sold, and told him they were leaving a week
from now, the caravan headed back northwest.
            It meant he had to give up, at least for the moment, on freeing
himself of the lyrium.  It would always be at the back of his mind, but he
wasn’t making any headway on it in Kirkwall.
            Fenris told Aveline first, mostly because he saw her walking on his
way from the inn Anastas was staying at.  He told her that he was leaving, but
she was unsurprised; she had heard about it from Donnic.  “So I can finally
stop making up excuses as to why your mansion can’t be sold and renovated?”
            He laughed.  “Yes.”
            “I’ll miss you,” she told him.
            “I’ll miss you too, Aveline,” he told her.  “You’ve been a good
friend.”
            They walked, and talked for a while, mostly about old times.  They
parted ways at Hawke’s mansion, and he found Hawke, as usual, not at home. 
That was fine; he talked with Bodahn for a while, and sat with Orana over tea.
            It had been a few hours, and Hawke still had not returned, so he
left.  He walked around Hightown, as out of place as only an elf could be in a
wealthy district.  He ignored the disgusted looks people gave him, the snide
remarks muttered under their breath, about his eyes, about his ears.  Some
stared because of the lyrium, that awful lyrium that made it so painfully
obvious that he must have come from the Imperium, making it so much more
obvious that he had been a slave.
            And people would whisper about that too.  He ignored it, as he ever
had, as he would always have to.  Acting upon those whispers only led to
shouting, maybe violence and arrests.  And if he were not friends with Aveline,
he knew that he would be in more trouble than a human would be, simply because
of his bloodlines.
            He turned and walked down the steps to Lowtown, moving out of the
way of humans and dwarves to avoid conflict, passing only very few elves—each
of them servants, he didn’t doubt.  He watched the steps as he walked, stepping
around pigeon droppings, listened to the cawing of a crow.
            He wondered what his mother had been like.  Aveline had told him
that, when he was on drugs, he had spoken of her.  He had been humming
something, and said he had learned it from his mother.
            Had she liked music?
            He wondered about Varania.  Aveline had said that he had known more
about her when he was under the influence; that he had said that Varania was
intelligent and logical.
            What was his father like?
            He didn’t know.  He had probably died a long time ago, and…  A
loud, hacking sound made him jump, and his eyes widened.
            His sad smile even touched his leaf-green eyes.  It had been
unbearable to see his father beaten and chained, the way he had limped, and
bent over the block.  The way the axe had bit into his neck, and did not cleave
it in two.  It required a second strike, thunking solidly into the wood.  The
head fell with a dull thud into the waiting basket.
            Fenris looked up, staring at the butcher, busily cutting into a pig
carcass.  He shivered, walking quickly away.
            My father was beheaded.  And I watched, helpless.  I couldn’t do
anything to stop it.
            That was why Jairus’ beheading had so bothered him.  He felt
suddenly ill.
            Why?  Why had his father been executed?  What had happened? 
Beheadings were for betrayers, mutineers, prisoners.  Prisoners.
            He had been beaten, bruised, and possibly tortured.  Danarius said
that his grandfather had been a warrior.  What had his father been?  What had
his father done to warrant execution at the hands of the Imperials?  He
suddenly felt angry.  His father had been a rebel fighter, and when he was
executed, his wife and child were sold into slavery?  Or was it something else?
            He guessed it didn’t matter.  He wanted to know, but it didn’t
matter.  He was dead.  His mother was dead.  Varania was gone, and he hoped
gone for good, after what she had done.
            He thought about Shaislyn, his nephew that probably hated him.  If
the boy were still alive—no, Danarius was sure that he was.  He wondered what
it would be like to have a real family:  Parents, siblings, his nephew.
            Against his better judgment, he watched parents minding their
children.  He watched older children caring for the younger, or adult children
caring for their elderly parents.  He imagined a different life, one where he
had never been a slave.  A life where his name had always been “Leto” and he
had never seen lyrium.
            He imagined a life where the word ‘master’ had never graced his
lips.  A life in an alienage perhaps, maybe like the one he had seen in
Seheron.  A life where he had grown up with both of his parents, and a little
sister.  He wondered where he would be right now.
            He looked down the street, at the gates of the alienage.  His heart
ached.
            At his age?  He’d be married, he imagined.  A child, children if
they were lucky.  He wondered what it would be like to receive the
unconditional love of a child.  What it would be like to hold that child, a
part of himself.  Watch a child he loved and cared for grow into an adult he
could be proud to have raised.
            It hurt, when he remembered that it was only too likely that he was
sterile.  The lyrium had seen to that.  It gave him constant pain.  It took
away everything he had ever been.  And it took every possibility of a family
from him too.
            He walked down the steps to the alienage, and couldn’t say why.  He
watched the elves there, as they went about their lives.  It was very empty,
compared to how it had been before Wintersend, but not every elf had been
willing to leave.  Two children were playing, and their mother was yelling at
them not to run through the mud, but it was far, far too late.  He looked up at
the venadahl, at its high branches.  He wondered what the trees meant to
elves.  He should have asked Merrill.
            He knew that the venadahl was planted to remind them of what they
used to be, but he wondered how much of that was true.  He didn’t know.  He
knew why Merrill thought the past was important, because he so often wondered
about his own past.  He wanted to know his own history, and felt like he had a
right to know it.
            “Haven’t seen you before,” he heard a voice say.  He turned toward
it.  “Have you just moved here?”
            He looked back at the woman.  He guessed her age around her early
30s, a newborn infant in her arms.  “Ah, traveling,” he said, the lie coming
easily to his lips.  “We just stopped here—I wanted to see… the venadahl.”
            “Do you not have one where you are from?”
            He thought of the burned alienage in Seheron, and shook his head. 
“No.”
            Her eyes conveyed her sorrow.  “I’m sorry,” she said earnestly. 
“I’m from Ostwick—years ago.  We didn’t have one either.  My name’s Caisclyn,
by the way.  Where are you from?”
            “Seheron, originally.  But I’ve travelled for so long, it’s hard to
say any more.”
            She was about to ask what he did, he guessed, but one of the muddy
children dashed past her, shrieking in mock terror.  The other child hurled a
ball of mud at the other, hitting him squarely in the back.  The other turned,
and stuck his tongue at the other.  “Boys!” she shrieked.  The pair laughed,
chasing each other around her.  She grabbed onto one of them, and the other
yelped and ran away.  She stared after him, but with the infant in her arms,
she couldn’t go after him.
            Fenris hesitated.  “I can hold the baby,” he offered.
            She smiled warmly, and, despite that he was a stranger, she handed
the child to him.  “Careful,” she said.  “I’ll be back in just a moment.”  With
a firm hand on one of the boys, she hunted down the second.  He watched her for
a moment, and then looked back at the infant in his arms.
            It was so small and helpless-looking.  So trusting, because it had
to be.  Its eyes were open, peering out at the world curiously.  He wondered
what the babe would grow up to be like.  Its personality had so many endless
possibilities, its future so uncertain and divided.
            He looked up when he heard the boys screaming again.  They seemed
to be causing a bit of a scene, and the mother, Caisclyn, looked exasperated.
            He frowned to himself, and walked up to the little family.  “Boys,”
he snapped.  They looked at him, but only went back to throwing mud at each
other and racing around their mother’s skirts.  He smirked to himself, the
lyrium coming to life over him.  The boys stilled, and the lyrium dimmed. 
Caisclyn seemed alarmed.  Apparently, he could still look intimidating with an
infant in his arms.
            “Mind your mother,” he told them.  They stopped, mud slipping from
grimy fingers, their eyes wide.
            Caisclyn finally laughed, the tension from the display easing.  “I
never got your name,” she said.  “I’m sorry about that.”
            He realized he had missed the social grace to have supplied it for
her.  He supposed that he would never really be very good at things like that. 
“Fenris.”
            She had a curious look on her face, as if she were expecting him to
say something entirely different.  “’Fenris’?” she echoed, a ghost of a smile
on her lips.  “Really?”
            He shrugged a shoulder.  “I didn’t choose it,” he said in defense. 
And she laughed again.
            He sat with Caisclyn as she cleaned off the boy’s faces and hands,
and made them change their clothes.  Now, they were playing—quietly—on the
floor nearby.  She smiled gratefully at him.  “Thank you so much,” she said
again.
            “It’s not a problem.”
            She shrugged.  “It’s just that—their father works all the time—and
they know I don’t have the energy to chase after them.”  She sighed, making a
face.  “The twins are good boys, really, but, well, they’re boys.”
            He looked back down at the infant, now sleeping in his arms
contentedly.  “They’ll grow out of it,” he assured her.
            She smiled.  “I sure hope so.”  She cocked her head to the side. 
“Do you have children?”
            He blinked in surprise, looking back at her.  “I—no.  I’m not
even…”
            She paused.  “Oh.  I’m sorry.  I guess you move around too much to
settle down.”  She looked back at him, holding her newborn baby.  “You’d make a
good father.  I can tell.”
            He looked back at her, unable to tell her that he wouldn’t.  All he
knew was death, torture, slavery, abuse.  He had tasted love, once, but it had
been so fleeting.  “If you say so,” he said, his gaze falling back to the
infant.  Its life was just beginning.  It was so precious, and so new.
            Caisclyn said that he could come back any time he wished.  He did. 
He came back the next day, and played with the twins, and held the baby while
Caisclyn cooked.  He met their father briefly, marveled at their family.
            Caisclyn’s husband walked him out of the alienage on the third
night.  “Why do you keep coming here?” he asked him.
            Fenris struggled for a moment.  “I’ve always wanted a family,” he
said.  “I don’t want to take yours, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  He
hesitated.  “I just… like to see what it’s like.”
            The man searched his face.  “Your parents sell you when you were a
kid?” he asked him, his voice not unfriendly.
            Fenris lied, “Yes—but I don’t remember it.”  It was so much less
complicated than telling the truth.  “And I can’t have children.”  He wasn’t
sure if that were true, but the odds were somewhat unfortunate.
            The man’s face softened.  Whatever the man chose to make of that,
Fenris didn’t much care.  But he felt like the lyrium made it that much more
apparent.  “I see.  Come back any time, Fenris.  Caisclyn and the kids like
you.”
            He did, often, whenever he could.  He went to see Wensley, and lost
himself for a time in his arms and his bed.
            He spent some time with Donnic and Aveline.  She made supper, and
they played cards—Aveline got mad when she lost but he was willing to endure. 
It had taken him completely unawares, but she hugged him goodbye, and asked him
to write if he would.
            “I write badly,” he warned her.
            “I’d still like to hear from you,” she said.  Her eyebrows rose
with worry.  “I worry about you going back to the Imperium.”
            “I trust Anastas.  My bounty is gone.”  He snorted a laugh. 
“Legally, I’m his slave right now—the first thing we’re doing is going to go
appear before a court and make everything official.”  He smiled a little. 
“I’ll let you know when I’m legally free.”
            She seemed uneasy.  “Are you sure he’ll do it?”
            He nodded, unworried.  “Most of his current servants and employees
are freed slaves—his freed slaves.  Anastas was a slave himself.  I know that
doesn’t mean very much, but I do trust him.  It helps that he gave me the
paperwork for it.”
            She still seemed uncertain.  “If you’re sure.”
            “I am.”  Donnic and he clasped hands briefly, and Fenris went home
for the night.       Hawke and Anders were out the next morning, but Fenris
took tea with Orana and they chatted for a while before Hawke came back.  He
stayed for supper, at Hawke’s behest.  Anders was at the clinic until well
after, finding he and Hawke talking in the library.  Talking, and nothing more.
            Though Fenris often thought about that “something more.”
            He let the matter go, with little choice, and contented himself
with Hawke’s happiness.  Anders loved him, and that was enough.
            When he went to leave, he was surprised when the door opened again,
and it was Anders who came outside.
The blonde fidgeted, and sighed, flustered.  “I wanted to say that I’m sorry I
hit you that night,” he said.  He took a deep breath.  “I’m sorry I hit you.
 Three times.  In the face.”
Fenris looked at him.  “Good.  And?”
Anders rolled his eyes.  “And I’m sorry that I swore at you.  And berated you.
 And I wanted to apologize for saying something else you never heard:  I once
said you acted more like a dog than a man.”  Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “It was
true at the time.”  The elf’s lips drew into a thin, unforgiving line.  “But,
lately, you’ve matured a lot--it took you a very long time--but you have.  And…
 I’m happy to say that it was wrong of me to ever doubt you were capable of
behaving like a mature adult.”
He stared at him, blinking slowly.  “I can’t tell if you just insulted me
again, or if you really apologized.”
“Both,” Anders clarified.  “I still don’t like you.”
Fenris nodded.  “Good; I don’t like you either.”  He paused.  “But I will
accept your apology, if you accept mine:  I am genuinely sorry about my
behaviour with Hawke, and I am sorry for my petty jealousy at the time, and for
hurting him.  And for passive-aggressively trying to ruin your relationship.”
 He paused again, flinching.  “And I am sorry that I was so selfish that I
couldn’t see that Hawke was happy--and I should have just been happy that he
was happy.”
Anders actually smiled.  “I appreciate that, and thank you.”
“You ever going to pay me back the money you owe me?” Fenris inquired, cocking
his head to the side, lips curving into a small smirk.
Anders laughed that time.  “I can certainly try, but I think I’ll be paying you
back long after I’m dead,” he complained.
“You’re terrible at cards,” Fenris agreed.
Anders nodded in agreement, then paused.  He hesitated, and seemed oddly
reluctant.  “Fenris.  One more thing…?”
The elf blinked.  “Yes?”
The mage looked down.  “You love Hawke?”
Fenris frowned, wondering where this was going.  “Yes.”
He seemed, for once, relieved to hear that.  “Years from now, I may write a
letter to you.”  He stopped again, and glanced back at the door.  He stepped
closer to Fenris, away from it.  “Do you remember when we went chasing the
Carta into the Deep Roads?”
            “Yes, of course.”
            Anders nodded again, and stared up at the sky for a moment.  “You
remember the Calling?”
            One dark eyebrow arched.  “Of course.”  It was a terrible price to
pay.  It was what almost made Anders noble, in a twisted sort of light.  He
knew he didn’t have long to live, knew how he would die, and what would happen
to him if he didn’t fall upon a blade before then.  It must be a terrible
burden to know, without doubt, your own death.  At the same time, he had
abandoned his duties as a Grey Warden and ran away from it like a coward.  Like
Fenris had tried to run away from himself in Seheron?  He could no more run
from his past and his deeds than Anders could, and they had both tried.
            Anders looked pained for a moment.  “I know it’s a lot to ask, and
it’s a long way off, but if you’re still around, I might ask you to stay with
Hawke after I go.”  He shook his head a little.  “I don’t want him coming after
me--that’s all.”
            Fenris nodded, sage eyes softening with the first shreds of
sympathy he had ever felt for the mage.  “I understand, Anders.”
            He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Sorry, but I know
you care about him, and I just really don’t want him to die down there with
me.”  He looked away.  “And you’re somewhat level-headed and I know…”
            “You can write to me.”
            Anders looked back at the elf, relief evident in his countenance.
 “Thank you.”
            “I’d do anything for Hawke,” he told him.
            “Which is why I know I can rely on you.”
There was an awkward pause for a moment.  “You better look after him in the
meantime.”
“I don’t think he needs me to, but I’ll always be there for him if he does.”
Fenris nodded, and turned away.  It was good enough for him.
 
            His last night in Kirkwall, Wensley had told him to drop by.  He
had said it wouldn’t be cheap, but reasonable, and he promised, in a breathy
whisper, to make it well worth his while.
            Fenris hadn’t known what to expect, as Wensley had blatantly
refused to even give hint of it, but he had not been expecting this. 
Wensley was wearing a heavy wool robe, when he came to meet him, with black
boots under it, and that was all he could see.  Wensley took him by the hand,
his eyes already dark with desire, and led him up the stairs.  They came to his
room, and Wensley opened the door slowly, leading the elf inside.
            Fenris blinked at the surroundings.
            Some might have said the fat beeswax candles drooling tallow wax
over the desk, the dresser, lining shelves and bedstands, the windowsill with
the drapes pulled back to let in the moons’ light, their small fires casting
the room in a pleasant, low glow was romantic.  Some might have said the trail
of white hardy cyclamen petals spread over the floor and the bed were cheesy,
others might say words like “touching” or “thoughtful”.  Rose petals would have
been more the norm for this sort of thing, but it was the wrong season for
them.  The cyclamen had the added bonus of being heart-shaped.  The door shut
quietly.
            At Fenris’ long silence, Wensley had to ask, “Is it cheesy?”
            Fenris glanced back at him.  “Yes.  But I like it.”
            Wensley breathed a sigh of relief.  “Good.”  He gave the elf an
intimate look, full of dark promises and forbidden secrets.  The belt of his
robe came undone at a tug from his hand, and the fabric slipped from his
shoulders, catching Fenris’ attention.  He shrugged out of the robe, hanging it
on a peg on the door.  Fenris drank in the sight of him, enjoying the way the
leather harness fit over his shoulders, the way the straps ran over his chest,
and a metal ring encircled his manhood.  The boots climbed to mid-thigh, laced
tight over his legs, drawing his eye to the bare areas of his thighs.  His
forearms were encased in laced leather bracers, showing only the barest glimpse
of his skin between the lacings.  The elf reached toward him, wanting to touch,
to see.  He wanted to slip his fingers between his muscular chest and the
leather, to pull the other man toward him.  He wanted to figure out how he had
slipped on that harness.
            Wensley stepped toward him, and let Fenris explore, let him touch
and caress and enjoy the way his skin felt.  Wensley moved his hands down the
elf’s back, gripping his buttocks tightly in one hand, pushing him against him.
            “Take that shit off,” Wensley said, his tone gentle but
commanding.  Fenris pulled away.  He wanted to peel off his clothing.  He
wanted to be naked and press his bare skin against the other man’s, feel the
leather against his skin.  His armor had to come off first, and Wensley helped
him, setting it out of the way.  Wensley folded Fenris’ tunic systematically,
setting it in an empty drawer with the rest of things, and threw Fenris, half-
naked onto the bed.  The man’s fingers dug into the top of pants, peeling them
downward slowly, nibbling his suddenly exposed hip, licking a newly exposed
thigh.  He eventually removed the pants, and moved away from the bed, back to
the drawer, folded the pants and placed them in there.
            Fenris watched him move, sitting up, leaning forward.  He liked
watching him walk, cool and confident in the bedroom.  He looked at the way the
straps fit across his back, the buckles glinting in the dim light.  He liked
the dominant and submissive play because it was only that—play.  The moment
Fenris told him to stop, he would.  The moment Fenris felt uncomfortable,
Wensley would stop, get him something to drink, hold him if he wanted it, and
do everything he could to make him comfortable again.  It was safe.
            Wensley went to the bed, pushing Fenris gently back down.  He
kissed him once, briefly, nuzzled against his neck.  He flicked his tongue over
a nipple, and licked his way down to the edge of the elf’s underclothes. 
Wensley bit along the edge of them teasingly.  He moved his mouth against
Fenris’ stirring manhood, breathing warm air over it, his lips against it
teasingly.  His teeth tugged against the fabric.
            He kissed his stomach, and clenched the top of the fabric between
his front teeth.  Fenris was as accommodating as reason would allow, moving to
permit the movement, enjoying the way Wensley would kneel submissively, the way
he would stare up at him with every inch pulled down.
            When Wensley had tugged them down to his knees, he pulled them off
with his hands.  He tossed the small garment on the floor, but moved out of the
bed all the same.  Intrigued, Fenris sat up slightly, watching him, eager for
whatever it was Wensley had planned.
            Wensley pulled a polished dark box from under the bed, and Fenris’
breathing quickened; he knew what this was.  It opened on silent hinges, but he
couldn’t see what the man had removed from it when he shut the box and slid it
back in its place.
            Wensley had something in his hand.  “Come here, darling, and stand
up.”  Wensley had only ever affectionately called Fenris “pet” once—and never
again when Fenris told him not to.  He hadn’t even asked why—he guessed that
was why he liked him.  Wensley, henceforth, had stuck to things like “darling”.
            Fenris slid from the bed, and Wensley moved behind him, his arms
encircling him for a moment.  His lips found his neck, pulling his back hard
against his chest.  Fenris grunted with the force of it.  Wensley’s erection
pushed against the small of his back.  Fenris moaned as the man’s hand moved
down his chest, running over the sensitive spot on his hip and down his leg. 
He rose on the tips of his toes, moving Wensley closer to where he wanted him. 
Wensley stepped back just as quickly.
            “I’m going to punish you for that—trying to distract me.”  He
tsked.
            Fenris glanced over his shoulder at him, his gaze roaming down
between his legs.  “Then don’t be so eager.”
            “Mmm—talking back.  I think I’m going to gag you.”  Wensley quirked
a smile, the dark lust in his eyes turning it into something almost malicious. 
“You look cute with the gag.”  But he didn’t get it yet.  He unwound the coil
of silk rope slowly, watching Fenris as he did as if he were mapping it all out
in his head.  As he tied and moved the rope around him, he asked him if it were
comfortable, if it chafed.  He would get distracted from time to time, kissing
Fenris’ skin, licking along his ribs.
            The rope was safe too—more than safe.  If Fenris wanted to, he
could phase, and the rope would fall around him in a useless puddle at his
feet.
            Wensley finished his work by tying off the last of the rope in a
braid between the elf’s shoulders, the end of it woven into another cross of
the rope.  Fenris sometimes wondered if the whore planned everything, or just
improvised, or if it were a little of both.  He was curious only in that he had
left his arms unbound, only weaving the rope into an intricate harness.  He
must have looked confused about it, because Wensley grabbed a hold of the rope,
pulling him forward.  His other arms encircled him, his fingers grasping the
rope behind him.  “It makes it easy to move you around.”  He crushed his lips
in his, the kiss deepening with their matched lust.
            The whore’s hand held fast to him, but couldn’t help but roam,
first only touching the exposed skin through the tangle of rope, edging
downwards until he fit the other man’s buttocks in his hands.  He gripped him
firmly, and Fenris tilted as his hand strayed further.  He rubbed against him,
teasing him, only rubbing against him and never going deeper, circling him,
starting to push against him, then withdrawing.
            “And one more part,” Wensley added, moving back behind him.  He
picked up a smaller piece of rope, weaving an elaborate braid of shackles,
binding his wrists behind his back.  Fenris was only amused at this; they both
knew he could get out of it.  Maybe it was why he liked it.  He could pretend,
for a while, that he couldn’t, having to trust someone else entirely.  Wensley
had time and again earned that trust too.
            Wensley kissed him again, very briefly, before he kissed his
clavicle, the center of his chest, the bottom of his rib cage.  He kissed the
area just above his penis, and knelt in front of him, running his tongue along
him.  He blew cool air through his lips over the wetness, gentle for all the
leather and rope.  He put his lips against the tip of him, and his mouth moved
agonizingly slowly down to the base of him, and back out again.  Fenris was
annoyed when he immediately stopped, and moved away, in search of other toys.
            He glanced back over his shoulder, watching him select something
from the box.  “Look straight forward, darling.”  Fenris moved his head back
forward.  He heard Wensley rise, and the man moved his arms slowly over his
shoulders, gliding his arms over him, joining his hands once in front of him. 
Gentle, he moved the hard leather against Fenris’ lips.  Through much trial and
error, Fenris had decided that the ball gag was a work of demon creation and
the silk scarves usually came loose and just fell around his neck, but the
“bit” was much more comfortable.  The bit also had the added bonus of still
allowing him, to a degree, to speak.
            Wensley’s hands ran down his back, and he knelt, kissing along his
spine, fingers trailing down his thighs to his ankles.  He moved his hands back
up his legs, as if trying to memorize every bend of his muscles.  They curved
over his hips, and he rose.  He kissed his neck again, lifting him off of his
feet.  He cradled him as if he were a small child—a strange feeling.  Fenris
stared up at him, leaning his head against his arm.  Even if he truly were
helpless, he felt safe.
            One thing he would lament about leaving Kirkwall were these times. 
How would he ever find another whore with Wensley’s talents?  He supposed he
would just have to make sure that he came with Anastas on his trips to
Kirkwall, and reserve the man for at least an entire night on those trips.
            Wensley did not move him onto the bed, which surprised him only a
little.  He moved toward one of the walls, setting Fenris down gently on his
feet.  The whore touched him again, caressing his face, a hand against his
neck.  His lips moved to his neck, to his collarbone, leaving a trail of
sucking kisses downward.  His tongue ran along his member, teasing again before
quickly moving on.  He kissed his way down his thighs.  His lips moved to the
back of Fenris’ knees, nibbling with his teeth, sucking hard.  Fenris moaned,
feeling his legs going weak.  Wensley jumped, quickly away, grabbing onto him
as his leg buckled.  He held him close for a moment.
            “Sorry—I should have remembered,” he whispered against his ear.  He
kissed both his shoulders, and let go of him.  He pulled a heavy tapestry
aside, hooking behind the object it had concealed a moment ago.  He glanced
over at Fenris.  “I made it thinking about you, darling.”
            Fenris studied it.  It was elegant in simplicity.  Polished, smooth
wood—he was guessing maple—the construction only a little taller than Wensley
was.  Parallel bars ran across it.  He wondered, for a moment, what it could be
used for.
            Wensley gently pushed him against it, leaning his back against it. 
He leaned over him, the bars pressing into the elf’s back.  He moved behind him
and Fenris heard a clicking noise.  Experimentally, he moved his wrists,
finding the rope now connected to a chain—hence some of the point of the
contraption, he guessed.
            Most of Wensley’s other clients were not quite as into the play, or
this kind of thing specifically, as Fenris was, so Wensley had since been
collecting toys and studying to please his client.  He wondered if it were the
first time he had used the rack.  He hoped so, not because it bothered him
otherwise, but more that he would be the first to use it.
            His thumb rubbed against the metal chain, finding the place it
connected to it.  It had the same closure as a leash, which meant he could
easily unclip it if he wanted to.  He left it alone.  Wensley was always doing
little things like that—little things to remind him of who was really in charge
while Wensley dominated him.
            He felt hard leather rub against his genitals, and his eyes flicked
downwards, watching the riding crop rub against his testicles, tickle the area
just under his member.  The crop brushed gently upward until it rested under
his chin, pushing his head back up.  Wensley had a look in his eyes he
recognized as excitement, and he felt a chill of his own eagerness rush down
his spine.  Now, now!
            But Wensley was just as likely to tease as to deliver, just as
likely to caress as to use the crop.  The leather brushed against his cheek,
and lifted away, then snapped against his stomach.  He gasped, and it cracked
down again, this time on his thigh.  He moaned past the gag, shuddering again
when it rested, lightly, against his hip.  It twitched, a gently tap.
            “Stand up straight; you’re slouching.  Good.”  The crop slapped
across his chest, and that time he jumped, head back, breathing hard.  Wensley
smiled, self-satisfied and liking what he saw.  It crossed over his chest
again, directly parallel with the other mark.  It fell against his hip next,
and Fenris shuddered, feeling his knees getting weak again.  Wensley stopped,
watching him.  “No.  Don’t you dare.”
            The elf took a deep breath, the human’s lips against his shoulder,
down to the marks on his chest, kissing every red mark, rolling his tongue
along the longer ones, until Fenris stood up straight again.  The whore moved
away, and the crop crashed against his other thigh, his stomach, once more over
his chest before it fell to the floor.  Wensley knelt in front of him, at his
feet.  His lips brushed his inner thigh.  Fenris felt his long lashes flutter
against his skin.  The man’s hands roved up his thighs, along his hips, curving
behind him, gripping firmly as he rose, pushing himself hard against him.
            Fenris wanted him.  He wanted his hands free to touch him, to wrap
his arms around his neck.  He wanted to pull his legs around his waist and let
the whore fuck him against the rack.  But he was tied to it, and he couldn’t. 
He rubbed his leg against Wensley’s, trying to convey his desire for him, but
he didn’t think he needed to.
            The man kissed his neck, and moved to the other side to kiss along
his cheekbone.  He cupped his face in both hands, kissing both his eyelids
tenderly before he moved away.  He lifted one of the long, white tapered
candles, dripping wax down the side of it.  Fenris felt himself panting,
knowing what was coming and readily anticipating it.
            The hot wax touched his shoulder first, scalding against the lyrium
and his skin alike, a burning hotter than the lyrium and for an instant, taking
his mind off the constant ache in his skin.  As it dripped and dribbled down
his shoulders, running in quickly drying rivulets, he shuddered and moaned. 
When the whore moved to his chest, he gave a loud, desperate cry as it dripped
over his nipple.
            Wensley’s other hand moved between his legs, gently moving his hand
along the length of his erection, rubbing his thumb against the head.  Fenris
watched him, helpless and yet not so, as the wax slowly moved down his chest,
more of it over his stomach.  He moved the candle over his thighs, letting it
drip over his skin, an instant of hot, and then quickly cool.  It made his toes
curl, his fingers clench.  Sounds were wrenched from his throat, and he leaned
heavily against the rack, tension on the chain that bound his wrists to it.
            The wax dripped slowly on the base of his penis, running down over
him and he gave another muffled cry, sweating as it dribbled down him, Wensley
working methodically, pleased with the sounds and expressions Fenris made for
him.  The whore set the candle aside, his hand against him, moving along the
dry wax, tracing the patterns the dribbling wax had made on his skin,
interested to see it seem to curve against the lyrium as if it cradled it—a
thing that, for a moment before it cooled, had a burn to match its own.
            The whore shifted away again, picking up a small bottle.  He opened
it, and the liquid contents smelled like bergamot.  He dribbled a bit of it
into his hand, and moved back to Fenris.  “Spread your legs.”  Fenris shifted,
his breathing slowing as the man’s hand slid between his legs.  He took deep
breath as he moved his finger against him, watching Wensley when the whore
pushed into him.  He liked watching Wensley do this.  He liked the way the
whore was so serious about it, all of his attention devoted to him as if there
was truly nothing else.  He understood it was just his job, but he liked the
attention.
            Wensley’s other hand roved over him, rubbing against his side, his
mouth over the wax-covered nipple.  Fenris’ breathing came in long, deep pulls,
escaping his lips in soft sighs.  Wensley’s movements were long, deep and
precise.  He had large hands, and thick yet surprisingly dexterous fingers. 
The movement changed abruptly, driving a sharp cry from the back of the elf’s
throat, his teeth biting down hard on the leather in his mouth.
            Wensley moved his hand, jerking away quickly.  Just as fast, the
crop slapped across Fenris’ breastbone, making him moan.  Two more quick, light
touches of the crop, barely enough to leave a red mark, and the whore moved his
hand behind him.  There was a cranking sound, and the chain seemed much more
slack.  The crop touched Fenris’ shoulder, guiding him down to kneel in front
of the whore on trembling legs.
            The crop rubbed against his shoulder, down his spine.  It snapped
across his shoulders—once—twice.  A third time made him cry out loudly, and he
heard Wensley make a small gasp of approval.  The sounds he made excited him.
            Wensley stood in front of him, and told him to look down at the
floor.  His eyes fixed to the wood grain, he listened as Wensley stepped, the
boots echoing faintly on the hardwood.  He set the crop down, and he picked up
something else.  The hot wax dripped onto his back, driving a soft moan from
the elf’s throat, and a second noise of approval as it dripped over his
shoulders.  It dribbled along his spine, his sides, getting only a little over
his arms.  The whore stepped over him, straddling his shoulders, a boot on
either side of him.
            The whore leaned over him, letting the hot wax drip over the small
of his back just below where his hands were tied.  The chain clinked as Fenris
tensed, crying out.  The wax burned down his back, scorched its way over his
skin, over the curve of his buttocks.  Wensley seemed to generally approve of
the way Fenris moaned, wanting more of what he did, what he could do, to him.
            The candle was again set aside, and Wensley stepped off of him.
            “Look up at me,” he commanded, his voice barely above a whisper. 
Fenris slowly tilted his head, looking upwards, his gaze lingering on Wensley’s
wet and ready member, and finally pulled away to look at his face.  His
countenance was cool, lofty, and in control, and it made the elf want him
more.  The whore smirked, and said, “You’re a slut.”
            He walked away from him, and Fenris’ eyes tracked him, watching the
way his muscles flexed as he walked, the way his footfalls seemed measured and
calculated, especially as he bent, giving the elf a generous view of his
backside.  Fenris wondered if that wasn’t for his benefit.
            He came back carrying a long, dark walnut cane.  It was polished to
a fine gloss, its handle wrapped in supple leather, the head of a snarling
great cat at the top of it.  “How’s my little bitch doing?” he cooed.  Fenris
watched him, his eyes falling on the cane.  His tongue ran against the leather
bit, his teeth rolling it in his mouth, first one way, then the other.  Wensley
stared at him for a moment, watching the way the leather twisted as Fenris
stared up at him, the desire in his eyes making the casual movement erotic.
            “Oh, I see,” he breathed.  “Up, then.”  Slowly, Fenris rose.  It
was not as easy without using his hands for balance, but more than possible;
the dwarf Mogren had trained him to compensate.  She had told him, once, that
his hands would always be occupied, so he had to learn to rise using only his
legs.  Wensley didn’t know the why of it, but he had always enjoyed the easy
way that Fenris seemed to do it.  “Turn around, darling.”
            Wensley watched him, drinking in the sight of him.  He flipped the
cane in his hand and a smooth motion sent it hard against the elf’s backside. 
Fenris gasped, and Wensley took care to listen to the way he did it.  Satisfied
that he hadn’t hurt him, not truly, he let the cane fall against him again.  He
rested between each strike, more for Fenris than for himself.  He listened to
the way the elf would gasp and pant, watched him sweat, delighting in each moan
and belabored breath.
            He stopped, hooking the cane back in its place against the wall. 
He looked over at his client, the elf’s forehead against one of the bars, still
panting, still very much aroused.  His lips curved into a dim, self-satisfied
smile.  He moved back against him, the leather rubbing against the raw flesh,
making it burn again, his fingernails scraped along the red skin, digging hard
into him.  Fenris gasped, and his lips pushed against the elf’s pointed ear. 
He nibbled along it, biting gently against the tip of it, his tongue running
back down all the way to the elf’s cheek.
            “What do you want next, darling?” he whispered, his breathing
heavy.  His desire was plain, his manhood hard against the elf’s back.  “You’ve
been so good—I’ll let you choose.”  He kissed his cheek, his hand roaming over
the man’s chest.  “You really liked the candle wax.”  Fenris shuddered, and
apparently approved of that idea.  The whore smiled.  “But I haven’t brought
out the paddle tonight either.”  The elf’s green eyes shifted toward him,
making a sound in the back of his throat he took for assent.  “I know you like
the bull whip too, and that’s still in the box—it would be a shame to leave her
all alone, wouldn’t it?”  The man’s sage green eyes gazed out at him, eyes a
little wider, breathing heavy, and he knew the elf liked that idea too.  “Or…
me?”
            When Fenris moaned a little louder, shifting until his fingers
curved around Wensley’s erection, the whore nodded against his shoulder.  “As
you wish.  You little slut.”  The whore stepped away from him, and lifted the
bottle off of the surface he had put it on.  He did not look back at Fenris
when he again opened it.  “Turn back around, back against the rack.  I like
watching you.”
            Fenris turned, leaning back against it, watching the other man come
closer.  He first coated his fingers.  The bottle still in one hand, he snaked
his wet hand between the elf’s legs, his face all business as he touched and
explored, staring down at the elf’s plain desire for him.  He moved his fingers
in a quick, scissoring motion, twisting his hand and listened to his client
moan.  Satisfied, he moved his hand away, rubbing a thin layer of the oil over
his erection.  He hastily set the bottle down, and lifted Fenris, balancing the
man against the rack.  He positioned himself with his other hand, quickly.  The
elf’s legs swung tight around his hips, drawing him in closer.
            Fenris appreciated the talents of the very learned whore.  He liked
the way Wensley always remembered the things he liked and didn’t like.  He
liked that Wensley remembered that Fenris liked the tight feeling, the brief
moment of hard pushing and the soft gasp as he penetrated him.  He liked the
slow, deep thrusting as he filled him, followed by hard, fast movements.  He
liked his back pushed firmly against the rack, the bars digging into his skin,
grating against the stinging touches of cane and crop as well as the softly
glowing lyrium.  He liked being supported completely by Wensley, knowing that
if the whore’s endurance gave up, he might fall.
            Wensley’s hand roved behind him, and the chain came undone with a
click, falling away from the rope.  He pulled them both away from the rack. 
Fenris slid against him, slowly, drawing him as deeply into him as he was able
with the other man walking.  He heard the whore shudder, and he laid him down
on the bed amidst the petals.
            Wensley kept pushing against him, moving them both toward the
center of it.  He unfastened the gag, dropping it to the side, to kiss him. 
Fenris kissed him back, as Wensley pumped into him—slow, deep, and filling. 
The whore pulled back, drawing out of him.
            Fenris licked his dry lips, wondering what the other had in mind. 
He leaned down, his mouth covering his erection, and Fenris’ eyes closed in
satisfaction at the whore’s honeyed tongue.  He felt himself rub against the
back of the man’s throat, felt every twist and turn of his the wet tongue. 
When the whore stopped, his eyes opened again, watching Wensley climb back over
him, his legs straddling him.  Wensley’s fingers wrapped around the base of the
elf’s member as he lowered himself onto him.
            He liked how, despite that he was moving atop Fenris, driving him
deeper into him, then impaling himself to the hilt upon him, that the human man
still looked to be completely in control.  He liked the way his back would arc,
and he would pant and moan on top of him, and he had a look about him of total
dominance.
            As Wensley moved, Fenris gasped, jerking his hips upward, meeting
him, wanting more of him when there wasn’t more of him.  He watched Wensley as
he moved, the man’s hand steadying himself on Fenris’ shoulder.  He felt like
he was at the limit of his endurance.  Wensley had been pushing his sexual
appetite for a long time, and he wanted the release and orgasm that came with
it.
            He shuddered a sigh, and cried out.  “I…” he gasped.
            The whore’s fingers pushed against his throat, his hand wrapping
around it.  Fenris stilled, controlling his breathing, closing his eyes.  He
focused on breathing, even when the fingers tightened, then loosened in perfect
tempo to the man’s movements.  He gagged once, and Wensley’s hand loosened
more, letting him take several deep breaths before he held him steady again.
            His eyes opened, lips parted in a silent cry.  His hips tilted
upwards, toes curling.  It came over him like a strike of lightning, running
through every piece of his body, nothing in the world but sex.  The hand around
his throat made him dizzy, made it impossible to think about anything but the
way Wensley felt, the way his body felt, the incredibly good feeling of being
inside him.  The feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction it left behind filled
him as surely as Wensley’s erection had.
            Wensley’s hand moved from his throat, and the man leaned over him,
hand against his own erection.  The whore kissed his neck, nibbling and biting
against it, and Fenris tilted his neck to allow it, panting softly as he tried
to catch his breath.  He moaned at a particular bite, gasped at a long, sucking
kiss, and stilled then shuddered as he felt the man’s hot seed spill over his
stomach.  Wensley crawled, backwards down his chest, licking the semen off of
him slowly.  Fenris watched him, wanting to be aroused again.
            Wensley left not a drop on him, swallowing the last of it as he
rose, smiling dimly at Fenris.  “Hey, gorgeous.”  He reached toward him, his
fingers trailing along Fenris’ moist lips.  “Can I get you something?  Want
some wine, water, tea?”
            “Wine?” Fenris said.  “Do you want to untie me first?”
            Wensley glanced at him at he climbed from the bed.  “No,” he
answered flatly.  He opened a cabinet, removed a bottle.  He nearly dropped it
when the light bathed the room.
            He turned back around, his eyes wide as the blue light dimmed. 
Fenris sat up, drawing his legs up near his chest, his arms wrapped loosely
around his legs, and smirking.  The rope lay tangled under him.
            “That scared me,” Wensley admitted.  “I’ll never get used to it—but
it is kind of sexy that you can do that.”
            Fenris laughed gently as Wensley located the cups.  “I’ve never
heard someone say it was ‘sexy’ before.”
            “Usually just ‘scary’?” the other inquired, hitting the nail on the
head as it were.  “You realize, of course, that now I have to spank you for
misbehaving.”  He handed him the wine.
            Fenris watched him over the brim of the cup.  “I look forward to
it, Ser.”
 
            Fenris woke with a moan on his lips, a hot mouth around his erect
cock.  It was wet, and Wensley knew what he was doing.  His legs spread a
little, his hand reaching down, holding the man’s head there, fingers clenching
in his hair with his desire.
            The whore’s fingers gripped his hips, and he sat up, pulling Fenris
with him.  The elf hooked his legs around his shoulders.  The whore held him
tight, eyes opened to watch him gasp.  His head pulled back, just his lips
against the tip of his member, his tongue flicking out over him.  The tip of
his tongue traced the vein down to his testicles, then ran between them,
licking along him, and back further.
            His damp tongue ran over him once, watching him, waiting for a
reaction, then he pushed his tongue against him, teasing at first.  His tongue
darted out in quick, wet movements, lapping at him like a cat with cream.  The
elf pulled his legs a little farther apart, making it easier for him to push
his mouth against him, his tongue probing into him.  The wet tongue moved
inside him, making him gasp, his back arch and curl.  The new sensation made
his stomach tense, forcing small sounds out of the back of his throat as his
fingers dug into the sheets.
            Wensley’s fingers wound in slow circles around his dripping penis,
mimicking the movements he made with his tongue before he buried his tongue in
him, greedy and almost hungrily, as if he could devour him.
            His hand covered him, pumping hard around him until Fenris gave a
sharp, final cry.  Wensley barely had time to catch it in his mouth, and still
missed some of it.  The whore wiped it off of his cheek with the back of his
hand, setting Fenris gently back down on the bed.  He looked at him, long and
intimate, then moved away.  He cleaned off his hand, and took a shot of
whiskey, but only swished it around in his mouth for a moment before he spit it
out the window.  Fenris didn’t need to ask why.
            “Get up—I made you a bath, and I think I owe you breakfast,
considering what your back looks like,” Wensley commented.
            Fenris sat up, flinching when he realized how sore he was.  “Hell,”
the elf muttered.  The hot water felt good, and the whore massaged him
afterwards, with lavender and rose oil to soothe his irritated skin.
            Wensley made sure that he ate, and afterwards when Fenris was
getting ready to leave, he said, “Do try not to forget about me, Fenris.”
            The elf glanced back at him, a wisp of a smile on his lips as he
thought about all the things they had done the night before.  “I don’t think I
could.  I’ll come visit you the next time I’m in Kirkwall.”
            “I’ll hold you to it.  Maybe I’ll have some more toys by then.”
            “I’ll hold you to that.”
            Fenris turned and left the Blooming Rose behind him, and the
Imperium in his future.
***** Cherished Beauty *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris and Hawke share a last farewell, and Fenris heads to the
     Imperium.
            Fenris felt himself pulled along by the tide of people with
Anastas’ caravan.  He had wanted to walk out of Kirkwall, the same way he had
come in, thinking about how much had changed in all that time.  He felt like…
he wasn’t quite the same person he had been when he had first lain eyes on
Kirkwall.  So much had changed, and really, all for the better.
            He had learned things he could not have learned with the dwarven
smugglers, things he could not have known with the Fog Warriors, and things he
could never have even dreamed as a slave.  He had learned how to read, write,
and he learned about history.  He learned about religion, the difference
between justice and vengeance, a little of what love and family was, and truth
above all.
            Every moment of pain and hardship had been worth the lessons. 
Every moment of despair could be outweighed by a moment of joy.
            And he had Hawke to thank for much of it.  He wondered if Hawke
would ever really know how much he meant to him.
            “Fenris!”
            He stopped, turning back around on the road.  The people around him
kept going by.  Who had called his name?  He looked for someone he might
recognize and saw an arm wave, a man jogging on the side of the road to catch
up.  Fenris recognized Hawke and went to meet him.
            Hawke panted as he tried to catch his breath.  “Glad I caught you,”
he said between breaths.  He looked at him.  His eyes were like tarnished gold
in the late morning sun.  Another deep breath, and he straightened to his full
height, his breath caught and subdued.  “This might be the last time I ever see
you, and I…”  He sighed.  “I just wanted to tell you something.”
            Fenris raised his eyebrows.  “Well, I’m here.”
            The mage made a face, as if flustered.  “Look, I know things never
worked out between us.  And I’m not saying I’m not happy, but I do want you to
know that I…”  His lips twisted, and he started to say something, and stopped,
then let out another noisy sigh.
            The elf’s lips curved into a crooked smile.  “I think I know what
you’re trying to say.”
            Hawke glanced back at him.  “You do?”
            Fenris was conscious of Anastas and his caravan moving past him.
 He watched Hawke, and felt strangely serene actually.  I love you, he thought,
but couldn’t say it aloud, not any more.  Once was enough, more than enough.
 Once, and he had poured his heart and soul into it.  He didn’t think he could
say it again and mean it quite the same way.  It would never be as special, as
holy and divine as that one moment he had confessed how he felt.  Fenris gave a
slight nod of his head, barely an assent, and more of an invitation.
            The mage glanced around them, and looked back at Fenris.  “A part
of me will always love you, Fenris.  Even if I never see you again, I will
always love you.”
            He knew that.  He supposed he had known that for a long time, and
he was glad to hear it aloud.  He looked down, at his feet on the hard-packed
earth.  He thought of all the things he could say.  I love you.  You mean
everything to me.  My life revolves around you.  All I want in the world is for
you to be happy.  But the words caught in his throat, a cold lump rising in his
chest, and he did not know what to say, or if there truly were any words to
say.
            “Please say something, Fenris.  This is incredibly awkward,” Hawke
insisted.
            Fenris looked up, blinking large sage eyes.  “I’ll miss you,” he
confessed.  “And I’m glad you’re happy.”
            Hawke looked relieved.  “Oh, thank the Maker; I thought you were
thinking about what an idiot I am.”  Fenris raised an eyebrow, that one look
saying everything, and Hawke laughed.  “I get it; I am an idiot.”
            Fenris wondered if he would ever again meet someone who could make
him laugh during difficult situations like Hawke did.  He wondered if someone
would ever hold him the way he did, or kiss him the way he did, ravage him the
way he did.  He wondered if anyone in the world would ever love him the same
way, or if he could ever love someone else.  “I love you,” he finally
whispered, and looked away, out at the hills in the distance, watching an eagle
soar over its peaks, outlined in a pale blue sky.  Why was this so hard?  It
would have been so much easier if Hawke had just left the matter alone.  If he
had just not come out today...
            “If you cry, you can forget the steamy affair when I see you
again,” Hawke promised him.
            Fenris looked back at him, and instead of weeping with loss, he
laughed, the would-be tears evaporating.  “I’ll miss you,” he said again.
 “I’ll write to you when I get to the Imperium.”
            Hawke clasped his arm briefly in camaraderie.  “I’ll wait at the
mailbox like a lost puppy.”
            “Don’t assault the mailman,” the elf warned him.  Hawke chuckled.
 “Take care.”
            “You too.”
            Hawke stepped back, and they looked at each other.
            “Do you mean what you said about the affair?”
            Hawke gave him an intimate smile.  “We’ll see.”
            There was a longer stretch, and Hawke turned.  Fenris watched him
go, walking back the way he had come, and the caravan pulled farther and
farther away with every step.
            “Hawke!” the elf called.  The man turned toward him, and Fenris
rushed to him, pulling him back to face him.  In the same breath, he pushed his
lips against his.  He had intended it to be a brief, chaste kiss--something
stolen before Hawke recovered, but his plans fell to ashes when Hawke pulled
him close, trapping him in his arms.
            It was a place he wanted to be, and the best place he had ever
been.  He inhaled the scent of him deeply, tasting him as if he never would
again—because he believed he never would again-- trying to remember every touch
and texture.  His lips were eager and needful, his tongue searching, his teeth
nibbled against his lower lip, drawing his tongue into his mouth.
            It was Fenris who pulled away, who always pulled away, slipping out
of his arms like water.  “Thank you,” he told him.  “For giving me that.”
            He turned, and followed after the caravan.  He looked back only
once, to see Hawke turning and walking back the other way.  He wanted to stop. 
He wanted to turn around and go back to him.
            And what?
            Pine after him?  Stare longingly at his manor, watch him out of the
corner of his eye, seethe with jealousy at every touch between he and Anders?
            No.
            Kirkwall was not his future; it was his past.  There was nothing
for him there, and all its fruits in his life were plucked.  If he wanted to
grow, expand his knowledge, maybe do what he wanted to do, he had to keep
moving forward.
            But all the same, he watched the mage go, and knew a part of his
heart would always go with him.
 
Traveling with Anastas was exactly as it was before; all the Liberati and
slaves alike joked and seemed to go where they pleased for the most part.  One
of the slaves was apparently pregnant, not even showing just yet, and Anastas
worried enough about her to make her only do light work, always asking if she
was all right.  It seemed to annoy her more than anything.  Her husband was
equally attentive, and she seemed like she would like both of them to stop.  It
must have been her first child.
            It was satisfying to see even a slave owner worry about his petty
property.  No, not to Anastas.  He treated each of them like people.  They were
all well fed, cared for, and not a one of them had a thing to complain about.
            One of the slaves commented to Fenris that he was eager to get back
and see his boy.  “He promised not to get too tall by the time I get back—we’ll
see if he kept his promise.”  Anastas had a rule that if his slaves had
children, the children weren’t slaves.  He also allowed them to marry non-
slaves, and each of them knew that once they had paid off their debt to
Anastas, they were free to go if they wished.
            When someone grew ill or got hurt, they were cared for.  One of the
slaves was a mage and tended to things like that.  If this was all slavery was,
he wouldn’t hate it so much.  But he knew what quarries were like, the mines,
and the Grand Proving.  He knew the Imperial brothels, the ships, the slaves in
the army.  Worse, he knew how most masters treated their slaves.  It was awful.
            Anastas was a good man in a sea of tyranny and evil, and he was
glad to see him doing well, and that he hadn’t changed.
            “First order of business when we get back to Vyrantium, a long
bath,” Anastas said, stretching in the saddle.
            “No,” Fenris said, smiling pleasantly.  “We’ll appear before a
magistrate, and you’ll free me of bondage.”
            He laughed.  “Right—forgot about that.”
            “I’m here to remind you,” he said pleasantly.
            Making their way out of the mountains took a lot of time.  There
was the occasional bandit gang and one time one of the slave girls came
screaming out of the wood with a bear chasing after her.  The animal was
dispatched, and they had eaten bear for a week.  It wasn’t a bad taste—somewhat
tough depending on the cut, with a wild flavour.  Anastas commented that this
particular bear had eaten a lot of meat.  He said that “you can tell from the
meat what they’ve eaten.”  He had gone on to explain that bears that eat more
berries and vegetables had a more pleasant meat.
            “I’ve never had it before,” Fenris said, swallowing a chunk of the
roast.  “It’s good though.”
            Anastas was quiet a moment.  “You don’t know anything about
Danarius’ bear, do you?”
            Fenris frowned.  “What?”  Danarius had a bearskin rug in his
quarters, in front of the fireplace.  The elf had lain on it before, staying
down when the magister had beat him.  He hadn’t known why he had hit him at the
time, and the why of it had never mattered anyway.  Danarius had left him there
all night, bruised but not bleeding, scared but not terrified.  It could have
been worse.  It could have always been worse.
            The man shrugged.  “His bear.  Some of the best gossip in the
Imperium was about how your deceased master’s father died.  Called it a hunting
accident.  I bet it was murder.”
            Fenris stilled, trying to remember if anything had ever been
mentioned.  He didn’t remember anything.  No one would bother gossiping to a
slave, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t overheard a lot of gossip anyway.  “I
don’t know—at least, I never heard anything.”  He frowned.  “It wouldn’t
surprise me if he murdered his own father.”
            He cocked his head to the side.  “And his dead wife—did he murder
her too?”
            Fenris knew the answer to that in the way Danarius had held that
little girl in the Fade.  How it was all he had ever wanted.  He wondered, if
that little girl had lived, if his wife had lived, if he would have still been
so cruel.  “No.”
            The desert was as beautiful as he first remembered, exchanging his
leathers for cotton and linen cloth.  Anastas taught him how to ride a camel. 
He preferred horses, plain and simple.  The camels were ornery, smelled awful,
and their commands were strange.  However, he got used to all of those things
in time.  It was either that, or walk or ride in the wagons.  The camel was
more interesting.  One of the children, about eight years old perhaps, asked
him if she could ride with him.  He let her sit in front of him, and gave her
the reins under his direction.
            The child seemed to enjoy it, and he liked it when she would laugh.
            He had a particular weakness for children, he had to admit.  Any
child, really.  It was something about their innocence that he had never had,
and a desperate need to cherish and preserve it.  Something about their
naiveté, and their narrow views of the world.  How everything was so black and
white to them, and they had not yet learned to see the shades of gray between
the two.  They were precious, priceless even.
            And it sickened him that the Imperium did put a price on their
innocence.  He might live there, but he could never condone that.  Anastas
would pay him.  He couldn’t forcibly free every slave he came across; that
would earn him a noose at the very least.  But, maybe he could buy some of them
out of it.  Maybe he could try to help them.  He wasn’t certain as to how
exactly, just yet, but maybe he could.
            The cheapest slave flesh, the ones who would be worked the hardest
and most poorly treated were the ones shipped to the Imperium, a disgusting
slave trade that every other country looked away from… because they were only
elves.  They would  be the ones with a family to return to, if he could try to
help them.
            It was weeks before they crossed the desert, and a few more weeks
before they crossed into Tevinter.  At the border, they were checked, briefly,
for smuggling.  When they came away clear, they were allowed to pass.  Fenris
hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath until they were well away from
them.
             He moved his horse beside Anastas.  “How did you convince the
Magisterium not to have me executed?” he asked.
Anastas shrugged.  “Fact of the matter, most of them don’t actually care that
much.  Pester them enough, and they’ll cave to get you to leave them alone.
 The Danarius family I had to bribe though.”
Fenris flinched.  “And?”
“Agasius Danarius, the bastard, was willing to ‘sell’ you to me for a
particular artifact I have.”
“And?”
He smirked.  “He has a perfect duplicate of it--but he had it inspected before
the transaction was made, and if he ever finds out it is a duplicate, he’ll be
too stubborn and proud to admit a rich Altus man like himself was tricked by an
old Liberati.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“Nonsense--I’ll say mine is the duplicate.  As far as value goes, all that
really matters is what people believe of it.  I’ll show it to you when we get
to Vyrantium.”
When they passed the desert, and started into the mountains, he changed back to
his familiar leathers, and the camels went to a camel herd Anastas rented them
from, and he had horses for the rest of the journey.  At the border, Fenris
found himself holding his breath as the guard looked over him.  It was perhaps
three seconds, at the very most, as the papers were looked at, then he passed
as the guards inspected the wagons.  He couldn’t help but feel apprehensive,
even paranoid, as he crossed into the Imperium.
He had believed he would never see Tevinter again, and had not mourned that. 
It was strange that instead of the guards calling him out as having a bounty on
his head, they just let him pass without a hassle.  It was strange to ride
along the roads, and eyes would linger but no one would try to cage him.  It
wasn’t bad.  It was nice, in a lot of ways, to not worry about Imperial
hunters.
The scent of incense filled his nostrils, and he realized he had almost
forgotten what it was like to have an entire city bathed in it.  They passed
through an assortment of towns and villages before they eventually came to
Vyrantium by way of the Imperial highway.  Anastas’ caravans went around to the
back of his estate, and the horses were stabled outside.  Anastas bade Fenris,
though, to follow him.  It was the middle of the day, and Anastas had sent a
runner into Vyrantium before they had happened upon it.  When Anastas led him
into the courthouse, he understood why, and suddenly felt foolish for not
realizing what they were doing.  They left the horses outside the building, and
spent several long minutes waiting for the magistrate.
There was a bit of paperwork, a few signatures, and it was done:  Fenris was
Liberati.  And, furthermore, Anastas was right—it was an incredibly dull
procedure.
“How do you feel?” Anastas asked him as they mounted their horses again.
Fenris stared upwards, at the crystalline blue sky.  “Free,” he answered,
though it might have been clichéd.
“You should,” Anastas agreed.  “I want to show you something—come with me.”
Fenris was surprised at the size of the man’s estate.  It was a newer building,
not built to be large and imposing with fearsome gargoyles and images of
tortured slaves and terrifying dragons like Minrathous.  Rather, it was a work
of quiet beauty. 
The gates were wrought iron, iron vines and iron roses wrapping around the
bars.  The walls held carvings of every sort, a parade of dancing bears,
prancing horses, playful dogs, cats, goats, a rearing elephant with long
tusks.  They left their horses with the stable boy, and continued past the
gates.  The lawns inside were green, kept watered through an intricate
aqueduct, the water flowing freely from a central fountain.  Bridges of wood
and stone arched over them.
Flowers were in bloom, and there were honey bees amidst them, and humming
birds, he saw.  Butterflies frolicked in the blossoms, and he was surprised to
see a peacock.  Anastas must have noticed his surprise at that, and pointed to
the colourful male.  “I have five of them—very aggressive birds, but aren’t
they beautiful?”
Beautiful, Fenris thought.  Serene, elegant…  At least until one of them shits
all over something anyway.
One of the peacocks, this one a much duller female, had her long graceful neck
over the fountain, drinking from it.  Fenris studied the fountain.  The
fountain was of a young maiden, a horn in her hand, and the water flowed
endlessly from the horn, splashing down a cascade of bowls into the fountain. 
He saw small fish in it.
They followed a meandering path through the flowers, past a pond with a stand
of willow trees and ferns.  There were swans swimming in the water.  The path
was white gravel, the flowers and grass well-watered through a series of small
aqueducts and carefully attentive slaves.  A second fountain mimicked a
waterfall in a stand of trees.  Coloured lanterns were placed along the paths,
to be lit at nightfall.
 “This is the statue he valued your worth at,” Anastas said, stretching out his
hand to draw Fenris’ attention.  “He wanted the rest of the collection too, but
I talked him down a bit--which wasn’t easy, mind.”
Fenris looked up at the statue, sitting on a raised pedestal.  The carving was
crafted from gold-veined marble, all the gold seeming to glisten in the
sunlight.  He was surprised to see that the figure was an elven maid, dressed
in a long, flowing gown that seemed to billow in a different wind, her face
raised high and proud.  He detected a particular air of nobility in the tilt of
her chin, the set of her lips, but a hint of sadness about her eyes.  He
wondered at all the things she had seen, the great tragedies and every small
joy.  And she had survived all of it.
“What do you think of her?” Anastas asked him after a long silence.
“She’s beautiful,” he said softly.  He had never seen an elf carved in
something as expensive as marble.  Fact of the matter, he couldn’t remember
having ever seen an elf carved like that.  He had seen carvings of dragons, he
had seen animated golems, works of stone.  But if any carving had been meant to
be an elf--like the horrible etchings in Kirkwall of tormented slaves--it was
impossible to tell; their ears were covered and the carvings were not that
detailed.  He had heard that there were ancient elven—elvhen—ruins in Ferelden
and Orlais still, but he had never been there to see them.
Anastas nodded.  “The Maiden of Arlathan--she’s older than the Imperium, and
she’s a survivor.”  He smiled in satisfaction.  “She’ll sure take your heart
away, won’t she?”
“Who is the ‘Maiden of Arlathan’?” he asked.
“My goddess of beauty.”  He laughed, and shrugged.  “No idea; we know she’s
probably a deity or maybe some ancient leader, but we don’t know which one.”
 He sighed.  “Probably, we’ll never know.  But her mystery, I think, is part of
her beauty.”
He left Fenris to wander the garden.  He looked up at the Maiden for a long
time, in awe of her.  The stonework was so old, and yet…  The stone carver had
perfectly accented every detail, leaving no doubt to the mind that the dress
was sheer, and so full of life that she looked like she may at any moment step
down from the pedestal.
He turned away from the statue, and continued on through the garden.  Anastas
had mentioned that he had a “collection” of them.  The Maiden was by far the
most beautiful piece, but he found other pieces too, carved from the same
marble.  A dancing halla in the rose garden, a wolf and a raven in a low hedge
maze, and by the pond, he was surprised to see a griffin.  Obviously half, or
even quarter-sized or maybe just young--the creatures were extinct so he
couldn’t really tell--it stood as if gazing into its own reflection, wings
partway unfurled as if it were stretching.
The Imperium carved dragons, and the carvings were skilled, but they were
always fearsome and terrifying to behold, meant to inspire fear and awe.  These
only inspired awe and wonder.  The griffin was not poised as if to attack; it
looked as though it could come alive at any moment, and Fenris had only
happened upon it.
Anastas treasured beauty above all else, in all its many forms.  Be it a
painting, stonework, a simple flower or a garden, the peacocks or the swans,
carvings, the laughter of a child, or the smile of one formerly without hope,
he treasured it.  Fenris hoped, sincerely, that Anastas’ passion for beauty
would never be eclipsed.
 
***** The Circle *****
Chapter Summary
     Two years later, a sinister plot unfolds...
Two years later—9:39 Dragon.
                                    Part 7
 
            The library was busy.  There were slaves tending it, and
apprentices studying.  Older mages sat in quieter corners with their own
studies, some reading for leisure.  Some books could not leave the library, and
a literate slave kept careful tabs of all of those on a ledger.  Presently, she
was scowling at him from across the room, her blue eyes like daggers carving
flesh from his skull; he had dropped a priceless book.
            Shaislyn sheepishly picked it up, and set it back on the table.  He
sighed, staring back down at it.  Mage’s Genesis was as close to historical
fact of the origin of human mages as they were likely to get--all about dragons
and learning magic.  A source of vague interest to him was humans coming to
Thedas.  What had they, with their power and their dragons, been running from?
 What had been so terrible that they had come to Thedas refugees, if that were
even the case at all?  Where had they come from?  Were there artifacts there--
the real human history locked away and buried in some remote place on the
earth?  No one really knew.  More interesting, if they were not escaping a
disaster, like some scholars theorized, what had made them come to Thedas in
the first place?  And, what Shaislyn had never been able to find an answer to,
were there humans elsewhere?  If so, what were they like?  What was their
culture and their language?  One scholar, he had read, had theorized that the
humans were refugees fleeing a disaster--war, plague, drought, or something of
that nature.            Another scholar had taken it a step further, and,
blasphemously and infamously suggested it may have even been a Blight.  Of
course, the Tevinter Chantry thought the theory interesting, but the other
Chantry considered it blasphemous.  But then, they claimed that Darkspawn came
from magister corruption.  While Shaislyn was perfectly accepting that the
magisters were corrupt and it might be pleasing to think that such terrible men
should be turned to Darkspawn, it was unthinkable and unforgivable that all
living things should suffer for the sins of a few men for lifetimes beyond
measure.  He did not, thus, believe that superstitious nonsense.  The
suggestion that darkspawn had existed, elsewhere in their world, before the
Golden City was “Tainted” was tantamount to blasphemy in the southern Chantry’s
harsh eyes.
            Shaislyn would like to know the truth--not superstition and
religious theory.  Unfortunately, there was little to be had; it was just too
long ago, and what was left required blind faith rather than hard facts.  Maybe
eventually they would find something more compelling than heresy, but he
doubted it.
He had once made the terrible mistake of mentioning his idea of how spells were
conceived, learned, and made to Cyma, his mentor.  She had listened in rapt
attention as he had described how he didn’t think that Dumat, who was said to
have taught humans magic, had simply taught them every spell in existence that
could ever be done.  Things were constantly being expanded upon and researched
even now, so that idea did not follow suit.  Elves had different abilities and
magic before contact with humans, and humans were able to learn the same
abilities.  Thus, it made more sense that magic could be learned, studied, and
expanded upon just like every other subject.  In magic, one and one did not
always make two, and relied on a number of other factors.  If a variable were
changed, expanded upon, subtracted, new forms were discovered.  Magic was often
just as complicated, and boring, as mathematics.  However, proving that Dumat
had not taught humans magic meant that he would have to find, historically, a
human mage in existence before the time of Dumat.  This was, obviously,
impossible.
To expand upon the idea, many mages often thought of their magic as being a
tool or a machine without a will of its own--a raw power waiting to be
manifested and used.  Shaislyn wasn’t so sure about that--his magic, to him,
felt all too alive.  It manifested in him and he merged with it; it felt alive.
 Or, perhaps magic was not alive nor machine-like and it existed in an in-
between state.  Many apostates who were self-trained allowed their magic to
manifest in different ways, and in his travels, he had encountered many
different schools of magic and ways of doing things.  How, then, could it
manifest differently and make new things if it was static?  It had to be
something else.  If he read older books of magic, the theory was all the same,
but some of the “facts” were just plain wrong, and the ideas changed.  Or maybe
it had been correct at the time but magic, like mankind, changed and developed
over time?  Magic was such an intrinsic part of the world.  It puzzled him that
so many people were afraid of it.
She had been fascinated utterly by his idea, and had mentioned it to the First
Enchanter.  Unfortunately, he thought the idea so stupendous and thought-
provoking that Shaislyn had to write and publish his theorem.  Shaislyn had
complained--loudly--about this scheme but in the end there was nothing he could
do.  He could write the book, or he could oversee trade operations.  Since that
meant dabbling in slaving, he picked writing.
He was, quietly, against slavery.  He opposed it when he could, but he lacked
the political power, wealth, and allies to do much about it.  And, he did know
how heavily the Imperium relied on it.
As he worked on his theorem, scribbling unintelligible notes and references, he
then worked on producing them into sentences and had someone else try to put
them together.  Two apprentices had been assigned to do that for him.
He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers, staring at the scribbled
words in front of him.  Sometimes, he wanted to pick it up and dump it all out
the nearest window.
He heard the chair across from him pull back, and heard someone sit down in it.
 His vision, rather than his head, moved upwards, more because he was bored
than curious about who it was.  He straightened in the chair, pulling back from
the table.  His lips curved into a disapproving frown.  “You don’t belong here,
Agasius,” Shaislyn said primly.
“But I do make generous donations to the Circle,” he offered.  “So they are
willing to overlook that occasionally.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “I wanted to
offer you something.”
Shaislyn’s teeth clenched.  His hatred for Agasius was trumped only by hatred
for Fenris.  “I don’t want it.”
“Oh, you might.”
The half-breed raised an eyebrow.  “Not interested.”
Agasius’ lips slid into a sly, condescending smile.  “Your uncle murdered my
uncle.  I know you have no love for this uncle of yours, and I would be happy
to pay you to kill him.”
Shaislyn rolled his eyes, sighing.  He opened Mage’s Genesis and busily started
thumbing through it, doing his best show of ignoring the Altus man across from
him.  He had no interest in beating that particular dead horse.  What
difference did it make to him if Fenris lived or died?  He hadn’t seen or heard
from him; his continued existence didn’t bother him exactly.  Absent, he had
come to realize, was just as efficient as dead.  He hoped Fenris outlived
everyone he had ever cared about and died alone.  At least then, they would be
on even ground.
Agasius seemed annoyed.  “I’d pay you very well for your service.”
“Throw your money at the Crows, then.”  The half-elf leaned back in his chair.
 “You get restitution out of this, and I get--what?--money?  No.”  Shaislyn
shook his head a little.  “I don’t want money for murder--get the Crows to do
it.”  He sighed to himself.  He just wanted to put it behind him.  He just
wanted to leave the past where it was and stop dragging it around after him
like a lead weight.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“The Void, I hope,” he muttered under his breath as the other man walked away.
 He stared down at the words on the pages, watching the way the ink curved and
flowed over the paper.  He thought about the dance of blades, how a sword would
curve and flow in similar patterns, the way the foot moved to accommodate an
assault and a defense alike.  He thought about Fenris.  He glanced out the
window, Genesisforgotten.
 
The light in the dusty pub was dim, the business bustling.  The soft moans of a
whore could be heard through the thin walls, barely masked by the music of an
out of tune lute.  The sound of mugs clinking, liquid sloshing, and bawdy tales
and sudden bursts of laughter made up the cacophony of noise around the pair.
It was not the sort of place either would normally be at, as some things had to
be compromised for what they discussed was murder and revenge of a singularly
dangerous and somehow well-connected individual.  It was prudent to leave
nothing to chance.  Secret meetings didn’t stay secret in obvious places.
The third chair pulled back, and the third person sat down.  The wood creaked
under his weight.
They talked, their voices low.  They kept the discussion brisk; they all knew
why they were here, and they all were of like mind.  No one needed convincing;
there were only a few minor details to agree upon.
“Seheron,” the third whispered in answer to a question.
“It could be at any time,” the rich man said in protest.  “It would take so
long to lure him…”
The mage considered.  “It’s very poetic.”
“It isn’t about poetry.”
“It’s about revenge,” the third answered.  “And I can think of no better place
for it than Seheron.”
It was discussed, briefly, then finally agreed.  They would need a decent lure,
and the mage made a suggestion.  Times were set.  Dates were agreed upon.
 Bargain struck, and the three walked away, one by one, leaving only the third
at the table, staring at the pattern of the scuffed wood, wondering if he was
doing the right thing, or just what felt right.
 
As Shaislyn walked, he trailed his fingers along the fence, wondering what his
old mentor would want to talk to him about.  Cyma had not spoken to him in half
a year, when she suggested he write the damn book.  He supposed there was
nothing wrong with it, exactly, but it was curious.  She didn’t care much for
making social calls to a Laetan Enchanter with no ambition.
Cyma lived in the tower, a Laetan mage of Soporati origin.  As a Senior
Enchanter, she had her own lavish rooms and slaves.  The half-elf walked past
the Templar guards.  Once inside, a young apprentice nearly collided with him.
 The boy stepped back, and dashed around him.  “No, nononono!”
Another apprentice was laughing down the hall a ways, leaning against the wall
for support, her hand clasped over her mouth to stifle her laughter.  As
Shaislyn passed, he asked her, “What’s going on?”
“Nestor’s mentor is examining his notes right now.”  She stifled another
giggle.  “He drew some terrible drawings of her in the margins!”
Shaislyn quirked a smile, and continued on.  He climbed the stairs, and went
down a hall, then another set of stairs.  He found Cyma’s quarters and knocked
at the door.  He heard someone tell him to come in and he opened the door.
 Cyma was alone, sitting on a brocaded sofa.  Her robes were more like an
elaborate gown of silks and rich embroidery with a high collar that was in
fashion than proper mage’s robes.  Her hair was piled on top of her head in a
confection of braids and curls he couldn’t begin to puzzle at.  Cyma was a
creature of fashion.  She had always tried to get him to forego his leathers
and practical garments for fashionable clothing, all to no avail.
The only thing unusual about this was that, after a quick adjustment of his
vision spell, that he learned she really was alone.  She had always had at
least one slave in constant attendance.  He wondered at the occasion.
“You’re on time,” she said, pleased.  Shaislyn was renown for being late.
“I was nearby,” he said with a shrug, sitting down opposite to her.  She, human
and bedecked in riches; he of mixed blood and hadn’t seen a bath in…  How long
had it been?
Her nose wrinkled a bit.  “Indeed.”  She nodded to the teapot.  “Help
yourself.”  He glanced down at the tea tray.  There was a small cake,
sandwiches, and other small tea things.  He poured a little milk into the
teacup.  His one social grace, in Cyma’s eyes, had been an appreciation for
tea.  He poured the tea and added a small amount of sugar.  He sipped at it,
wondering what this was really all about.
He blinked in surprise at the taste.  “This is Anderfell chamomile.”  He
frowned, just a little.  “It’s not in season either--may I inquire as to the
occasion?”
She smiled warmly, and he was not at all comforted.  “It’s not often I see you,
and I know you like tea.”
He looked at her, wondering.  “True.  Cyma, how have you been getting along?”
She told him about her business in selling spices, her sister’s recent wedding.
 She had been one of the many Laetan mages with no ambition to become a
political power.  She was quite content as a Senior Enchanter; low enough that
no one would bother to assassinate her for power, yet with just enough power to
command respect.  It was a position he cherished for many of the same reasons. 
They were already talking about promoting him in a year or two.  They had long-
since discovered that Shaislyn was more useful with a shorter leash--all the
easier to have him act as a courier when needed, a spy when necessary, a thief
when convenient, and someone to shank a Qunari or Viddathari when required--
Shaislyn liked that last one best, always eager to volunteer to go to Seheron
when requested.  “And you, Shaislyn?”
She had never butchered his name to “Shai” like many people chose to, always
rolling the “slyn” off of her tongue like a snake, making it almost sound like
a different word.  Southern Tevinter often had a sort of different accent than
Minrathous, and when she had come here, she had made it her life’s ambition to
lose the accent, and had only managed to lose most of it.  Shaislyn,
controversially, had stubbornly refused to lose his Seheron accent.  He studied
her for a moment, still trying to sense her motive.  “I dance to the tune the
Magisterium plays--I don’t think anyone can fault me for it.”
She smiled, as if amused at his analogy.  “As do we all,” she agreed.  “But,
tell me, how are you doing?”
He blinked.  He looked down at the teacup in his hands.  He set the cup down.
 “The Magisterium wants to transfer me to Seheron.  But I won’t go back there,
not permanently anyway.”
Cyma nodded.  “Do you like Minrathous?”
He shrugged.  “I’d rather be on the mainland--if they wanted to transfer me to
anywhere else in the Imperium, it would be fine.”
Her already straight posture somehow seemed to get straighter.  “I could
mention something, come up with a good reason for you to stay.  I can think of
other Enchanters I would rather see in Seheron.”
He wondered what she would want in return.  Cyma did not give favours for free.
 “I would appreciate that.”
She clasped her hands together, as if in prayer.  Cyma, for all her exuberant
fashion sense, was also a devout believer in the Maker and had on multiple
occasions preached at him.  He had flippantly told her that she should join the
Chantry.  He wondered, for one cringing moment, if she were going to pray, but
her fingers neatly folded together, resting in her lap.  He relaxed.  “Do you
have any family left?”  Her voice was gentle.
He picked up the teacup again, sipping before he answered, “No--”  He stopped.
 He frowned into the cup.  “Yes…  No.  It’s complicated.”
She arched one delicately plucked eyebrow.  “How so?”
“Well, I don’t consider Agasius Danarius to truly be my cousin, if you know
what I mean.”
She nodded; this made perfect sense to her.  “You’re a bastard.”
He agreed, “Yes.”
She shifted, leaning forward to lift her teacup from its saucer.  She sipped
graciously, her lips leaving a faint rosy imprint on the cup like a flower
petal.  “What about the other side of your family?”
“My mother passed away recently.”  He was quiet a moment, and twitched
slightly.  “And my uncle is still alive, I think.  But I’ve no interest in ever
seeing him again.”
She nodded.  “Who is that again--remind me?”
He finished his tea.  “Fenris.  Do you remember Cillian Danarius’ slave, the
one with the lyrium in his skin?”
            She blinked, and thought hard.  “Yes,” she said, blinking.  “I was
an apprentice the last time I saw him--he was frightening.  That’s him?”
He nodded, considering one of the sandwiches.  “Yes, unfortunately.”
She frowned.  “Didn’t he kill Magister Danarius?”
“That’s right, and Hadriana Capena.”  He paused.  “His bounty is gone--I guess
it was paid off a while ago.  Not my business.”
She considered, frowning.  “You should try to talk to him.”  Her features
softened a little.  “Just speak to him.”
He scowled.  “Why?  I know everything I care to know about him.”
She sighed.  “He’s the only family you have left.  And you might be all he has
too.  Try to talk to him, at the very least.”
He made a face.  “And what?  Tell him, ‘Hey, you asshole, want to know where
all our family is buried?’”
She blinked.  “That might be a very good place to start.  He doesn’t know any
of that, does he?  I would want to know.”
He huffed.  “Anyway, is there anything else?  I need to go stare at and
catalogue some crap in the library--the First Enchanter has been bugging me
about how it still isn’t done.”
Cyma sighed gently--a very ladylike sound.  “Very well.  I’m always here for
you if you need anything, Shaislyn.”
He rose, stealing a sandwich as he walked out.  His thoughts wandered back to
Cyma as the door closed.  Maybe she was just concerned over his headlong rush
to his grave, concerned that one of her students might die alone one day,
passing from existence with no one by his side, and no one to cremate his body,
no one to keep a small urn of ashes in his name.  She had all but given up
trying to convince him that he wanted to join the Maker’s side in the
afterlife.  He would rather fall into oblivion and nothingness.  Nothingness
was all he had ever known, and it had never really been as bad as recognition.
The thought did not bother him.
She didn’t reprimand me for swearing, he considered, his brow furrowing.  That
was unusual.  He doubted she had just given up on the matter.  What was it
then?
***** Damnation *****
Chapter Summary
     Shaislyn confronts Fenris.
            The letter crumpled in his fist as his fingers tightened around it,
the paper wrinkling.  He stared at the corpse on the stone slab.  Most slaves
were not given that grace.  Most slaves were just burned, or tossed into a
ditch somewhere and buried.  But this slave had the possibility of netting her
master a fair amount of money even in death, so her remains had been placed in
a cold room on a colder stone slab.
            His hot breath frosted in the air.  I need a drink, he thought.  I
am way too sober to deal with this shit.
            Shaislyn wasn’t supposed to be down here.  Agasius wanted fifty
sovereigns just to look at the corpse.  Damned bastard had even put up a guard,
but a single one--more the sort to raise an alarm and stall if Shaislyn had
wanted to put up a fight, before Agasius brought down the small army of
household guards on him.  The single guard was quickly put to sleep with a
spell rather than killed, and a squirrel had wriggled under the door, down a
long hallway, and here he was.  It had not been difficult to find.
            The room was dark, owing to being underground.  There were cold
torches, and even the special lanterns designed to hold mage light, but he
didn’t know that spell and he didn’t want to attract attention anyway.  Light
or dark had never made a whole lot of difference to his vision spell though; he
saw what was there, light or no.  Sometimes, he saw more.  Other times, he saw
less.
            “I’m sorry, Mother,” he whispered as he approached.  She would not
have wanted him to come near, but he was a disobedient child and always had
been.  It wasn’t that he deliberately disobeyed her often--it was more that he
obeyed his heart rather than others’ wishes.  Maybe that had never been his
best course of action.  Maybe he should have been more obedient of others.
 Would Mahkerin have sent him away if he had?  Would his mother have been more
accepting of him?  Would Danarius have been more accepting of him?  If he just…
were not the person he was, but instead he were the person that the people who
had mattered to him wanted him to be…
            Vanessa had accepted him as he was.  Funny, he could barely
remember what the magister looked like.  She had been the last person in his
life to accept him as a person. Something fundamental about him had broke when
they had stitched his mouth shut, when they had named him Bas-Saarebas and
locked him in a cage.  Something in him had changed the night of the Qunari
attack in Seheron.  It was irreparable, and he thought he would despise all
Qunari and the Qun until he died.
            She had been pretty alive.  Not stunningly beautiful, but pretty.
 When death claimed her, she looked much the same really--cold and distant,
uncaring.  He had only ever seen that part of her, so why shouldn’t he see that
part of her in death as well?  She had been kind and loving as his grandmother
had lain dying, and he had heard her voice soften in ways it never had for him.
 He had seen her passionate, hopeful when she had first started writing to
Fenris.  He had seen her love someone, or the remnants of someone.  That part
of her had never graced his life, not directly anyway.
            He tried to remember her when she had began to care about him, too
late in his life to make much difference.  She had tried to love him; she just
couldn’t.  She had seen what he grew up to be, and it wasn’t, he didn’t think,
that she thought he was evil or corrupt.  It was only the circumstance of his
birth and conception that made her hate him.  That, at least, was something.
 He would take whatever he got.
            Still, he had hoped to see something… more.
            He reached toward her hand hesitantly, half-expecting for one
idiotic moment for the hand to withdraw, but she was cold and dead, and no
matter how much she had hated him in life, in death she could not withdraw.  In
death, she had to bear his touch, his presence, and his voice.  He was a
selfish son; he did not respect her enough in death to not touch her.  He did
not respect her enough to leave her be.  He cared more about his own pain than
her wishes.
            “I didn’t want this,” he said to the dead woman.  He blinked at the
growing dampness in his eyes.  He moved a little closer, watching her
stillness, the dead hand stiff in his.  She didn’t look like she was just
sleeping.  She looked dead.  He touched her vibrant red hair, never old enough
to see it tinged with gray.  Her skin never old enough to see a wrinkle.  She
had died alone, with no one beside her.  She had died in bed, and no one had
been there with her.  She had never fallen in love, not that he knew.  She had
never made anything out of herself.  Her life had been one misery and then the
next.  No one deserved this.  “I tried.”  His voice cracked as he spoke, like
it had when he had been a child growing into a man.  He swiped at his eyes with
the back of one hand.
            “I wanted a life for you.  I wanted you to be happy.  I wanted to
give you everything that my birth took away,” he heard himself say, even when
she couldn’t hear him.  “I wanted you to be a magister.”  He had wanted her to
have the social power and wealth to sustain herself, every freedom he could
hope for her, every luxury, every dream that she had ever had he wanted it to
be a reality.  Danarius had been his best chance at that, and her best chance.
 Fenris had destroyed that utterly, though.  And why?  Why was it so terrible?
 It was only slavery.  It wasn’t like Fenris hadn’t been free a long time--
several years, in fact.  It wasn’t like he would have been alone.  It wasn’t
like Danarius would have lived that much longer anyway.  Whatever cruelties
that man had inflicted upon him, Varania would not have allowed it to continue.
 For that matter, neither would Shaislyn.  He wanted Fenris miserable as he and
Varania had been, but nottortured.
            “Damned bastard,” he said, tilting his neck back as if he were
staring at the ceiling.  He meant that for Danarius as well as Fenris.
 Danarius could have put more effort into recapturing Fenris.  Fact of the
matter, the hunters were all well and good, but with someone like what Fenris
had to offer, a bounty wasn’t enough; he should have doggedly hounded him--
never let him rest, never let him sleep, eat, stop.  The elf would have had to
pass out from exhaustion eventually, and then they could just collect him, as
it were.  Of course, if he had done that, he would not have been able to use
Shaislyn.
            But maybe Varania would not have died in slavery, at the very
least.  A servant and miserable maybe, but not a slave and even more miserable.
            It was only natural that the half-blood blamed Fenris entirely for
it.  It was only natural that his anger and hatred at his own helplessness be
redirected toward the one person he hated the most.  Even when he let that
darkness consume his heart, he knew it was unfair.  Fenris was fighting for his
life, his ideals, and his freedom.  It wasn’t fair for Shaislyn to hate him for
it, but he did.
            He supposed it was much the same way one country hated another when
they went to war.  They were overall the same, and everything was
circumstantial.
            He had wanted Varania to die of old age in luxury, relatively safe
and secluded in a seat of power where no one could do harm to her.  Maybe…
 Maybe if that could have only happened, she would have at least thanked him
for his efforts?  Maybe she would have cared, even a little?
            He leaned against the stone slab, his heart like a lead weight in
his chest.  Who was he fooling?  She never loved him.  She had tried, he gave
her that.  She had started to care about him, but that was all.  Maybe she had
just needed more time.  He had come so close.  He had just needed more time.
 He was sure of it--if he only had more time, then...
            He let go of her hand and sunk to the floor, his back against the
stone and the corpse above him.  He picked idly at a loose thread on his cuff,
rolling the thread between finger and thumb.  “Mother, I wanted…”  His eyes
squeezed shut and a tear finally squeezed past his lashes and his will, and
rolled down his face.  “Anything but this.”       
            The hunter stalked along the dark alley, each footfall calculated
and precise.  He passed among the shadows, past oblivious passersby.  He
followed the rumor like a wolf followed a scent, like a hawk followed the
twitching in the grass.  Satina’s light cast long, dark shadows in the streets,
her sister making the lighter areas starker in contrast.  He pushed open the
door and was greeted by the smell of smoke from a wood fire, the scent of
cigars, and spilled alcohol.  The floor was scuffed in a thousand places, the
tables an odd collection, and many of them looked to have been repaired with
different woods.  Not a single chair, bench, or stool matched.  The patrons
were openly gambling and telling loud, often crude, stories.  He liked it
immediately.  The bar was filled with mostly humans, a couple dwarves, and he
spotted one Tal-Vashoth with cut horns engaged in a drinking contest with a
dwarf.  There was a big crowd around them cheering them on.  His eyes roved to
a lone elf at the bar, watching the goings-on, but never a part of it.
 Shaislyn was glad to find him alone--it would make it simpler.
            The half-blood walked up to him, leaning against the counter.  The
counter seemed to be the only thing that was ever cleaned and waxed in the pub.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he commented.  “Tracking” would have been a more
accurate term; he had been hunting for him everywhere, and of course he should
find him all the way in the Free Marches on some kind of business trip with his
employer.
The elf looked toward him, sage green eyes narrowing with suspicion.  “Why?”
Shaislyn blinked.  “You don’t recognize me?”  He laughed.  “No, why would you?”
 He leaned against the counter, amused.  “Last time you saw me, I was eight
years old.”
For the first time, Fenris looked beyond his weaponry, at his face.  He saw
Danarius in his eyes, in his crooked, self-confident smile.  It had been a very
long time, and he hadn’t been able to see the magister in the child, but he saw
him in the man who stood before him.  He even saw some of Varania in him, and a
little of himself, and that was the most disturbing part.  “Shaislyn?”
He laughed.  “I’m surprised you remember my name.”
Fenris sighed, and turned away from him; looking at him bothered him vaguely.
 His eyes, though faded and milky, looked very much like Danarius’ eyes to him.
 Because he’s his son.  Shaislyn invited himself to sit down beside him.  “I
don’t know how I could forget you.”
The young man raised an eyebrow.  “Feeling guilty?”
Fenris stared down at his mug of ale.  “Ale” was a polite term for it; it
tasted brackish.  “Remorseful.  I should have killed you.”
Shaislyn’s eyebrows rose, just a bit.  “What would that have accomplished--
other than child murder, I mean.”
Fenris glanced at him sidelong.  “And how many people have you killed, mage?
 And how many would you sacrifice for your own ambitions?”
The half-blood crossed his arms, annoyed.  He wondered if Fenris knew about his
involvement in Varania’s betrayal.  “How many people have you?”
The elf fell silent.  It didn’t take a mage to murder, nor did it take a mage
to kill people for their own benefit.  Fenris knew that.  When it came down to
it, they were just people.  People who were easily tempted, seduced, and
corrupted--but no different than anyone else at the core of who they are.  He
didn’t like the deflection of the question with another question though.  He
wasn’t about to answer it either.  “Why are you here, Shaislyn?”
The other was quiet, and looked at the eavesdropping bartender.  His jaw set,
irritated.  “I’ll give you a sovereign to go find something else to do,” he
told him.
The bartender collected the coin, and gave the half-blood a complimentary shot
of rum, but did stay away.  The mage downed it in one quick swallow, and
removed a tarnished silver case from a pocket.  He pulled out a slender cigar,
and offered one to Fenris.  The elf considered, then plucked one from its case.
 Shaislyn snapped it closed, and the case disappeared back into his pocket.
 Shaislyn extended a single finger, a small flame taking light.  He lit the
cigar, and before Fenris said anything, he lit that one too.  Fenris sighed,
then inhaled deeply, annoyed.  People had seen the display, and were watching.
            The two stared at one another for a short moment, quietly judging
the other through a thin screen of smoke.  “My mother is dead,” Shaislyn said
quietly.
            Fenris looked up.  “Varania?”
            Shaislyn looked at him flatly.  “That’s my only mother.”
            Fenris returned the look.  “And why am I supposed to know anything
about your family?”
            The other smiled crookedly.  “Good point.”  He raised an eyebrow.
 “You’re not really a part of it, are you?”  He paused.  “But you could have
been.”
            Fenris had been ready to become testy, and maybe leave, but that
made him pause.  “Oh?”
            Shaislyn nodded absently.  “Well, what do you think happened to us
after you killed Danarius?”
            Fenris finished off the ale.  “I never cared to think about it.”
 That wasn’t true, but it had never been at the forefront of his mind; he
hadn’t even thought about Varania--or Danarius--in a very long time.
            The half-breed made a face.  “Right.  Well.  Before you were
‘Fenris’, you and Danarius drew up a contract, detailing that if you ever were
to violate it--like run away or something--my mother, grandmother, and Lura
would be slaves again.  Well, Lura and my grandmother are dead--I think Lura is
dead anyway--”
            “Who’s Lura?” he interrupted him to ask.  He knew much of this, but
he saw no benefit in telling him that, especially if the other were explaining
something.  If he had learned nothing from Varric, it was to never give away
how much he knew, no matter how little.
            Shaislyn’s lips pressed together in a disapproving frown.  “Your
lover.”
            He blinked, looking away.  “Oh.”  He didn’t remember her either,
any more than he truly remembered Varania.  Oh, he had a few images of his
sister, an idea of her, which was more than he ever could have imagined having,
but the name “Lura” meant nothing to him.
            Shaislyn cleared his throat and continued, “You violated your
contract, which meant Varania was a slave again--and Danarius was fucking
reasonable compared to Agasius, let me tell you.”  He made a face, staring at
the empty shot glass as if wishing there were more.  “Damned bastard.”  He
looked up at the ceiling.  “I begged him to sell me my mother.  He consented to
sell, but for what he was asking, I could have bought a small country and
crowned myself king.”  He traced the brim of the glass with a finger absently.
 “I begged him to lower it--I would have fucking blown him just so he would be
reasonable.”
            Fenris shifted, suddenly uncomfortable.  What Danarius told him in
the dream--it was all true.  He had always thought it had to be, but to have it
verified...  “And…?”
            “And she died.”  He seemed angry for a moment.  “I worked so damn
hard--for years.  I did everything I could to get money.  I didn’t eat, barely
slept.  I’d do anything for money.  I almost had enough for the deposit, and
Agasius was… kind… enough to write to me to tell me that she had died.  But, he
said, for the amount I had, he was willing to relinquish her body so I could
properly dispose of it.”
            Fenris felt like crawling under the counter.  He had unknowingly
destroyed two lives that day--his only living family, in fact.  He felt guilty
about it.  He would not have changed the outcome, per se, but he still felt
guilty.  Maybe, if he had ever bothered to try, there might have been another
way--something else at least.  “I’m not sorry,” he said softly instead.  “I
couldn’t have known about that contract.”
            “Even if you did know, what would you have done?” the other
demanded.  “You don’t know her--you don’t care.”
            He looked back at him.  “Are you blaming me for her death?”
            Shaislyn rose.  “Yes.”  He stared at him.  “And I’d like to settle
it.”
            He stared back at him.  “Where and when?”
            “Two hours from now, in the field outside town.”
            Fenris nodded, taking a deep breath.  “Nice knowing you.”
            “Fuck you,” the half-elf spat, and turned and left.
 
            When Fenris, arrived, it was well past dark.  He assumed that he
was on time, but maybe he was early; he didn’t see Shaislyn.  The stars
glistened overhead like a thousand eyes, watching and judging him.
            I wasn’t the one who challenged him.  I don’t care care if he lives
or dies.
            But if he did kill Shaislyn, the half-breed was a mage, and had
undoubtedly done something in his life that would warrant death, he was more
than certain.  He had more than likely had a hand in Danarius’ last plan to
capture him, and for that, Shaislyn deserved to die.
            He was just an angry kid.  And doesn’t he have a good reason to
hate you?
            He remembered Seheron.  He remembered the mists, the feel of the
soil under his feet, the grass between his toes.  He remembered the way the air
had smelled like blood and viscera.  The blood on his hands, under his
fingernails, felt like it would never come out.
            He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  When Shaislyn got
here, he would apologize for what he had done that day.  It wouldn’t make it
better, but it was a start.  And he would ask him if he really wanted to do
this.  Like it or not, they were each other’s last living family, really.  Did
they really want to try to kill one another?
            The bird of prey plummeted out of the sky, silent.  Fenris barely
glimpsed it coming, and ducked down, out of the way.  Its talons raked over his
scalp, but it otherwise left him unharmed.  Blood ran down his hair, a trickle
of it dribbled down his face.  He spun, heart pounding.  Head wounds just bleed
a lot, he reminded himself.  Doesn’t mean it’s serious.
            “What in hell?” he wondered, watching the animal wheel away.  His
eyes fixed to the bird, he watched it turn back, watched it come back toward
him.  His eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he dove to the side as it neared.
 The bird was expecting it, and banked after him.  He raised his arms to
protect his face, eyes closed.  Its talons slashed against his armor, and the
bird let out an angry cry.  His eyes opened in time to see a flash of light,
and he rolled away just as quickly, bringing his sword to hand.  He blocked
against one slashing sword, and danced away from the other.
            Shaislyn.
           He was, briefly, annoyed; that was cheating, plain and simple.  As
he fought, parried, slashed, and dodged, he thought of every bird he had ever
seen, every dog and cat, every animal.  How many animals could he become?  Was
there a limit?  Magic was terrifying.
            “You destroyed her life!” the mage cried, coming at him again.
            “So did you,” Fenris countered, his argumentative side getting the
better of him, again.
            “I didn’t choose to be born,” he hissed.
            This wasn’t getting either of them anywhere, he thought with an
inward sigh.  “I’m sorry!” he cried.
            Shaislyn paused, the black sword he used primarily to attack
lowering slightly.  “For what?” he asked dubiously, sidestepping.  He wasn’t
looking at him, but Fenris knew he could, somehow, still see him.  Instead, the
mage’s head was turned, as if he were listening to him.
            Fenris stepped with him, countering the movement.  They slowly
stepped, slowly circled.  The dance had only just begun.  “For what happened in
Seheron,” he said, and meant every word.  “I’ve struggled with that every day
of my life since then.”
            Shaislyn darted forward.  He was fast, and seemed to know what
Fenris was going to do before he did it.  Fenris was taller than he was though,
had a much longer reach with his sword, nearly as fast as Shaislyn, and his
training had been much more formal and thorough.  Fighting the half-breed was
exhilarating; no single opponent had given him this much challenge since Master
Taggart and Mogren.  The lyrium bathed them both in its light, and he pressed
the attack, stepping back when Shaislyn gave ground.  They stopped, staring at
one another.  “You murdered them.  You betrayed them.”
            “Your mother betrayed me,” he said.  Though he always tried to tell
himself otherwise.  He always tried to tell himself that she had her reasons,
that she hadn’t truly betrayed him.  Lying to himself made it hurt less.
            Shaislyn’s eyes narrowed.  “At my behest,” he countered.
            Fenris suddenly understood what this was really about.  Shaislyn
was hurt because his plan had backfired in the worst possible way.  He was mad
at Fenris, even hated him, but Fenris was only half the problem.  “Shai…”
            The half-elf attacked again.  Each gave and lost ground.  This
needed to end.  Fenris brought the sword down, but the flat of it.  His nephew
wasn’t fast enough that time, and he fell to the ground, losing one of the
swords in the grass as he fell.  There was another flash of light, and the wolf
leaped toward him, all fangs and claws.  Fenris fell away from it, blocking
with his sword.  It hit the ground on all fours and spun toward him, snarling.
 It lunged again, and he hit it away with the flat of his sword, and struck out
with the pommel.  It wasn’t easy to defend; two-handed weapons were not meant
for defending.  The wolf, all the same, was stunned.  It gave a slight shake of
its head as if to cast off the lasting dizziness.  It started to snarl, as if
it might attack again.  The sword swung in a wide arc, knocking the animal back
with the blunt, flat side of the blade.  It didn’t cut him open, but it
obviously still hurt.  The animal yelped, backing away further.  Its ears
drooped.  Gone was the venom of before.  Its head lowered, the tail hanging
low.  The light encircled it again, and Shaislyn knelt, sensing defeat.  “Kill
me.  I know you want to,” he muttered, sheathing his remaining sword.
            “I don’t,” Fenris said quietly.  The other looked up, confused.
 “Shai, I’m sorry about Seheron.  Truly.”  He paused.  “And I’m sorry about
your mother--I didn’t know.”  He put his sword down, and knelt beside him so he
could look at him at eye level.  “I really didn’t know.”
            The half-elf did not move, or even look at him.  “It wouldn’t have
changed anything.”
            Fenris stared at him.  “Can you blame me?”
            They looked at each other.  “Yes,” he answered.  Then he looked
away, flinching.  “But I fought to not end up in slavery too, so I understand…
but that was your fault.”  He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly and
shook his head.  He looked back at him.  “You’re really sorry about Seheron?”
            “Yes.”
            “And my mother?  Are you sorry that she died miserable and in
slavery because of your choices?  Are you sorry that I worked my ass off trying
to buy her out of it, and failed?”
            Fenris flinched.  “I’m sorry anyone is in slavery--even Varania,”
he whispered.  He looked up.  “But you can’t blame me for that.”
            “I can and I do,” Shaislyn muttered.  His mouth twisted into a
frown, and he looked up.  “Come with me to Seheron.”
            Fenris had not been expecting this.  “What?”
            “Seheron.  Come with me,” he reiterated.  He cocked his head to the
side.  “I’ll show you where I buried my mother, next to my grandmother.”  He
paused.  “And I’ll show you where my grandfather died.”  He rose to his feet,
extending an empty hand out to Fenris.  The elf hesitated, and accepted.
 “Well?”
            “I won’t apologize for killing Danarius,” Fenris warned him.
The half-blood began to walk away, clearly expecting him to follow.  Fenris
stood still, unmoving, watching him and suspicious.  “I don’t expect you to.”
 He stooped, picking up his dropped sword.  He glanced at the blade and
sheathed it.  “I thought about killing him a few times myself…”  Shaislyn
looked back at him.  “But I found someone I hated more.”
Fenris hesitated, but his nephew had stopped walking, waiting for him to catch
up.  He walked beside him.  Their discomfort with one another showed; one or
even two more people could have walked between them.  Neither spoke for a long
time, and then the blind half-elf said, “So.  I’ve been hoarding money since
Danarius died, and now I have all this gold I don’t know what to do with.”
 Fenris chose not to comment.  “That being said, let’s go get pissed and plow
our way through the local brothel.”
The elf smiled.  “I like the way you think.”
Shaislyn laughed.  “Danarius hated how I’d go get shit-faced and go whoring.
 He had me arrested once--in a brothel.  It was very awkward.”
Fenris couldn’t help but laugh.  “What?”
Shaislyn noticed they were walking a little bit closer.  “Like I said, it was
awkward.”
“How hypocritical,” he commented.  “He used to get drunk--often--and go
whoring.”
He scoffed.  “Damned bastard.”  A sentiment Fenris shared.  “My goal is to not
be able to walk in the morning.”
“Aren’t we leaving for Seheron soon?”
“Seheron isn’t going anywhere, but I’ve noticed I have this awful disease--it’s
called ‘mortality’--Damned humans, right?--and I’m not really getting any
younger here.”
“Do you identify more with being an elf?” Fenris wondered.
“Don’t see why I wouldn’t.”
He looked at him.  “But you could pass as a human, so why don’t you?”
He scowled.  “You could about pass for a very short, hornless Qunari, so why
don’t you?” he countered.
            Fenris shoved him in the shoulder.  Shaislyn shoved him back, and
they caught themselves smiling.  Shaislyn was the first to look away.
***** Pilgrimage *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris and Shaislyn start the journey to Seheron.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Come morning, Shaislyn rolled out of bed.  His entire body was throbbing, he
smelled faintly of vomit, and his head was pounding so hard it was hard to cast
a spell, so he felt around on the floor until he found his underwear.  He put
them on, realized they were on backwards, and pulled them off again.  He slid
back into them and half-fell out of his room.  Fenris was awake in the den, and
it smelled like he had already requested breakfast from the innkeep.   Trailing
his fingers along the wall, he walked slowly, trying to remember where all the
furniture was.  His thigh bumped into a low table, and he skirted around it.
            “Do… you need a cane?” Fenris asked slowly.
            “It’d be nice,” Shaislyn commented.  “But I can figure it out.  I
was born blind; I’ve been doing this a long time.”  His hand touched the back
of a wooden chair, and he crawled into it heavily.  “I am way too hungover to
cast spells right now is all.”
            “I wasn’t expecting you awake this early.”
            “If you’re naked, I don’t care; I can’t see you.”
            Fenris laughed.  “Not quite naked, no.”
            Shaislyn laughed aloud.  “Oh, Maker, are we ever related.”  He
paused.  “How are you feeling?”
            “Better than you--you should eat something.”  Shaislyn heard a
plate being pushed toward him.  He sniffed.  He could smell ham, bread, and a
nutty cheese.
“Yes, Mother,”the mage said.   He found the plate with only momentary fumbling,
picking up a slice of bread before he found the cheese and ham.  Wrapping it
all up, he bit down on it, chewing thoughtfully.
            Fenris frowned in thought.  “Something has been bothering me.”
            “What’s that?”
            His frown deepened.  “You said yesterday that Agasius said he would
sell you Varania’s body for the amount you had, then you say that you buried
her.  Then, you said that you have all this hoarded gold…”
            Shaislyn nodded.  “All true.”  He bit off another chunk of his
makeshift sandwich.  “See, he did offer that.  And by ‘bury her’ I meant, I
buried a lock of her hair.  I realize it’s a poor substitute, but what else
could I do?  I’m not paying six hundred sovereigns for a rotting corpse.”
            Fenris’ eyes widened.  “Six hundred?  And that was only the
deposit?”  That was insane.  Fenris, as a slave, had not been worth twelve
hundred sovereigns, he didn’t think.  And he had, arguably, been the most
expensive slave in the Imperium.  That had never occurred to him before.
            He nodded.  “Another six hundred, and I could have bought her out
of slavery.  I told you Agasius is an asshole.”  There was a long pause, and
Shaislyn picked at his food.  “I’m incredibly hungover--do you know how to make
tea?”
“No.”
Shaislyn was incredulous.  “Why don’t you know how to make tea?”  He took
another bite, barely chewed, and swallowed.  “Weren’t you a slave or
something?”
Fenris rolled his eyes.  “I don’t know how I could possibly make that any more
clear.”
The other scoffed.  “What good is a slave who doesn’t know how to brew tea?
 Fuckin’ useless.  What did you even do?”  Fenris didn’t deign to respond to
that, and he wasn’t sure he was even supposed to.  The half-blood stuffed the
rest of his sandwich into his mouth and slid from the chair.  “Where’s my
pack?”
Fenris rose.  “I’ll get it.”
He scowled.  “Don’t you dare baby me--where is it?”
The elf frowned, instinctively wanting to argue.  He sighed, relenting.  He had
obviously survived this long being blind and hung over.  “By the door, to the
right of it.”
Shaislyn nodded, pointing with an uncanny accuracy.  “The door is over there,
right?”
He had no idea how he did that; he had been so drunk last night, there was no
way he remembered.  The truth was that Shaislyn could hear someone walking in
the hall, and he could feel a faint breeze from under the door.  “Yes.”
He nodded and trudged after it.  He felt around on the floor, poking with his
toes until he touched his pack.  He knelt in front of it, blindly sorting
through the contents until he picked up a small dented tin.  He stood up.  “Do
we have a kettle in here?”
“No.”
He made a face.  “Fine.  Water?”
Fenris helped him with that, and Shaislyn poured it into a small cooking pot he
had in his pack.  He placed it on top of the cold stove and opened his palm.
 The fire hovered but a moment over his open palm before he, very carefully,
sent it to circle the pot, both his palms on either side of it.  When it
started to boil, his hands clenched and it extinguished.
“Can’t cast, you said,” Fenris muttered.
“My sight spell takes all my mana,” he commented blandly.  “That doesn’t.”  He
picked up the pot, flinching slightly.  “Ow.  Burned myself.”
“Do you want help?”
Shaislyn shook his head, walking purposefully over to a pre-prepared pitcher,
because he couldn’t find a teapot.  He slowly poured the hot water into it.
 “If I want help, I’ll ask.”
Fenris sighed.  Shaislyn set the hot pan back on the stove, and sat back in his
chair, waiting for the tea to steep.
“Was it at least a good night?  I don’t remember, so I’m assuming I had a
decent time, but you tell me,” the half-elf said.
“I woke up in bed with two women--I’d say it wasn’t that bad.”
“I blacked out.”  He cocked his head to the side, listening.  “Did I do
anything horribly embarrassing?”
“You threw up on a man’s shoes on the way back.”
“In front of the girls?  Where are they anyway?”
“They left an hour ago.”
“I’m assuming I just passed out immediately when we got back?”
“We put you into bed.”
“Great.”  He poured his tea, very carefully because he didn’t have a strainer.
 Fenris watched him, fully expecting him to spill or for the cup to overflow,
but neither happened.  “Do you want any?”  He filled Fenris’ cup and set the
pitcher down.  He sipped at the tea.  “But we had a good time, yeah?”
“Yes.”
Shaislyn grinned.  “So.  Tonight, when I’m not feeling sick, I say we go out
drinking and gambling.”
Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Shaislyn’s grin grew wider, despite the hangover.  “How do you think I got all
this money?” he demanded.  “Not honestly.”  He leaned back in the chair, taking
another slice of cheese.  “Look, my amazing sight spell thing allows me to see
everything in a room, from every angle.  Super easy to see my opponent’s
cards.”
Fenris made a mental note to never play cards with him.  “Then why do I have to
be there?”
He leaned forward, the grin back on his face.  He looks like Danarius when he
smirks like that.  Yet, somehow, not like him; there was too much mischief in
his eyes, too much slouch to his shoulders and back.  “Are you familiar with
hustling?”
 
They left the night after last, Shaislyn’s gold replenished temporarily before
he paid to see a whore go down on a donkey.  Fenris caught wind of this from
another whore, and abandoned his drink at the bar.  He went out back to the
stable to see a crowd of gathered whores and patrons alike, alternately staring
in mute horror and fascination, and some of them drunkenly cheering her on.
 Shaislyn was laughing, a girl on his lap, and his hand down her blouse.
 Fenris plucked his wrist away from her bosom, and pushed her gently out of his
lap.
“You’ve had enough,” he informed him.
He pointed.  “Oh, Maker--look!  She’s gonna swallow it--Andraste’s tits, she’s
gonna do it!”
Fenris turned around, appalled that he was even looking.  He quickly looked
away, swallowing the impulse to gag.  He grabbed onto the young man’s arm and
hauled him roughly away.  Shaislyn complained the entire way, and when the
crowd let up a loud cry, he complained louder.  He glared at him all the way
back to the inn, until he passed out on the floor an hour later, finishing off
a bottle of spirits.
            Shaislyn said that they would board a ship in Rivain for Seheron,
and then asked him if he’d like to walk to Rivain.  Fenris thought he was
joking.  From what the elf could tell, at this point, he hadn’t been.
            Fenris had been on one of Anastas’ Free Marches trips, and so he
let his employer know what he was doing before he and Shaislyn headed north
towards Antiva.
            “We aren’t really going to walk all the way to Rivain, are we?”
            “Just to Antiva.  From there, I bet we can hop on board a cargo
ship or something.”
            “Legally?”
            Shaislyn snorted.  “If I was alone, no.  Since nothing on this
earth will make you particularly good at hiding, I suppose we must.”
            Fenris was quiet a moment.  “Shaislyn, I would like to ask you
something.  Personal.”
            “Oh, goody,” the other muttered.  “You can ask, I suppose.  Don’t
expect an answer.”
            Fenris glanced at him.  “You can become any animal?”
            He shrugged.  “To learn a form is like learning a soul.  It’s not
easy--I’m good at it, but it’s not easy.”
            “Of course.  And… about that incident with the donkey…”
            Shaislyn kind of twitched, making a face as if he had bitten
something sour.  “If this conversation is going where I think it’s going, the
answer is ‘no’ and if you finish asking this particular question, I am going to
punch you in the nuts--when you least expect it.”
            The barest hint of a smile danced about Fenris’ lips.  “Of course,
Shaislyn,” he said indulgently.
            “Oh, you damn darkspawn shit.”  Fenris thought it prudent to say
nothing and only glance at the half-blood loftily.  The other made a face.
 “You have this whole idea in your head, don’t you?  You nasty motherfucker.”
            “You’re the one who paid to see a whore blow a donkey, not me.”
            “Touché.”
            The days passed on the road.  Some travelers liked to harass Fenris
when he was alone, just because he was an elf, he assumed.  Humans did things
like that, and always had.  He imagined they always would.  Shaislyn, though,
was the one to butt in, to make the fight about him instead.  He would bluntly
throw it in a person’s face that he was half-elven, paraded that he was a mage,
and if someone still continued to dare to ridicule him in any way, well--Fenris
had broken up more than one fight, and it had only been three days.
            “I don’t know how you are still alive,” Fenris commented dryly,
watching Shaislyn nurse a black eye.  A farmer had hit him when Shaislyn had
antagonized him.  He hadn’t done it without reason, but everything he did was
too much.  Fenris had been content to ignore the racist jibe, but Shaislyn
hadn’t been.  The half-blood had nearly drawn steel, but Fenris had hauled him
bodily away before that had happened.  “Didn’t your sword master teach you when
to use your swords?  He was unarmed--just a farmer.”
            The other smoldered.  “He called me a half-bred mongrel,” he said
darkly.
            Fenris stared at him morosely.  “Because you told him to gargle a
bottle of horse piss.”
            “He insulted you!”
            The elf sighed deeply.  “So let me handle it; it was directed to me
anyway.”  He frowned.  “Well.  You did learn something more than how to fight,
didn’t you?”
            “You mean fighting etiquette?  No, I didn’t pay much attention to
that.”
            His frown deepened.  “You do not ever attack someone unarmed with
naked steel, Shai.  Never.”  He considered.  “There are extenuating
circumstances, of course, but there’s no sense in drawing blood over that.”
            The half-breed started to argue, lost interest in the argument, and
walked past him.  They walked in silence for a long while.  Shaislyn looked up,
watching a hawk high above them soar.
            “They say a circling hawk at the beginning of a journey is a bad
omen,” he commented.
            “I don’t believe in omens,” Fenris told him.  “And anyway, it’s
been almost a week now.”
            Shaislyn looked back at him.  “It is stupid, isn’t it.”  He was
quiet for a while, watching the hawk until it wheeled away.  “Walking is
overrated,” he decided.
            “We could always hop onboard a caravan, I suppose.”
            He made a face.  “How about you just carry me?”
            “To Antiva?”
            “I’ll just turn into a squirrel or something and ride on your
shoulder.”
            The other rolled his eyes.  “Could you turn into a horse, and I
could ride you?”
            “Sure--we’ll switch.  But I don’t have a saddle.”
            He blinked.  He hadn’t meant that seriously, but he was awfully
tired of walking.  “I can manage.”
            Shaislyn shrugged.  “All right, but I get to go first.”  Before
Fenris could object, there was a flash of light, and a sparrow landed on his
shoulder.  He scowled at it, and it chirped contentedly.  He hadn’t asked him
if he could even understand if he spoke.
            “Shaislyn?” Fenris asked.  The bird looked toward him.  “Can you
understand me?”
            The bird gave no indication that he understood.  Maybe he couldn’t.
 That seemed so strange to Fenris.  How could someone give up their body and
their language?  How much of the mage’s consciousness was forfeit when he used
this spell?
            He frowned in thought.  Interesting to consider.  He would have to
ask him when he got the chance.  He wondered how often birds shat.
            Halfway through the day, the sparrow flew off of his shoulder, and
landed on the dirt near him.  A flash of light revealed Shaislyn.  He
stretched.  “If you don’t mind, I can go catch us dinner.”
            When they set out, they had some travel provisions, but they were
both quickly tired of that.  Fenris didn’t miss that Shaislyn had said “catch”
not “hunt” though.
            “How many forms do you have?”
            The half-breed walked beside him.  “Ah…”  He hesitated.  “Eleven.
 Mostly birds.”
            “Can you understand what people say when you’re an animal?”
            He shook his head.  “No--well.”  He made a face.  “It depends on
the animal.  When I’m a dog or a wolf, I seem to understand a bit more--mostly
because I had a lot of practice at it.  My raven understands a fair amount--or
more accurately, I hear the words better and I can puzzle through what they
mean, but it’s hard.  My horse knows a few words, but that’s the best I can
do.”  He shrugged.  “It’s weird.”
            “If I should need to communicate with you…”
            He glanced sidelong at him.  “I’ll sense danger long before you do
in most of my forms.”  He stretched.  “This is why I love being a mage.”  He
winked at him broadly, and another flash of light enveloped him.  The eagle
beat furiously in the air for a moment, heaving its great wings into the air.
 When it was above the trees, in the wind, it soared.
            It was an hour before sunset when he saw him again.  Fenris had
ventured off the path to make camp.  He hated doing these sorts of tasks.  He
was glad he knew how, but it was the least enjoyable thing he could think of to
do.  He had no idea how the Dalish could enjoy this sort of thing--tromping
about in the dirt, camping, and other such things.  He didn’t mind the
traveling so much; Shaislyn stayed in inns whenever possible and Fenris was
much happier with a roof over his head and a floor under his feet, a proper
bath, and a real meal.  None of those things could be found in constant
camping.  He had, once, considered seriously joining the Dalish when he had
been running from Danarius.  It would have made everything so easy; the Dalish
were all elves and he would easily fit in, for one.  For two, they would be
welcoming, and they already moved constantly and would be happy to keep him
well out of Danarius’ reach.  But it had meant running about in the dirt and
the rain--things he found to be detestable.  Isabela said that the Dalish had a
permanent settlement in Rivain which would have been more preferable, but he
had never been there.  He supposed it was all just as well.  Overall, it had
turned out better than he had ever thought possible.
He was still working on building a fire when a rabbit thudded to the ground
next to him.  He jumped, startled, and stilled when he saw the eagle swoop low,
wings fanned.  It landed nimbly on the ground, folding its wings.  Shaislyn
knelt beside the rabbit carcass, bringing a hunting knife to hand.
            “Ever skinned a rabbit?” he asked conversationally.
            “No,” he admitted.  He traveled alone as rarely as he could manage,
and if he had to, he made sure to have provisions.  Shaislyn couldn’t seem to
be bothered with carrying enough provisions.  He supposed, why bother when he
could transform into an animal and eat it raw.  That was just so disgusting.
            The mage cast a hand out, and the dry tinder lit.  His hand
dropped, and he went back to the rabbit.  “Do we have a spit or something?”
            “I’ll work on it.”
            “Thanks.”
            The half-blood skinned and gutted the rabbit while Fenris made a
functional spit.  While it was cooking, Shaislyn’s wolf prowled around the
area, like he did every night, sniffing and hunting out anything that might be
dangerous.  A few nights ago, Shaislyn had came yelping and running back to
camp with a bloodied nose.  The mage had slunk behind Fenris’ legs, head low
and whining before the elf had seen the badger.  Fenris swore at the stupid
wolf, a pulse of the lyrium sent the badger scurrying back the way it had came.
 He had glared at the half-elf until his nephew had yelped plaintively again,
then trotted off.  
The half-elf had also commented that he scent-marked the area and it would keep
other wolves away, or should.  He also slept as a wolf, saying it was warmer
and more comfortable that way.  Fenris suspected, correctly, that he just
didn’t like carrying a bedroll.
            “You know, for an escaped slave who couldn’t read for half his
life, you’re not completely stupid,” Shaislyn commented, walking out of the
forest in the only form he had that could talk.  
            Fenris stared at him flatly without commenting.
            The other prattled on, either oblivious or willfully ignoring him,
“You know, when I was a kid, before you slaughtered a whole bunch of people for
no good reason, I used to really look up to you.  I thought…  I wanted to be at
least half as good as you are at swordplay but without the backstabbing, and I
thought you were really inspiring.”
            Fenris blinked in surprise.  Somewhere in that long string of
insults and bitterness, Shaislyn had told him he had looked up to him.  It was…
odd for him to hear someone else say that they thought that.  Aveline had
wanted him to teach people swordsmanship.  He didn’t think he would ever make a
decent teacher, even if humans would ever want to listen to an elf.  But,
again, that was Aveline, with her idealistic worldviews, always wanting to do
the moral “right” thing even in the face of opposition.  He didn’t think
Aveline really saw race the way other people did; she saw a person’s moral
standing.  He missed Aveline sometimes.  He had lost contact with her shortly
after Hawke’s letters stopped coming.  He wasn’t worried about either of them,
per se; life happens and letters were easy to lose when they traveled a long
way.  And perhaps Hawke and Anders had fled in the face of Sebastian’s army—who
knew?  “Really?”
            Shaislyn rolled his nearly white eyes.  “That’s what I said.”
            “Then why are you a backstabbing little shithead?”
            The other’s jaw set for a moment, and he swung at him.  Fenris
caught his wrist, but couldn’t dodge the second blow in time.  His fist
connected with his upper arm, at a pressure point he didn’t think was an
accidental blow.  He flinched, and there was a brief struggle before Fenris
immobilized his nephew and both of them were laughing.  Fenris let him go, and
he slunk away.
            “I won’t be complimenting you any more.”
            The elf suppressed the urge to laugh, watching Shaislyn sulk.  “You
must have really hated me,” Fenris commented.
            Shaislyn looked back at him.  “Still do.  But…”  He hesitated.
 “You’re all right.  As a person.”  He sat down across from him, the fire
between them.  “Why’d you do it?”  He looked hurt.  “Why’d you kill them?”
            Fenris looked back at him.  He didn’t know how to even begin
explaining it to him.  “Shai, you used to be a slave.”
            He stared back at him.  They were both silent a very long time.  “I
don’t understand,” he said flatly.  “I don’t understand how you can kill
someone who cared for you.”
            The elf made a face, searching for the right words.  “Danarius
ordered me to.”
            He saw the other struggle with the concept, watched him almost
breach understanding, then saw it fail.  “It’s still vile.”
            Fenris glanced around their surroundings, and his eyes settled on
the fire.  “A fire, by itself, isn’t evil.  A fire can provide warmth and
light, but if someone knocks over a candle, or maybe someone purposefully sets
fire to a house, it’s easy to blame the fire rather than the one who controlled
it.”
            The other was quiet as he thought about what he had said.  “You are
a sentient, self-aware, intelligent being, responsible for your own actions.
 You make your own decisions, even if they are to follow orders.”
            He sighed.  “Not at the time,” he whispered.  “It’s taken me years
to overcome that, Shaislyn.  Years.”
            He saw him roll his eyes, but he didn’t respond.  They spent the
rest of the evening in relative silence.  Fenris took the first watch, letting
Shaislyn sleep.  Maybe he could find that field again, in Seheron.  Maybe he
could stand on the blood-stained earth and his heart could break for the lives
he had ended that early autumn day.  Maybe he could pray for their souls, and
lay on the grass, and weep for his sins and wish with everything he was that he
could take it back.  Maybe if the Maker were good, he could take it back.
            If he could go back to that day, knowing everything he did now,
Danarius would have died instead.  And he would have still been in Seheron
today.  He may have even been happy.
            I never would have met Hawke.
            He thought about that.  He never would have found out who Shaislyn
was.  He never would have known Varania existed or was his sister.  And was any
of that so bad?
            Hawke…
            A glimpse of love and happiness in a lifetime of misery made him
reluctant for that wish.  He wasn’t so sure any more.  It was wrong to think
that so many people’s deaths was worth a glimmer of joy, but he loved Hawke.
 It was selfish, but he loved Hawke.
Chapter End Notes
     Yes, Shaislyn did, in fact, buy a donkey a prostitute.
***** Voyage *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris travels with Shaislyn.
            It was strange riding bareback with no reins, but he guessed reins
were only for controlling a horse, and Shaislyn knew where he was going.  A
saddle would have still been nice though.  He very nearly opted out and chose
to walk, but he just hated that his feet were dirty, and he was tired of
walking besides.
            A mercenary riding a bay gelding came upon him from a crossroad.
 She looked at him oddly.  “How do you control it with no reins?”
            “I don’t need to,” he responded bluntly.  The horse snorted, ears
twitching.  The gelding stepped away from Shaislyn, and the horse seemed to
regard the mage as oddly as the mercenary regarded Fenris.
            The mercenary shrugged, and they walked beside each other in
silence for a long while, until Shaislyn apparently had enough of it.  He saw
the way his head lowered, the ears flicking back.  Under his legs, he felt the
muscles tense, and his thighs dug in.  His fingers gripped its mane, and the
horse raced down the road.
            It was unlike riding a real horse; Shaislyn knew what riding was
like.  He was smarter than a horse.  If he came across a part in the path
strewn with gravel, he would stop and look at it before he moved on, picking
his way gingerly through the obstacle.  If he came to water, he would do the
same.  It eliminated the need to dismount.
            A fair distance away, the horse slowed to a walk.  He wondered what
that had been about.  Around noon, Shaislyn suddenly stopped, legs locked, and
tossed his head.  When Fenris had no idea what he was trying to say, the other
rose on his back legs, slightly.  Fenris hopped off of him.
            Shaislyn stretched.  “Good to know you can ride--I was worried I
would lose you for a second.”
“Not that easily.”
He raised an eyebrow, smirking.  “Don’t inspire me to try.”
“Why did you take off like that?” Fenris had to ask.
“The horse knew something was wrong with me--and I thought the situation might
be awkward for you as it was.”  True enough,  Fenris supposed.  “So, there’s a
shortcut up ahead—saw it yesterday when I was flying, and it leads pretty much
directly to the next village.  What do you think?”
“How long by the road?”
“We will probably have to camp again.”
Fenris glanced apprehensively at the sky.  The clouds covered the sky
completely, and were heavy and gray with water.  He expected rain at any
moment.  “Lead on.”  They walked on the road for a time, and two hours before
sundown, they moved onto a more slender trail.  It was slower going on the
trail, and time seemed to slip away quickly.
            It was darker under the canopy of leaves, the trees casting long
shadows.  To a human’s eyes, it may have been too dark to see, but the lyrium
gave off light to see where he was putting his feet, and he could see the path
ahead of him well enough.  Shaislyn walked in front of him on the deer trail,
too narrow for a horse.  They were mostly quiet, the half-elf occasionally
calling out any peculiarity in the trail.  He supposed the vision spell was not
very much affected by light.
            “There’s a river up ahead, but there should be a footbridge,”
Shaislyn commented.  Fenris snorted, but otherwise did not reply.  The trees
parted just enough to reveal the river and a rocky shore along it.  At first,
Fenris was irritated, as the path was not there, then he saw the narrow
footbridge.  The river was swollen with rainwater, and the water looked to be
just beginning to flood the bridge.
            Fenris stared at Shaislyn.  “You first, mage.”
            The half-elf let out a noisy sigh, and trudged up to the bridge.
 “I’m sure it’s fine.”  There was no guardrail, just a narrow planking.  “It’s
pretty deep, though, and the current looks bad.”
            Fenris sighed deeply, and watched the half-elf cross.  Shaislyn
slipped and nearly fell towards the middle, where a puddle was forming, but was
otherwise fine even on the slick boards.  Of course, he had shoes.
            Shaislyn turned and waited on the other side.  Fenris started
cross.  It was not as sturdy as it appeared, and Fenris, particularly with his
sword, weighed more than Shaislyn did.
            He walked slowly across, testing each step.  The boards creaked,
and the water rushed by under his feet, trickling over his toes.  The rain
continued to pour.  He couldn’t wait to be out of it.
            “One more mile,” Shaislyn promised him.  “Then we can get out of
this rain.”
            “That will be welcome,” Fenris commented dryly.  The puddle was too
wide to step over.  His options would be to take one small step into it, and
try to step the rest of the way over, or step in the center of it.  Hopping
over it was not an option with the rain, and trying to skirt around it even
more dangerous.  He groaned and went with the first option, standing on the
balls of his feet, and hating Shaislyn more and more by the minute.
            He stepped on the other side, carefully putting down his weight.
 He heard a cracking noise, and jumped back instinctively, too quickly.  He
should have known better.
            He could hear Mogren in his memory, chiding him about how he needed
to learn to step on wet surfaces, in puddles, in mud.  Her scolding him when he
slipped and fell on greased metal of all things.  He should have known better,
and as soon as he did it, he knew what would happen, and tried to brace for it,
to correct the mistake.  If the bridge had not been so old, when he corrected
his misstep, he would not have fallen.  Instead, the board splintered and
nearly gave way.  He heard Shaislyn cry out, then he slipped.
            He fell forward, plunging into the icy water.  His fingers grasped
the bridge for the barest moments before the current pulled him forward.  His
head smacked against the underside of the bridge, and he lost his grip on it
completely.  His skull pounded, and the logical part of his brain considered
the possibility of a concussion or a cracked skull.
            The current threw him against the bridge again, buffeting him in
it.  He couldn’t breathe. His lungs were on fire, and it was difficult to think
against the pain in his head.
            He tumbled and rolled in the current, trying to figure out which
way was up.  He couldn’t see anything and the water was dark as pitch.  The
lyrium did nothing but illuminate how dark the water was.
            He had always thought drowning had sounded so pleasant.
            He had always thought if he were going to end his life, it would be
by drowning.
            It wasn’t pleasant.  It was terrifying.
            The water clutched all around him, pressing against him, not warm
and inviting but cold and harsh, pinning him under it, striking him against
every rock.  For an instant, he touched the bottom of the river, dragged along
the rocks at its bed, before he rolled and spiraled away from it, and again
lost his sense of direction.  He struggled, trying to figure out which way was
the surface.  His back struck hard against a stone and his mouth opened in a
mock cry, filling with water.  He swallowed a lungful of it, and coughed.  His
lungs felt like they were on fire.  The lyrium blazed, and still he was
drowning.  He felt like he was on fire, but he was drowning.
            He couldn’t breathe.  Everything felt… dim.  He realized he was
about to faint.  Against the burning in his chest, against the blazing pain of
the lyrium and the pounding in his head, fainting did not sound so bad.  He
felt himself going limp, rushing towards the embrace of unconsciousness that
would mean a release from pain.  A release from suffering and torment and all
the pains of living.
            They said you went to the Maker’s side when you died.  That didn’t
sound so bad.  He wouldn’t be in pain there would he?  And if it were only the
Void for him, which he had always thought as being more likely, that wasn’t so
bad either.
            Being alive hurt so much.  Every whisper of the wind, every touch,
every time his clothing rubbed against the lyrium, it hurt.  He could never get
it off of him, and it hurt.  Death didn’t seem to hurt as much.  Maybe in death
the lyrium would finally free his soul.  Maybe in death, magic would finally
release him.  Living hurt so much.  His eyes closed.  Dying wasn’t that hard.
 His thoughts scrambled.  It was hard to think, hard to reason.  Hard to do…
anything.  It was so cold.
            Maybe death wasn’t cold either.  He was beginning to feel numb, and
the cold was beginning to fade.  He was beginning to lose consciousness, he
recognized with a dim understanding.  It had once been so important that he
stay awake, that he stay…
            His eyes opened.  Alive.  I don’t want to die.
           It was so hard to stay conscious.  He couldn’t fight to reach a
surface he couldn’t see.  Every second to stay awake was a battle.  His
thoughts tumbled by his head.  Think of something.  Stay awake.  Stay awake!
 He thought about Hawke, and felt himself relax, and let go.
            No, don’t!he wanted to scream at himself.  If you black out, you
die!
           What would keep him awake?  Danarius.  Thoughts of how much I hate
him, feared him, resented him, has kept me awake many a night.  He thought of
how his blood had felt on his hands.  He thought about what it had been like to
look into that man’s eyes as fear had finally masked his face, as the damned
magister had finally realized he could no longer control his runaway slave.
 And that had been the moment, the real moment, Fenris had been free.  Free to
let his hate go, free to let his life choices not be dictated by a need to run
and build his life the way he wanted it to be.
            He wasn’t ready to die yet.  He couldn’t die yet.  Not yet!
           Something grabbed onto him.  His fogged mind couldn’t tell what it
was.  Had he gotten stuck on something?  Trapped, and now he was pinned here
and he was going to die?  Drowning, just the way he had always thought…
            He had been wrong.
            Drowning was not pleasant.
            Dying, compared to living, was relatively easy, but it was not
pleasant.
            The thing pulled him--under?  Deeper?  He couldn’t tell.  What was
going on?  What was…?  Everything felt so faint.
            His head came over the water, and he gasped, coughing water out of
his mouth.  He choked, and gagged, feeling himself going weak.  He still might
faint.
            He coughed, his lungs heaving to expel the water.
            Something was pulling him again.  He coughed up water, trying
desperately to breathe, to stay awake.
            Something--someone--pulled him into shallower water, dragging him
onto the shore.  He heard the swearing, in Tevene tinged with a Seheron accent.
 “Shai?” he breathed, and coughed up another mouthful of water.
            His nephew helped him roll over to keep coughing water onto the
ground, and waited.
            Fenris swiped his mouth--a futile effort, but habitual.  He raked
his fingers through his hair, and checked to make sure his sword was still
there, not relaxing until he felt the hilt in his hand.  He sagged, letting
himself drop to the ground.  His eyes slid closed.  The rain continued to pour.
            Shaislyn knelt, checking the back of his head.  “We need to find
you a mage--a real mage who can heal, not me.  Or a potion.  Can you walk?”
            Fenris coughed again, looking at his nephew.  The half-elf looked
concerned, and dripping wet.  “Yes.”  He paused.  “Thank you.”
            Shaislyn sighed, then forced a smile.  “You really scared me, you
know.  If it weren’t for the lyrium, I never would have found you.”
            “I’ll try not to do it again.”
            When Fenris climbed to his feet, he noticed he was shaking, and
everything still felt fuzzy.  Shaislyn grabbed onto him before he fell, and
Fenris ultimately had to sling his arm over the shorter half-elf’s shoulders,
and he helped support him.  Shaislyn chattered the whole way there, mostly
about nothing.  He described the rain in vivid detail, provided commentary on
the plantlife, and gave epic speeches about any animal they happened by, all
the while forcing Fenris to not only pay attention to his ramblings, but also
to respond to them.
            “You hit your head,” Shaislyn said when Fenris had lost his
patience and told him to shut up.  “It’s bleeding.  And with head injuries,
it’s hard to tell the extent of it.  I think, if you can figure out what I’m
saying and respond, it can’t be that bad.”
            The elf felt like that made sense, and some of his irritation
ebbed.  He couldn’t wait for a warm fire, a bath, hot food…  Just to get out of
these wet clothes would be a blessing.  A mile was not far, but dripping wet
and shaking, his head spinning, it felt like half a continent away.
“You are a terrible mage,” Fenris informed him.
            Shaislyn laughed.  “If I must be a mage, I should at least know
some magic--is that what you mean?”
            “Precisely.”
            “I know, I think, four spells,” Shaislyn said with a hint of pride-
-as if his undereducation were a good thing.  “I wish I knew an ice spell--that
would improve most of the alcohol I drink.”
            “Shaislyn, you would drink rat piss if it were mixed with whiskey.”
            “And likely have,” he agreed cheerfully.
            The pair were cheered by the sight of the village, and marched down
the streets to a building likely to be an inn.  They were correct, and Shaislyn
kicked the door open, and the relief from the rain and the warmth of the room
was immediate.  The innkeep, a portly woman with a consistent scowl, doddered
over to them.  She had a general air of disapproval about her.
            “Close that door!” she snapped.  Shaislyn made a face, but let go
of Fenris to shut the door.  Fenris shook his head a little.  He still felt
nauseated.  She folded her arms under ample breasts.  She took one look at
Fenris and said, “He’ll need a healer.  I’ll fetch her.”  She turned and barked
a name, “Mattie!”  A young girl jumped across the hall and dashed forward.  She
had the same natural scowl as the innkeep--obviously a daughter.  “Go fetch
Lluvia--now go.”  Mattie dashed off again.  The innkeep glanced back at them.
 “What’ll it be?”
            Shaislyn spoke with her briefly, and she handed him a key.  The
pair trudged off to their room.  “Innkeep said she would get the healer over
here.  You sit down.  I’ll find some towels.”
            There was a knock at the door and Shaislyn opened it.  A gangly
youth with a pockmarked face trudged in carrying firewood.  “Mother said you
might need this.”
            “We appreciate it,” Shaislyn blathered on.  He glanced at Fenris.
 “And towels?”
            “Go talk to my Mum.”
            The half-elf nodded and trotted off.  Fenris stood silent, trying
not to shiver and failing, the water dripping off of him in a puddle.  The boy
neatly stacked the tinder and got a fire going.  Fenris thanked him, and the
boy muttered some comment about how “his kind should learn to wear shoes”
before he left.
            Shoes were deathly uncomfortable--restraining and too hot, sweaty
in the best of times.  Still, with his toes frozen and caked in mud, it didn’t
sound half-bad.
            He stood in front of the fire, shaking his head a little.  He
finally removed his sword and armor, and when Shaislyn got back carrying a
large stack of towels, he first dried off his sword before himself.
            The half-elf scoffed.  “You could catch the flu doing that,” he
commented, unbuckling his swords and setting them down on the small table.
            Fenris looked up at him, water dripping down his hair.  “The metal
could rust.”  He paused, and frowned a little.  “I’ve only ever been sick once
that I can remember.”
            Shaislyn cocked his head to one side.  “Truly?”  He sat down,
unlacing his boots with frozen fingers.
            Fenris frowned.  It had never really occurred to him before, but…
the only time he could remember ever having been sick, he had been knee-deep in
snow and practically starving.  Also, discounting when he had been shot in the
chest--that wasn’t so much illness as near-fatal though.  “Yes, only once.”
            Shaislyn kicked off his boots and pulled off his soaked socks.
 “That’s… an interesting development.  You think because of the lyrium?”
            “That might be,” he said quietly.  The ancient elves never got sick
before their contact with humans.  He shuddered at the thought.  Being immortal
was more terrifying than dying.  Watching a child grow up, grow old, and die
while he remained fixed in place was frightening.  Knowing everyone he knew
would die long before he did was even worse.  At least I’m aging.
            They were both quiet while they peeled themselves out of their wet
clothes.  They dried off first, and Shaislyn commented that Fenris’ head wound
seemed to have stopped bleeding.  They rang out their clothes in a bucket,
dumped the bucket, and continued.  By the time they had hung up the assortment
of leathers near the fire to dry on various furniture, there was a knock at the
door.  Fenris sighed, knowing what this was about.  He wrapped himself in a
towel and opened the door to be presented with a small human woman.  She wasn’t
particularly chatty, and only bade him sit down while she had a look at him,
her back distinctly to the half-elf, and any time she began to turn in his
direction, promptly jumped and would look away.  She stared at the lyrium
markings, but tried not to while she looked at the wound.  She moved around
Fenris to stare at his eyes, asked him to look around the room, and follow her
moving finger with his eyes.  Satisfied, she moved on to the actual healing
process.
            “You’ll need to stay awake, at least the night.  Things like this
can change as time passes.  I can heal it, but… well, you never know,” she
said, haltingly as if the King’s Speech were not her first language.  She held
a thick Antivan accent.
            “Was your name Lluvia?” Shaislyn inquired as she worked.  He was
pulling all the things that had gotten wet out of their packs so they could
dry--which was everything.  Shaislyn had pulled off his pack when he went after
Fenris in the river, but he had had the misfortune of slinging it into a
puddle.
            She looked up.  “Yes,” she answered, quickly looking back down, her
face red.  Shaislyn still had not put on a towel.
“Shaislyn,” Fenris growled.
“What?”
“For propriety’s sake…”
The boy frowned.  “I’m sure she’s seen a naked man before.”
Fenris theorized that, because Shaislyn had no idea what real vision was like
for a person, he may not realize that people looked at things accidentally.  Or
his nephew really was this ignorant of social norms.  Most likely, it was a
combination of these things.  “This isn’t up for debate.” 
He grumbled and swiped a mostly dry towel off the floor.  Wrapping it loosely
around his waist, he resumed the task of decorating the room with wet items.
 He cocked his head to one side as he neatly laid out the travel food,
inspecting what was salvageable.  “Always been an apostate?”
“Not always.”
Both the mages fell silent at that.  Lluvia left quickly after she was paid.
 Fenris glanced back at Shaislyn.  “So.  You willing to stay up all night and
make sure I don’t fall asleep?”
The half-elf groaned.  “Aw, hell.  Damn you and your head injury--fine.”  They
went to the bath house first, and the hot water was a very welcome thing, even
if the communal bathhouse was strange to Fenris.  In smaller communities, a
communal bathing house was often just easier.  This one was for the inn only,
and it was empty at this time of night.  There were public bathhouses in the
Imperium, but Fenris had certainly never been in one, even since working for
Anastas.
“I can’t remember the last time I took a bath,” Shaislyn commented.
Fenris glanced at him, making a face.  “You should really bathe more often.”
“As often as you do?” the other inquired.  “At every chance I get?”
            “I like the feeling of the hot water,” he said with a shrug.  He
leaned back in the water.  “And the lyrium is… irritating when it’s covered in
dirt.”  It was just one more thing constantly touching it, and that part he
could at least do something about.  “I took the liberty of sending our things
to be washed by the way.”
            “You like spending my money, don’t you.”
            Fenris frowned at Shaislyn, his brow furrowing in judgment.  “Have
you ever washed your clothes, Shai?”
The mage shrugged, dismissing the issue entirely.  “You’re not supposed to wash
pants until they gain sentience and try to escape,” he said matter-of-factly.
The elf was unimpressed by this complete lack of reasoning.  Fenris had no idea
how the Circle tolerated Shaislyn’s poor hygiene.  Probably why they didn’t
mind him being elsewhere.  Shaislyn did say that they often sent him running
errands.  “Right…”
Shaislyn continued, “Then, you have to catch them, then drown them in soapy
water, then beat them thoroughly.  Then, you drown them again in not-soapy
water, then beat them again--to improve morale.  After that, you string them up
on a line to reflect on their actions.”
Fenris blinked.  “Strangely… accurate.”
“Right?”  Shaislyn sighed.  “What are we going to do all night?  It’s not like
you can drink.”
“Is that all you ever do?”
“Yes.”  He blinked.  “And it’s pouring, so…  Well, food is next.  For sure.
 And then…”  His voice trailed off.
“We could always talk to each other.”
“That would be pretty novel, wouldn’t it?”  They shared a small chuckle.
Still wrapped in towels because all their clothing was at the laundry, they
stole back into their room, sitting in front of the fire as their hair dried.
 Shaislyn had finally taken the time shave his face in the bath house, and
because he was careless, was bleeding from his neck.  Fenris watched the blood,
as the mage held a small cloth to it until it stopped.  Not once did it smoke
and evaporate, but he always half-expected it to.  How could he not?  The half-
blood cast a particular spell constantly.  He lived every day of his life with
his sight spell, or his shapeshifting spell.  He was almost never not using
magic.
“You keep staring at me.”
“Just watching for signs of demons,” Fenris said pleasantly.
Shaislyn let out a noisy sigh.  “That’s a conscious thing.  I can’t cut myself
shaving or something, and be like ‘Oo, instant blood magic!’  That would be
really unfair for women.”
Fenris blinked, then made a face as he understood what he meant.  “Mages too
easily succumb to blood magic as it is,” he muttered, half in agreement with
Shaislyn’s statement.
Shaislyn frowned.  “Actually, I agree with you on that.  And they too easily
can become abominations.”
Fenris had never, not once, heard a mage agree with him--about much of
anything.  Hawke strayed the fence with his feelings about it, and the pair
rarely, if ever, spoke about it to one another.  It had kept things peaceable
even if Fenris understood that Hawke’s opinions were somewhat compromised by
Anders.  “Why do you agree?”
Shaislyn stared at him.  “I live in Minrathous.  How can I not agree?”
The elf frowned.  “I was interested in your reasons for doing so.”
The other nodded.  “Oh.”  He paused.  “Well.  I’ve always been the master of my
own magic.  Always.  I have never, not once, not been at peace with it.  But so
manymages hate their gift, or try to force it to their will instead of letting
it manifest into something they are actually good at.  They want to be like
their peers, but maybe that isn’t their talent, but they will never know
because that’s all they try to do.  Or maybe they just want their magic to go
away because they keep trying to do the things others can do and they have
never been good at it.  I mean, if your hands are shaky, don’t try to learn the
harp.”
Fenris was pleasantly surprised.  “You think the Circles are wrong, though, all
the same?”
“Yes and no.  Many mages have mage relatives, but a lot don’t.  And, say, a
child discovers they are a mage.  They need someone to teach them magic.  It’s
almost impossible to find someone reputable to teach you when you are an
apostate.  I was lucky.  So in that, the Circles are--were--important.  For
everyone.  Cutting contact with the mage’s families, I think, is entirely too
extreme.  That was something that caused more problems than it ended.”
Fenris frowned.  “You can’t just train them and then release them into the
world.”
“I don’t see why not.  They need the teaching, but they don’t need a cage.
 Caging someone and expecting them to not act like an animal is an exercise in
futility.  You, of all people, should agree with that concept.”
“So there would be no one watching them to strike them down when the
maleficarum summon demons and murder people?”
Shaislyn frowned.  “You know, I don’t understand maleficarum either, Fenris,
and I’m a mage.  Demons should not be that difficult to say ‘no’ to.  They
can’t really be controlled or even relied on.  And they should really learn
that during the Harrowing.  Just ignore them--it really isn’t that difficult to
say ‘no’, so it makes me angry that they don’t.  Or maybe I’m just too stubborn
for it, I don’t know  But either way, the end result is blood magic, to try to
make up for what they can’t do otherwise.”  He paused, and made a face.  “Mages
shouldn’t be pushed to all achieve the same thing--it’s stupid.”
Fenris was bemused.  “So you believe they are driven to it.”  Anders had said
the same thing, he remembered, and look how that had turned out.
“No.  The ultimate decision is with themselves.  They are often pushed in that
direction, but, well--you can push a horse in a direction, but that doesn’t
mean it will go that way.”
None of Shaislyn’s philosophies made sense.  “You say they are driven that way,
then you say it’s their decision.  Your logic is circular at best.”
“We, as people, allow ourselves to be driven and influenced by others.  Don’t
we?”
            “I’d drink to that, if I could drink right now.”  He paused.  “But
mages should be caged, to protect others if nothing else.”
“Why?  If you cage someone all their lives, they are never going to develop
empathy and compassion for other people; they just grow disdainful of everyone
around them.  It’s empathy and compassion that keeps a person from doing harm
to others.”
Fenris had often thought the same thing.  Danarius had lacked both empathy and
compassion.  So had Hadriana.  So had he.  He had tortured that boy, and he had
been guilty enough…  If Fenris had only asked him, he probably would have told
him everything and he never would have had to hurt him.  Fenris felt empathy
and compassion, but he had felt those things for the downtrodden, for slaves,
for those oppressed by others.  He had never felt it for anyone else.  “And
they can’t learn those things from their peers?”
“No.  If you pull someone away from their entire life and force them into
something else, they are going to hate everyone around them, including their
peers.  They need to see the world and appreciate that all life is sacred and
valued, and you can’t learn that if you are constantly told that you are not
sacred and hold value.  If you are despised simply for being born the way you
were, how can you expect to learn love and compassion?”  Shaislyn looked
pained. 
“I was a slave,” Fenris argued.  “My value was monetary at best, and a badge of
honor for my master.  That never meant I didn’t feel pain when that man killed
a child.”
Shaislyn raised an eyebrow.  “But how long was it before you learned what love
was?  What compassion is?  How long before you felt empathy for someone else? 
And not just guilt?”
He thought about Perya.  He hadn’t felt empathy for her, because he couldn’t
have known at the time what it was like.  He would never really know, for that
matter.  He had felt terrible when Danarius had killed a little boy to impress
his fellows, but empathy?  He had desperately wanted to protect the people
Danarius would have harmed, but was that only martyrdom?  Had Fenris ever once
shown compassion, or even mercy?  Had he ever really felt love before he met
Hawke?  He hadn’t.  He had been guilty, and motivated by that guilt.  He had
felt poorly about situations, but compassion and empathy were things one had to
learn.  Magister Jairus had shown him compassion, and he should have recognized
it for what it was.  Annalkylie had shown him empathy and he had never seen
it.  Hawke had shown him love, and he had almost missed it.  “I…”
“We don’t need another Imperium.  Mages don’t need power—I never said that. 
Freedom is fine.  But, say, keep magic out of politics.”
Fenris rolled his eyes.  That was hardly a solution.  Culling the weak ones
might help.  He supposed that was actually what the Harrowing was for though. 
The topic was an old, tired one.  He was quickly weary of it.  “Are you
hungry?”
“Starved.”
 
Traveling with one another, at first, had been difficult.  They would argue and
bicker as often as get along.  It was easier when Shaislyn decided to spend all
day and night as one animal or the other, because Shaislyn didn’t understand
most of what Fenris would say, and couldn’t talk.  After a couple of weeks,
they resupplied in a town.  Fenris drug Shaislyn from what was likely to be a
brawl, less angry than only annoyed.
They slept in a hay loft for the night, and come morning, it was raining
lightly.  Children played in the mud puddles as adults trudged through it.
 Shaislyn watched them, oddly quiet.  By nightfall, it was miserable, but
Shaislyn had flown off and found an abandoned charcoal burner’s hut.  The roof
was caving in, but it was relatively dry, and the old shed still had dry wood
for a fire.
“Did you ever want to have kids?”
The question took Fenris by surprise.  He was quiet for a long moment.  “I
don’t think I can.”
Shaislyn raised an eyebrow.  “How do you know?”
He shrugged.  “In Vyrantium, I was seeing this whore pretty regularly--”
“Elf or human?”
“Elf, and she had a child already.  I was her only elven customer; she
mentioned it once.  It’s not unbelievable.”
Shaislyn paused as he considered.  “True.”
“At any rate, she got pregnant.”  He sighed.  “I was… really hopeful,
actually.”  He didn’t know why he was telling him this.  “It was half-elven.”
His eyes softened.  “I’m sorry, Fenris.”  That was a pretty clear indicator.
 Elves and humans only rarely were got with child, and Fenris, by all odds,
should have had much higher chances than a human and an elf.  “I’ve never been
to the same whore enough times to tell.  And anyway, how could I?  It’d be
human.”
“You’ve never just had a relationship with someone else?”
He shook his head.  “Who would want me?”  The elf looked away.  Like two peas
in a pod.  “Maybe if I moved somewhere else, changed my name.  Lied and said I
was human; my ears aren’t particularly pointy--it wouldn’t be that hard to
believe.”
Fenris glanced sidelong at Shaislyn.  His ears had the very faintest of points,
as if his bloodlines had tried, very hard, to make him elven, and failed.  It
had been more noticeable when he was a child, fading over time.  He looked back
away.  “Do you want a family?”
“I just want to feel… like I belong somewhere.  Like someone wants me.  To
feel, I don’t know, loved.”  He looked down.  “I never have.  I mean,
Grandmother would say she loved me.  So would Lura.  But I was a little kid.
 Varania did a couple times, but I’m not sure she really meant it.”
Fenris knew exactly what he meant.  He knew, exactly, how painful it was to
feel like he didn’t belong anywhere, like no one would ever love and care about
him.  He knew that pain very well, and had just learned to bury his sorrow and
loneliness.  Somehow, with his nephew, he didn’t feel quite so lonely.
            The stopover in Antiva City was brief before they boarded the ship,
and the trip there was boring.  They were allowed to go in most places on the
ship, so they walked around often.  Shaislyn had a lot of, often humorous,
stories to tell about his escapades in his early teenage years.  It made Fenris
wonder about his own teenage years.  What had that been like?
            “Did Varania ever tell you anything about when she was a child?”
            Shaislyn stared up at the ceiling of the cabin.  His feet were
propped against the wall, and he was lying on his back on the floor.  Fenris
sat in the lower bunk.  “She hated talking to me, so no.”  He shrugged a
shoulder.  “She hated looking at me.  I guess I reminded her of Danarius.”
            Fenris looked at him.  His eyes, his hair, the shape of his lips
and his stubbled jaw, his brow, and most of his facial expressions—it was all
Danarius reflected in him.  The elven blood lines had tempered it, though, gave
him just enough differences that Fenris didn’t only see the magister.  But he
could still see Danarius in Shaislyn.  In the half-light, if the half-elf would
just be quiet for a moment, it was, eerily, almost like his old master was
alive.  It had taken some getting used to.  “You do look like him.”
            “Do I remind you of him too?”
            He almost laughed.  Shaislyn, lying on the floor in dirty clothes,
his hair unwashed, needing to shave and was too lazy to do it, and his breath
smelling like whiskey.  Danarius would never.  “No, actually.”  He stopped.
 “Well.  At first.  But you are really nothing like him.”
He rolled his head to look at Fenris, or give the impression of looking at him,
whichever; it was hard to say.  “Did I ever tell you I had a twin?”
            Fenris almost said “no” and thought about it.  He seemed to
remember…  “I’m not sure.”
            He blinked.  “Well.  I did.  She died when we were infants.”  He
looked up at the ceiling.  “Danarius told me what happened to her.  Do you know
that stream that goes through the orchard--in Danarius’ manor in Minrathous?”
            “Yes,” he said.  He had liked that place actually.  A particular
bend in the stream, a small grassy patch under a fruit tree, and he had been
able to sit there, sometimes for only a few minutes at a time, and look at the
water--just a moment of peace from the madness insanity that had been his life
as that man’s slave.  Those moments had saved his mind.
            He nodded.  “That’s where my sister died.  That’s where Varania
drowned her--like you drown unwanted puppies.”
            Fenris stared at him, his lips curving in disgust.  And Shaislyn
expected him to feel empathy for Varania?  He could barely believe Shaislyn
did.  “But… you’re her child.”
            He nodded again.  “She would have killed me too, if you had let
her.”  He sighed.  “You didn’t get there in time to save both of us, though.”
            “How could you ever care about that woman?”
            Shaislyn looked back at him.  “She’s my mother.  And she did try to
do her best for me.  How could I blame her, Fenris?  Think about who my father
was.”  His eyes closed.  “She never loved me--not once.  But…  Fuck.”
            “Do you remember my mother--your grandmother?”
            The half-blood’s eyes opened again.  He smiled, rolling onto his
side.  “I wish she hadn’t died then.  I barely remember her at all.”  He
paused.  “She liked to sing, and she would pick me up sometimes and dance with
me around our house.”
            Fenris looked at his hands, wishing he could remember her.  “What
was her name?”
            “Mieta.”
            The back of his head tapped against the wall.  “‘Mieta,’” he
echoed.  Neither spoke for a long time.
            Shaislyn shifted again, his feet back against the wall, over his
head.  “So.  I seduced one of the sailors last night.”
            “I was wondering where you went.”
            “Drunk sex is some of the best sex,” he said assuredly.
            Fenris kind of chuckled.  ”And you like to say no one would ever
want you.”
“It’s easy when we’re both drunk and out at sea with few options,” the other
said flatly.  
“I’ve only ever seen you go after women.”  He didn’t think there were any women
on board, come to think of it.
            “Life is entirely too short to limit yourself to something, and I
think the world has placed enough limits on me already,” he commented.
            Fenris considered that, and liked it.  The world was too limiting.
 Life was too short.  His life had been motivated by hatred and revenge for so
long.  Life really was too short to let things like that consume him.  This was
the only life he would ever have, and he had wasted so much of it by dwelling
on things long past.  It didn’t make the things and people he had hated right,
but it made him a better person to feel his hatred letting go of him, freeing
him.  His hatred had so long chained him to it, and it had felt so good, and so
righteous, that he hadn’t wantedto let go of it.  He had been as much a slave
to his own hatred as he had been to Danarius.  He had not ruled his own
emotions, and let his hate dictate his actions.  Hawke had tried to tell him
that once, and Fenris had not wanted to listen to him, but he had heard him.
            He had come to that conclusion long ago, and it had been hard to
let go of it.  He could never forgive what Danarius had done.  He could not
forgive the children that he had hurt and murdered, nor Perya.  He couldn’t
forgive all those lives snuffed out.  But he could forgive what he had done to
him, but not for Danarius; for himself.  If he could do it all again, Danarius
would still have died, but he wouldn’t have died for what he did to Fenris--he
would have died for every child, every woman, every man who had ever suffered
at his hands, directly or no.  He would die, too, to keep anyone else from
suffering at his hands.  It was not justice; it was vengeance, and Fenris knew
that.  Vengeance dealt in death.
            Zekiel had told him, once, that hating takes up a lot of energy,
and it wasn’t worth it in the end.  He had tried to make him see it back then,
and he should have taken it to heart.  For Zekiel, he was determined to try.
 
            The ship docked, and it seemed they were barely away from the docks
before a runner approached the mage, and handed him a message, promptly
disappearing.  Shaislyn looked over the small note and sighed, crumpling it
into a ball.  He glanced at Fenris.  “I have to go for a couple of hours--think
you can manage everything by yourself?”
            Fenris wondered why.  “Of course.”
            “Sorry,” he muttered.  He glanced away, an awkward, learned habit.
 He sighed deeply.  “The only reason the Circle let me do this was because I
agreed to be an envoy.  It’s shit, but they let me leave, so what can I do?”
            Fenris stared at him, quietly hating that he was a mage.  Hawke was
a mage, he reminded himself.  But that was Hawke.  And Shaislyn was nothing at
all like Hawke.  Why does he have to be a mage?  It was like the Maker was
laughing somewhere, at him.  His only family left in the world, an Imperial
Circle mage.  Not even an apostate--that would at least be tolerable.  No, he
had to be Imperial to his bones, vainly proud of being a mage, and so many
things he hated.  It would be so much easier to like him if he were not a mage.
            He had never seen him use blood magic, so there was that.  But he
wondered at that.  Shaislyn was not a particularly skilled mage.  He got by in
the Imperium because of his abilities, but how long before he tried to be as
strong as the other mages, and blood magic was all that was left to him because
he didn’t have enough mana to cast?  It was repulsive.  Tempting the half-blood
with blood magic was like dangling a goat in front of a tiger.  Eventually,
that tiger was going to get hungry.
Shaislyn, completely unaware of Fenris’ inner thoughts, flashed a grin.  “I’ll
be out of there by nightfall no matter what, though--then we go have some fun,
I promise.”
            Fenris was actually quite content to sleep, to stretch, to enjoy
the scent of spices in the marketplace and a long, long bath.  He spent some
time in the market, sampling the foreign foods, and wary of pickpockets.
 Rivain was an interesting place to be, culturally.  It was always going to be
primarily human, but people did not treat Qunari or even elves much
differently.  He saw a few Dalish in the city, completely unharassed and
everyone seemed to get along.
            He felt like this was largely due to their Qun-like beliefs.
 Qunari had indoctrinated many Rivaini people, instilling in them that all are
equal in the Qun.  Another part of it was that their worship and religion were
very nature-based, and not at all the primary teachings of the Chantry.
 Religion was a sore spot for him.
            He opened the door to their room and Shaislyn was disentangling
himself from his robes.  Fenris actually laughed when the half-elf threw the
garment disdainfully on the floor.  “I hate wearing robes,” Shaislyn said,
standing there in his underwear.
            “Do you have to when you go to the Circle?”
            “Only for official crap--the Minrathous Circle let me go on this
venture because I agreed to go visit the mages here, like I said.  Hell, do
they ever talk.”  He kicked the garment aside.  “Remind me to set that on fire
later.”  The mage started pulling on his leathers.  Fenris would have thought
that, with the heat, the robe might be more comfortable.  “Never let a Circle
mage… ex-Circle mage… talk at you, I swear--you will be dead long before they
finish.”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “I’ll remember that, Circle mage.”
            “Oh, you know what I mean!  We ready?  There’s horse races in town-
-let’s go have some drinks and take a look, shall we?”
            Races, drinks, women, men, gambling, music, more drinking, and the
last thing Fenris remembered of the night was standing on the docks while
Shaislyn stripped and jumped in the water--it had something to do with a bet.
 He woke up on the floor of their room at the inn, with his nephew no where to
be found.  He was dimly concerned as he located all of his clothing, and
checked the beds.
            He decided he shouldn’t worry, and washed off the stink of the
somewhat wild night.  He was just thinking about food, standing on the balcony
in the morning air, when the door opened.  He wandered into the room to see
Shaislyn crash face-first onto one of the beds.
            “Where’ve you been?”
            His voice came muffled through the pillow, “I don’t even know.”  He
snorted a laugh, rolling onto his side.  “I woke up in a hallway--um, to
clarify, on a ship, in a hallway.  Also I smell like semen, so I am assuming
something happened last night.”  He rolled over.  “You hungry?”
            Every day in Rivain was much the same as the first night.  Shaislyn
had to make several more appearances on behalf of the Minrathous Circle, each
time drinking all the way up to the meeting place.  Fenris thought they must
have been glad to finally get rid of him when their ship left.
            Their ship to Seheron was a cargo ship, laden with food, weapons,
medicines, bandages, and other assorted goods in large, heavy boxes.  The pair
had a cramped windowless cabin and neither spent much time in it.
            Shaislyn snuck off frequently and disappeared--Fenris had no idea
what he was doing, but sometimes he would not see him for days before he
appeared again.  Those times were quiet, sometimes even pleasant.  His nephew
was obnoxious, and would sometimes talk in his sleep when he didn’t thrash--
nothing amusing or intelligible either, often half-garbled languages.
            He used the time alone mostly for quiet contemplation about his
life, how far he had fallen.  After all, here he was, knowing that Shaislyn
walked a perilous and tempting path with his magic, and Fenris was right here…
apparently sanctioning it.  And living in the Imperium again on top of that,
working for a rich man that owned slaves.  That wasn’t quite how it was, but
looked at objectively…  My morals have definitely loosened.
           He often thought about how his nephew was a mage, how his sister was
a mage.  Had he cared, from the time before his memories were wiped clean?  It
didn’t seem like he had.  Why not?  He had been a slave then too!  Why hadn’t
he cared?
            He considered that.  Probably, he hadn’t cared because he--because
Leto--had been devoted to his family above all else.  He hadn’t cared because
he had just accepted everything as the way the world was.  And, most of all, he
hadn’t cared because Varania being a mage meant she had a chance for something
more than slavery and scrubbing floors all her life.  The Magisterium saw
someone as a mage first, and an elf second.
            His only shot at being something other than a gladiator, meat for
slaughter, was in the markings in his skin, the lyrium rushing through his
body.  That had been his only chance.  It had worked, but not in the way Leto
had thought.
            Sometimes, when Shaislyn would leave, he would come back with fresh
fruit--a very rare commodity at sea that the pair would consume away from the
watchful eyes of the sailors.
            On one such excursion, he was gone for nearly a week, and confessed
he “had trouble finding the ship again”.
            “What do you mean?” Fenris couldn’t help but ask, catching the
apple Shaislyn tossed to him.
            He shrugged.  “I flew back to Minrathous--I had a…”  He made a
vague gesture.  “Thing.”  His face twisted into a frown, casually tossing his
remaining apple into the air and catching it in an act of pseudo juggling.
 “Did I mention I’m actually an Enchanter there?”  He shrugged again
helplessly.  Fenris briefly inspected the fruit before he bit into it.  It was
rich and juicy, and tasted just like…  “I really do my best to not get
promoted--short of failing my Harrowing--and they keep… wanting to promote me…”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “It’s not about having faith in your
abilities; it’s about keeping track of you.”
            Shaislyn’s eyes widened, and he gestured.  “I know!  They deny it,
of course, and they do everything to try to keep me busy.  I hate it.  I mean,
I tried to keep from getting the promotion by showing up drunk all the time.
 And what do they do?”  He put on his best Minrathous accent, “‘Hey, Shaislyn,
we see you’re intoxicated again.  Good job--test all the liquor in the city and
make sure it’s up to standards.  We’re promoting you for your good work.’”
            This only confirmed Fenris’ belief.  “Do you like that Imperial
leash around your neck?”
            “Isn’t it pretty?”
            The elf snorted, taking that for acceptance of the fact.  “Where
did you get this?” he asked him, gesturing with the bitten apple.
            The other grinned, biting into his.  “Stole it.  Sort of--right out
of dead Danarius’ orchard.”
            Fenris snorted a laugh.  Dead Danarius.  He liked the term.  He
stared down at the fruit, rubbing his thumb along its smooth surface.
 “Sometimes, when Hadriana wanted to starve me, I’d go by the orchard on my way
back to the manor from the sparring field.  I used to sit by the stream, and if
an apple happenedto fall, I got to eat something.”
            Shaislyn’s face softened, just a little, the smirk fading to
obvious sympathy, then was gone, replaced by another smirk.  “And by ‘happened
to fall’ you mean, ‘I’ll just accidentally hit this apple, and--hey, look.
 Waste not, want not.’”
            Fenris quirked a smile.  “Yes.”  He looked back at the fruit.  “If
Hadriana had known, she would have been furious.  I have no doubt that Danarius
knew; I don’t think he cared.”
            “You ever get to try the spiced cider that came from them?”
            Fenris leaned back.  “Yes.  And the apple wine.”
            Shaislyn kind of smiled.  “I’ll remember that you like apples.  If
I have to go back again, I’ll grab some more.  I hope I don’t though--it’s
exhausting.”
“They keep you fairly busy?”
            “Only with stupid things,” he agreed, sitting down on the small
desk, legs dangling over the side of it.  “I mean, when I was an apprentice,
before my Harrowing, I just had to ask my mentor if I could take off for a bit.
 And, you know, nothing about that really changed until they promoted me to
Enchanter.  Now I have to get written approval from her, the First Enchanter,
and have to make sure someone else can see to my duties.  So, yes, I realize
very well it’s a leash.  The higher up in rank you are, the more closely you
are watched--unless you are a magister, then you get to be the watcher, so long
as you understand there are always people watching you too.”  He made a face.
 “What are you up to?”
            “Nothing,” he admitted.
            “It’s boring out at sea,” he said in agreement.  “That being said,
I found some wooden poles in the hold--come spar with me.  I’ve always liked
seeing you fight; now we can beat each other up.”
            It was good exercise, and a good waste of time.  Fenris hadn’t
fought just one opponent in a very long time.  He used different tactics when
fighting groups, and he had almost forgotten what fighting only one person
meant.  It wasn’t easier, per se, just different.  Fenris was taller than
Shaislyn, who seemed to be more elven in height, and had a much longer reach
than he did with his sword.  With the heavy wooden pole, it was about the same,
but the pole was faster than his sword.  Shaislyn was quick, but without the
heavy two-handed sword to weigh Fenris down, they were almost evenly matched in
speed.  The half-elf was agile, and Fenris realized quickly that he couldn’t
feint and pretend to attack at one angle, and move toward another, because the
other simply never fell for it.
            It meant a further change of tactics, but not by much.  Fenris was
used to longer fights, waves of enemies and being attacked from every angle by
all kinds of attack.  Shaislyn, by contrast, was more used to single opponents,
and subterfuge.  In the dark of the hold, they were near evenly matched, but
Fenris still won most of the time, at least while it was a proper duel.
            When they decided to make things more interesting, and split up,
each at one end of the hold, and a strict rule of no magic or phasing
(Shaislyn’s sight aside and he agreed to limit it), the half-elf “killed” him
more frequently.  When they moved on deck, Fenris still won most of the duels.
 Their game of cat-and-mouse, Shaislyn won more frequently; he had an easier
time sneaking up on Fenris.  Fenris often as not complained about this, saying
it was unfair because the lyrium would show up like a beacon in the dark.
            Some of the sailors would watch them sometimes.  As time passed,
they would sometimes place bets on which one would win that day and their mock
battles became more heated with a crowd cheering.
            Fenris actually didn’t mind the crowd, but it made his nephew feel
awkward.  He supposed it was because he had been a gladiator.  It was
comforting to know even a little about his past.  He was still bitter about it,
but it was better than it had been.  It wasn’t his entire life that was gone
any more, just much of it.  And every year, he had another year of memories.
 It wouldn’t replace what was lost, but it could console him.
            He couldn’t move forward if he were always looking back, and his
past had been a difficult piece of himself to give up on, but nothing good had
ever come from trying to dig it up again.  When he had told Merrill to leave
the elves’ past where it was, he should have listened to himself as he spoke.
 If he had, things might have turned out very differently.
***** Seeds of Distrust *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris receives an omen from a fortune teller and contemplates what
     it means.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            Shaislyn had disappeared almost the moment the ship docked, saying
he would meet up with him at a particular inn later, and if Fenris wanted to go
directly to it, that was fine.  He actually wanted to look around the city
first.  He assumed the kid was out whoring or gambling, or both.
            He looked out at the sea, taking in the colours of the waves and
the sky, the creaking of the ships and the crying of the gulls.  He walked away
from it.  Seheron City looked different from the last time he had been here,
but much of that was circumstantial.  The last time he had sailed into Seheron,
it had been as a slave, with a collar around his neck.
            He hadn’t really stopped to look at the sights.  He had looked at
the people, measuring proximity to the magister, analyzing possible threat, his
every breath and movement only for his master, as if the mage were some kind of
god.  That was all that had mattered, though.  He hadn’t really thought of
anything past what might please Danarius.
            That was a sobering thought.  He really had changed a lot since
then.  He walked down the streets, watching the people live their daily lives,
and wondered what it would be like to be so ordinary.  What would it be like if
he had never held a sword?  What would it be like if he were perfectly
ordinary, like everyone else?
            Boring, he decided.  Delightfully uninteresting.  Unworthy of note
or consequence.  What would it be like to never have killed someone?  To be
that innocent?
            The city was the Imperial’s only real foothold in Seheron at the
moment.  They were losing ground, badly, to the Qunari in a desperate attempt
to keep the war off their doorstep.  Once all they had was the water between
Seheron and Tevinter, the Qunari dreadnaughts would annihilate their coastal
towns.  He wondered if it would get that far.  The mages were doing all they
could to keep the war away.  If the Senate could stop squabbling and warring
with one another and stand united, they would make a lot more headway.  Fenris
actually shivered at the thought.  Better a warring Magisterium than a united
one.  When the whole of it united to a common cause, they were a force to be
reckoned with.  Separate, they were weaker.  Fenris was a warrior at his core,
and he knew that very intimately.  If the Qunari could crush Tevinter, he would
not particularly mourn this--save a few things.  Anastas, for one.  All the
families that would be torn apart for reeducation from slaves to Altus
bloodlines, planting the brutal seeds of their religion into them, secondly.  
Himself, for another.  There was no guarantee that they would not leash him the
same way they did their mages.  Danarius had seen to that, and had known the
truth of it too.  His whole body was molded into a weapon, and the Qunari would
not be blind to it.  No, he feared he would be treated much like the mages.  It
was unfair, and he had no doubt the Qunari would think so too, but the dangers
he represented would outweigh any ridiculous notions of fair or unfair.
            The city had been broken, squashed to rubble under the might of the
Antaam, then the Qunari had ruled Seheron virtually unchallenged for some time
before the Imperials retook the port again.  They were making headway, but he
and Shaislyn really should not linger here overlong.
            The city of Seheron was an Imperial city, but one at war, and the
people there reflected that.  Even the children knew they were on a
battlefront.  Most of them were refugees, fleeing their smaller towns for
Imperial protection.  There were just as many slaves, hurrying and busy, or
forlorn in chains waiting for their fate to fall upon their shoulders.
            He hated it.
            He had rescued many a slave from the auction block, with little
choice.  He wanted to cut down the slavers and free all of them, but Anastas
made too good a point:  That action would only result in them being caught
again, worse fates befalling them, and it would place him back on a bounty
list.  Logically, he had to let the matter go.  He was outspoken about the
evils of it, and actually found that there were many free people, some of them
even people in positions of wealth and power, in the Imperium who disliked it,
and some of it was even on moral grounds.  Yet he found plenty of slaves, too,
that didn’t  care.
            Like Shaislyn had said, it was better than starving and dying in
the street.  There had to be a better way.
            He had spoken to a Circle mage who Anastas was on good terms with,
and asked about a way to get rid of the markings.  The woman and he had talked
a long time discussing the Ritual and the effects thereof, and he found that
she disliked slavery, but not on moral standards.
            He listened, in quiet horror, as she described a more efficient
system than slavery to him.  “If we paid them, it would increase morale.  We
wouldn’t pay them much, granted, but still pay them--they can come and go as it
please them.  This also means we won’t have to have an overseer and pay someone
to watch them, or waste money on hunters to go fetch the runaways, because they
will be easy to replace, and we will have no financial loss if one of them dies
or is maimed.  Because they will be free, we can just fire them and hire
someone else.  I own no slaves,” she added, pleased with herself.
            That was hardly a better solution.  If anything, to Fenris, that
sounded almost worse.  Better in some ways; the workers could leave if they
could, but most would not be able to.  Worse, if they were hurt, they would
just lose their job and be replaced by someone else.  Slave owners had to eat
the losses when that happened, and pay for healings.  They had to pay to get
rid of the corpses of their slaves.  If a woman were with child and could not
perform the work, they moved them to lighter work; this mage said she would
just get rid of them.
            The woman proposed they abolish slavery, but not because it was
moral; because it would be cheaper for the most part.  He had quickly changed
the subject, back to Danarius’ book and the matter at hand, and she had
discussed the blood magic aspects briefly, before straying slightly off topic.
 “Why, you know, I’ve found plenty of people with these strange fetishes for
being cut.  They would pay me for it.  They orgasm from the cutting, believe me
or not,” she went on.  That had pretty much ended their conversation, and
Fenris had left the room with barely an at-your-leave.  If he lost his temper
and killed her--something he believed needed to be done--he would wind up back
on a bounty list, or arrested and tried for murder.  Or both.  At least the
woman could not say that her workers were not willing.
            A Rivaini hedge mage had a small booth he passed by.  Her wares
were specially blended incense, strange tokens, and a collection of carved
bones.  The signs claimed they were dragon bones, carved and ornamented to keep
their owner safe.  They were probably chicken bones.  She was reading fortunes
in a person’s palms.  
            The girl she was reading from giggled to her friends as she left,
their talk about her future marriage, all signs pointing to a man she knew.  He
wondered if any of that was real.
            “You,” the hedge mage said, pointing one bony finger toward him.
 He blinked.  “I have an omen for you.”
            He shook his head.  “No--I don’t want--”
            She stared at him.  “This one is free.”
            He felt intrigued, but he knew this was probably just a lure.  Did
he look like he had money?  He stepped toward the old woman.  “I think you must
be mistaken--”
            Her surprisingly swift hands clutched his wrist, bringing it
forward.  She flipped his palm over, staring hard at the lyrium.  She traced a
mark on his palm.  “The lyrium cuts into your lifeline,” she said gently, as if
she were telling him he didn’t have long to live.  “It casts your loveline into
shadow.”  She was intrigued, as if doing this for her own curiosity, and not to
his benefit at all.  She looked up, into his eyes.  “Don’t trust him.”
            “Who?” he had to ask.
            She stared back at him, one blind eye rolling lazily away from his
face as if showing its disinterest in this strange elf.  She did not seem to
have heard his question.  “You will want to trust him, but you mustn’t.”
            Shaislyn? he wondered.  He didn’t trust him.  Maybe that was all it
was.  He wanted to believe in his half-blood nephew, trust in him, but he
couldn’t bring himself to trust a mage, and someone who only a few weeks ago
had tried to kill him.  So that seemed an odd warning.  Or was it something
more?  “Is it someone I know?”
            “You know him, but you don’t know him,” she said, and dropped his
hand as if it had suddenly caught fire.  She leaned back.  “That’s all I know.”
            Cryptic.  Words he already knew.  This was why he didn’t like
fortune tellers.  They gave a cryptically worded message that could be taken
for anything, and made a person paranoid.  He dismissed it.  He already knew he
shouldn’t trust Shaislyn.  He already knew that he knew him, but didn’t really
know much about him.  What of it?  Or was this some dire warning from the Fade,
from the spirits there, that Shaislyn was taking him into a trap?  If he wanted
him dead, they had traveled through Antiva.  As much money as the mage had at
the moment, he suspected he would be dead by now.
            Unless there was something to this he didn’t see.
            He almost laughed aloud.  He had told himself he would dismiss what
the woman said, and there he was--thinking about it.
            He explored the city for a while before he came across Shaislyn,
getting kicked out of a whore house.
            He watched the display from a distance, faintly amused.  He was
half-naked, his swords wrapped in the baldric clutched in one hand, the rest of
his things in the other.  The bouncer and he were yelling at each other, and
then the door slammed.
            “What did you do?” Fenris asked, chuckling.
            Shaislyn glanced back at him.  “One of their regular patrons called
me a mutt, and said my mother should have drowned me like a worthless dog.”  He
made a face.  “So I hit him over the head with a chair.  It escalated a bit
from there.”
            Fenris stared at him flatly.  “This happens to you entirely too
often to blame other people for it.”  He knew what the man had said to Shaislyn
had been, even unwittingly, too personal, but the half-breed had still over-
reacted.  Fenris supposed he had no room to lecture on that though.
            The other ignored him.  “Can you hold these?”  He shoved his swords
into Fenris’ arms before he could answer.  Shaislyn started dressing quickly,
on the street, and wriggled into his boots.  He untangled the baldric and
shrugged into it.  He fiddled with it for a moment before he took the swords
too.  “And, yes, actually--I know that.”  He shrugged it off the same way he
shrugged off responsibility and common sense.  They started to walk down the
street.  “Did you find the inn?”
            “I haven’t even looked for it.”
            He nodded.  “Right--um.  I don’t know how to get to it when I’m
walking.  This could take a while.”  It took over an hour.
            The entire time they walked, he thought about what that woman had
said.  Don’t trust him.  Why?  Was Shaislyn up to something?  He wondered what
it could be.  They arrived at the inn and his nephew promptly took off again.
 That was fine.  It left Fenris some time to think.
            Shaislyn had tried to kill him once.  He had also had a hand in
trying to re-enslave him.  Shaislyn made no secret of hating him.
 Simultaneously, they had actually been getting along rather well as of late.
 He wondered if that wasn’t an act on his part, just to make Fenris more at
ease around him.  Silly--if he had wanted to kill him, how hard would it have
been to stab him in the throat when he slept?  Or to have slid a blade between
his ribs when they had “hunted” one another in the hold of the cargo ship?
            Or what if he wanted something else first?  Wanted him to suffer?
            He had brought him through Antiva, the perfect place to hire a Crow
assassin if Shaislyn didn’t think he could manage it.  They had sailed all the
way here, giving him lots of time to do the deed if he had wanted to.  No,
Seheron was his biggest clue.
            He wanted to show him Varania’s grave, and Fenris’ mother’s grave--
Mieta.  Was there anything more to that?
            Would Shaislyn make his move after that, or would he try to kill
him when he showed him?  It would be iconic, him standing over the graves of
dead family, dead family Shaislyn blamed him for.
Chapter End Notes
     Yes, that was a description of minimum wage.
***** Logic and Legend *****
Chapter Summary
     Shaislyn and Fenris head out of the city.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            It was past midnight when Shaislyn pulled himself down the stairs
of the brothel, legs weak, smelling strongly of sex.  He had a pleasant buzz
going on, and really would have liked some more alcohol.  Whisky sounded good. 
Rum sounded better.
            The alcohol kept his mind off of what he was doing with his life. 
It kept him relatively happy when he had no reason otherwise to be.  He hid
behind laughter and jokes because it kept everyone else away.  The alcohol made
everything easier to bear.
            He finished off a drink, and had no idea what it was, and ordered
another.  He was finishing off a third when someone sat down next to him.
            He thought nothing of it, at first, then the person addressed him. 
“Shaislyn.”
            The half-elf paused, and looked at him.  Aiming his sight was
difficult when he was drunk, and it wandered a bit, but he straightened when he
recognized Lysander.  It had been a few years, and Lysander was a young
teenager now.  “Lysander?”  He blinked.  “What are you doing in Seheron?”
            “I could ask you the same thing,” the other mage commented.  He
raised an eyebrow, glancing at the empty shot glass.  “But I thought I could do
some good here.”  He paused, and the pause stretched.  Shaislyn shifted in his
seat.  “I passed my Harrowing recently.”
Shaislyn leaned against the bar, and asked the bartender for a glass of ale.  
“You’re progressing very quickly.”
            “I have,” Lysander agreed.  “I’ve heard… you’re here with Fenris.”
            Shaislyn looked at him.  A mug seemed to plop down as if from
nowhere beside him, and the shot glass disappeared.  “We’re visiting some
graves—that’s all.”
            Lysander snorted, not believing him.  Shaislyn hardly blamed him;
the half-blood was a renown liar.  “Do you want revenge?”
            The half-elf smiled sardonically.  “Yes.  The Maker is at the top
of my list.”  The half-blood sipped at the ale. 
            “What’s the real reason you’re here with Fenris?”
            Shaislyn laughed gently.  “You caught me.  I plan to knife him in
the back when he looks at my mother’s grave.  It’s a shame, really; Fenris had
so much potential.”
            Lysander frowned in puzzlement, trying to tell if the other were
telling the truth or not.  “I would be very pleased to hear of his death, and I
would reward you in the future.”
            “I’ve already had one offer.”
            “Did you take it?”
            Shaislyn laughed.
Lysander seemed annoyed.  “I’m going to be a magister in the future, Shaislyn. 
And you’re a Circle mage with no ambition, no political power, no family—you
have nothing.  You could use an ally.”
            Shaislyn stared at the half-empty mug.  He knew when he was being
threatened, but he had been threatened by more than a recently Harrowed
apprentice.  He shook his head a little, and picked up the mug again.  “All
I’ve ever had is nothing.”
            “Don’t you ever want anything more?”
            Shaislyn chuckled.  “Sure:  Revenge, sex, money, drugs, and perhaps
another shot of rum—or whatever this is.”  He raised it, tilting the liquid in
the mug.  He stared at the contents.  “Because it sure as fuck is not ale.”
            “Dwarven ale,” the bartender called.
            Shaislyn frowned deeply.  “Are you taking bets on what will put me
under?”
            “There’s a betting pool,” the bartender said pleasantly.  “Drinks
are on the house until you pass out.”
            Shaislyn drank to that.  “Good luck,” he cried, and gave a rueful
grin after another long swig of the ale.
            Lysander had finally had enough of him.  “Kill him, and I’ll be
grateful.”
            The half-blood laughed again.  “If I kill him, and I’m not saying I
plan on it, it won’t be for you or Hadriana, Lysander.”  He finished his
drink.  “It would be for me.”
           
            The room wasn’t the classiest place he had ever been, but it wasn’t
just a couple of shoddy beds either.  There was a single bedroom, which Fenris,
seeing that the other wasn’t around, took.  Shaislyn must have slunk in
sometime in the night, passing out on the sofa.  He reeked of alcohol.  The
half-elf had left as soon as they had the keys to their room to go back out
drinking.  He was, Fenris noticed, smoking less often though.
            Fenris sighed to himself and went down to the market.  He came back
with a horrible smelling concoction in a glass bottle.  He set the bottle down
and nibbled on some of the food the maid had brought up.  Shaislyn woke some
time later, falling off of the couch awkwardly.  Fenris barely looked up,
beginning to accept this as normal.
            Shaislyn muttered to himself unintelligibly.  It didn’t even sound
like a language Fenris knew, or even a language for that matter.
            “Drink the contents of that bottle.”
            Shaislyn fumbled blindly for a moment, his hand running over the
low table until he brushed and nearly tipped over the bottle.  “This?”
            “Yes.”
            The other picked it up and uncorked it.  He sniffed, and recoiled.
 “I pass, thanks.”
            “It’ll get rid of your hangover.”
            Shaislyn sniffed it again, his nose wrinkling in disgust.  “I like
the hangover better.”
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “I’d like to see those graves today.”
            “We’re in for a bit of a walk then.  Fine.”  He downed it all in
one swallow, and gagged dramatically.  He set the bottle down, and swore
liberally at Fenris, cursed the day his uncle was born in three languages, and
stumbled over to the tray of food.  He was pleasantly surprised to find a cool
mint tea.  He downed half of it before he stopped swearing at him.  Fenris
ignored him utterly.
            “So.  Mieta was originally buried in the alienage here.”  He
gestured vaguely, and assumed, correctly, that he was pointing in the wrong
direction before his arm dropped.  “But I buried Varania elsewhere.  I didn’t
want her resting place to be an alienage.  I moved Mieta too.”
            Fenris made a face.  “That seems… wrong.”
            He shrugged.  “People move around gravesites all the time.  I just
thought she should be buried with the rest of her family.”  He pointed, again
in the wrong direction.  “In Schavalis.”
            Fenris blinked, his stomach twisting uncomfortably.  “Schavalis?” 
He had thought he had forgotten the name of the town, but hearing it again
jogged his memory.
            “You were born there, apparently.”  He pointed at him, this time
accurately.  “Danarius had quite extensive records of your bloodline--I’m
guessing he did some research at one point.”  He shrugged.  “Anyway, whatever.
 Schavalis.”
            “Schavalis,” Fenris repeated slowly, a faint tremor running down
his spine.  He thought about complaining, and wished he had known it wasn’t
Seheron City that Shaislyn had wanted to bring him.  If he had said Schavalis
from the start, he would have declined the trip.  What if the Fog Warriors were
still there?  How could he bare to face them?
            Shaislyn was quiet, listening to his voice and his breathing.
 “There’s no one there any more, Fenris.  Schavalis got attacked by a dragon
some time ago, so they moved somewhere safer.”
            That was relieving to hear at least.  “And are we getting horses
for this trip?”
            “If it will make you happy, I suppose.  Easier to carry supplies
too I guess.  I’ll walk, or fly.  You can take care of the horse.”
            Fenris didn’t mind that chore so much, and said so.  The other only
snorted.  
            “If I’m buying you a horse, you can come with me on an errand,”
Shaislyn told him.
            Fenris shrugged and agreed, and Shaislyn led them both out of the
inn.  He paid the innkeep, and the half-elf wandered down a series of streets.
 Sometimes, they would comment on the sights, but mostly the pair were quiet.
 Shaislyn must be contemplative, because he was usually very chatty.
            Fenris stopped when he saw Shaislyn head towards the fort.  “Shai,
I can’t,” he said, staring at it, his voice flat.
            The other turned, looking back at him.  “Why not?”
            “Have you forgotten that I’m an elf?”
            Shaislyn’s lips curved into an “O” of realization.  He waved the
matter off.  “You’re with an Enchanter.  I’ll get you in--no way I’m letting
you skip out on this.”
            Fenris rolled his eyes, and, as expected, the guards didn’t want
him coming in, period.  Shaislyn and the guards argued, and the half-elf
ultimately pulled rank, and the guards let them both pass.  Fenris groaned
inwardly.
            The half-elf walked about the fort as though he knew it well,
stopping by a supply closet, but found it locked.  He looked at the width from
the bottom of the door to the floor, and whatever he was looking for, the
finger’s width of space between the two was not it.  He swore, kicking the door
childishly.  Fenris watched him for a moment, wondering what he intended to do.
 “We’ll have to hunt down whoever has the key.”
            Fenris rolled his eyes, the lyrium singing in his ears.  His fist,
then his arm went through the wall, he twisted the knob on the other side, and
pulled his hand back.  The door creaked open.
            The other blinked.  “So.  If you ever want to get into burglary…”
            “I’ll let you know.”
            From the supply room, Shaislyn pilfered two spades, and nothing
else.  What are we digging?Fenris wondered.  He followed him out wordlessly
anyway.  The mage shoved a door open into the training yard.  Fenris felt more
at ease here; he had spent a good portion of his life in such places.
            Shaislyn hunted through particular areas, and it occurred to Fenris
after a long moment that he was seeking something using magic, for he stumbled
on occasion, his sight spell gone.
            “Watch your step,” the elf called.  Shaislyn froze, seconds from
tripping over a large stone.  The half-elf stopped.
            “Fenris?” he called, turning his ear toward him.  He faltered,
chewing on his lower lip.  “Would you… help me?”
            The other hesitated, but stepped up to him.  “What do you need?”
            He sighed, and set the spades down.  “I need to find the spot
first--could you just guide me?”
            Fenris grabbed onto his arm, letting the half-elf follow after his
footsteps, walking only very slowly, and no doubt they looked incredibly
foolish.  People did their best not to watch the spectacle, but he still felt
the odd glance their way.  Shaislyn suddenly froze, pointing.  “That way,” he
said.
            Fenris headed in the direction indicated.  He stopped when the
other stopped.  Shaislyn let go of him, and there was a faint buzzing in the
air, a numb tingling that must have been the other’s spell fading.  Shaislyn
knelt in the dirt.  “Right.  About those spades.”
            “I’ll get them.”
            “Thank you.”
            Fenris wondered what could possibly be buried in the training yard
that was so important.  He grabbed the spades and walked back.
            Only one person tried to stop him, demanding what he was doing.
 Shaislyn had not even looked at him, and only said, pointing towards himself,
“Enchanter.  Mage business.  Don’t talk to me.”
            The guardsman left.  Shaislyn actually did most of the work.  The
hole was deep, the earth hard-packed, and the other was sweating when he
stopped.  “Can you keep digging?  It’s really deep in there--got buried deeper
when they reconstructed the fort.”
            Fenris shrugged, and continued.  They switched once more, and
Shaislyn pulled something out of the hole.  He tossed the old leather satchel
in the dirt and worked on filling in the hole.  Fenris helped him.  They packed
the earth, and the mage picked up the satchel, turning back towards the fort
and the storage room.  They put away the spades, and Fenris finally had to ask,
“What’s in the sack?”
            “A box,” the mage told him, opening the sack.  It was indeed a box,
old and buried in the earth for a long time, but though the leather sack was
worm-eaten, the box was not.  
“There’s an enchantment on the box to protect the contents,” he explained.  “I
didn’t know that at the time, so it’s convenient, or these might not be
intact.”  He twisted the latch, and the box opened.  Dirt fell as the lid
creaked backwards.  In the box sat three slender volumes, bound in hard
leather.
The mage stared at the books, almost reverently.  He ran his finger down the
stained brown cover of the first one, an image of what might have once been
some kind of raptor faded on the front.  He picked it up.  “The book that
taught me my sight spell--this one is actually a grimoire.”  He set it down on
a mostly empty bench.  He picked up the dull red book without a title.  “This
is the one that taught me how to shapeshift.”  He set it on top of the other
book.  The last one was the most tattered, and Fenris assumed the cover had
once been yellow, but it was closer to a stained white now, sunbleached and
filthy.  The title read “Corpus Illumine”.  “And this one… was about magical
theory; it helped me understand what I needed to know about the other two.”  He
looked back at Fenris.  “Regret helping me now?”
The other watched him.  “No.  It is knowledge you already know.  I am assuming
the books hold a sentimental value to you; it’s why you buried them.”
“You are a very shrewd elf, Fenris.  But, yes; to keep them safe after the
Qunari attack,” Shaislyn admitted.  “They’ve been here a long time.”
Fenris was quiet a moment.  “Are you going to give them to the Circle?”
            He laughed.  “Oh, Maker, no!  Could you imagine a Circle filled
with shapeshifting Tevinter mages?  The debauchery!”  He laughed, shaking his
head a little.  “No.”  He slipped the three books into his pack, but left the
sack and the box where they were.  “No, I think the Imperium really doesn’t
need to know this.  They can keep their blood magic and their demons; this is
mine.”
They left the city by mid-morning, and Fenris was quite content to ride the
grey mare instead of bareback on a horse prone to whim.  Shaislyn walked beside
him for a short while, before he took off, an eagle flying high overhead until
Fenris lost sight of him in the fog.
            He didn’t much care what Shaislyn was up to, so long as he wasn’t
doing anything vile.  He did not have a difficult time imagining what vile
things a mage with his abilities--and rank--could do.
He wondered what it was like to fly like that, whenever he wanted to.
            A group of Imperial soldiers passed him by with barely a glance in
his direction.  They had hunting hounds with them.  They walked on their
leashes properly, keeping slack on the chain and not darting out and around the
horses.
            He had seen many dogs not properly trained, who would go where they
pleased on their leash, larger ones dragging their handlers and all around
being a nuisance.
            He touched his throat absently, remembering the way the collar
would feel around his throat, the chain tinkling.  The way the chain would tug,
ever so gently, at his throat.  It was just one more reminder that he had been
only a step above an animal.  Danarius had taught him to walk like the hounds--
never getting in the way, always keeping slack on the chain, and if Danarius
had left the chain somewhere, Fenris would obediently stay in that spot.  A
tame wolf.  He had heard somewhere that when a person trained a dog, they
didn’t so much train their dog as train themselves how to train their dog, and
the dog followed.  It was, supposedly, instinctual.  He had followed Danarius
doggedly, instinctually wanting to obey him.
            His hand fell away from his throat.  Those days were long, long
over.  But it was hard to leave it completely behind him.  Being treated like
that had been painful even then, and it was so much harder to consider that he
had really believed that there was nothing wrong with it.  He had really
believed that it was, for lack of a better term, normal.
            He had hated it, but he had endured it because he hadn’t known any
better.  He hadn’t known there could ever be another option except to obey that
man.  That was the reason for a lot of things he had done in the past.
            It was a few weeks before they made it to Schavalis, and not un-
accosted.  The Imperials questioned Fenris frequently, and he would sigh deeply
and respond in perfect Tevene when they grilled him with questions, trying to
ascertain that he were not a runaway slave.  Shaislyn, who must have never been
far away, would show up out of the fog as if from nowhere and complain loudly
about them being stopped.  When they found out the half-elf was a Minrathous
Circle mage of rank, they always backed down.
            Shaislyn would warn him if there were Antaam scouts nearby, and
they would venture off the road for a while, skirting the area by a wide margin
before resuming their course.  Fog Warriors, Shaislyn would want to avoid in a
similar manner, but they never encountered any.
One thing about traveling that Fenris truly disliked--if it wasn’t completely
miserable, it was impossibly boring.  He really wasn’t much of a wanderer,
despite that he had done a lot of traveling.  He would much prefer to stay in
one general area, at the least.  It was nice to always have a place to return
to that felt like his own.  He had been denied that for a long time, until he
came to Kirkwall.  It had taken a while, but Kirkwall felt more like home than
anywhere else he had ever been.  Or maybe Hawke had just felt like home.
            He found his mind wandering, thinking of Hawke.  He thought about
the way his eyes would light up when he laughed, or how his lips would pull
when he smiled, or how he would get lost and pretend he had known exactly where
he was going.
            “I’m not lost--I know exactly where I am going,” he had said once.
 Fenris and the others had only stared at him flatly.  “I just don’t… know
where I am.”
            Fenris had seen a great deal of arrogant and self-confident mages,
and had learned to associate them with cruelty.  Hawke was not exactly
arrogant, but he was self-confident.  So confident that Fenris would return his
affection, so confident when he held him, kissed him…
            He thought about all the times Hawke had kissed him.  Drunken
kisses, passionate kisses, chaste kisses, stolen kisses--their last kiss had
been bittersweet.
            “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” a voice asked, walking beside him.
            Fenris frowned, only to realize he had been smiling.  “Nothing,” he
lied.
            Shaislyn smirked, catching up to walk beside the horse.  “Thinking
about someone?”
            “It’s none of your business.”
            Shaislyn’s smirk widened to a toothy grin.  “You were thinking
about Hawke, weren’t you?”
            “Shut up, Shai.”
            He laughed, shaking his head.  “No, but it’s funny.  I mean, you
hate mages.  And there’s Varania, and me.  And then Hawke.”
            “Shut up.”
            He continued, “So it’s funny, cuz it’s like you’re stuck with us.”
            “Ugh,” Fenris groaned.
            The half-blood laughed.  “Wanna race me?”
            He snorted.  “No--you cheat.”
            “Just because I’m smarter than you--”
            Fenris cut him off, “You’re smarter than the horse, I’ll give you
that.  It’s hardly fair when you are unburdened though.”
            “Fine.  I can race as a dog.  Is that more fair?”
            “No cheating.”
            “Scouting the terrain ahead isn’t cheating, is it?”
            Shaislyn got to the end point faster, by a handful of seconds.  The
two fought and bickered over whether or not the half-elf had cheated or not.
 Shaislyn vehemently denied cheating, and Fenris was just as certain that he
had, dismounting his horse to argue with him face-to-face as they walked.  The
debate was spirited, but not unfriendly, just as quick to  laughter as anger.
It was strange, in ways--when Shaislyn argued passionately about things with
him, at many times, he would scowl or glare in such a way that reminded him of
Danarius, but it was often accompanied or followed by a mischievous smirk that
was not at all the magister.  Fact of the matter, the more time he spent with
him, the less of Danarius he saw in him.  His nephew would happily trek through
mud, climb up trees to collect fruit and nuts, and would plop right down in the
dirt when setting up camp.  No, Shaislyn was not his father.
A storm hit before they had made it to Schavalis, and the pair found shelter in
a rocky outcropping, almost a cave.  Fenris hurriedly tended the horse while
the other cut pine boughs, constructing a sort of wall against the shallow, low
cave, and covering the bottom in the same boughs, to keep them out of any rain.
 They hurried into the shelter out of the encroaching storm.  They couldn’t
make a proper fire, so they made do with jerky, cheese, and some hard travel
biscuits.
            They sat in silence, listening to the rain and the sounds of the
storm outside.  Fenris was glad to be out of it.
            “How’d you learn to make this?” he asked his nephew, gesturing at
the structure.
            Shaislyn shrugged a shoulder.  “I didn’t grow up in Minrathous.  I
just live there now.”  He stretched.  “A Dalish Keeper showed me, before I
killed a couple of Templars, and he got mad at me and told me to leave.”
            Fenris wasn’t sure what to make of that.  “You lived with the
Dalish for a while?”
            Shaislyn shook his head.  “No.  The Keeper of the Arlathan clan was
captured by Templars a long time ago.  I think the clan was destroyed by
slavers or something.  Anyway, I lived with him for a while when he escaped the
Circle, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with me after I killed a couple of
people who would have happily killed us.”
            He frowned.  He felt like there was more to that story than
Shaislyn was letting on.  His eyes shifted away, thinking about Aramael and
Wren.  He knew what had happened to that clan.  “When the Circles fell, what
did you do?”
            “The Imperium’s Circles are a joke, so essentially, they were
pretty stable.  Furthermore, since the Imperial Templars aren’t addicted to
lyrium, we didn’t have that problem either.  I’d have been on the mage’s side--
I really believe that…”  He sighed.  “No one is really evil.  People are just
what you make of them.  Every blood mage I’ve ever talked to is very against
becoming an abomination, believe me.”
            Fenris frowned.  That was… not what he had been expecting.  “But
mages are too easily corrupted, and can cause a great deal of destruction by
themselves.”
            The other gave him a flat look.  “I could say the same of you, so
I’d shut up if I were you.”
            He wanted to argue that that was different, but he considered it
objectively.  He had killed someone by accident once.  He had destroyed
property by accident while learning to manage his abilities.  But that was…  He
hadn’t wanted…  He hadn’t asked for…
            I did want it.  I competed for it.  I asked for it.
           Mages never did.  They were just born that way, the way Fenris had
been borne of Leto.
            But someone else did this to him!  This hadn’t been natural.  It
hadn’t been something uncontrollable.  A mage had done it to him!
            He supposed many mages blamed the Maker for their lot in life too,
and it was just as pointless.
            Perhaps, he thought dully and with some sarcasm, I’m going to have
to reevaluate my life.
            The difference, he decided—the pivotal difference—was that he
really just wanted to live and let live, and the mages always seemed to want
more; they wanted more power, or imagined safety, and they were more than
willing to step over the corpses of children to get to it.  He wasn’t.  He
would rather not have that safety, or the power he thought he needed, if it
meant leaving a trail of dead children behind him.  Mages always justified
their repulsive behavior.  Their taste for blood, gold, power, and sexual
conquest all that seemed to motivate them.
            The wind howled outside, and he listened to it whistle through the
trees, but the branches kept it, for the most part, out of their shelter.
            “Nearly every mage I’ve met has fallen to blood magic because it
was convenient for them.  Maker’s breath, if they trip going down the stairs,
they decide to use blood magic.”
            Shaislyn actually laughed.  “That’s ridiculous.  Why?”
            Fenris was so incredulous he nearly laughed.  “A girl I knew
practiced blood magic to try to purify something.”
            The half-elf’s eyes widened.  “That’s insane.”
            The elf agreed with the sentiment.  He continued, “Other mages
practice it to gain power, like Danarius or Hadriana for example.  Or to…”  He
hesitated.  “To create me.”
            The other’s face softened with sympathy.  “But that’s…”
            “When the Kirkwall Circle fell, Orsino—“
            The other cut him off, “Oh, I could understand the mages in places
like Kirkwall wanting to kill all the Templars; they treated them like shit!”
            Fenris actually felt offended.  “If the mage in question is an
abomination or a maleficar, I can hardly blame them for taking precautions.”
Shaislyn kind of twitched.  “You know the Templars in Rivain let them keep in
contact with their families and do whatever they wish for the most part?  And
did you know that, given that, the mages are much, much less likely to rebel or
practice blood magic?  Because they have no real reason to?  They aren’t scared
or feel the need to escape.”  
Fenris scoffed.  “They are locked up for their own safety as well as everyone
else’s.  At one point in history, being a mage was just illegal, and they were
outright killed.  The Circles are an offering of peace, and the mages spat on
it!”
He made a face.  “Try the same experiment with slaves.  How often are there
slave rebellions near quarries and mines in Tevinter?  All the damn time,
because they’re treated like shit.  How often in cities, where they are for the
most part cared for?  You treat someone like an animal, don’t be surprised when
they act like an animal.”
            Fenris blinked at him.  “I don’t believe those things are
comparative.”  He shifted slightly.  “When slaves rebel, it’s because of how
they are treated, how they’ve been taken from their homes and enslaved.  They
aren’t allowed to learn or make their own decisions.  They can be killed for no
reason.  They’re beaten and starved, their children ripped away from them.
 It’s completely different.”
            Shaislyn stared at him, shocked.  “But that is exactly what happens
to mages in most countries!” he complained.  Fenris started to argue that it
wasn’t, but the other cut him off.  “Oh, talking with you is pointless.
 Goodnight.”  Fenris felt similarly, and found himself glad when his mageborn
nephew was on four legs and furry instead of his usual obnoxious self.
            The wolf seemed more comfortable on their bed of branches anyway.
 Fenris sighed to himself, and pulled his blanket over him.  He rolled over and
tried to sleep, the big wolf stretching again.  Sometime in the dark, a tree
groaned and with a snap, came crashing to the ground.  Fenris woke with a
startled jump, and the wolf stirred, eyes open in the darkness, ears twitching
as he listened, then the eyes closed again.  Fenris didn’t trust him all the
same, and listened for anything--sounds of flooding or other destruction, but
nothing seemed to be coming.  He heard the horse bray nervously outside.
            He shifted in the blankets again.  Shaislyn didn’t use them--he
supposed a fur coat was warmer than blankets could be anyway.  The cold had
still found a way past the thick wall of blankets and branches though, seeping
all around him.  He shivered, and the wolf tilted its head.  He burrowed deeper
in the blankets.  He couldn’t wait to be back in Vyrantium, in a real bed after
a hot bath.
            The wolf lifted its head, and nudged him a little with its nose.
 He wondered what Shaislyn wanted, but when the animal scooted closer and
stretched out prone next to him, his suspicion turned to a surprised gratitude;
the wolf was warm, and his close proximity was a blessing.  He rolled, looking
at the rise and fall of the wolf’s breathing.  He smelled like damp dog, and in
no way would anyone ever guess it was something other than a wolf.  One yellow
eye opened, then slid closed, perhaps falling asleep.
            The elf looked at the animal he had been named after--a Fenris
wolf, and thought about the legend of the creature.
            He had read about the wolf in Vyrantium--part of Anastas’ art
collection was in literary art too.  It was a very old story, but the wolf in
the legend was mad.  It had tried to destroy the world, and when it was free,
it had killed many people.  One man gave up a fist to seal the creature away.
 It was sealed by mages, bound in rope crafted by dwarves.  In the legend, the
wolf eventually freed itself and began its destruction, to be cut down by the
son of one it had killed before.  Little wolf.  It was an elven name, and the
legend never once claimed it, but it was probably elven in origin--given the
name:  “fen” was the elven word for “wolf”.
            He wondered why Danarius had picked that name.  Was it the part
about the legend, where it was bound in a material crafted by dwarves, and
sealed by mages?  Did that not describe him?  The rest of it, surely, didn’t.
 He wasn’t mad, and he had certainly never had any intention to destroy the
entire world.  Well, maybe the Magisterium’s world.
            Cut down by the son of one it had killed.
            He stared at the wolf in front of him, and felt a chill rush down
his spine.  The wolf yawned, exposing long, sharp fangs, and some instinct in
the back of his mind made the hair at the nape of his neck stand on end.  With
effort, he calmed.  It wasn’t a real wolf.  There was a person’s mind in there-
-not always a reasonable mind, but, it seemed, a sound one.
            He reached out, a finger running along the animal’s thick fur.
 Slowly, his hand sunk into the fur, burying his fingers in it.  It was warm,
and soft.  A real wolf, he reminded himself, would be, to a degree, dirty.  It
would be dirty from tromping through forests and chasing after game.  Each time
Shaislyn became an animal, he carried none of the dirt and grime with him.  The
animal would carry the scents of the forest, of the earth and the foliage.  The
wolf only smelled like wolf.
            It wasn’t a natural creature, not by half.  Still, he was glad of
its warmth, and glad that Shaislyn had shut up for a while.
            “Goodnight, Shaislyn,” he muttered, his eyes closing.  The wolf
shifted its head, and nipped gently at his hair, those vicious fangs never once
grazing his scalp.  He wondered if that was how he had said goodnight, or if he
were complaining that the elf wasn’t sleeping.
 
Chapter End Notes
     Because I am bored, this is actually how I write each scene:
     Shaislyn: I haven't been entirely truthful with you.
     Fenris: ...
     Shaislyn: Sorry, Fenris, but the princess is in another castle.
      
     This one was more amusing:
     Raith: I’m having a problem.
     Danarius: That’s not unusual.
     Raith: *ignorant* The markings on the elf’s junk… The foreskin gets
     in the way. And if he ever has an erection, it will change the shape
     of the markings, and thus their meaning too. So his power could
     change slightly.
     Danarius: Hmm…
     Raith: We could have him castrated. That would fix everything.
     Leto: 0_o
     Danarius: … We could…
     Leto: *cringes*
     Raith: I’ll make the appointment.
     Danarius: …But I don’t think he’d like that very much.
     Raith: … So?
     Danarius: … *considering* What if he were circumcised?
     Raith: … I… suppose… that would solve most of the problem.
     Danarius: See that it’s done.
     Leto: *dies*
***** Discord *****
Chapter Summary
     Fenris and Shaislyn reconcile and Fenris spends some time alone at
     his family's graves, wondering what family and love really means.
            The soil was bloody under his feet.  The grass sodden with
entrails.  The fog looked pink with it.  The mist clung to the bodies--so many
of them--like flies.  Each face was someone he knew.  The very air was so thick
it was suffocating.
            The blood stained his hands, soaked under his fingernails and
seemed to crawl up his arms, dripping the wrong way.  He couldn’t get it off.
 All the water in the world wouldn’t get it off.
            A voice was calling him, and he ignored it in a desperate hunt for
water.  He stumbled over the bodies, an elf with brown hair and a broken bow,
dozens of Qunari, and he saw children too.  There was the broken body of a
human boy with tallow hair, a sword piercing his arm.  There was the body of an
elf cut nearly in two, his arm outstretched toward a human corpse.  
He stumbled backwards when he saw Isabela, her skull split.  His heel bumped
against another corpse, and when he looked, it was Varric, ripped from neck to
groin.  He wheeled away from it, appalled.  Anders, his throat torn from one
side to the other.  Merrill, her staff through her stomach, one bloody hand
clutching at the staff in a feeble attempt to remove it.  Flies crawled across
her face.  Aveline’s body lay not far away, beheaded, the eyes rotted out from
the face.  He flinched away from the sight, and stilled.  Sebastian, torn to
pieces like an animal had ripped him apart.
            I did this.
            His back thumped against something, and he stilled, and slowly, so
slowly, he turned.  Hawke.  His heart dropped into his stomach, and he stared.
 The dead eyes stared back at him.  The sword that pinned him to the tree was a
Blade of Mercy.  Blood ran from an unmoving mouth, yet Hawke’s voice echoed all
around him.
            “Fenris,” Hawke’s voice whispered.
            “No,” he heard himself gasp, stepping backwards, unable to take his
eyes from the sight.
The soil under his feet had given way to the wooden planks of a ship, and he
turned from the impaled body of Hawke, running, but the ship seemed to stretch,
and stretch.  The ship pitched in the storm, rain pounding down around him,
making it slippery.  He slipped, grabbing for the handrail.  Lightning flashed,
and he realized the rain wasn’t rain.  It was blood.  He froze on the pitching
ship, hand gripping the railing so hard it hurt.  The rain pounded down around
him, rain that wasn’t rain.  The sea wasn’t water.  It was blood, a sea of
blood and tears and corpses.  Every toss and rock of the boat threatened to
toss him into it, and he turned around, running from the edge.  The blood sank
deeper, crawled higher.  It was all over him, consuming him.
            It sunk into the lyrium, making it twist and wrench at his being.
            The wood of the ship groaned, and lightning flashed all around him,
blinding him.  He heard a tremendous creak, a groaning like a great tree
falling.  He froze, and looked up to see the mast falling forward, falling
toward him.  He dove out of the way, rolling.  It crashed and splintered only
an arm’s length from him.  The boat tipped and he cried out in alarm as it
threw him toward the side.  His back hit the railing, and the boat rocked,
tipping farther, farther.  He gasped, reaching out, for anything, anything at
all.  His hands caught empty air, and he fell through space.  He closed his
eyes, expecting to fall into the bloody sea.  
He fell, and tumbled to the sand of the Proving Grounds.  He looked up at the
crowd of dead bodies, standing in silent audience, watching him.  He recognized
them.  All of them.  So many people, so many dead.
            He stared down at the sand, watching it turn red with blood.  In
alarm, he rose to his feet, trying to step away from it.  The blood pooled
around his feet, and seeped between his toes.  He stepped back, but there was
no where to step back to.
            His back thumped against a wall, and when he blinked, the coliseum
was gone.  He rushed forward, his fingers wrapping around the iron bars,
pushing and straining against the door but it wouldn’t budge.  He was trapped.
 Trapped, and the blood kept pooling, rising.  It was up to his knees, and he
was going to drown in the blood.
            A body floated by him, and another brushed against his leg as it
climbed up his thighs.
            A dim sob escaped his throat.
            He stepped backwards, away from the tide of bodies, but where to?
 They were everywhere, all around, and the blood just kept rising…
            It came to his waist, to his shoulders, his neck.  Just as he went
under it, he fell back against a cold, dry floor.  He looked up, and the blood
was gone.  He stared up at Danarius, even as he felt the blood again pooling
around him.
            “Please help me,” he begged him.  “Please make it stop, Master…
 Please…”
            The man smirked down at him, and said nothing, just watched him as
the blood rose around him, filling his mouth, his nose.  He gagged and choked
on it, and someone grabbed his arm, hauling him upwards, dragging him
backwards.  His eyes opened, and he watched the nightmare fade.
            The blood was gone.  The scenery was gone.  They were stranded,
alone, in a barren landscape, the Black City in the distance.
            Fenris panted, swiping his sweaty brow.  Danarius waited, and
sighed.  “You fell prey to a fear demon--again,” he muttered.
            Fenris glanced at him, puzzled for a long moment.  “I thought you
had gone,” he confessed.
            Danarius raised an eyebrow.  “Hardly.  Not with you around.”
            Fenris sighed, and shook.  Just a nightmare.  He should have known.
 “Well.  Thanks for… dropping by, as it were.  I wanted to ask you about
something anyway.”
            Danarius rolled his eyes.  “Of course.”  He took a deep breath, and
the scenery shifted.  They were standing in the garden of Danarius’ Minrathous
manor.  It was a bit more pleasant than it had been before.
            “Have you been avoiding me?” Fenris asked him, but it wasn’t what
he wanted to talk about.
            “I try to, but I usually end up stumbling across you when you
sleep; I normally don’t interfere.  But you were begging, and…”  He shrugged.
            The elf cringed at the thought of Danarius, still always nearby.
 He couldn’t truly escape, could he?  He shook his head as if to cast off the
remnants of dismay, and he exhaled deeply in something almost a sigh.  He
stared upwards for a moment, then let the matter go.  Danarius was not here
because he wanted to be. 
            Fenris looked at him flatly.  “It is nice to know you’ve decided to
mostly leave me alone.”  He sighed.  “I wanted to ask you about Shaislyn.”
            “I don’t think I know him well enough to comment on him, but you
can ask.”
            The elf frowned.  “How so?”
            Danarius considered for a long moment.  “I know he’s a whoremonger,
he smokes, and drinks copiously.  I don’t know if any of that has changed--”
            “It hasn’t.”
            Danarius was clearly irritated that Fenris had felt free to
interrupt him, but he continued anyway, “My point being, I don’t know him very
well.  I knew him as a young teenager.  He could very well have changed quite a
bit.”
            Fenris sighed.  Too true.  “I need an opinion, and quickly.”
            The dead magister blinked.  “All right, then ask.”
            “What was the role he played when you tried to trap me?”
            Danarius watched him, and his face closed like a door, sliding into
a fixed, unreadable mask.  Fenris stared back at him coldly.  “I told you
already; he orchestrated much of it.  It was never really about you, though,
Fenris; he hated you, but he…”  He paused.  “He really wanted what you wanted--
what Leto wanted, more specifically:  To care for his mother.  He was only
sacrificing you for her, and that he already hated you was, I think, just
convenient for him.”  He stopped, and began to pace as he thought, a signal
which immediately put Fenris at better ease.  When the magister was truly
thinking deeply about something, he tended to pace, or sit, but never stand.
 He stopped his pacing.  “It was really all about his family, Fenris.  Not
you.”  He looked a little sad for a moment, even regretful.  “He’d do anything
for your sister, and she never even looked at him.”
            Fenris was unmoved.  “Are you regretting not tearing an infant from
its mother’s arms to keep as your own?”
            He glanced back at the elf.  “You phrase it as though I were
kidnapping him and keeping him as a slave; he’s my son and I would have kept
him as such.  If I had only the foresight, I would have raised him as human and
never told him about his elven heritage.”
            The idea made Fenris feel sick.  Danarius would have raised his
bastard, mageborn son right in front of Fenris, never even hinting to either of
them that they were related.  He was quiet for a moment as he contemplated how
that may have turned out, his stomach twisting.  Surely he would have known?
 Looking at the child’s face, he would have known?  He looked back at Danarius.
 “He tried to kill me a while ago.”
            The mage was unsurprised.  “Did he now.”
            “You have no contact with him?”
            “No.  My only contact with the living is you, Fenris.”
            The elf made a face, and stepped away, studying the too-perfect
petals on the daffodils.  The stupid, bright yellow daffodils that Danarius
only liked because his damned dead wife liked them.  He thought about the dried
daffodil he had found in the mansion, and sighed quietly to himself.  “Well.
 Shai and I came to an agreement, and I went with him to Seheron.”  He paused.
 “To see our family’s graves.”  The magister raised an eyebrow.  “After the
ship docked, a fortune teller stopped me and told me ‘don’t trust him’.”
            “You can’t believe some half-trained Rivaini hedge mage,” the
magister scoffed.  “It’s superstitious nonsense, nothing more.”
            “I know.  But it’s too coincidental to dismiss.”
            “Conveniently coincidental.  Dismiss it anyway.”
            Fenris scowled.  “I’ll dismiss it if I think there’s no merit in
it.”
The magister visibly rolled his eyes.  “So.  You think that he is going to try
to kill you somewhere in Seheron?”
            He shrugged hopelessly.  “He had plenty of opportunities to kill me
on the way here.”
            The mage frowned in thought, thinking hard on the matter.  Fenris
knew that Danarius actually did want Fenris to live out his natural lifespan.
 It couldn’t hurt to get the man’s opinion.  Fenris just told himself that
whatever Danarius might say, he had to temper it first with what he knew.  “He
might still want to.  The only way you’ll really know though is if he attacks
you, I’m sorry to say.”
            Fenris bit his lower lip.  “But how trustworthy is he?”
            Danarius actually laughed.  “How much money do you have?”
            That didn’t bode well.  Fenris sighed, flustered.  “This isn’t
getting me anywhere.”
            “I don’t know what you were expecting.”
            He stared at him.  “An answer.  Something.”
            “No, you can’t trust him, nor should you; he hates you.  The
Shaislyn I knew would kill you given a chance.”
            The elf shook his head a little.  “Thanks,” he said blandly.  He
stilled.  “Did you ever consider how to get rid of these markings?”
            “I don’t think it’s possible without killing you.”
            Fenris shook his head a little, staring down at the grass
underfoot.  He kicked idly at a clump of grass and looked back up.  “What about
my lost memories?”
            “Blood magic.”  Danarius hesitated.  “I split your memories off and
partitioned them.  If you want them back, the cost is going to be higher than I
think you are willing to pay.”
            Fenris stilled.  It was possible, though.  It was possible to not
be plagued by half-remembered images and phrases.  It was possible to remember
completely who he had been.  “What’s the cost?”
            Danarius seemed to smile, just a little, like a cat with cream.
 “Too high for you,” he said again.
            “Don’t bait me like this.”
            The other shrugged.  “Fine; but you won’t pay it--to remember
everything, you’ll need another blood mage.  Give them complete access to your
memories.  They can unearth your memories as Leto, but in return you will have
to give up your memories of Fenris.  You see, I split the “two” of you, and
that part cannot be undone--not permanently.  Pick one or the other, Fenris.”
            Fenris’ mouth felt dry and he swallowed.  He glanced away.  In
effect, he would have to die.  The person he knew as himself would have to die
to revive the person he had been.  The dead magister was right; the cost was
just too high.  It wasn’t worth it.  He would rather keep his half-remembered
fragments of memory than forget who he was--than forget Hawke.  “I can’t.”
            “I know, my little wolf.”
            Fenris looked back at him, feeling an old hatred well up in his
chest.  It was the magister’s fault--he had done this!  It was his fault that
Fenris would never remember half of the life he had lived.  It was his fault he
felt incomplete, unwhole, like something was always missing.  It was his fault!
 He took a deep breath, trying not to let his temper and his hatred run away
with him.  “My only remorse in killing you was that you died too quickly--but
not for what you did to me,” he added quickly.  “For everyone else you have
tormented.”  The lyrium was glowing, a blaze of light in the Fade.
            Danarius only looked at him.  “Die as you lived, Fenris.”
            He felt himself being pulled away.  He was waking.
            “Remember, there are other people left in the world who would kill
you too,” Danarius reminded him, before he felt the Fade slip away.
       
            He woke, as usual, before Shaislyn, and was pleasantly surprised to
see sunlight filtering in through the woven branches.  He yawned, and sat up.
 The wolf shifted, burying its face under its paws, very much like a child.  He
frowned at it.
            He tapped on its shoulder.  “Wake up, you.”  The wolf grunted, and
rolled over, but onto him.  He cursed.  It weighed as much as a man.  Idiot--he
is a man.  “Andraste’s tits--Shaislyn, get off of me!”
            The wolf’s eyes opened partway, and a paw fell down on his
shoulders, and the wolf shifted again.  Its weight made him thump back to the
ground.  He scowled up at the animal, presently using him like a pillow.
            Irritated, he wriggled and shoved the mage in wolf’s clothing off
of him.  The wolf rolled into his blankets.  He sighed and rolled his eyes.
 “Fine, be like that.”
            He crawled out of the shelter, stretching.  The morning was
beautiful, and he wondered if he could find any dry tinder.  Then he realized
that was ridiculous--he was traveling with a mage.
            He frowned, staring at the place he had left the horse.  The animal
wasn’t there.  Could the mare be lying down?  He stalked over to it, and found
the broken line.  He sighed deeply, and cursed loudly.  He looked for any
obvious signs of where the animal had ran off to, but it had rained so
fiercely, he couldn’t see anything.  He called for it, but heard nothing.
 Shaislyn could probably find the animal faster than he could.
            He haphazardly gathered some firewood, and tossed the wet
collection of sticks and tinder into the pit.
            He had been trying not to think about it, but the idea that there
was a way to regain his memories was tempting when he was awake, more so than
when he had been dreaming.  Yet it still was not worth the sacrifice.  Some
prices were just too high.
He took a look at the rest of their supplies, then meandered back to the
shelter where the wolf was still sleeping.
            “Shaislyn?” he barked at the entrance of their small shelter.  The
wolf rolled, staring at him.  “I need to talk to you.”
            There was a flash of light, and he sat up.  “What?  You know it’s
hard for me to understand you--”
            “Yes, I know.  Look, the line broke last night and the damn horse
ran off--do you think you can find her?”
            Shaislyn sighed.  “Yeah, probably faster than you.”  He stuffed his
feet into his boots and crawled out of the shelter.  He climbed to his feet,
brushing pine needles off of his trousers.  He glanced to where the animal had
been tied, and he walked by the firepit, casting out his hand casually.  The
fire lit, and the wolf bounded into the woods.
            “Don’t scare her!” Fenris yelled at him, but had no idea if
Shaislyn had understood his words.  The elf thought it prudent to ignore the
matter for the moment, and chose to work on breakfast.  Some water was found in
a nearby stream swollen with rainwater.  Oats, a small amount of spices, and
dried fruit did well enough, he supposed.  He wasn’t a particularly picky
eater.
            He stirred the pot idly, his mind elsewhere.  Danarius seemed to
want to leave him alone.  That, at least, was good news.  Yet the dead magister
had no more insight into Fenris’ problem with Shaislyn than he did.  Still, his
opinion had never been necessary.  The ultimate choice to trust Shaislyn
belonged to Fenris, and he was on the fence about it.  Shaislyn had done many
things that should make him untrustworthy and a lack of murdering  Fenris in
his sleep did not really do much to redeem him.
By the time he had begun eating, Shaislyn had come back leading the mare.
            He stared grudgingly at Fenris as he tied her back up.  He was
soaked with water up to his waist.  “Your damn horse ran across a river and got
her dumb ass stuck on the other side.  You’re fucking welcome.”
            “Thanks,” Fenris said blandly, only halfway listening to him, and
more to the sound of his voice than his words.  Don’t trust him, the hedge
mage’s words echoed in his memory.
            Shaislyn continued grumbling for the duration of the morning, and
Fenris was glad when his nephew took off again, as was his custom, for the rest
of the day.
            They were in Schavalis by mid-noon, and Shaislyn joined him by
then, walking beside him but rarely speaking.  Fenris was surprised that he
remembered much of the place, considering how long it had been.  It had
survived the ravages of nature and time, and even a dragon attack.  Many of the
buildings still stood, even if much had been destroyed.  He picketed the horse
in a mostly fenced in yard, leaving the tack hidden under overgrown bushes.
 They continued the rest of the way on foot, picking their way over debris and
skirting overgrown plant life.
            Shaislyn was right when he said the place was long-abandoned.
 There was no sign of people here.  He listened to the cries of the seabirds
off the shore, the songbirds, the occasional chattering of a squirrel.  A feral
dog barked somewhere.
            Fenris remembered the old hedge mage’s words:  Don’t trust him.
            He looked for any signs of a trap, of an ambush.  He saw nothing,
but that meant little in truth.  They came upon the long-rent gates of the
graveyard.  The mists shifted among the headstones like forgotten ghosts,
clinging tight to the earth.  Some of the ground here was scorched, as if by a
dragon’s breath, a tree that long ago caught fire twisted out of the ground,
blackened.
            The mage stilled, and looked back at Fenris, pained.  “Can I… tell
you something?  Before we see the graves?”
            Fenris stopped, curious.  “Yes.”
            The other made a series of facial expressions, then sighed in
defeat.  He kicked at the earth underfoot.  “I could have bought Varania
back.”  He laughed without humor.  “I could have demanded a seat on the
Senate.  I could have demanded the Altus bloodline and be named Danarius’
heir.”  He smiled hollowly at Fenris, shaking his head.  “I could have saved
her.”
            Fenris wondered what he could possibly be talking about.  Maybe his
own lament that he had not let Danarius officially adopt him while he was still
alive.  “Shai…  It isn’t your fault.”
            The half-blood seemed almost angry, then it died.  “No, it is.  I
want to blame you, but…”  He shook his head.  “It is my fault.”  He cocked his
head to the side.  “When the Qunari were in Kirkwall, I stole the gaatlok
recipe.”
            Fenris’ jaw dropped, then he closed it when he realized that his
mouth was open.  He blinked slowly as he processed this.  “What?”
            Shaislyn swiped his fingers through his curly hair.  “I stole it. 
When the Qunari were occupied.  I spent a long time watching them, and spying,
and I found it.  And I memorized it—never thought I would memorize it, let me
tell you.”  He shook his head, staring downwards.  “I could have sold it to the
Magisterium.  Hell, I could have sold it anywhere and got half a kingdom.”  He
laughed again, pain beyond words in his eyes.  “I could have saved her,” he
said again.  “She died in slavery alone because I weighed the lives of those
that would die to the gaatlok over hers.  She died because of me.”
            Fenris was quiet as he looked at his nephew.  He could only wonder
at the pain it took for Shaislyn to keep that secret; the very real torture he
must have gone through to witness his mother’s suffering and know he could end
it with a word if he only found a way to make her mean more than the countless
people who would die when Thedas had the Qunari’s powder recipe.  “You did the
right thing, Shai.”
            “Did I?” he whispered, then turned his back to him.  Shaislyn
walked systematically, but Fenris noticed, avoided walking across the graves.
 “Fenris?  Don’t tell anyone that.  The Imperium would have no problems
torturing it out of me.”
            “I won’t,” he promised him, and realized the burden Shaislyn had
placed on him.  If he ever mentioned it, people would kill for the
information.  If he ever slipped, Shaislyn’s life was in danger.  He trusts me,
Fenris thought.
            Don’t trust him.
           Was it a ploy?
He followed a twist of overgrown and broken paths until they came down a hill
and around a bend.  The weeds were so dense that the headstones were mostly
covered.  Shaislyn knelt beside it, pulling the weeds off of it enough to see.
 Fenris knelt to look, curious.
            He pointed to the weathered stone.  “Your grandparents.”  He moved
to another, newer looking one.  “Mieta.  Obviously, it would have been
impossible to recover Calias, but--”
            “Who?”
            Shaislyn blinked.  “Oh.  Grandfather--your father.  Calias.”
            Fenris stared at the headstone, at the names carved into it, and
the dates.  The day his father died marked the day his life as a slave had
began.  In his mind’s eye, he watched the axe fall--again and again.  “Thank
you for doing this, Shaislyn,” he said quietly.
            He was still, not acknowledging Fenris’ words.  “I don’t know the
exact date Calias was executed.  I looked up some old Imperial records and
found his name, and an approximate date.  I guess we’ll never know for sure.”
 The other rose, and moved to a last grave.  “I just thought…”  He sighed and
shook his head a little.  “It’s nothing.”  This headstone was smaller than the
others, just a single name on it.
            Fenris looked at it, long and hard.  He remembered Varania from the
Hanged Man, the woman who had betrayed him for a job.  He barely remembered the
little girl with her hair in braids, playing in their master’s courtyard.  He
wanted to remember that Varania--the little girl, not the mage that had
betrayed him.
            But he didn’t.
            He started to turn, then stopped.  A small grave, one his nephew
had not pointed out to him, sat partially obscured under a tangle of grass.  He
pushed the stalks aside.  The headstone was only about as large as his hand,
and the dates were in the same year, with only a single name:  Viscaria.  Was
that the name of a flower?
            “It’s an empty grave,” his nephew said hollowly.  Fenris glanced up
at Shaislyn.  “But I thought my twin should still have one.”  He hesitated, as
if he might say more, but stilled.
            Fenris looked at him, his heart heavy in his chest.  He thought
about his dream where he had spoken to Danarius.  “Shaislyn?  Do you… still
hate me?”
            The other was quiet for a very long time before he spoke.  He
finally sighed, and shook his head.  “No.  I…  I forgive you, Fenris.”  His
voice was soft.  “And I know you are sorry about what happened with the Fog
Warriors.  And I know you feel remorse about Varania, so I can’t ask for much
more from you, can I?”
            “Shai.”  Fenris hesitated.  “I forgive what you tried to do.”
            The corners of his mouth pulled into a crooked smile.  “I know
forgiveness doesn’t come easily to you.”  He snorted a laugh.  “For either of
us.”  He halted, and flushed briefly.  “I want…  I want you to be my
family—reallybe a family.  Oh, Maker, that sounded corny, didn’t it?”
            “It did,” he agreed, but looked back at his nephew.  A family?
 Broken and needy, but still a family?  That was… something he had dreamed of
for as long as he could remember.
The other sighed, and shook his head.  He turned away, suddenly feeling
awkward.  Shaislyn sighed again, his head down.  “I’ll… leave you alone for a
bit.  … I’ll go figure out camp then—somewhere by the horse.  Come meet me when
you’re ready.”
            The half-elf was gone before Fenris said anything, walking quickly
away.  Fenris looked at the graves in turn.  He had no memories at all of his
grandparents, and judging by the dates of their death, he had been too young to
remember them anyway.  He knelt, tracing their names with a finger, wondering
what they had been like.
            Your grandfather wielded a great sword.  Like you.
            His eyes closed for a moment, in pain.  Information hard-gained,
but all he had of who they had been.  It was a wonder how so many people could
live their lives and have no impact on the world, their lives passing with
barely a ripple in the pond of existence.  Individually, people meant little in
the passage of time.  A rare few stood out in history, and the rest passed
unremembered.  Life went on, but they did not.
            He looked to the second grave, touching the smooth granite, trying
to remember Calias.  For the life of him, though, all he remembered were leaf-
green eyes and a sad, sad smile.  The chopping of the axe, a moment of helpless
terror, and his stomach clenched.  He swallowed the lump rising in his throat.
            I’m sorry I only remember your death, Father.
            At least he remembered something, though.  Anything he remembered
at all of him, at three years old, had to be better than nothing, didn’t it?
 He wasn’t so sure.
            His eyes slid to Mieta’s name.  Mama…
           If he closed his eyes, he couldn’t remember her face, but he could
remember her voice.  He couldn’t sing the tune if it killed him, but he could
almost… almost… remember the song.  Slavery had taken her song and her dance
away, and he couldn’t bear to watch the life in her fade day to day.  It had
been better to sacrifice himself than watch his mother’s life pass before his
eyes, to be forced to watch, a captive and tormented audience, as her smiles
came less and less frequently, as the laughter faded from her voice and the
song left her completely, as her feet unlearned how to do dance.  It had been
more than he could bear.  It was what had ultimately driven him to Danarius.
 Forever tormented and Danarius’ prize possession, his favourite pet, was
better than watching that and helpless in the face of it.  Nothing that man had
done to him had been as painful as watching his mother’s soul and being fade
before his eyes.  Not even the lyrium matched that pain.
            I’m sorry…
            His eyes were wet, and he blinked it away, trying to hold back his
own sorrow.
            Varania’s grave, he went to last.  What did you endure to make you
turn back to Danarius?
            A young girl laughing as he chased her, giggling as he caught her.
 A young girl holding a newborn kitten, the way she had smiled in delight.  A
girl bruised and dirtied as the other children had taunted her for being a
mage, and how angry it had made him that they would.  How she went to him
instead of to their mother when she was upset, always to him.  And he had sent
her away to a world she didn’t understand and had never experienced, where she
would never see him again.
            He knew seeing the graves would be painful.  He hadn’t known how
painful it would be, or what it would feel like, but he had been imagining it.
 He had experienced a lot of grief in his life, and this was only more, a raw
ache in the wake of his other pains.  There was nothing he could do about their
deaths, no words he felt like he could say.
            I had a family once, he thought.  That alone was enough.  Someone
cared, once.  He had cared for someone else.  His life hadn’t been devoid of
love, family, and laughter.  That was something, at least.
            He wished he could remember it.
            A sea breeze caressed his skin.  The lyrium felt like it was
digging in farther in protest, and he inhaled deeply, his eyes closing, as if
in prayer, but he didn’t pray.  What for?  Who to?
            The Maker was a human god.
            The gods of elvhenon had been just as cast down as the elves,
sealed away and gone forever.
            The Ancient Tevinter gods were nothing but beasts, rising again
only in a Blight.
            If anything of your spirits remain in the Fade, maybe one day, I’ll
find you all again.
            His heart ached for each loss, for each death.  I wish I knew you.
 I wish I could talk to you.
            He stared at the graves for a long time, wondering what might have
been had things turned out differently.  He had been born in this place.  His
parents had been born here.  What had it been like back then?
            He was still as he watched the grass twitch in the wind, watched
the weeds dance, and the leaves rustle.  He listened to distant birds, a
squirrel scolding.
            He rose, finally, his legs aching for how long he had sat,
unmoving.  Fenris walked slowly down the path, lost in troubled thoughts of
family and love, and what it all meant.
            When he had first met Hawke, Hawke had had a brother, a mother, an
uncle.  Hawke had been dispirited when Carver had been forced to join the
Wardens, and heartbroken over what had befallen his mother.  His sister and
father had died long before Fenris had ever met him, but each loss seemed to
have taken its toll.
            He thought of Sebastian, and his family murdered over greed.
            He thought of Isabela, whose mother had sold her into a marriage
she had hated.  Varric, who had been betrayed by his brother.  Merrill and
Keeper Merathari, how the Dalish Keeper had cared about her so much that she
had sacrificed herself to a demon to keep her safe.  Anders, whose family had
sent him to the Templars.  Aveline, who had lost her first husband to the
Blight but found love again.  He wondered what it all meant, and what it could
mean.
            What was family anyway?  A concept?  An ideal?  Was it really as
simple as blood ties or was there more to it?  What was love?
            He didn’t think it was entirely possible to fully describe a
concept, an emotion, like love.  So, too, it would be difficult to describe
what family really was.
            He walked as far as the path went, then turned and headed back the
other way, taking another path farther away, and doubled back again.  He paced,
feeling restless.  He came back to the graves of his family--whatever “family”
really was.  A pile of ash in a grave, a collection of carved stones.  An
assortment of dates and names.  A menagerie of vague images and half-remembered
words.
***** Masks *****
Chapter Summary
     We all wear masks. Sometimes we wear many, sometimes just one. But we
     always hide pieces of ourselves, the ugly parts we don't want others
     to see. We hide our secrets and our sorrows and put on a mask to show
     the world, as if nothing is wrong, as if there is nothing to hide.
            The songbirds had begun to sing of nightfall as the day wore on
into evening.  He should go back to camp.  He needed to take care of the horse
and figure out a meal.  Fenris wasn’t much of a cook, but he was more patient
about food than the half-elf was.   If he left Shaislyn to it, the mage would
either burn or undercook it.   He started to turn from the grave, staring down
at the path, only his thoughts for company.
            “You know them?” someone asked.
            Fenris’ head snapped upwards, the stranger’s words shattering his
train of thought.  The Qunari looked back at him with pale violet eyes, a shock
of disarrayed white hair falling against a bronze complexion, horns trimmed but
not cut.  As the shadows grew darker, the man somehow seemed even larger and
imposing.  “No,” he answered.  “I never did.”
            Blue eyes filled with tears.  “No.  I never did.”
            Hadriana’s words, the one shred of humanity he had ever seen in
her, and so quickly she had put it away, burying it under layers of cruelty and
greed.  How quickly she had cast aside her compassion and care.  Why?  Had she
felt that being compassionate and caring would make her weak?  Maybe in the
Magisterium, it would, but he didn’t think compassion was ever something to
exchange for cruelty.
            The Qunari was quiet for a moment, as if puzzling through what
Fenris might be doing.  “Place has been empty a long time--it’s pretty lonely,
isn’t it?”
            Fenris stepped toward him, but kept a fair distance from him, just
in case.  The Qunari was armed, after all.  A great axe was strapped to his
back, and by the scars on his arms, and the way he walked with it, he knew how
to use it.  He judged the space between them to be, even should the other step
forward, just out of his reach.  “Yes,” Fenris agreed.  “Are you here to pay
your respects to the dead?”
            The Qunari shook his head.  “Just a corpse now--no point.”  He
frowned a little.  “Saw you, though.”  He frowned at him.  “Don’t remember your
name, and I doubt you remember me, but I saw you--long time ago, can’t remember
how many years…”  The Qunari considered, trying to remember.  Fenris felt the
blood drain from his face, his stomach clenching.  Oh, no.  No…  Fenris felt
like he was suffocating when his gaze fell to the amulet at the man’s chest--an
amulet he recognized:  A Fog Warrior’s amulet.  “Saw you in Seheron City.  I
went scouting--heard you went to Schavalis with the others.”  He paused.  “But
when they went out, they never came back.”
            His eyes shifted away and with effort, the elf forced himself to
act as though nothing were wrong.  “I left,” he said quietly, and started to
walk toward the gate.  The Qunari strode right behind him on the narrow path.
            “We came across the bodies--looked like something happened.”  A
pause.  “Probably Imperials, or we would’ve found Antaam bodies too.  Imperials
like to do something with their dead.”
            Fenris was quiet.  Should he lie?  Should he…?  He couldn’t bring
himself to tell the man the truth.  Maybe saying nothing would be in his best
interest; Fenris was not a skilled liar.  “My name is Fenris.  I’m sorry, but I
don’t remember your name--?”
            The Qunari nodded.  They passed through the gate, and the man
walked beside him, dark and imposing yet somehow amiable.  The man’s arms were
like a leg, and he put a new name to the term “barrel-chested”.  He had a thick
bull neck and fingers like sausages.  Fenris felt incredibly small next to him-
-he was well below his shoulders and probably less than half the other’s
weight.  “Aban-ataashi.”
            “Sea dragon?” Fenris haphazardly guessed.  It had been a long time
since he had had need of the language.  What on earth was a…  It came to him.
 “A cetus?”
            “You ever see one?”
            “No,” Fenris admitted.  Many sailors went their whole lives without
ever seeing such a creature, and Fenris, for all the sailing he had done,
counted himself among them.  Anastas had once paid a princely sum for a good
portion of it for a meal though.  He had offered Fenris a plate, for a paltry
fee of fifty sovereigns.  Fenris had politely declined, and the smell from the
filet had been ghastly.  “Have you?”
            The Qunari grinned, showing a gold tooth among the stained white.
 “It’s the reason I’m Tal-Vashoth,” he admitted.  “A great storm attracted the
beast, and it crushed the ship.  I escaped and ended up here.”  He paused.
 “Not so unlike as to how you were freed of your master.”
            Fenris considered the wisdom in that--a great beast assaulted the
place he had been, and he had escaped.  Even so, that hadn’t trulybeen the
moment of his escape.  His escape had not been sudden.  It had been slow and
gradual, and he had come to it timidly, and perhaps even against his will at
first.  He had not started out running from Danarius.  During the attack, it
had only been about surviving.  When he had killed the Fog Warriors, he hadn’t
been running from Danarius.  He would never be able to outrun himself, and he
could not escape the horrors of what he had done.  Fenris had ran enough at
first, but he had not actively avoided or killed the hunters until he learned--
incorrectly as it was--that Danarius wanted to kill him.  Danarius wasn’t
without blame, but neither was Fenris completely innocent.  What would have
happened if he had not tortured that boy?  He would never have falsely believed
that the magister wanted him dead.  And would he have fought so hard to keep
his freedom if he had not thought that capture meant death?  He didn’t know.
 “True enough.”
            “I like to come through the abandoned cities sometimes, weed out
the scum, if you know what I mean.”
            Fenris glanced at his axe.  He could imagine.  “Do you often travel
alone?”
            “Best kind of travel.  But perhaps we go the same way?”
            The elf glanced up at him.  He doubted it.  “I’m going back to the
mainland,” he said.
            “So you’ll be headed to Seheron City, then.  Mind if I accompany
you?”
            He hesitated.  It couldn’t be a good idea to let him go, not with
Shaislyn who would probably run his mouth off, who was so very quick to accuse
Fenris, and bring up that massacre.  Fact of the matter, Fenris himself felt so
guilty about it, he felt like he would be lying to the man every step of the
journey.  “Are you headed south?”
            “I can go south,” he said amiably.  “Say, there were no Fog
Warriors who survived…  How did you?”
            Fenris’ eyes flicked away.  What should he say?  “I’m an elf; they
were expecting Tal-Vashoth.  I look Imperial, so it wasn’t…  That difficult.”
            “Coward,” the man scoffed.  There was some venom in his voice that
time.
            Fenris said nothing.  Let him think that.  It was so much better
than the bloodied truth.  He would rather the man brand him a coward in his
mind than a betrayer and a murderer.
            He considered the man’s curious method of speech.  He spoke
primarily in fragments, tumbling over words as if they had no meaning, cutting
sentences to make them shorter.  Perhaps his grasp of the King’s Speech was
deceptively looser than his accent suggested, or perhaps he just spent a lot of
time alone.  It was not so dissimilar to the way many slaves spoke; slurring
their words and butchering their sentences.   The odd manner of speech mostly
affected the miners or field workers, rarely leaking into their city slave
counterparts.  Their masters tolerated offenses to the ears and eyes least of
all.  Fenris would have been slapped if he had ever developed the mannerisms,
and he never developed that habit.
            The Tal-Vashoth had a big draft horse, the size meant for pulling
heavy ploughs or even heavier carriages, as a riding horse.  It was picketed
not too far away, and mostly obscure.  When Aban-ataashi said they should merge
their camps for safety, Fenris could not think of a viable reason they should
not.  The Fog Warrior’s camp was better secluded, and the man stayed behind
while Fenris went to get his horse.
            Fenris walked slowly to give himself more time to think.  His
thoughts tumbled together, on the verge of panic.  Should he saddle the mare
and run?  Kick her into a gallop and run her until she wouldn’t move any more,
letting Shaislyn come find him?  Shaislyn would know why he had ran.  He might
belittle him for it, but he wouldn’t press the matter.
            Fenris quickly brushed the horse down and saddled her.  He told
himself that he would have to, just to move all the tack anyway.  He hefted the
saddlebags, testing the straps.
            “You’re not running away, are you?” a voice asked, half-laughingly.
            Fenris froze, because that had been exactly what he had intended to
do.  Run, because that was how he dealt with all of his problems.  He forced
himself to calm.  He looked back at the big man, at that enormous axe.  “No--
but I can’t carry all her tack, and she can.”
            The Qunari shrugged, reaching around Fenris to take her bridle.  He
looked at the horse’s mouth, at her hooves and flanks.  “She could use a good
rest,” he commented, and started leading her away.  The horse was nervous about
being led by such a big, horned stranger, but Fenris walked beside her, just as
nervous as she was.
            When they arrived at Aban-ataashi’s encampment, he started removing
the tack, putting it beside his own.  Fenris had to lift the saddle with both
hands; the Qunari heaved it around with one as if the weight were nothing.  The
Tal-Vashoth could probably lift Fenris’ mare.  Fenris felt oddly helpless as he
watched him.  Should he mention Shaislyn?  He was going to find out about him
anyway.
            “I’m going to go look for my companion,” Fenris said slowly.  “If
that’s all right.”
            “Sure--you didn’t mention anyone?”
            The elf shrugged.  “He runs off a lot.  I’ll be back soon.”  He
turned, thinking hard.  They could abandon the horse and the tack.  He could
live without the mare.  He would be fine without the supplies, even if
uncomfortable.
            He found Shaislyn near where he had had his horse picketed.  The
young man had his arms crossed, his eyes accusing.
            “Were you watching that?” Fenris asked him.
            The boy cocked his head to one side.  “I don’t like this,” he
admitted.  Fenris searched his face.  The mage had an almost unnatural distaste
for Qunari.  He had flinched any time they even passed a Tal-Vashoth.  He
wondered why.  
He approached him.  “I was actually considering running.”
            Shaislyn’s eyebrows rose, his demeanor changing completely.  “Oh,”
he said.  He chewed on his lower lip.  “What about the horse?”
            Fenris shook his head.  “Leave it.”
            He nodded dimly.  “Understood.”  The other followed close behind
him as he led the way back out onto the street.  They stole down the alleys,
the sun fading fast on the horizon.  It seemed terribly disingenuous, but what
else could he do?  With it dark out, and Fenris agitated, the lyrium was
glowing brightly.  He tried to calm enough for it to dim, but it only made it
flash, which he was certain only made it more obvious.
            “Maybe we should cover you in tar,” Shaislyn mused.
            “I’m not sure that would help.”
            “We could still try.”
            “Shai?  Now is not the time.”
            “Right.”  They both fell silent, stealing across the street and
down a twist of alleys and side streets, into crumbling buildings and into an
overgrown lot.  They headed toward the gate, staying off the wider, better lit
streets in favor of concealment.  A collapsed building hampered their path, and
they veered off the side street, looking for a way around.  Fenris found an
alternate route through a barn, and they headed through it.  They ventured down
the maze of alleys and buildings and finally had to rejoin the main street.
            Fenris heard hooves, and groaned aloud, turning around.  He would
shine like a beacon in the dark, and he should have known better.  He looked
back, chewing on his lower lip as he watched the horse approach, the big man
astride it, for the moment just a distinct silhouette.
            “I’ll say you needed to come find me,” Shaislyn muttered with a
sigh.  Then he cocked his head to the side.  “I could probably set him on fire,
though--if you want.”
            “Do it and you lose an arm.”
            The other snorted.  “Touchy.”
            Fenris glanced at him, then back at the approaching Tal-Vashoth.
 “Not one word about the Fog Warriors, Shaislyn.”
            His lips curved into a smirk.  “Oh?”  An eyebrow raised.  “And what
do I get out of keeping my mouth shut?”
            Fenris stared at him, and debated on slapping that smirk off of his
face, then calmed.  “My eternal gratitude and thanks.”  The glow of the lyrium
and his tone of voice made it half a threat.
            His lips curved into a disapproving frown.  “But--”
            “I helped you scam people out of money.”
            “The correct term is ‘hustling’.  Fine.”  Shaislyn huffed, but
crossed his arms and fell silent as the rider approached.
            “You took so long, I thought you might’ve come across bandits--
found some the last time I was here,” the man said sincerely.  “I’m sure you
could handle yourself, but you never know.”
            Fenris shrugged.  “He was difficult to find.”  He glanced at
Shaislyn.  “And shy around strangers.”
            Shaislyn made a face, but said nothing.  The man swung out of the
saddle.  It did little to decrease his height.  “Name’s Aban-ataashi.”
            The mage looked back at him, an expression of bored aloofness on
his face.  He had never looked quite so much like Danarius to Fenris as that
moment.  “Enchanter Shaislyn Avidius, Minrathous Circle.”
            Fenris frowned at him.  That could have gone better.  The Fog
Warrior stared at him, his eyes narrowing only slightly.  “You travel in
strange company, Fenris,” the man said.
            The elf sighed deeply.  “He’s mostly harmless,” he muttered.  The
half-elf snorted with disdain.  The Fog Warrior walked his mount and the other
two walked with him, Shaislyn a fair distance apart.
            “Where’s your horse?” the Fog Warrior asked Shaislyn.
            The mage lifted his head, and smirked.  “Why ride when I can fly?”
            “Shaislyn, no,” Fenris snapped.  He paused, and the pause stretched
to an uncomfortable silence.  “Avidius.  I would not have expected you to have
an Imperial last name.”
            Shaislyn had removed the slender case of cigars he kept on his
person, prying at the lid.  “The Circle insisted.  I didn’t see a point in
pressing the matter.”
            “Hmm.”  It made Fenris feel irritated.  Shaislyn claimed to have so
much devotion to their family, and he just tossed aside everything about them.
 Maybe because he was a bastard.  It was a poor excuse.
            The cigar lit, and the Fog Warrior visibly stiffened to see the
mage use magic to light it.  The case snapped shut and disappeared back in his
pocket.  Fenris hadn’t seen his nephew smoke in weeks, come to think of it.  He
wondered if it wasn’t just something he did when he was stressed.  Did that
mean Shaislyn had been comfortable around him before?  He considered that in
silence.
            Aban-ataashi looked at each of them, noting the small animosity
between them.  “Well, are either of you hungry?”
            Shaislyn froze, and chuckled a little.  “I completely forgot--
I killed a deer in the forest.  Came back to get the horse because I couldn’t
lift it by myself.”  He glanced toward Fenris, inhaling on the cigar.  “So,
I’ll just borrow your horse, Fenris, and I’ll go get it.”
            The Fog Warrior stopped.  “Hissra is already saddled; lead us, Bas-
Saarebas.”
            Shaislyn visibly bristled at the title.  Neither mage nor Tal-
Vashoth moved, and Fenris felt like a captive audience watching the two stare
at one another, as if measuring their strengths and weaknesses, and deciding
where to strike first.  The tension in the air was so thick if Fenris struck it
with his sword, it could be cut.  Shaislyn tilted his head slightly, the cigar
burning unnoticed in his hand.  “Horned beast,” he said disdainfully, but in
Tevene.  Aban-ataashi frowned, not understanding the term.
            Fenris ground his teeth.  “Shaislyn--”
            The mage turned.  “Follow me.”
            Gone was his nephew, and the half-elven mage who had been happier
an apostate; gone the thief and the drunkard; gone the gambler and the
whoremonger.  This was the Laetan Enchanter.  Fenris wasn’t so sure how he felt
about the change.
            The mage walked fully expecting that the other two would follow,
never even glancing back at them.  Fenris’ eyes shifted toward Aban-ataashi,
the man’s violet eyes flashing with indignation before it cooled, and he
turned, following the other.  Fenris sighed, walking beside the Fog Warrior,
the mage ahead of them.
            “You must be doing something important,” Aban-ataashi commented
dryly.
            Fenris shook his head a little.  “Just a personal venture.”  He
glanced at him.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”
            The other’s demeanor softened.  “You didn’t end up back in Imperial
hands, did you?” he asked, his voice gentle.
            The elf shrugged one shoulder dismissively.  “No.  I was never a
slave again,” he clarified.
            The other paused.  “Keep your secrets, if it please you.”
            “It does,” Fenris said good-naturedly, and the Fog Warrior’s lips
curved into something almost a smile.  The elf’s eyes again fell to the mage in
front of them, his head raised, back straight, even arrogant.  He hoped he
didn’t plan on acting this way all the way back to the city.  Of course, if
Shaislyn really hated traveling with Aban-ataashi, he could always leave them.
 Fenris could get back to the mainland without him, but it would be lonely.  He
supposed that it was inevitable that they part ways as they both had very
different lives, but he had grown to enjoy the other’s company.  He had thought
that Shaislyn had felt similarly, but he didn’t think his attitude had to do
with Fenris at all.
            He wondered why he had hated Qunari so much, trying to remember
anything he had said about them.  It came to him, suddenly:  Shaislyn had been
used to spy on them.  Fenris had not asked about it, but now he wondered.
            Shaislyn had an odd abrasion-like scar around his lips.  Fenris had
never really questioned it; it had been there since he had met him when he was
a young child.  But Fenris had seen Saarebas.  Their mouths were stitched shut
with a thick leather cord.
            If he considered the scars around his lips…
            He missed a step.  All this time, it had been staring him in the
face, and he had missed it.  Shaislyn sided strongly with the Imperials because
he hated the Qunari, and he hated the Qunari because…
            He shivered.
            “Are you all right?” Aban-ataashi inquired.
            Fenris looked toward him.  “Fine,” he responded, frowning in
thought.  Well, if Shaislyn were really uncomfortable around the Fog Warrior,
he could leave, he supposed.  Nothing was stopping him.
            They followed the Enchanter into the woods, and down a meandering
deer trail, before the mage stopped.  He turned around and confessed, “I can’t
tell where it is from here.”
            The Qunari stared at him, behind Fenris with his mount.  “A fine
waste of time.”
            The mage scoffed, and a light flashed around him.  The wolf darted
off ahead of them, confident in its abilities to smell its way there.  Fenris
sighed, and glanced back at the stunned Tal-Vashoth.  “No, not all Imperial
mages can do that; it’s really just Shaislyn.”
            He stared off at the waiting wolf.  “Mages,” he muttered, but
followed.  The wolf led them for several minutes, then snarled as it bounded
forward, its thick coat pulling against a blackberry bush.  Fenris hurried
around the foliage when he heard the wolf snarl, followed by a short yelp.  He
came across Shaislyn snapping his jaws at a pair of feral dogs, swiping one
with his paws.  The dogs snarled back, circling.  Fenris drew steel, and the
lyrium brightened.  The dogs jumped, backing up.  Shaislyn ran toward them, and
the dogs abandoned the deer carcass, running into the wood.  The wolf followed
them a short distance before trotting back.
            The wolf sniffed at the deer, and Fenris looked at it, but it
didn’t look as though the dogs had gotten to it just yet.  A flash of light,
and Shaislyn knelt over the carcass, drawing a hunting knife to hand.  “Anyone
want to help me?”
            Aban-ataashi assisted him, neither speaking to one another.
 Shaislyn had bled the animal before he had gone, but he apparently intended to
gut it here.  They worked, and Fenris stepped away from the awful smell of
spilled viscera.  He tended the horse, gentling the big animal, uneasy around
the scent of blood.
            Aban-ataashi had a stained tarp in his saddle bags he threw over
the old leather saddle.  Gutting it was the work of minutes.  They left the
cold entrails in a bloody pile and heaved the dead doe upwards.  The horse
stirred only a little when the dead animal was lain across its back.  The
carcass was quickly lashed in place, and the Tal-Vashoth lead the horse back
out, following the path they had taken.  Shaislyn glanced backwards, making a
face half a wolf’s snarl.  The feral dogs had come back, slinking out of the
trees to nose at the intestines.  Fenris half-expected him to chase them off
again, but the mage did not.
            Shaislyn was quiet and strangely… dignified the rest of the
evening.  Even skinning the carcass, he did so with a calculated sort of
precision.  He let Aban-ataashi light a fire, and Fenris attend the horses,
with the same sort of cold aloofness that, perhaps to the Fog Warrior, seemed
standoffish and even rude.
            Shaislyn salted the meat they wouldn’t be immediately eating, and
used a heavy cord to tie it to a tree branch to keep animals out of it.  While
he did it, Fenris walked up to him and said, “Shaislyn, stop acting like a
Blighted gemlock.”
            He looked up at him.  “Tell him to stop calling me‘Bas-Saarebas’,”
he hissed, but in Tevene instead of the King’s Speech.
            Fenris groaned inwardly.  “If we are all going to get along, you
will both have to give a little ground.  Don’t act like an asshole.”
“Fine, just as soon as he stops calling me ‘Bas-Saarebas’.”
            “It’s just a word.  It means ‘non-Qunari mage’, which you are.”
            Shaislyn’s face twisted into, for just an instant, a wild rage
before it slipped beyond rage, into the calm of the storm.  “It means so much
more than that,”he snapped.
            Fenris caught himself looking at the scars around his mouth, and
flinched.  “Shaislyn…”  He glanced at Aban-ataashi, and switched to Tevene.
 “Shai, were you… ever captured… by the Qunari?”
Shaislyn stared at him, his eye twitching slightly, lips pulled into a sneer.
 “And if I was?”
Fenris felt a lump rise in his throat.  Mages should be collared and
controlled, lest they abuse their power, but…  They did it to children.  Qunari
held a firm belief that demons could ride a mage’s words, but Fenris did not
think that belief could hold water.  If that were true, a lot more people would
be possessed.  Fenris would be possessed if that were true--how many blood
mages had he been near and he had never had such a problem?  Caution was all
well and good, but they used caution to justify torturing children.  Nothing
justified the torture of a child.  Still, there were some mages he would not
have minded seeing their mouths stitched shut--but those people were long dead.
 He thought of Magister Elden briefly, and amended that thought.  “Was it when…
 you were a child?  Before I met you?”
The mage crossed his arms, staring downwards.  He swallowed.  He looked back at
Fenris.  “They stitched my mouth shut and put a collar on me, and they threw me
into a cage.  They took away my sight, my name, and my voice.  They took away
everything that made me a person.”  He looked pained.
Fenris didn’t know what to say.  “But you got away.”
“Because I learned to shapeshift,” he told him peaceably.  He frowned at him.
 “I was only there for a few weeks, but I willneverforgive what they do to
their mages.”
Fenris’ eyes flicked toward the Fog Warrior, and back to Shaislyn.  “He isn’t…”
Shaislyn shook his head firmly.  “I don’t care.  You give up all your prejudice
about mages and I’ll stop hating those oxen and their damnable cult.  Is that
fair?”
“That’s not the same--”
“It is,” he hissed lividly.  “They put a collar around my neck, took away my
name and who I am.  He calls me ‘Bas-Saarebas’.”  He jerked his head in the
direction of the Fog Warrior.  The man had to know they were talking about him.
 “How would you feel if a mage kept referring to you as ‘slave’?  It is the
exact same thing.”
To a child, a few weeks was an eternity.  His mouth stitched shut, locked in a
cage, beaten and alone…  He couldn’t even imagine…  But mages could do so much
harm if left to their own devices.  He had seen it, lived it.  The Qunari did
those things, yes, but they didn’t do it because it pleased them or for the
sake of being cruel; they did it because they wanted to protect others.
 Danarius had only done those things because it pleased him and because he
wanted to be cruel.  The intent changed the deed... didn’t it?  “I’m sorry,
Shaislyn.  It’s not the same.”
Shaislyn grew angry.  “Oh?  Maybe if I started calling you ‘pet’ you would
understand how I feel about being called ‘Bas-Saarebas’.”
The lyrium flared with his temper.  His teeth bared in the wake of his rage.
 Shaislyn did not back down.  “That isnotthe same.  Danarius called me that,
and he tormented me for years, mage.”
Shaislyn scoffed.  “Tormented you,” he laughed.  “You spoiled shit.  You had
one of the best rooms in his manor.  What hardships didyouendure?”
Fenris stared at him, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt.  “That bastard beat me.
 He cut me for his filthy blood magic.  He let Hadriana starve me when she
would.  He paraded me around on a leash, Shaislyn.”  He swallowed. “He raped a
girl in front of me because I thought she was pretty.  He let another
magister…”  He stopped, and stared down at the earth under his feet.  
Shaislyn shook his head, fuming.  “I had my damned mouth stitched shut.  They
put a collar around my neck that made me blind and unable to speak.”  Shaislyn
gestured angrily, as if he might speak with his hands.  Most mages learned,
very quickly, not to do that--ever.  The Magisterium had just made it rude and
uncivil, but mages elsewhere learned not to do it for very different reasons.
 Shaislyn had not heeded that lesson, and Fenris half-expected accidental
spells.  He should have known better; his nephew had no mana to cast.  “They
threw me into a cage, too short to stand up in, too small to lay down.  They
beat me when I tried to speak or when I screamed.  They never had the time to
castrate me, but they had planned to.  They let me out once in a while to
relieve myself, and always someone was watching me.”  He stopped, shaking with
rage.  “What could ever justify doing that to a child?”
“Because of what you are and what you can become!  Mages can summon demons--
every mage has the ability to kill people!”
“So do you!”Shaislyn snarled. “Look at you!”  He pointed at him.  “Every time
you use your ability, you step into the Fade.  Do you think demons don’t see
you as an opening to our world?”
Fenris stilled, speechless.  Hawke had brought him into the Fade.  He should
have done what Sebastian did and refuse to go, but he had not.  He remembered
the pride demon with self-repulsion.  Pride had been the ancient magister’s
greatest folly and sin… and it was his too.  “Shaislyn--
“I’m sorry, but I’ll take your silk pillows over the cage.”
Fenris stared at him.  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I don’t?”  He paused, and a slow smirk spread across his face.  Fenris
impulsively wanted to step back, his gut wrenching.  How could his obnoxious,
drunkard of a nephew look so much like Danarius because of a facial expression?
 “Pet.”
The lyrium consumed his body, washing over him in a torrent of anger and pain.
  Aban-ataashi was trying not to stare.  Shaislyn doesn’t understand, Fenris
tried to tell himself.  Shaislyn didn’t know what that word meant to him, what
the term meant.  That single-syllable word perfectly summed up every horrible
thing Danarius had done to him.  It summarized every bruise, every cut, every
fallen tear, the way he had made him feel, the things he had done to him, and
the things he had made Fenris do.  “Pet”--because he had treated him like an
animal.  “Pet”--because that was all Fenris had been.  Some people used the
phrase as a term of endearment--it was the single worst term of endearment he
could ever imagine.  It was only made worse in that Danarius had often used the
term almost affectionately.  That had just made everything so much worse.  He
didn’t understand, or didn’t know, what Danarius had been like.  Shaislyn had
no knowledge of what Fenris’ life had been like, and the elf was not about to
tell him just for the sake of an argument.  There was a number of things Fenris
wanted to say.  There was an even longer list of things he wanted to do.
 Instead, he found a different set of words, what he hoped were the right words
to keep the situation from escalating.  Fenris’ temper, in many ways, was often
his own undoing.  It was hard to reign it in, and hard to want to.  It was
always a small victory when he did--a victory against the hatred that Danarius
had instilled in him.  He could be better than what Danarius had made him.  The
beacon the lyrium had become dimmed to the glow of a lantern, like a nimbus of
light surrounding him.
            “What you are acting like is one of the many reasons Qunari treat
mages like they do.”
            Shaislyn stiffened, but nodded dimly.  “Ask him to refer to me by
name, andI’ll try,” he muttered.
            “Good.”  He turned from his nephew, taking several deep breaths,
trying to calm.  His eyes slid closed, and he tried to think of water, of the
calm of the sea or the babble of a brook.  The orchard.  Riding Siren in the
surf with Kylie.  His eyes opened, and he didn’t feel so angry any more. 
Shaislyn was being an ass, but he was a kid; he really didn’t understand, and
that was all there was to it.
            With that, he went to Aban-ataashi.  “Please act civil,” he
requested gently, and to get his point across he used his not oft spoken
Qunlat.  “Shaislyn agreed to be peaceable if you will refer to him by his
name.”
”What was that about?”
           Fenris shook his head a little, dismissing it.  “Nothing.  We just
had a disagreement on a… difficult subject.”
            The man watched him, as if considering.  “You shouldn’t trust him,
Fenris; he is Bas-Saarebas.”
            “I can hear you,” Shaislyn called from across the camp, responding
in Qunlat as if to spite the Tal-Vashoth.
            The man watched him the way one watched a viper, but did not rise
to meet the challenge, not yet.  The half-blind hedge mage’s words echoed in
his mind:  Don’t trust him.
            The meal was consumed in a silence that the word “awkward” could
not do proper justice to.  Despite that, the roast had turned out well, and
Fenris commented to Shaislyn that he might have cheese in one of the
saddlebags, but they were completely out of the travel bread.  Shaislyn dug
around in Fenris’ saddlebags until he found the last of the cheese.  Aban-
ataashi declined.
            The mage watched him loftily.  “What do you have against cheese?”
            “When I was a child, I grew sick, and they fed me cheese, and said
it would make me better.  Threw it up, and they made me eat more cheese.  I
learned to hate cheese,” the warrior explained.
            Fenris chewed thoughtfully on a bite of cheese.  “Someone once told
me that he never trusts someone who doesn’t like cheese.”
            The other made a face.  “Cheese is molded milk.”  His judgmental
gaze shifted towards the mage.  “I can’t imagine why anyone would eat it,” he
said, as if to suggest that Shaislyn’s enjoyment of cheese was a result of his
magery, and not just a personal preference. 
            “It’s delicious,” Shaislyn offered, his tone of voice light-
hearted, but his reproachful stare betrayed his innermost thoughts.
            It was going to be a long night.  They each took a watch, Aban-
ataashi taking the middle watch, and Shaislyn took the first.
            The big Fog Warrior had his hand on his shoulder when Fenris woke.
 It was disorienting, at first, then he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
 Shaislyn had disappeared at the end of his watch, he saw.
            Fenris liked the last watch of the night.  The dawn was peaceful,
and he liked to watch the sun turn the mists pink as the birds woke.  Breakfast
was consumed quickly, and in relative silence.  When they left, Shaislyn flew
off, circling overhead.  Aban-ataashi liked it not one bit.
            “Can the mage understand us speaking when he is an animal?” he
inquired of Fenris.
            The elf shook his head.  “Not particularly well.”
            He seemed relieved to hear it.  The two talked a bit, mostly of
mundane things and asking questions of one another.  Fenris was interested to
hear of the Fog Warrior’s many travels and campaigns.  Aban-ataashi had been
all over Seheron, fighting Imperials and Qunari alike.  It reminded Fenris, too
much, of the Fog Warriors--their tales of their exploits and their bravery, the
awe Fenris had felt for them.  
Aban-ataashi told him about how they had lain a trap for the Antaam by having a
rogue taunt them into giving chase.  The rogue could run faster than they, and
had lured them right into an ambush.  Fenris laughed when the man described
their elaborate traps.  There was a pit, a grease trap, and Fenris’ personal
favourite--a log suspended on ropes the Fog Warriors had used to knock over
their foes and slay them while they were down.  Aban-ataashi had all sorts of
stories like that, and they were not all of victory--some were of defeat, some
stalemates.  He told one story where he and a few other Fog Warriors had ended
up trapped in a cave-in, which he described as being the most harrowing
experience he had ever endured.
It was not all battles and adventures with Aban-ataashi either, though.  The
Fog Warrior had known very little of other cultures or social norms, and had
made, from the sound of it, quite the fool of himself at first.  He was
fortunate to have a good sense of humor and knew when to laugh at himself, and
did not take himself as seriously as most Qunari seemed to.  The Tal-Vashoth
mentioned the first time he had tried whisky, and they both laughed.
Aban-ataashi inquired as to Fenris’ own adventures and adapting to life as a
free man.  Fenris admitted his acquisition to normalcy from slavery was not
particularly humorous or entertaining.  He mentioned the hunters, the crazed
paranoia he had to live with for many years that had left him with a habit of
constantly scanning his surroundings.  It was not a bad habit to have,
especially while working or traveling and the Fog Warrior agreed.  He mentioned
the smugglers, and that he had walked from the Arlathan Forest to Kirkwall.
 The other was impressed at that feat, and asked about the lay of the land and
the desert especially--as he had never seen one.  Aban-ataashi asked him about
Kirkwall too.
“Was it worth the many years you spent there?” the man asked in his native
tongue.
Fenris thought about Hawke.  “I suppose so.”  He hesitated. “A man I met there
helped me deal with the hunters and even taught me to read--among other
things.”  The elf thought, He taught me so much more than that.  He helped me
so much more than that.
It must have been something about what he said, or maybe the look on his face,
for the other commented, “You cared about him.”
            Fenris’ eyes shifted away.  “Yes,” he admitted.
            “Then why leave?”
            He looked back at him.  “He loved someone else.”
            He nodded knowingly.  “I understand.”
            Do you? he wondered.  “It’s better that I left.”
            “Must have been difficult.”
            “It was.”
***** The Monster of the River Ván *****
Chapter Summary
     “There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily,
     and so do dreams and hearts.”
     ― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
            By the afternoon, they stopped for a lunch of venison.  Shaislyn
didn’t bother.  Sometime toward late afternoon, the mage circled back to them,
the eagle screeching, wheeling and diving.  Fenris commented, “I think he is
trying to get our attention.”
            “Seems that way.”
            The bird stopped, and flew off the path, winging low in the fog.
 It took Fenris a moment to puzzle through it.  “He found something, and I
think he wants us to follow him.”
            “He could just say that, couldn’t he?”
            Fenris agreed, but they followed the insistent bird anyway.  When
they passed a stand of pine trees, he put a finger to his lips, and led them
deeper into the grove.  When they stopped, Fenris swung out of the saddle.  He
went to him and asked, “What’s going on?”
            “There’s a band of thieves coming up the road.  We could probably
handle them, but I don’t want to risk the horses; they’re not destriers.”
            Fenris glanced at Aban-ataashi, and the man nodded in agreement.
 “Let’s leave the animals here and go take care of the vermin,” he suggested.
            The other two promptly agreed.  They discussed a course of action,
and Shaislyn flew off again, a raven this time.  Fenris thought that choice of
forms was a little foreboding and melodramatic.  Maybe Shaislyn liked that.
 Merrill had once told him, somewhat against his will, about the difference
between crows and ravens--in a very long, boring lecture while walking down
Sundermount, after one of the offending birds had shat on him, and he knew more
about the animal than he cared to.  Wolf birds, he thought.  They play with
wolves.  Then, Danarius called me his “little wolf”.  Does that make Shaislyn a
raven?  
It flew off, circled in the fog, and flew back, signaling where they were.
 Fenris moved around, into the forest to flank them, and Aban-Ataashi took the
dangerous place walking up the middle.
            Fenris wasn’t close enough to hear the confrontation, but the
bandits did confront him.  When he saw weapons being drawn, he flew out of the
trees like a ghost, his sword rending flesh and bone.  At first, he didn’t even
see Shaislyn, and would have called him a lazy coward for letting the other two
do all the work, but then he did.  He worked better in subterfuge; he would
appear in a flash of light, drive a blade into someone, and disappear, a
sparrow zipping around them, or a wolf surprising them and quickly vanishing.
 Aban-ataashi, though, was a sight to behold.  Terrible and fearsome at his
full height, his hulking mass hefting the great axe like a child would a stick,
the bandits were nearly as terrified of him as they were of Fenris; glowing
bright in the mist and obviously of some dark magical origin.  The bandits
broke and scattered, and a wolf ran them down.
            When it was done, the two warriors inspected their weapons,
cleaning their blades.  Fenris and Shaislyn checked the bandits for coin while
Aban-ataashi took a whetstone to his axe’s blade.
            “Didn’t think a mage would stoop to using such a mundane means of
attack,” the Tal-Vashoth commented to Shaislyn.
            The half-blood snorted.  “You think I lug these around for
decoration?  They’re pretty, but that just sounds inconvenient.”
            Something about spilling blood together made the two more amiable
towards one another, Fenris was relieved to see, even if it were only by
degrees.  Men were like that though.  It had been like that between he and
Anders too--it never lasted beyond a few minutes, but they would, even briefly,
be at least amiable towards one another.  Isabela and Aveline, controversially,
had been the opposite--their blood was riled and they would be more
temperamental.  He guessed it was as simple as a man getting to vent and a
women just working up to it.  Like an orgasm, maybe.
            The thing about fighting, though, he always wanted to fuck after
it.  Isabela had been great for that--they would go out with Hawke, and the
moment the doors closed, often before the doors closed, it was a done deal.
 She was always a sure thing.  With Anastas, there was a slave he thought he
might have been half in love with.  Human and gorgeous, she had been happy to
welcome him back every time he fended off bandits or wild animals while on the
caravan.  She had gotten married some time ago.  On the eve of her wedding, she
had slipped into his room and jumped into bed with him, but that had been the
last time.
            He often felt it was better that way.
            Aban-ataashi and Shaislyn were talking.  “I’m sure a man like you
has a girl or two waiting for him somewhere,” the mage was saying.  “Well,
don’t you?”
            “Somewhere,” he said, evasively.
            The mage made a face.  “Well--tell me about her.”
            “I’m much more interested in the girls you have somewhere.”
            “Just, you know, my hand.  It gets the job done,” Shaislyn said
matter-of-factly.  The other two laughed.  “I really hadn’t intended to say
that out loud.  I meant to say, I fuck a lot of whores.”
            “That’s really not any better,” Fenris chimed in.
            “Well, one is free,” he agreed.  “The left is cheating though.”
            Aban-ataashi’s face flushed--something Fenris had never seen in a
Qunari, the bronze of his skin heating like melted metal.  The elf couldn’t
help but laugh, and when Shaislyn saw him, he chuckled too.  The good mood only
lasted for so long, until they got back to the horses, and Shaislyn took off
again.
            “The Bas-Saarebas is not what I expected,” Aban-ataashi commented
to Fenris.
            Fenris raised an eyebrow.  “He wasn’t what I expected either.”
            That evening, around the campfire, Shaislyn prowled in the dark,
leaving Aban-ataashi and Fenris alone.  Aban-ataashi told him stories about his
many travels, and what had happened the night the Imperials lost Seheron City,
when Fenris first tasted freedom, from the Fog Warrior’s perspective.
            It was interesting to hear about.  They had seen the fires from a
long distance away, and ventured cautiously toward it.  Waiting for the Antaam
to leave, they had gone through the city looking for survivors.  There weren’t
many; the Antaam always took whoever they could.
            Shaislyn came out of the forest stretching, and sat down.  “If you
go north at all, be careful; there’s a very steep, not very visible, cliff up
there.”
            Fenris looked back toward the Fog Warrior.  “The men you found dead
in the field, how long did they lie before you found them?”
            “We reckoned a week, maybe two--animals had been at them.”  He
shrugged.  “Guess we’ll never know what happened--any tracks or clues were
gone.”  He stared at the fire.  “Guess it doesn’t matter--damned Vints.”
            “What’s--” he started to ask, then it dawned on him.  “Oh.”
            Fenris watched Shaislyn, prepared to throw something at him if need
be to keep his mouth shut.  The half-blood said not one word, however.  The elf
hesitated, and stared down at his hands.  “The… field you found their bodies
in…  Do you happen to know where it is?” he asked, looking toward the Tal-
Vashoth.  Shaislyn’s mouth twisted into a disapproving frown, but he said
nothing.
Aban-ataashi nodded.  “Yes.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Fenris knew what he had to do to try
to reconcile what had happened in his heart, and finally lay these ghosts to
rest.  “If it is not too much trouble, could we go there?”
“You should leave it alone,” Shaislyn finally muttered.  
Fenris ignored him.  “How far away is it?”
“We’ll be near in about two, maybe three days, and it’s a few hours off the
road.”
Fenris nodded.  “I’d like to visit there.”
“I’ll take you,” the man promised him.
Shaislyn sighed, defeated.
 
Fenris’ heart was pounding the moment they stepped off the road, following a
deer trail into the forest.  Aban-ataashi had to lead his mount or the low-
hanging branches would catch on his horns and weapon.  Fenris ducked low, and
Shaislyn trailed behind, a lonely wolf dragging its feet.  Shaislyn had made it
abundantly clear he didn’t want to talk to either of them, and had been deathly
silent for days.  Fenris couldn’t help but wonder why.
            True, he had been testy and quiet since Aban-ataashi had shown up,
burning his way through the cigars until there were none left, and his attitude
had not improved when his supply ran dry.  The past couple of days had been the
worst of it.  It felt like all the progress he and Fenris had made had
dissolved.  They had almost been friends, almost liked one another, very nearly
been like real family.  Maybe one day, they may have learned to care about one
another.  All of that ended when Fenris asked to see the field.
            Shaislyn, he had reasoned, would forgive him this one diversion,
but he hadn’t yet.  At camp, his nephew stalked the perimeter or watched from
above, and did not even transform back to eat or sleep.  Once, he had woken
sometime during Shaislyn’s watch, and saw the mage standing with his back to
the fire, watching the dark in his birth form.  It was frustrating, and
difficult because he could not even talk to him about it.
            What would he even say anyway?  The one time he had managed to talk
to him, alone with Aban-ataashi asleep, he had whispered, “I’m sorry, Shaislyn,
I have to do this.”
            Shaislyn had stared at him, the steam from the tea in the tin cup
mingling with the ever-present fog.  The tea was the only reason Shaislyn
wasn’t an animal at the moment.  “Drag the past around after you like a dead
goose?” the mage had hissed lividly.  “Because that’s what you’re doing.”
            Of course, that had only riled the elf’s temper.  “Don’t you ever
want to make amends for past wrongs?”
            Shaislyn gave him a vacant stare, his lips drawing into a thin
line.  “There’s nothing you can do.  Stop being an idiot.”  He sipped at the
tea.
            His eyes narrowed.  “This has haunted me for years--if there’s even
the slightest chance I can ever forgive myself by going, I have to go.”
            The other’s jaw set, his brow drawing down in a glare.  “You’re an
idiot,” he reaffirmed.  “And this is a waste of time.”
            Fenris stared at him, watching him sit straight-backed on the
fallen log as if it were a throne, the way he held the tin cup and regarded
him.  “You’ve never sounded so much like your father.”  As soon as he said it,
he regretted it.  It wasn’t true, and he knew it was a sore spot for his
nephew, but it was too late and the damage was done.
            “Fuck you.”  And that had been their last conversation.
            Fenris contented himself, instead, to listen to the sounds of the
forest.  The birds, squirrels, the whispering of the wind, and the laughter of
a brook.  They passed by an elk, who stood silent and serene, staring at them
with large eyes, watching them but not so afraid as to flee.  They left it
alone and it bent its head to continue to graze.
            A rabbit darted across the path, and the wolf that was really a
mage chased after it.  Apparently bored with following them, it pursued the
animal a short distance.  There was a sound as the rabbit’s spine snapped, and
Fenris made a face.  He could barely believe that Shaislyn had no qualms about
eating raw, bloodied flesh.
            The wolf came back licking blood off of its muzzle.  It stared up
at Fenris for a moment, then fell back into line behind him--far behind him.
 Fenris’ horse had gotten used to it, but Aban-ataashi’s gelding was still
finicky around the wolf.
            He thought about his “discussion” with Danarius, and the nightmare.
 Maybe he couldn’t trust Shaislyn.  Maybe Shaislyn did intend to kill him.  But
what if he didn’t?  Dare he act on an impulse, before proof was provided?
 Should he really condemn someone for something they may do, without first
giving them an opportunity to prove they won’t?  Should he administer
punishment before the crime?
            If a child may strangle someone in the future, does that make it
right to chop off their hands now?
            His tumultuous thoughts had pursued him for days, and wouldn’t
leave him be.  Aban-ataashi would tell him to kill him, he knew that.  Even
Danarius had wondered.  Fenris himself was on the fence about the issue.  He
wanted to trust Shaislyn, because he was the only family he had left.  Shaislyn
had even told him that he wanted them to be family.  Didn’t that mean
something?  But was that a good enough reason to trust someone?  He had put as
much trust as he dared in Varania, and that had nearly put him back at the end
of a leash .  Worse, Shaislyn had done more than stand idly by while it nearly
happened.
            He thought of all the traitors and mutineers he had known.
            He thought about Anders, who had bombed a building, killing and
injuring innocents, to free mages.  The Chantry had tried to seek a peace
between the Templars and the mages, and Anders had ended that.  He had betrayed
everyone when he tipped the scales and incited a war.
            He thought about Annalkylie, though he had not thought about her
for years.  She had betrayed everyone she had ever known, and her entire
country, for her own freedom above all.
            He thought of Isabela, who had taken the Tome of Koslun and ran.
 It didn’t matter that she had come back; she had still done it.
            He thought of Merrill, who had betrayed her Keeper’s teachings to
study blood magic.
            Bartrand Tethras, who had betrayed Varric and left him to die in
the Deep Roads.
            He thought of the great betrayals in history--Loghain betrayed King
Caillan.  Andraste betrayed by her own worldly husband to the Tevinters.
            He thought about how he had betrayed the Fog Warriors.
            He should not have come.  He should have…
            “This is it,” the Fog Warrior announced, stepping into the field.
 If Fenris were not astride a horse, he may have stopped, and may have been
reluctant to break free of the stand of trees.  He may have hesitated, and
shied away from the sun and the grass, but the horse only felt a small tension
on the reins as his fingers tightened, and plodded forward.  Fenris swung out
of the saddle, the grass climbing to his knees.  The summer sun was warm, the
fog dense, but not so dense that he could not see.
            Fenris looked at the field.  The sunlight shone brightly on the
shifting mists between the trees.  The grass was green and springy underfoot.
 He had heard once, somewhere, that grass grows greenest where blood had been
spilt.  Bloody soil, fertile land.
There were small buttercups scattered in the grass, the occasional trampled
daisy.  He saw grass twitching as small animals moved in it.  Shaislyn had not
caught up yet.
Fenris held onto the horse’s lead, and stepped forward, listening to the lark
singing in the distance.  All he could see was the blood, the bodies, the
horrible sins he had committed.
The lark’s song only sounded like the gurgle of a throat as it bled, the light
breeze the sigh of the dying.  The whisper of the wind through the grass like
whispered words.  The branches creaked gently in the breeze like brittle bones.
 Then the lark went quiet, he assumed because they were here.
He heard a growling behind him, and looked back at the wolf.  His ears were
bent back, head low and hackles rose.  Long, dripping fangs were exposed, the
yellow eyes aflame.  Aban-ataashi was staring at him, his expression blank.
“Shaislyn?” Fenris wondered, staring at the wolf.  Something primal, some
instinct of survival, tingled in the back of his mind.  He fought down the
instinctive fear of the sharp fangs and vicious claws.  He wished he were the
mage right now, and not the wolf.  At least he would be able to tell what his
intentions were.  “Shaislyn, what are you--”
The wolf sprang forward, 140 pounds of fur, fangs, and claws slamming into
Fenris’ chest.  It all seemed to happen so slowly.  The wolf’s weight against
his chest, hot breath at his face, smelling faintly of blood.  He imagined the
fangs at his throat, tearing into him the same way it had torn into the rabbit.
 Despair was first to claim him, all he had time for--betrayal hanging over his
head like a headsman’s axe.  The pair went down, Fenris hitting his back hard
against the earth, the weight of the animal driving the wind from his lungs.
He did not have time to be terrified.  Shock and despair weighed too heavily
against him for fear to edge into his mind.  Shaislyn had betrayed him after
all, just like he had suspected.  Had Shaislyn and Aban-ataashi actually
collaborated this whole time?  Had it all been a hoax, and now Fenris was going
to die?  Those fangs were going to tear into his throat, and he was going to
bleed to death?  His life was going to end, where he had ended so many other
lives.  All those people deserved justice, and he could barely remember their
faces and their voices.  He had owed it to them to remember them, and he had
not even been able to do that.  Mortals were so frail.
            He had always known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he
would never die in bed old and toothless.  Yet, he had not imagined he would
die like this either, betrayed by someone he was just learning to trust.
I never even thought…
Chapter End Notes
     aaaaand cliff hanger.
     I will be uploading the next chapter soon though.
***** The Fenris Wolf *****
Chapter Summary
     “Love is watching someone die. So who's gonna watch you die?” --
     Deathcab for Cutie, What Sara Said.
The arrow thudded into the horse’s neck, and the animal cried, and fell.  There
was a sickening crunching noise as the mare hit the ground, one of her long
legs snapping under her weight.  If the arrow had not killed her, the fall had.
 The wolf bounded from Fenris, standing over him defensively, ears flattened,
staring at the direction the arrow had came from, leaving the elf relatively
untouched.  Fenris’ heart hammered as he cautiously sat up, eyes straining to
see whatever Shaislyn had sensed, whoever had loosed the arrow.  If he had been
standing, that arrow would have hit him instead of the horse.  He had thought…
            He glanced first at the horse, then at Shaislyn.  Shaislyn had not
attacked him.
            He had not attacked him.
            It took him a long, pivotal moment to process that he had not been
attacking him; he had been trying to protect him; he had not had the time to
transform back, and had to act.
            Or had he?  It still wasn’t impossible that this was some kind of
elaborate trick.  He could not imagine the purpose of it, but he couldn’t rule
out the possibility, no more how ridiculous it sounded.  And it did sound
ridiculous.
            Then he had no time to consider it any longer; the field was
suddenly alive with people, weapons raised.  Fenris paled, rising to his feet.
 His sword was brought to his hand in the same motion, and the wolf sprang
again, close at his back as their opponents--bandits, slavers?--melted from the
mist all around them.  Or were they mercenaries?  Assassins?  An old paranoia
surfaced.
            Fenris didn’t think; his sword swung, and the lyrium sang its song.
 He moved and breathed the art of death and warfare.  It consumed him, breathed
through him, and he became it as easily as drawing air into his lungs.
 Throughout his life, he had never been as confident and at peace as when he
wielded a weapon.  Let them think that they had the advantage in numbers; it
made them bold and overconfident.  Let them think to trap him in a pincer
movement when he could cleave through them and use their numbers to a
disadvantage.  Arrows and bolts meant little when they could just as easily hit
their own.  And, no matter their numbers, against a single opponent, no more
than two, maybe three, skilled fighters could attack him at once or risk
hitting each other as easily as him.  He knew how to fight large numbers, and
he knew what they meant.  
As anticipated, two groups of the attackers convened, forming a hammer and
anvil--the hammer seeking to drive him back, onto the anvil.  He broke, but did
not move back--he moved to the side, turning their prepared attack against
them.  Regrouping quickly, they formed into an offensive wedge, one man with a
broad shield taking point, the brunt of their force designed to drive him down
under the sheer weight of the assault.  He saw it coming, and rolled to the
side, coming up to strike down a woman at the corner of the wedge.  He drove
hard into them, breaking them apart to keep them from continuing to strategize.
 The strategy is what would ultimately kill him.  He needed to break them
apart.
            He heard the horse coming before he saw it, and his heart hammered
in his chest.  He knew, academically, the best ways to attack armored horse,
but it had been yearssince he had even practiced such skirmishes.  He risked a
glance toward the horse and rider.  Three of them.
            He swore, bringing his sword up to counter an incoming blow from a
mace.  The very earth seemed to shake as the armored horse came closer.  His
stomach tightened, and he could almost feel the lance aimed toward him.
 Armored horse was the bane of any infantry, and with other foot soldiers
blocking his path…
            He heard a man cry out, and a horse whinnied, rearing as the man
fell.  The hawk wheeled away, and Shaislyn drove one of his swords into the
horseman’s neck, then was quickly away before anything engaged him.  He
breathed in relief; Shaislyn had seen the urgency in dispatching the horsemen.
 He had to rely on his nephew to deal with the horses while he put himself
against the others.  At least the half-elf was efficient, if nothing else.
            As he parried and attacked, he heard the second horseman dispatched
in a similar manner, but by then, the third had learned to watch the skies, and
put aside his lance for a bow.  Even a single arrow would be deadly to the
mage.  He looked up to the man aiming at the hawk.  The lyrium pulsed, searing
through the air, driving the men around him back.  The horse wheeled back in
fright, and the horseman scrambled to get control of the horse again, but the
animal had the bit in its teeth, and it wasn’t going near Fenris again.
 Horses, when it came down to it, were not as stupid as their riders could be.
            Fenris kicked a man’s legs out from under him, and jumped over him.
 His sword struck the horseman in the lower back, cutting into the armor,
through the leather padding.  The horse jumped, trying to get away from the
glowing elf.  The animal kicked in fright, and Fenris pulled back, narrowly
avoiding getting a shod hoof to his face.  The elf turned back to the melee.
He scanned the area, trying to spot Aban-ataashi, but for the life of him, did
not see him.  How a giant could disappear was beyond him.  The mists rolled in,
heavy and thick against the earth.  Or perhaps the Fog Warrior had melted into
the fog.
He recognized each method of attack and knew the counter for it.  This was his
life, at the core of his being, this is what he was.
            But was it all he was?
            A warrior… a betrayer?
Men fell, and he shivered.  It was just like back then.  Just like…
His dream floated back to him like a swollen corpse in water.  The blood
dripping off blades of grass.  Hawke impaled by a Blade of Mercy.  All the
bodies of people he had killed…  Could it be...?
            No, it wasn’t.
            They were attacking him.  No one had sat astride a horse with a
self-confident smirk on their face as he commanded him to kill them.  He was
only doing this to defend himself.  If they had not attacked, this would not be
happening.  They had brought it upon themselves.
            The ground was slick with blood.  It dappled the long grass, and
men lay dying and in pieces in the lea.
            He sensed an incoming weapon, sliding nimbly to one side,
effortlessly blocking another blow.  The lyrium surged, as if eager.  Yes, he
thought as it boiled inside of him, leaping to do his bidding.  It was what the
lyrium had been designed for--what hehad ultimately been designed for, molded
for, trained for.  This was his existence.  Maybe Danarius had known he was
born to wield a weapon, and had in turn fine tuned him into a weapon himself.
 He could not, even for a moment, imagine it any other way.  He could not
imagine a life without the searing lyrium.  He couldn’t imagine a world without
its song and its pain.  The lyrium screamed through him, an angry torrent of
power and he agreed with it, letting it burn, feeding its own wrath.  The
lyrium blazed, coming to life inside him like a tiger being released from its
cage.
            He didn’t hate the lyrium.  It had become too much a part of who he
was.  It was too much in sync with him.  It fed off of his emotions, and fed
his emotions.  A constant companion of torment, it being used by him as much as
it used him.  The metal leapt at his command, hungry to be used again.
            The great axe sailed harmlessly past him, and he stilled when he
saw the Tal-Vashoth.  It hadn’t been an accidental blow.
            Don’t trust him.
           His heart fell.
            He had trusted Aban-ataashi.
            And he had blamed Shaislyn.  He had never once considered that the
warning could have not been about Shaislyn.  But the warning had never been
about his nephew; he had jumped to conclusions--the wrong conclusions.  And now
he was paying for it.  Shaislyn was paying for it.  All these dying men were
paying for it.
            And hadn’t it been so obvious?  Aban-ataashi had found him as if
from nowhere, and he had been so agitated he had not even considered the
possibility that the man had been looking for him.  The man had gone looking
for him again, and he was so amiable, and Fenris so guilty, that he had never
stopped to wonder why the man was so keen on traveling with him.  He had never,
not once, even considered the possibility that he had always meant to betray
him.  He had been too busy feeling guilty, too busy dancing around lies and
secrets, too busy chiding Shaislyn for being unfriendly when his mageborn
nephew had the right of it the entire time.
            And it’s my fault.  I chose not to see the truth even when it was
laid bare to me.
            “Why?” Fenris demanded, the power of the lyrium echoing faintly in
his voice like a metallic ring.
            “You killed them,” he answered, and swung again.  He ducked, and
the wind of the weapon’s passing ruffled his hair.  He broke the fight to hit a
rogue near him with the pommel of his sword.  He ran him through and turned
quickly back to the Tal-Vashoth.
            “I’m sorry,” Fenris told him, but knew it wasn’t enough.  It was
never enough.  No apology would bring them back.  No apology was enough to make
amends for a life cut short, and he knew that better than most, but it was the
most he had to give, and he had paid for those grievous sins every day of his
life.  Fenris could not hope to wash away his sins, but he did want to try.  “I
killed him!  I killed the man that told me to do it!”
The other did not even acknowledge it.  Fenris supposed that he deserved that;
an order was not a deed, and Aban-ataashi might blame the magister, but he
still blamed Fenris.  He stepped, following the Fog Warrior’s movements.
 Behind the giant, he saw a wolf’s jaws close around a man’s neck.  Shaislyn
was doing his best to keep the other attackers at bay while he dealt with the
other warrior.  Fenris finally pressed the attack, seeing no other option.
 Defense was his largest weakness; it was difficult with his weapon choice and
if he kept defending, he would die.  Attack had always been, however, a strong
suit.  His best method of defense was to attack.  Maybe they would surrender.
 Maybe they would give up, and turn and leave him be.  If only they would.  He
didn’t think any more people needed to die for deeds long gone and sins long
past.
            Aban-ataashi used every means at his disposal to gain the upper
hand, and the others were quick to press any advantage.  The axe moved with a
viper’s deadly grace.  The warrior had too long a reach for Fenris to get close
enough.  He needed to think of another strategy--and quickly; the others were
regrouping to attack.  Shaislyn could not hold them off for long on his own.  A
mage harried him with every step.  A spell made him stagger and lose his
footing.  He scrambled to his feet, rolling out of the way of the axe as it
buried itself in the earth where he had lain not seconds before.  He leapt
upwards, seeing an opportunity to strike as the Tal-Vashoth heaved the weapon
away from the earth.  He moved past the broad head of the axe, ready to swing
his sword.  The air felt frigid.  His breath frosted.  He shook, the ice
cracking and falling away as he resisted the spell’s influence.  He needed to
do something about that mage, but it was impossible to break away from the
fight.
            “Shai, the mage!” he cried, hoping against hope that the wolf would
understand him.  The wolf stopped in its tracks, and turned, racing toward his
next victim, a dark blur in the high grass.
            The pommel of his sword struck hard against a man’s skull.  He
heard it crack, and the man fell.  He jumped over him as he fell, swinging the
blade into another man’s midsection.  Aban-ataashi was there, as if appearing
like a demon out of the Fade, huge and terrible, full of wrath and vengeance in
his eyes.
            Fenris was a spirit in the mist.
            He was always faster, a bright light in the fog, and he could be
stronger too, not just faster.  It was why he had chosen two-handed weapons.
 He had picked the more difficult to wield weapon, the ones less suited to
elves, because he wanted to prove everyone wrong.  He wasn’t weak because he
was an elf.  He wasn’t subjugated.  He wasn’t impoverished, and he had never
lived in an alienage.  He had proved everyone wrong.  His every breath proved
everyone wrong about elves.  His very existence was evidence to the contrary;
elves were not weak, many were free, many were not impoverished.  And damn it,
he wanted this for everyone.  He had chosen the harder path to prove it was
possible, and he regretted nothing.
            He regretted nothing.
            He had so much to regret.  He should regret every past mistake,
regret killing the Fog Warriors under his master’s orders, regret torturing a
boy on the deck of a ruined ship.  But every mistake had led him closer to
Hawke, and he could not regret feeling love.  He did not regret loving Hawke.
 And he did not regret that Hawke had gone to Anders either.  Why should he?
 He had loved him once, and that was enough.  If Hawke had chosen Fenris, he
would never have gotten to know his nephew, visit his family’s graves.  It was
the closest he would ever have to family, and he did not regret knowing what
was left of it, or what had happened to everyone else.
            My grandfather wielded a two-handed sword.
           The blade passed scant inches from a man’s neck, the rogue quickly
moving out of the way, directly into the wolf’s line of attack.  There was a
snarl, a snapping of fangs, and the animal bounded on, toward the mage.
            My father was executed for standing against the Imperials.
           As he fought, he looked at their armor, analyzed their fighting
styles.  It was absolutely not Tal-Vashoth or Fog Warrior in style, and Aban-
ataashi was the only Qunari.  The rest were human.  What did that mean?  Their
form was quite Imperial, their clothing Tevinter in style, but not the maroon
of a soldier’s uniform.  Slavers, then, or bounty hunters?  Why?  He had paid
off his bounty.  Why would…?  Could they be mercenaries?  Why?  Why wouldn’t
Aban-ataashi have simply rallied the Fog Warriors to go against him, and
instead bought mercenaries?
            He puzzled through these questions as he fought.  Who had done
this?  Not Shaislyn, he decided, the wolf darting in and out amongst the men,
killing them with fangs and claws.
            Who?
            Fenris reached his hand outward, passing through a man’s skull as
easily as a fish through water.  His fingers sank into the soft tissue of his
brain and he yanked forward.  The mercenary died instantly.  He flicked his
hand, dislodging bits of flesh from his gauntlet.
            The bounty was gone.  Why?
            He moved forward, a ghost in the world of the living.  His whole
body phased through another person, brushing against him with barely a ripple
in the world.  He let one hand trail behind him, fingers clenching around what
he guessed was a kidney.  He ripped it out of him from behind.  The man went
down, the organ shredded but still attached.
            The son of one he killed…
           He thought of all the people he had killed--the dozens--hundreds?--
of people he had killed.  One day, he may yet stand before Sebastian’s Maker
and plead guilty of each crime against His children.  One day in his future, he
may face eternal judgment for each death.
            Zekiel.  Aban.  Ashaad.  The rest of the Fog Warriors.  Lysander.
 Lysander’s magister father.  Aramael.  Asher.  Hadriana.  Every hunter.  Every
mercenary.  Every slaver.  Danarius.
            Danarius only had one child, and…
            He felt the spell wrap itself around him, bind him.  He felt the
dread well up from the depths of his soul and he fought it.  The terror is just
the spell.  It’s not real.  His hands shook as he carried the weapon into
another attack.  His heart pounded in his ears, his blood rushing as if trying
to match the lyrium.  The terrible, heart-hammering fear pulsated throughout
his being.  The lyrium flared nervously.  Don’t think it’s real.
            Think about something else.  Fight the spell.
            He thought about that dead cat.  He thought about the blood on his
hand, the clumps of white fur.  He thought about the child Danarius killed to
entertain his fellows.  A child he had picked out for him.  He thought about
Perya.  The horror coiled its way around his mind like a snake.
            Think of something else!
           He thought about his mother, who loved to dance.  He thought about
his father, who had died trying to protect him and his family.  He thought
about his grandparents.  He thought about Varania, not the backstabbing mage,
but the little girl in his fragmented memory.  He thought about Hawke.
            His mind seemed to clear, the near-panic receding, but not entirely
gone.
            Who orchestrated this?  Who could have...
            It came to him, and he stilled, trying to find the mage again as he
felt the spell ebb.
            The lyrium’s song echoed in his ears.  He could almost hear a voice
with it, the sweet music ringing out around him, its tempo in perfect tune with
his movements, with his thoughts.  Every swing of the blade, every dodge, every
step, all of it to its melodic tune.  His soul danced in time with the lyrium,
his heart in perfect harmony, and he gave himself over to it fully.  It was a
part of him, and would always be a part of him.
            A sharp pain lanced up his arm, burning against the heat of his
inner rage as a blade sliced open skin.  Blood, bright and alive, rushed down
his arm, twisting over the lyrium.  The blood only seemed to feed it.
            He turned, engaging a new partner to the deadly dance, his feet
moving over the bloodied grass like a dancer on a stage.  Nothing could hurt
him.  He existed like a spirit of battle, warfare incarnate.  Danarius had told
him that he had given him more than he cared to think about.  He had given him
a great many things, and some of them were even useful.  He had set him on the
path of a warrior, trained him in the art of it, made it so much a part of him
that he could never be separated from it, like a lark from its song.  He didn’t
want to ever be separated from it.
            My mother sang and danced.
            He dove out of the way as a ribbon of lightning snaked toward him,
crackling as it burned through the air.  He looked back at the mage, judging
his distance to him.  He could break and deal with the mage, but then he would
have to worry about the Fog Warrior at his exposed back.  In the high grass, he
saw the wolf loping toward it, intent on its prey, and he turned back to the
Tal-Vashoth.
            Fenris did not directly engage him.  He danced around him, away
from the swing of the axe and his longer reach as he tried to decide his best
chance.  The sword felt heavy in his hands.  The cut on his arm was still
bleeding.  He felt bruised.  He could not keep this up forever; he was not
inexhaustible.
            Drop the sword, he decided.  It’s slowing me down.  One shot at his
heart; that’s all I need.
           He watched him, dancing around him, waiting for the right moment.
 The giant swung, and Fenris dropped his sword, diving forward instead of back,
under the weapon, too close for the weapon to be of use.  He shot up, his hand
cleaving through the Fog Warrior’s stomach, driving up under his ribcage.
His arm snaked up and through his entrails, cleaving a way to his heart.  The
back of his knuckles scraped against his rib cage.  He tore open more than just
his heart, but his fingers clenched around it, and he felt it shred in his
gauntlets.  He ripped his hand back, and the body crumpled to the ground, dead
before he fell, a huge bloody hole in his chest, ribs shattered under the power
the elf commanded.  Fenris stepped out of the way as the axe tumbled to the
ground beside him.  He stopped, breathing hard, blood covering his arm past his
elbow.
            He didn’t hear any more fighting.  He looked around, but saw
nothing.  Burnt grass, blood, bodies and weapons.  He picked up his sword in
the grass, kneeling beside it.  He absently cleaned it off, expecting Shaislyn
to come find him, but he didn’t.  Could he have gone after any men that had
fled?  He frowned, and rose.  Where was his nephew?
            He looked back, trying to find Shaislyn or a wolf.  He saw neither
in the fog.  “Shaislyn?” he called.  He stepped over a corpse, looking, hunting
for his nephew that had saved his life.  “Shaislyn!”
            Where had he last seen him?  Apprehension raced through his veins.
 What had happened?
            He had last seen him rushing toward the mage.  And then…
            He hadn’t seen him again.  He walked slowly toward the direction he
had last seen him, hunting in the high grass.  He heard the blood rushing in
his ears, and everything else sounded dim.
            He heard something in the grass, and turned toward it.  When he saw
him, his heart fell.
            He knelt in the grass, beside the wolf.  The thick pelt was matted
with blood.  The air smelled like burnt fur.
            Cut down by the son…
            One yellow eye opened, and the wolf shuddered.  Fenris didn’t know
what to do, if there was anything he could do.  He reached toward him.  There
was a bolt from a crossbow buried deep in his side, white goose feathers
sticking out of the black fur.  His hind legs looked badly burned, and the
blood was… everywhere.
            The eye closed, and the light swallowed the body.  Fenris expected
Shaislyn.  He expected an obnoxious, whoremongering little twat who drank too
much and smoked like a chimney.  Even the self-important Enchanter.  Even the
thief and the liar, the bastard that had set him up to be betrayed by Varania
and re-enslaved.
            It broke his heart to see his nephew, burned and bleeding and so
obviously close to death.  Fenris felt helpless watching him die.
            What should he do?  Was there anything he could do?
            He stayed beside him, because he didn’t know what to do, or what to
say.  His hand was bloody, but he took it.  “Shaislyn, I’m sorry,” he tried to
say, but choked.  I thought it was you.  For even an instant, I thought it was
you.  I thought you were going to kill me.  I thought…
            The half-elf turned his head toward him, more his ear than his
eyes.  No mana, Fenris assumed.  Too weak to cast.  His lips opened, like he
wanted to say something, but no words came forth.  Blood stained his lips.
 Maybe from the wolf’s method of attack, maybe from…  Fenris tried not to think
about it.  The younger man was shaking, and was in obvious agony, between the
burns on his legs, and the arrow in his side.
            “Shaislyn, you can’t…”  Don’t leave me alone again.  Please, just…
            Blind eyes closed, and his hand was trembling.  But his lips curved
into the smallest of smiles.  “Fenris…” he started to say, then stilled, his
face going slack.
            “No,” he whispered.  The man didn’t move.  He felt limp in his
arms.  “Shaislyn?”  He looked at him.  Fenris grabbed his wrist and checked his
pulse, his own racing heart he could feel between finger and thumb.  He tried
to calm enough to tell.  Maybe Shaislyn had only fainted.  Maybe…
            He pulled out the black griffin from its sheath at his nephew’s
back.  He held the polished steel to Shaislyn’s lips, and waited, his heart
pounding.  He just couldn’t be...  The steel did not fog.  He checked the pulse
at his neck, but felt nothing.  The young man’s skin was cool to the touch.
 The shortsword slipped from his fingers into the grass.
            Fenris sat beside him for a long time, staring down at the broken,
burned body of his nephew, and wondered what he had tried to tell him.  Why had
he smiled?  What had he known that made him smile?  What was it that he had
been about to say?
            “You shouldn’t have had to die for me,” he whispered.  He could
have let him die.  He could have flown away at any time.  He never had to help.
 He never had to...
            He washed off the blood on his arms, carefully cleaning the armor,
lest it rust.  Taggart had taught him how to care for weapons and armor.
 Danarius had considered it impractical and useless, because a slave would
“always” be able perform the task for him, but Taggart had taught him anyway.
 He had said that knowing how to care for them himself would teach him more
about weapons and armor.  It was true, and he was glad to have learned the
lesson or he might have inadvertently let it all rust and ruin a long time ago.
 Methodical tasks were easy to perform; they didn’t require a whole lot of
thought.  No matter what he wanted to do now, some things still had to be done
first.
            Aban-ataashi’s horse was not far away, and the animal had grown to
like him.  It wasn’t hard to calm the big gelding.  He removed Shaislyn’s
swords and baldric from his body, and hesitated only once before he relieved
him of his money too.  He wouldn’t need it any more.  He was faintly surprised
to see most of it was gold.  He could pay back Anastas with it if he wanted to.
 And then what?
            His fingers wrapped around the bolt in the body’s side.  He took a
deep breath and pulled it back.  The arrowhead caught, and he heard it break
off inside him.  He sighed, yanking the slender bolt out.  Dead, cold blood
trickled freely from the hole.  He tossed it aside in the grass, and decided to
leave the arrowhead.  His eyes trailed involuntarily to Shaislyn’s legs, and
left them be.  He knew they were burned--badly.  He had no desire to see the
extent of the burns.
He didn’t have linens, so he wound Shaislyn’s body as best he could in a
blanket.  The mercenaries had horses too, and after a brief search, he found
their camp.  The ones who had fled during the fight were there, quickly
saddling horses.  When they saw him, they abandoned whatever they were doing,
and fled.  The ones who were not quick enough died.  Fenris was in no mood to
be merciful.
            Fenris looked to the remaining horses.  The three destriers from
beforehand been taken by the fleeing mercenaries, or he might have liked to
take them instead.  He kept the best of them, and the others he freed from the
makeshift corral.  Some of them wandered out of it, others ignored the open
door, but they would find it eventually.  He fully expected most of the beasts
to wander happily back into their master’s hands, but at least now they had the
choice to do so.  He moved about the tents, looking for anyone still left and
hiding.  Any slaves they had brought had fled at the first sign of trouble,
likely just back to their masters.  What could he ever expect, though?  He took
what coin he could find at the camp, and hunted through the supplies.  Food
still remained, lanterns and oil, and other camp supplies.  Raiding a camp had
never left him so empty before.
            Everything just felt… dim.
            He took his time finding the firewood.  He took everything
available from the mercenary’s camp, anything he thought that might be useful
for it.  It was not enough for what he had in mind, however.  He walked through
the quiet forest, the animals frightened away after the spectacle.  They would
be back, given time.
            A spade in the camp was useful for digging out the pit.
 Thankfully, it didn’t need to be deep; just enough that he wouldn’t catch the
forest on fire.  He could only carry so much at a time by himself, but he
brought one of the horses with him to carry the firewood in bundles, wound in a
thick cord.  He still had to make several trips, which he did not mind so much,
taking the time to stack the wood neatly between each trip.  By the time he had
collected enough wood, the day was edging toward evening, the sky just
beginning to darken.
He spent a long time building the pyre, stacking the wood in a neat pile.  He
had never done it before, and not even seen it done before, but it wasn’t
exactly mentally demanding work; it was all obvious.  A pit, so the fire would
not spread recklessly, stones to help contain stray sparks, barren earth around
it, dry tinder so the flames would catch, lamp oil to make it easier.  He used
blankets and rags to make a bed in the center of the pyre, thinking those
things would catch first.  
The mercenaries and even Aban-ataashi, he left to rot, but his nephew’s body,
his rotten, stupid, reckless mageborn nephew he had every right to hate but
didn’t, he laid in the pyre on the pile of blankets.  The violet evening had
worn on into a sapphire nightfall, a nightingale taking the place of the lark.
 The warm breeze was beginning to get chilly as darkness crept across the sky,
the blue darkening to black.  He stared at the pyre in the gloom, the dark and
the moons casting long shadows, making every dark twist of the sticks darker,
as though the blackest recesses hid vile things.
He picked up the lamp oil, pouring it over the blankets, soaking the body.  He
set the empty container down with a heavy sigh.
He looked at the prone body on the pyre.  The blanket was soaked with blood.
 Should he have tried to wash the body?  What would be the point?  He didn’t
know the right thing to do.  Perhaps there were particular ways he should have
been dealing with the dead.  Maybe there were particular ceremonies, but he
didn’t know what they were.  He didn’t think Shaislyn cared any more, and he
didn’t think he would have cared in life in any case.
The body, he didn’t think, cared either.
            The corpse of a Tevinter Circle mage, the son of the man he had
hated more than anything, who had conspired to see him enslaved.  A thief, a
whoremonger, possibly a murderer, a cheat at cards, a hustler, a drunkard,
treacherous, and untrustworthy.
            The body of his nephew, son of his little sister, who had wanted to
show him his family’s final resting place.  A child with a crooked smile and
messy hair, who had seen more pain than any eight-year old should have.  The
young man who had challenged him, and submitted to his own death when he was
defeated.  The last family he had.
            “You shouldn’t have had to die for me,” he whispered as he struck
at the flint.  His hands were shaking and it took several tries to get the
collection of twigs to light.  When it lit, the lamp oil he had poured over it
caught.  It ignited quickly, and he stepped back, watching it burn.
            The smoke from a funeral pyre was not like the woodsmoke from a
campfire, or a fireplace, or even a cooking fire.  The smoke was dark, and the
smell was unpleasant as the hair burned, as the flames consumed the flesh and
the fat popped and sizzled in the fire, the muscle burning to a hot crisp.
            He sat down in the grass a safe distance away, his arms wrapped
loosely around his legs, staring at the inferno in front of him, closing his
eyes against the heat of the blaze.
How long had Fenris spent hating Danarius and Hadriana?  He had refused to see
either of them as people.  Slavers too.  His hate had just consumed him,
blinding him to the reality around him.  He had cherished the beauty of an
ideal--freedom--and it had blinded him to the peril of believing that people
were evil.  People did evil things, but that didn’t make them evil.
Shaislyn had done the same, except he had pulled himself back from his hatred;
he had wanted them to be a family, what was left of their family.  And maybe
Fenris did deserve to die for killing the Fog Warriors that day, and maybe he
deserved punishment for what happened to Varania.  Maybe there was a special
kind of hell for people like that, but Shaislyn had forgiven him, he knew that.
 The thought was not comforting, as the heat of the fire washed over him.
            As he sat, he remembered Lura.
            He remembered the concept of Lura as a woman he had once loved too
briefly to know if he really had.  He remembered her dying in his arms when he
had not recognized her, remembered how she had whispered Leto’s name, and
smiled as she passed from the world, the way Shaislyn had tried to smile and
had died with Fenris’ name on his lips.
            Had either of them had some divine wisdom in their dying moments
they had not passed on to him?
            Or, rather, had that been their divine message?
            Leto.
            Fenris.
           The wordless black of a name.  A sad smile and blood before death
claimed them for its own.
***** Epilogue: Prose Edda *****
Chapter Summary
     “There are no happy endings because nothing ever ends.” --Peter S.
     Beagle, The Last Unicorn.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Epilogue:  Prose Edda
            The way back to Schavalis was long, and it rained a day or two on
the road.  He felt too numb to really notice it.  The way to the field had been
just as long, in truth, but he had not lacked for company.
            He tried to busy himself with the horses.  He did enjoy their
company, at the very least.  He used Hissra primarily for carrying the bulk of
the items he carried with him.  The other, he rode, or sometimes he walked and
led them when he wanted to stretch his legs.
            He found himself thinking about that day with Hawke, on the beach.
 The horses, the sand, and the surf, that kiss in the water.  He thought about
how Hawke had pulled away, and sighed to himself.  He wanted more days like
that in his life--not necessarily with Hawke, but days where he could forget
what his past had been like.  Days where he could forget Danarius and slavery,
and the burning lyrium in his skin.  Forgetting pain was a blessing.
            He stilled, the horses at his back halting.  He frowned in thought.
            He had given up his memories.  He knew, from an intellectual
standpoint, why.  It had been the best thing he could do for his family.  But
there was something… more.
            Danarius had convinced him that he didn’t want to remember.  He had
tormented him, raped him, convinced him that his memories would only bring him
pain.  And he believed him.  Maybe his life was better without that pain.
            But would it mean more with it?  Would it mean more to him if he
could remember his childhood?  Would his life have more meaning if he
remembered growing up?  If he remembered his sickly mother?  If he remembered
his sister’s rape, and Shaislyn’s birth?  Would his life mean more if he had
always been the same person?
            No, he didn’t think so.
            He valued his life, valued all life.  Life was the highest value of
anything, the highest ideal, the thing in the world with the most meaning.  He
had woken the first time knowing that.  Danarius had, indeed, given him more
than he gave him credit for.  He had left him with one value:  His value for
life, and his strong will to live.  It had been a grave mistake, because it
made him cling so desperately to what it meant.  It was all he had left of
Leto, of who he had been.
            Death was just so permanent, and so meaningless.  If he were alive,
it wasn’t so meaningless.  He had yet to find a pain he could not endure--and
he had endured so much pain.
            He started walking again, one foot in front of the other, his heart
heavier than ever.
            He almost longed for a diversion--bandits or, well, anything.  He
saw not a soul on the road.  It was empty as could be, and lonely.
            His nights were completely dreamless, or perhaps he did not sleep
long enough at a time to dream.  He woke frequently, and to every small sound,
worried that the stragglers who had escaped him might have caught up, but there
was never anyone there.  Most of the time, he would lie awake at night,
listening to the nighttime noises of owls, the squeaks of mice, and other
creatures.
            Sometimes, he thought about the long way back to the city, and the
boat ride back to Tevinter.  He thought about how easy it would be to slide
back into his life with Anastas as if he had never come to Seheron with
Shaislyn.  He didn’t think he would talk about it with his employer, but he
would write to Aveline.
            She and he still exchanged letters on occasion, and she would give
him what news she could.  Hawke and Anders had disappeared from Kirkwall some
time ago, vanishing in the night like so many ghosts.  She was unsure of their
whereabouts, and admitted that this was for the best; Prince Sebastian Vail was
as vengeful as ever and wanted Anders dead, his head on a pike the way it
sounded--and he would kill Hawke for protecting him.  He wondered where they
had ended up going.
            The Imperium would be a safe bet for two skilled apostates, as much
as he was loathe to admit that.  Then again, Anders would just as likely be
against going there too.  Anders was not fond of any leash being around his
neck--be it the Circle, or the Grey Wardens.  He would likely feel the same way
about the Tevinter Circles, and Hawke might be reluctant; he was an apostate
who had never experienced anything like what the Imperium had to offer.
            Maybe they had gone back to Fereldon.  King Alistair had made it
quite clear that he refused to hand over mages to the Circle if they didn’t
want to go, and he might be sympathetic to their plight.
            He wondered if Merrill had ever found a Dalish clan, or if she had
made something like another with the Kirkwall refugees.  He wondered if she
were the Keeper’s First, or the Keeper.  She had been starting to mature,
finally, when she had left.  Maybe she had grown wise.  He would like to
imagine that.  Maybe she could prevent anyone else from traveling down the path
she had taken.  Maybe she would know what to do to keep it from happening.
 That was a pleasant thought.
            Perhaps Isabela had made a name for herself.  Wherever she was, he
hoped she was satisfied with the path her life had led.
            Varric?  He just hoped Varric hadn’t gotten in over his head.  He
had heard he had gotten himself involved in some venture with Isabela and even
King Alistair a while ago, though he knew little else about it.
The rain had let up by the time he made it to the crumbling city.  The broken
gutters spilled water onto the shattered streets, but it had not exactly
flooded.  He traveled along the path, letting the horses pick their way slowly
over the rubble of the streets.  When he came to the graveyard, he dismounted.
 He tied the horses to a nearby tree on a long line.  He removed their bridles
and bits so they could graze, and on second thought, their tack too.  He didn’t
have an urn--Shaislyn’s ashes were contained in a leather sack, and he didn’t
know how to construct a box for it, so it had gone in a small trunk he had
found in one of the mercenary’s tents.  He put his swords and books in with it.
 He first carried the box, and went back for the spade.
He selected a barren space by the rest of their family.  It didn’t need to be
particularly large, just deep.  He didn’t think Shaislyn would mind overmuch
that he didn’t have a headstone for him.  Recognition had not been something he
had ever desired.
            The first few strikes with the spade were hardest, and the rest
easier.  It was harder than he expected, his muscles moving in ways he had
never had to move them.  The earth resisted him with every shovelful as if
resentful of its new charge, but it was futile as he dug into the ground.  When
he finally judged that it was deep enough, he heaved in the trunk.  He didn’t
think Shaislyn would care, and he had no idea how to gently get it down by
himself anyway.
            A pully, he thought, too late.  He stared down at the box, and
looked to the rest of the graves.  He would never rest with the rest of them,
he didn’t think.  And that was fine; his corpse was only that--so much meat and
bones.  Mourning was for the living, and when he died, there was none left of
his family to mourn him.
            Flowers were appropriate, but not particularly like his nephew.  He
sat on the edge of the grave, staring at the bottle in his hands.  He pried the
lid off with a corkscrew, and tossed it into the grass beside him.  He sighed,
and drank deeply.  The wine was rich, obviously having belonged to one of the
higher ranking mercenaries.  Maybe he had been saving it as a victory drink--
Fenris didn’t care.
            Danarius had driven a taste for alcohol into him.  He hadn’t really
put it together at the time, but he had.  And how clever that had been!  He
stared down at the bottle.  He had driven a dependency to the drink into
Fenris.  Fenris wanted the alcohol to sleep, wanted it to take the pain away.
 Danarius had made himself the only link to it, and Fenris had noticed that, at
least.  He had made him wholly dependent on it, and on him.  His taste for wine
had never really left him; he liked alcohol, and wine was a favourite.
            “Fuck you, Danarius,” he muttered to nothing, taking another long
swallow.  He looked at the bottle, shaking his head a little.  He was feeling a
bit fuzzy now, after drinking almost half the bottle.  He wondered, with
Shaislyn dead, if that meant Danarius would be gone from his life forever, free
to leave him without the tether.  He certainly hoped so.
He took one small, final sip of the wine and poured the rest over the trunk in
the earth.  He dropped the bottle and the glass shattered over the wooden
trunk.  He looked up at the sky, and swore loudly before he grabbed the spade
again.
Chapter End Notes
     Thank you all so much for reading! You kept me enthused to continue
     this when I almost put it down! I know it’s long, and it was never my
     intention that it would be this long, I promise, but the characters
     insisted on having their story told. Originally, this had several
     different ways I thought about it ending before I realized there was
     really only one way to end it. I knew from the beginning of Shai’s
     life that he died, I just didn’t know how.
     Also, who has figured out who hired the hit on Fenris? I give
     frequent hints throughout, but this is the biggest of them: “The wolf
     is cut down by the son of one he killed.” So, who did Fenris kill who
     also had a son?
End Notes
     I've had this idea and plot in my head for the longest time and told
     myself I would just write out a couple chapters of it and never
     publish it. Before I knew it, I had a lot more and felt like I needed
     to share. I will continue writing it until I feel it's completed, and
     keep editing in the meantime too, so I'll try to have a new chapter
     every week.
     The many Original Characters was not my original intention but I
     found few ways around it, and it ended up working really well I
     think. You can't build an entire world with only a few characters,
     after all!
     Thanks for reading!
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      The_Nights_That_Bind_Us by Xenrae
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