The parchment was massive—a tapestry of gilded words—and something proud and caged stirred in Malcolm's breast at the sight of his name in the elaborate loops and curves of the Orlesian script.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Consuelon said and watched the four faces, shadowed and youthful, as they took in the honor and formalities: Malcolm, lost in some daydream; Orsino, so stoic he'd look bored to eyes that didn't know him well; Rosamund, open-mouthed and teary-eyed; Boniface, trying to look as though it were every day he was invited to brush shoulders with the well-coffered and well-born.

It was more than impressive, Malcolm thought, it was… it was women in jeweled masks and hooped gowns, as beautiful and light-footed as butterflies; it was a goblet of wine that cost more than everything he'd ever owned; it was a breeze that smelled like pine and a horse beneath him and slender arms wrapped about his waist. The horse was a stallion, dark as obsidian, with a splotch of white between the eyes, and the beast did not gallop so much as fly between the pines. He had never seen a horse outside the pages of a book, and indeed the stallion in his fantasy had a striking similarity to the one pictured in the Compendium of Beasts and Their Magical Properties he'd read to tatters.

He could almost feel her (whose?) arms about his waist.

"Malcolm?" Orsino was nudging him. "Wandering the Fade?"

There was a murmur of laughter and Malcolm flashed a winsome smile. There was a careless beauty about him, in the cloud of dark curls about his face and the gold-flecked brown eyes that were dark almost to blackness in the candlelight. Rosamund, who had been staring at him as intently as he'd stared at the parchment, caught his eye for a moment and felt her cheeks burn as red as her name. He pretended not to notice; he'd been pretending not to notice for three years.

"As I was saying," the Senior Enchanter continued with an easy patience, "the details are still unclear, but all of the necessary permissions have been granted. Unsurprisingly, nearly the entirety of the Order has volunteered for escort duty, but I expect the selections will be made—"

Malcolm's fantasy of drinking entirely too much spiced wine and pretending he was an Orlesian nobleman died under the watchful eyes of some templar clunking around behind him.

"You are not just an evening's entertainment," Consuelon said and the severity in his tone brought Malcolm back to the cold, dimly lit room. "You are representatives of the Circle of Kirkwall, and in that you are representative of two things much larger than yourselves—mages, all mages, and Kirkwall itself." There was a heavy silence, accentuated by the crackling fire. "I want you to enjoy yourselves," he continued, his voice softening, "but I want you to remember."

Remember. Malcolm looked toward the open door and the templar posted outside it, no doubt listening to every word… yes, there was more to remember than piety and patriotism.

"Will we meet the Grand Duchess?" Boniface asked, breaking the silence. He was the son of a pair of White Spire mages and fancied himself a patriotic Orlesian, though he'd spent his entire life in the Free Marches.

"I'm sure," Consuelon said.

"Even me?" Orsino asked. Rosamund glanced at his ears, then down at her hands, as if looking were as bad as the slur.

"Offer to show her how elves butter their bread," Malcolm said. There was a long, horrible moment of quiet, then Orsino laughed, and then they were all laughing, the tension that had fallen over them dispelled as easily as a hand through a cloud of smoke.

(for the rest of his life

it was that memory of Malcolm

careless, quick-witted

that gave knife ear no power over him)

"Maker help the Orlesians if Malcolm ever plays the Game," Consuelon said.

If you squint, Leandra thought, he doesn't look so effeminate.

She stood before her betrothed's portrait, hands clasped behind her back, and observed him with a solemn squint. Guillaume de Launcet. He'd the smooth, round face of a boy given to an over fondness for treacle tarts, and a carefully trimmed and styled mustache curled above his lips. He was not displeasing to the eye—his reddish blond hair was his best feature—but she was acutely aware that she could not spend her life squinting at her husband.

"Well?" her mother prompted.

"He looks very… nice," Leandra said, searching for a genuine compliment. And the boy in the portrait did have a certain kindness in his eyes.

"He looks like a girl with a mustache," Gamlen said and laughed.

Leandra tried not to smile (and failed), but their mother rounded on Gamlen too quickly to catch her. "If your only purpose is to make disparaging remarks about your sister's future husband—" Bethann began, fixing her son with a look that would freeze saltwater.

(She thinks he does, too. She doesn't want Gamlen to make me see it.)

"Her future wife, you mean," Gamlen said and sulked under his mother's glare.

"He does look a bit girlish, Mama," Leandra tried to intervene. Gamlen opened his mouth, ready with some fresh insult, and she caught his eye. His throat worked, straining at his self-control, and she widened her eyes ever so slightly in a wordless plea. He looked away with a frown and held his tongue.

"He might be clean shaven at the ball," Bethann said and turned back to the portrait. There was a twist at the corner of her mouth. "The emperor has kept himself clean shaven three months now and I've heard there's been a following for the style."

"Perhaps," Leandra said. Then, trying to please: "I'll be happy to see him again, mustache or no."

Bethann smiled and reached out to stroke her daughter's cheek. "Of course you will. Now, the steward needs me, but I'll be back to talk about the ball. I want you to pick something from that book of patterns for us to discuss—Orlesian, of course."

"Yes, Mama," Leandra said with practiced obedience as Bethann kissed her forehead. The Lady Amell said nothing to her son—did not even look at him—as she swept out of the room. The two of them were quiet, as still as statues, until the sound of her footsteps whispering on the marble floor were gone.

"Thanks," Gamlen said. "Pretty sure she was about to start the whole 'honor of an Orlesian marriage' speech again."

"Do you really think he looks like a girl?"

There was a quiet sadness in her voice, a soft desperation, that made him pause and reconsider the portrait. "I… well, no, he doesn't look like a girl, not really, he's just so…"

"Orlesian," Leandra finished.

They looked at each other in silence, both thinking of that immaculately curled mustache and certain the other was too… and then burst into laughter.

"Thank the Maker you're the one marrying him!"

"He has a sister," Leandra said innocently.

"No."

"But Gamlen," she went on in exaggerated tones, "think of the honor of an Orlesian marriage."

Her brother groaned. "You know, you really do sound just like her when you're doing that."

"Why, the last time a daughter of the House of Amell married into the Orlesian nobility—" Leandra plowed on, mimicking their mother to perfection, and Gamlen threw a velvet cushion at her head. She shrieked and dove behind the chaise longue (one of several gifts sent in her betrothed's name with his most recent portrait,) flailing around the back of the chair for something to fire back at him.

"Did you see Rose?" Orsino said later in the semi-privacy of their shared quarters. "I thought she was going to faint when Consuelon told her she could wear a gown instead of robes. You'd think the ball was in her honor the way she's been going on about it." He was hunched over a parchment at his writing desk with a thoughtful frown. "And it's for some duchess, right? Flora...?"

Malcolm stared at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head, and traced the familiar cracks with his eyes, half-sure someone before him had tried to etch Bellitanus in the stone. The room was not truly large enough for two to share, but close quarters was a fact of life in the Gallows. "Grand Duchess Florianne," he said, letting each word dance on his tongue. "The emperor's niece."

Orsino sighed. "I don't even speak Orlesian."

"It's mostly Kirkwallers, I bet," Malcolm said. "Just memorize a few things—it's a pleasure to meet you, you honor me with your presence, where is the cheese—important things."

"Where is the cheese," Orsino repeated with a snort.

"Où est le fromage."

Orsino looked over at him, taken aback by what appeared to be effortless Orlesian (it was a proper sentence, as it were, though the accent was terrible.) "You're a genius," he said flatly.

Malcolm met his eyes with a grin and a raised eyebrow. "Because I know how to locate Orlesian cheese? Wait until you see me tell a templar to fuck off in Rivaini."

Orsino laughed even as he cast a nervous glance to the door and the templar he knew would be walking the corridor. "No. Well, yes, that's part of it, but you know what I mean."

"I'm sure I don't," Malcolm lied easily.

"Consuelon had to pick four mages," Orsino persisted. He set his quill down and turned. "Four, out of everybody here, and you're one of them."

Malcolm shrugged. "So are you."

"Yes, but… you know he picked the best."

"Please," Malcolm said and grinned. "Don't be so modest."

Orsino sighed and rose from his seat, wondering why he'd tried to have a serious conversation with Malcolm of all people. "I'm going to the library; I've got an idea of what I want to do for my performance, but I still need to work out the details."

There was a flicker in Malcolm's smile. Performance.

"Something wrong?" Orsino paused at the door, curious at what he'd seen on his friend's face.

"Hm?" Malcolm feigned distraction. "Thinking."

"Right then. I'll be back in a few hours, I guess."

The door clicked shut and Malcolm let out his breath in a gusty sigh. Performance. He imagined himself walking into the ball with a leash about his neck, led by some templar (Ser Veryn, always Ser Trick-the-Tranquil Veryn) with a buck-toothed gape. He imagined the faces of the wealthy and the noble as he performed for them—they would ooh and aah at the simplest of fire conjurings like it were anything more than a first year apprentice's trick—see him as no more than a domesticated beast, carefully supervised and sent back to its cage when—

"Stop," he told himself quietly. There were enough unpleasant truths about (the Circle) life without poisoning his daydreams with them. He would keep his daydreams for sweeter things… like slender arms about his waist and a breeze that didn't smell of the Waking Sea.

"I am so happy to see you again... of course, let us dance... would you accompany me to the gardens..." Leandra whispered Orlesian pleasantries into the darkness of her bedroom. There was an aching stillness to the night and she turned, clutching a pillow to her chest, to look at Guillaume de Launcet's portrait on the wall above her writing desk. There was more disinterest in his eyes than kindness…

"I learned to love your father," Bethann had said, sensing the restlessness in her daughter's heart. "For a wise woman, love comes after marriage."

Leandra tried to remember the short, fair-haired Orlesian boy, but it had been two years since last she'd seen him and the portrait suggested he was much changed; the Guillaume she remembered had been little more than a scarecrow with a touch of fuzz beneath his nose. He's only fifteen. Somehow, she had been expecting... she sighed and turned again, staring up at the canopy in wordless frustration. She had been twelve when first they'd met, and even then she'd felt a sense of disappointment—the storybook prince she'd imagined was just a ten-year-old boy with ruddy cheeks, an indecipherable accent, and an aversion to anything that might soil his exquisitely-tailored clothes.

She sat up, grabbed her pillow, and threw it at the portrait. It didn't even make it over the chaise longue. There was almost certainly an insolent disregard in his eyes.

It could be worse. Phyllis Lafaille's parents were talking of betrothing her to a nobleman who was twice her age. "You're lucky," Phyllis had confided to her with a jealous glower. "At least he's not old enough to be your father. And you'll get to be the Comtesse de Launcet one day! And he's really not so bad to look at." Leandra squinted at the portrait. In the darkness, when you could barely see the details of his face in the first place, it was easy to turn him into the dark, dashing prince of her girlhood dreams—or Gaspard de Chalons perhaps, the sighing daydream of every girl from Val Royeaux to Minrathous (or so you'd think, the way Phyllis went on about him.)

There was a tapping on her chamber door.

Leandra stared at the door, wondering if it was just her imagination; the moon was high and the house had been dark for more than an hour. The door began to creep open and she jerked the curtains closed about her bed, suddenly remembering every story she'd ever heard about Lowtown brigands stealing into houses—a candle was thrust through the crack, then Gamlen's face appeared above it.

"Leandra?" he whispered. "Are you—"

"You nearly scared me to death!" Leandra whispered back and parted the curtains. "I thought you were—what are you doing?"

"Going out your window," he said and shut the door.

"What?" Leandra scrambled off the bed and followed him to the open doors of her balcony. It was high summer and the gardens were in full bloom. Gamlen said nothing, only peered over the edge of her balcony as if he were trying to solve a puzzle.

"Gamlen," she insisted. "What are you doing?"

"Sneaking out." He hoisted himself onto the ledge and grabbed at the vine-wrapped trellis.

"If Father and Mother find out—"

"They'll be more disappointed in me than usual. What, are you going to tell?"

Leandra bristled, offended. "I've never told!"

"You're the best of sisters," he said and kissed her cheek.

"Where are you going?" she asked and looked over her shoulder, expecting their parents to come rushing in at any moment.

"Out," he replied, halfway down the trellis

"Gamlen!" she hissed.

"Don't wait up," he said and grunted as he jumped from the trellis to the cobbles. She started to call after him again but he was gone, as light-footed on brick and cobble as their mother in her heavy gowns.

I may not be a disappointment, Leandra thought, but I'm certainly not having as much fun as you.