FULL MANY A ROSE
My parents are arguing again. This is nothing new.
"You spend all your time making things for those shem! Would it kill you to spend a little time with your family, Elin?"
My mother's voice is shrill yet pretty, lilting with its Dalish accent. She dominates the conversation. My father remains mostly silent, his soft-spoken voice only occasionally interrupting hers. He's tired after a long day of work. She is, too. I think this is why they argue.
Their lives could have been different. My mother regrets falling in love with my father and leaving her clan. My father regrets that he married a woman who gave him a mage for a son.
I'm not a child, but around them, I feel like one. Had I been born into my mother's clan, I would have been First. This is what she likes to tell me. My father will not allow me to accompany him into Lowtown, even though I am far past the age of apprenticeship. I'm fine with this, as I have no desire to make my living as he does, building and selling furniture for the shem.
I use that term, but I don't feel the same way about humans as my mother does.
The shem are ignorant. They hire women like my mother to clean their houses because that's what their parents and their grandparents did. But not all shem are the same. I'm convinced of this, even though I can count on my fingers the number of times I've actually spoken to one.
My father appears in my door way. He looks tired as he leans against the doorframe, his hands slowly falling into the pockets of his short trousers.
"Your mother would like you to fetch some things from the market," he says.
"Fine," I say.
"You're to stay in the alienage." He gives me a steady look. "You're not to go further into the city."
"Fine," I say again. I hold my hand out for the list, and he gives it to me, along with a few coins. Carrots, potatoes, rice.
"No meat," I say. "Maybe I'll see a rat on the way there."
"Don't complain," he says.
He straightens and turns to go. I fold the list up and push it into my own pants pocket before grabbing my jacket and hooking first one leg, then the other, over my windowsill.
Mud squelches up over the top of my shoes as I drop down. It tries to suck them off me as I walk, but the shoes are old. They've conformed to the shape of my feet and are some two sizes too small. They aren't going anywhere.
The alleyway opens up onto the alienage marketplace. Its sounds and smells greet me like an old friend. A man chases a pig down an alley adjacent to our own; his wife calls out from the apartment above, chastising him. A group of women are busy hanging lanterns around the vhenadahl while their children hang over the edge near the harbor and call out to the passing ships. Several merchants call out to me as I pass their booths. Nala, the tailor's apprentice, waves at me from the window of her master's shop, but I don't wave back.
I stop at Merin's vegetable stall first. The potatoes she shows me are small and already sprouting eyes.
"Don't worry, da'len," she says. "If there's any flavor left in them, your mother will know how to get it out of them."
Merin is Dalish, too. Everyone seems to think that this gives her some sort of gift with plants, as if her fruits and vegetables taste better, riper, than anyone else's. But I've seen how empty the farmer's cart is when he arrives at the alienage. His fellow humans have already had first pick. If the others really wanted fresh produce, they would leave the alienage and shop amongst the shem. But most only leave for work and return as soon and as quickly as their aching feet can take them. A lucky few, the ones who work in kitchens, bring back good things to eat, sweetmeats and pastries, nipped from the baking sheet and slipped hastily into pockets.
"Did she say how many she needed?" asks Merin.
"No," I say.
"Well, these three should do if it's a stew she has in mind to make." She smiles and hands me the three small potatoes. I slip them into the inside pocket of my coat. There are no carrots today.
I pause after leaving Merin's stall, watching as a human man slips out of one of the apartments, his coat hanging over one hand. The apartment belongs to my friend Rissa and her mother.
"Ren!"
Rissa waves at me as she hurries across the open marketplace. Her curly dark red hair bounces behind her, her green eyes wide.
"Did you see him?" she asks. She stops before me, panting for breath.
"Who," I say.
She punches my arm. "You know who!" She looks over her shoulder, watching as the man who left her mother's apartment slinks his way out of the alienage.
"I'm going to follow him," she declares. Her voice is rough and hushed. "He's up to no good. He's blackmailing her somehow. And I intend to find out how."
She looks at me. "Come with me, Ren."
I glance back doubtfully at my own parents' apartment. The windows are dark. My mother keeps the shutters drawn. To keep out the ill wind, she explains.
Rissa knows I'm not supposed to leave the alienage.
"All right," I say.
That's not what I want to say, though. I want to tell Rissa her mother likes human men, and that's all there is to it. But there wouldn't really be any point to it because Rissa already knows this.
I glance one more time back towards home before hurrying with her towards the alienage entrance. The man has just slipped past the corner apartment, the last building before entering into the city proper. Rissa tugs on my wrist, pulling me forward. We duck down at the building's corner for a second, the man pausing to tip his hat to a Chantry sister before continuing on.
He's strolling now. He's not in any hurry.
The city opens up before us as we follow. We are two elves, our hands clasped tightly together, small things no one sees in a sea of humans. The humans pass us, intent upon their business, their eyes never lowering to meet our own. Merchants call out on both sides of the street. It's loud and busy, just like the alienage. Only it's as wild and alien as a Qunari soldier. I feel Rissa's palm squeeze my own.
"There!" she says.
She points through the crowd. Our man has paused at a jeweler's booth before moving on. Rissa pulls me forward.
This is not my first time out into the city. It isn't Rissa's, either. My parents used to punish me for it when I was younger; my father bolted my bedroom door and window for two days once. My mother beat me. I don't think they would say anything now though. I'm older. Maybe they would be sad if I never returned home. Maybe they would be relieved.
We slip through the milling crowds. Pockets of inactivity open up around us sometimes, forcing us to duck and hide for cover. The man never looks back over his shoulder, though. He pauses a lot. He buys a red silk scarf, a woman's scarf, at one point.
When he ducks inside a ground floor apartment, I pause, but Rissa tugs on my arm, pulling me forward. We creep up to a window and peek through.
"Templars?" Someone says behind us. "Where?"
We turn around.
"Mage hunters," a woman clarifies. "Caught another one, they did. And good riddance to him."
"Watch your tongue," says a man, a merchant. "My sister's a mage. Never hurt a fly, and they drag her off like she's some sort of criminal."
An argument springs up, several people castigating the man and his family for not giving the sister up to the Circle in the first place. The man fights back. Another man supports him, asking who among them would give up their loved ones to the templars. Beyond the crowd, I hear the sound of heavy boots and spot a glint of polished armor.
Rissa does, too. She pulls me until we can crouch behind a pair of barrels and several foul-smelling crates—fish, fresh from the docks.
The crowd parts. Most simply step aside, though a few are quick to duck indoors. People don't want trouble, especially with the templars. But some are curious, anxious to see a rogue mage being brought to justice. Humans don't notice elves, and so no one comments on Rissa and me, peeking out from behind our barrels.
The mage is a boy, about my own age. He's human. He looks down as he walks, his hair in a ponytail, his cheeks dusted with several days' growth of whiskers. He's dressed plainly, poorly, though not as plainly as Rissa and me. Two templars walk on either side of him, each gently grasping an arm.
Another templar brings up the rear.
He seems tired, this one. Maybe they've been searching all day for the mage. Maybe he had to deal with an angry father or a weeping mother. Maybe a young wife clung to his newest charge, a baby screaming in her arms. Maybe it made him think of his own family.
He is older than I am. I'm not good with human faces, but there's a hardness to his features that suggests he's seen too much already. His hair is dark, cut short. It looks soft, and I wonder what it would feel like, to run my fingers through soft, human hair like that.
His eyes are blue, as blue as the sky right now. He's looking at me—I don't know how.
He smiles a little.
I don't smile back.
I wonder what his name is. I wonder what life in the Circle would be like, if there is food every day, if mages wear rich silk robes and learn spells from ancient books. I wonder if this man, this templar, will befriend the boy he leads away now, the boy who looks so sad.
I feel a wave of warmth envelope my hand, my fingers curling inward around the ball of light I've conjured there.
"Ren!"
Rissa hisses up at me. She squeezes my arm, her nails digging into my skin.
I stare back at the templar with the beautiful eyes.
My fingers close around the globe of light. The templar looks away. The mage boy struggles suddenly between his two captors, and my templar reaches out, resting a hand gently on his shoulder.
I close my eyes.
I crouch back down beside Rissa. My hand is cold again. I bring it to my chest, folding my arms up, my forehead coming slowly forward, resting against the barrel. I open my eyes and stare down at the damp earth, down at the knees of my worn pants, brown on brown on brown. Through the crack between the two barrels, I can catch one last glint of armor. Then, nothing.
"Do you have a death wish?" Rissa snaps me.
"No," I say.
I close my eyes again.
Later tonight, my mother will scold me for not getting any carrots. At night, Rissa will crawl through my window and show me a bracelet, a gift left for her mother, but not by the man from this afternoon. She will demand that we find out where the bracelet is from and track down where the man who bought it lives.
I'll tell her I'm tired. I'll shut my eyes and feel her crawl into bed beside me, pulling the blanket up over both of us. Her cold feet will brush against my own. She'll kiss my cheek and tell me not to dream of demons. Then I'll fall sleep.
Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, and everything will change.
Maybe I won't.