Antigone's Reprise
Bede Trevelyan woke to the sound of distant shouting. The nine-year-old rubbed her eyes and slid out of her bed. If she were a little older, or a little more awake, the idea of investigating the commotion unarmed and nine years old would concern her. But then, the little Marcher noble still had a lot to learn about the world.
Bede padded down the hall and down the staircase, the shouts growing louder. She began to recognize the voices of her sister, oldest child and Lady Trevelyan, and her brother, who was the best brother in the world. He never answered her questions with "Because I said so," like her sister and the other adults. As Bede drew near the ajar door to the study, she caught a few servants scurrying away.
"-was meant to serve man!" Caledon Trevelyan argued with all the passion of a fifteen-year-old. "Let me serve-"
Lady Larkin Trevelyan interrupted her younger brother sharply.
"I will not let you endanger our family!"
Bede slipped into the room, trying to figure out why her siblings were angry. If she knew, then maybe she could make them less angry. Larkin was often in a dour mood; learning to take over as head of the house when their parents were too old to do so wore heavily on her. Bede barely remembered the time when her sister had taken her to see the annual cheese races.
"I would never hurt anyone, you know that!" Caledon replied, eyes wide with horror.
"Haven't you heard the stories?" Larkin hissed right back. "Whenever you dream, you risk letting loose something that would kill everything you love."
There was pain in Larkin's eyes, not fear. Bede, young as she was, could see that Larkin was less afraid of dying than she was of seeing Caledon lose himself.
"Cale?" Bede asked, voice wavering. Brother and sister started at the voice of their young sibling. Larkin closed her eyes and muttered a word Bede was taught never to say.
"Did we wake you?" her brother asked gently. He took a step towards her, and Bede saw Larkin stiffen and mimic him. He threw her a dirty look, but moved no closer.
"Are you—are you magic?" she asked. She thought that might be what they were arguing about. Bede didn't know how to make that better. Most of the people she knew were afraid of mages, who were said to hold fire in their hands. But Caledon didn't look scary. His were the hands that helped her onto the big gentle mare she wanted to ride, and "accidentally" spilled wine on the de Launcet sisters when they pulled her hair and called her a horse. She didn't want people to treat him like he scared them.
"Yes," Larkin answered before Caledon could even draw breath. Her voice was hard in the way only extremely tired and sad people could affect. "He's going to the Circle in the morning."
Caledon flinched at hearing the words, though clearly not surprised by them.
"I'm going with you," Bede announced sternly, trotting up to her brother and putting her hands on her hips.
"You can't," Caledon said, for once beating his elder sister. He smiled down at Bede sadly. "But maybe you can visit me."
"Why can't I go with you?"
"Because there are lots of books in the Circle," Cale announced gravely. "You don't like books, remember?"
Bede thought hard about this. She didn't like reading, it was true. The Circle was close enough she could visit every day. And if Larkin was sending Caledon there, then she thought it must be a safe place.
"I'll take you up to bed," Larkin offered softly, sensing the fight leave her sister.
"Let me take her," Caledon said suddenly. His voice was oddly low, and strained. His eyes were bright in the light of the fireplace.
Larkin hesitated, looking between her siblings with reluctance written in every line of her face. She exhaled slowly, casting her eyes down. She looked small and old.
"All right."
Caledon took his little sister's hand, and held it so tight it hurt, but Bede didn't say anything. When he tucked her into bed, he put a kiss on her forehead.
"Don't look scary," Bede advised. Her brother chuckled hollowly.
"I'll try not to."
In the morning, the Trevelyans lined up to meet the Templars. Larkin held Bede's shoulders fast when the armored men flanked Caledon, threatening in a way the girl had never seen before. Bann Trevelyan had a hand over his eyes, his wife heartbroken, but hiding the fact with a blank face as hard as stone. If Bede were a little older, or a little more well-read, she would have known to cry.
#
Bede later learned that her brother had to leave because Larkin had caught him shaping the flames in the fireplace with magic. She tried to do magic too, so she could go to the Circle with Caledon, but no matter how long she wished for magic, and how hard she tried to make the fire prance like a horse, she never got her magic. If she couldn't join the Circle as a mage, then there was only one other way to do it.
Bede was twelve when she announced she was going to be a Templar.
#
On all except the hottest days, Bede practiced in her armor. The woman—perhaps irrationally—feared that if she began to practice without it, she'd lose her ease with it and get slowed down. Bede could not afford to be at anything less than her best, because when she finally took her vows, more than her own life would depend on her martial skills. What she really wanted was to go back to sparring with the other Templars, but since Kirkwall and the smattering of Circle uprisings since, Larkin—with the full support of the Knight-Commander—had forbade her from training outside Trevelyan walls. She had long sneered at the special treatment she got from the Order because of her name, until she realized that any other mage who'd hid his magic until he was fifteen might not have made it to his Harrowing. The Trevelyan name protected Caledon, too.
Naturally, she saw nothing of him the last few months, and it grated on her. Bede was becoming more acquainted with the world, and with the Chantry and the Order. She knew, better than she wanted to, that there were abuses. She also knew than it was not universal, and was determined to set a good example.
Bede hefted her shield and charged at the training dummy, relishing the splintered crack of the dummy's core post. It was a short-lived pleasure, given that the dummy was good for nothing more than exercise at this point.
They could still exchange letters, and often did. Sometimes, Larkin would add a greeting for her brother. Bede knew her sister took Caledon's "condition," as she called it, personally. Larkin need to protect her family, which meant she wanted to control everything. Caledon was in danger as much as he was dangerous in Larkin's eyes, and she had never figured out what to do about it.
Bede, meanwhile, silently blamed Larkin for her brother's gilded cage. If Larkin hadn't seen him, or had just gone to bed that night...Teenage Bede chaffed more at the thought than adult Bede did. She knew her brother would likely have not lasted into adulthood. She knew better, just like Larkin knew better than to think she could control Caledon's magic, but the Trevelyans were an emotional and stubborn lot.
The boom was so faint, Bede almost missed it. The lack of intensity meant she was not immediately concerned as she listened for more, but when joined by a smoke trail coming from the Circle she could just barely see, her heart turned cold and fell into her stomach.
"Saddle my horse!" she roared, sheathing her sword and rushing towards the stables. The startled farmhand, too skilled for his condition to trip him up, had just barely secured the girth before Bede swung up into the saddle. Her cry had drawn other attention, however.
Larkin and Bann Trevelyan were waiting breathlessly for her in the training yard.
"Stay, daughter," the sturdy man bade solemnly.
"There's trouble at the Circle, I will not dawdle," Bede snarled back, already kicking her mare into a trot. She expected Larkin to take up the call, and was not disappointed.
"Bede, it'll be dangerous!"
"So am I!"
Too late her father called for the gates to close; Bede's mare was galloping down the road, to the tune of rising screams ahead.
The Circle was in ruins. Blown-out walls gaped open like drunken maws, fires spread here and there. It looked like a painting she once saw of Kirkwall after the qunari attack. Despite the obvious devastation, there were only a few bodies poking out under the piles of rubble. There were still some Templars and mages who stumbled, blinking stupidly at their surroundings, telling Bede that she had not wasted much time riding. She dismounted and tried to ignore the implications of the destruction.
"Caledon!" she called, eyes darting to every mage that moved. "Is Caledon here?"
One mage mumbled something she didn't understand. Then Bede heard a scream. She unshouldered her shield, drew her blade, and ran.
"Please!" a trembling man called, shrinking from a looming Templar Bede didn't recognize, "I didn't know—I wasn't-"
The Templar's sword came down, too quick for Bede to intercept. What mages were still stunned by the explosion awoke at the man's drying scream, and fled the scene in terror.
"What are you doing?" Bede cried, stomping up.
"They did this," the Templar sneered, rounding on her. "A wall came down on my friend, and now they're escaping!"
He made to chase another woman, but Bede kicked a brick fragment that bounced off his thigh. The man turned to her, mage forgotten, and raised his blade.
"Stand down," boomed a deep voice.
Knight-Commander Valer jogged up, his glare miraculously cowing the angry Templar.
"Sir," the man protested. Valer cut him off.
"At least ask their surrender before you cut down everything that moves," the Knight-Commander snapped. "Now, we have to-"
An unnatural roar interrupted his order. Bede imagined it a darkspawn sound, if not for Valer's curse.
"Rage abomination," he spat, looking between Bede and the other man. "With me."
Valer was already moving, and Bede jogged to catch up, running through everything she knew of rage demons. They were made of fire, or near enough, and burned you if you got too close. Bede gritted her teeth. This would not be pleasant.
Despite her training, Bede was ill-prepared for the towering monster of living flame. Heat and anger rolled off it in waves thick as fog, smothering her sense and making her dizzy. Valer smashed into it without hesitation, exploding in pure light that cut through the fog of rage. Bede gulped in the clear air in case the rage returned.
The three warriors hemmed in the demon, crouching behind their shields to minimize the damage from the creature's flaming shroud. Bede, finding its arm as good a target as any, swung to cut it off. The rage demon shrieked when her blade impacted its otherworldly flesh, and spun, knocking her back. A bolt of ice flew over her head, slamming into the demon. It fell in on itself, growing dark as icicles bled into the newly appeared cracks in its flesh. With a final battle cry, Knight-Commander Valer bashed the creature with his shield, turning it into flying chunks of ice.
Bede leaped to her feet and watched the rage demon evaporate in toxic green whisps. Only then did she turn her back on it and indulge the pearl of hope rising in her chest.
The elderly mage looking nothing like Caledon, and Bede quashed her disappointment.
Knight-Commander Velar greeted the elderly woman by name, an Enchanter Bede vaguely recognized now that she'd banished hope of seeing her brother. The woman looked frail, but didn't stand like she knew it. The mage was ready to fight if the Templars turned on her. Bede didn't know what to do if that happened.
"At ease," Valer bade gently. "I know you had nothing to do with this."
The old enchanter relaxed visibly.
"I convinced some others to stay," she croaked. "I promised them you would not harm them for the actions of others. The ones that left didn't believe me." There was bitterness in her last words, Bede noted. It sounded like censure more than disapproval.
"You know you have my word."
Bede could not hold her tongue a moment longer.
"Is Caledon with you? My brother?"
The woman regarded her with eyes narrowed in thought. Then her face lightened, but only a little. They were all tired, but there was regret in her eyes, too. Her gaze flickered once in Valer's direction.
"Please," Bede whispered.
"He knew nothing of the explosion, I'm sure," the woman said, more for Valer's benefit than Bede's, "but he wasn't one of the mages who believed me."
#
Bede had been ready to set out at once to track down her brother. Larkin, Knight-Commander Valer, and Bann Trevelyan convinced her to wait, but only because Bede hadn't decided what she would do if she found him. Drag him back to the Circle? She wasn't sure how merciful Valer could afford to be to those who had run. Should she then bring him to the Trevelyan house, where they would all be arrested for ineffectually harboring an apostate? Or should she go on the run with him, keeping him from danger or from succumbing to demons? The idea only briefly had merit. It would only make matters worse for both of them, and she didn't think they would be able to escape for long. When word reached them of the Divine's Conclave, however, Bede jumped upon the fourth option.
"It's not a good idea," Valer warned. With tensions between mages and Templars high, he wanted level-headed Bede to help him keep the smoldering Circle from reigniting. Normally she'd have been glad to, but not when Caledon might be at the Conclave—or, better but if possible more unlikely—help make peace and end the war before it got worse.
"You've got things handled here," she said, regardless of whether she believed it, "and I may do more good there."
The Knight-Commander's office, a re-purposed store room that had been too sturdy to collapse, echoed with the sounds of masonwork. Valer shook his head wearily.
"That meeting will only end in bloodshed, and you know it."
Footsteps echoed with the scrape of trowels. Bede was surprised to see Larkin standing in the open doorway, her fine green cloak gray in patches with brick dust. She sighed when she saw Bede.
"I thought you'd be here."
Bede threw up her hands and paced the room.
"Great, who else will show up to tell me I'm stupid?"
"I want you to go."
Bede froze, ignoring Valer's indignant exclamation. Turning, she saw a stranger wearing Larkin's skin. The woman's shoulders were hunched, her cheeks gaunt, her face more ghoulish than stern. There were bags under her eyes when she looked at her younger sister.
"It's my fault," she said, calmly, as though pointing out the color of Bede's armor. "My brother needed me, and I abandoned him. I don't care what father says, I'll get you what you need to go to the Conclave."
Larkin Trevelyan strode forward, grasped her sister's hand in both her own, and placed a kiss on it, as a lady might give her blessing to a knight.
"Bring home our brother."