He came to the Qun a small broken thing, as most viddathari do. However much of his devotion was feigned, I do not know. I never cared to pry too far into the depths of the Warden, into the heart of one I held as basalit-an. At the end of the banquet hall he paced, gazing at the empty places where his comrades might have stood, had they been strong enough to live.
Gazing into the past where the mate of his flesh had fallen, overburdened already by the memories that were now sour with regret and heartbreak.
My people know much of heartbreak, though we do not admit this out loud. Not to foreigners, and not to ourselves, but in the Qun we may speak of this heartbreak as if it were an imagined thing, a potential for calamity. We drag it out as words that can do no harm, and let our brothers dispel its power with the structure of the Qun. I have met no other soul in this accursed land to ever give me such comfort, save for the Warden.
It was only fitting that I might do the same for him.
So reaching out with mere words of opportunity, I have given Kadan another path to travel. A path away from his regret, as far away as a sea could take him. He is a broken, small thing, and I will readily admit my fear that the hunger he so openly expresses for basra vashedan might one day reach me, as one festering wound might infect another. Were that ever to become a reality, Kadan could so easily break, for as most elves he was born to inferior physique. He has already demonstrated this with the loss of an arm, and no man is so powerful as to afford to sacrifice his own limbs so carelessly.
We have had words on the matter, during the sail back to Par Vollen. He simply laughs in that strange half-mad way, and for reasons unfathomable this brings me a satisfaction I hadn't known I was seeking.
He came to the Qun a small, broken thing, a dangerous thing, bas, saarebas. Strange that I do not feel disappointment in the Warden's blindness; stranger still that he continues to leave his life in my hands, despite his open heresy. I cannot quell my heart, and no one of my kind would ever advise me to (not even the vashoth who cast their souls so easily aside would wish me to abandon kadan-an).
He expresses surprise when I admit this.
"What does that even mean, that I am 'kadan'?"
"It means you hold a position that is close to one's heart, Warden."
"Sten," A wry look, an expression I recognize well.
It brings me to a smile, and I would twice curse the Warden were I not so busy keeping his soul from the despair of the unenlightened life to which he had been born. "Warden," we have our games of words and deed, keen minds finding strength in the sparring. I do not fear breaking him in this, at least.
"Might I know your name, if I'm to be kept so close to your heart?"
My smile grows, as does the warm regard pitted somewhere in my stomach. "No."
"Then you will call me by 'kadan', and I will call you simply by 'sten'? Hardly seems fitting." He makes an unsteady, lopsided path to my side, where his bent and hobbled body curls over in its current vulnerability. I am loathe to observe.
"I will call you saarebas, a dangerous thing." His eyes open from their previous drowse. "You will call me nothing at all, for your mouth will be bound."
The Warden sleeps with a depth the crew of this ship liken to death. I work each night with the captain of this vessel to raise the funds necessary for Kadan's saar-varad. It would prove a challenge, finding one sized for an elf, and no precaution would prove useless in this venture. It does much to quell the anxiety of the crew, to see a kossith such as I bent to menial tasks for flat rate coin.
It is not a cause for thought, for shame or pride. It is simply what must be done. The Warden, as per usual, admits a difficulty in understanding this.
"I was not raised Arvaarad. You might be seized, or denied port altogether. We might be slain, under suspicion that you have gained a foothold in my mind and control my actions thus."
"So you're building up a bribe?" Kadan does not waste incredulity over the suspicions of my people; we have spent long nights in discussion of history and warfare and he is not one to challenge what has already been established as fact. It is a trait I admire. No... it is a trait I treasure.
"No. I will buy the cowl and leash required to -" I stand from the side of the cot in the crowded and acrid sleeping quarters, the words sour in my mouth. "You will not leave the ship without them, do you understand?"
The Warden sniffs, unimpressed. "Of course. I'll be visiting under Grey Warden diplomacy; does your Arishok have any regard for that?"
"... The Wardens are trusted." But I could not know the Arishok's whim, and would make no further presumption. Let me be strung against the wall beside Kadan, if it came to that.
The Warden sleeps.
I work in the sun and the wind, with rope and barrel and large nets straining with the sea's bounty. I pretend ignorance of the Rivaini tongue, turning aside the jeers and the questions. No blood would be spilled under dint of pride, and there was work to be done.
The Warden wakes on my return; we share the bed because the ship can hardly spare its passengers the commodity. We had done such before, in the cold and the snow of Southern Ferelden, huddled like imekari with those who would call the Warden basalit-an. Those Kadan considered brothers in our cause, if nothing else.
He huddles even now, though the bowels of the ship are stifling. Pressing against me as if taking shelter from a cold wind. It is... unsettling. "Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun." I reach out through the filthy dark and find Kadan's empty shoulder. "Maraas shokra." I reassure him. He is weeping, as most viddathari do. I do not finish the prayer out loud.
Anaan esaam Qun.
The sea does not sleep as idly as the men on this ship; it wakes with a vengeance and purges its ire in a storm that would nearly see our vessel lost. I fell from the strung bedding as the others in the overcrowded underbelly already had, world unsteady beneath my feet. Heading to aid who I could in the chaos, I am halfway up the rain-lashed staircase before I notice him.
A pale branch of an arm curled around my own, fingers thinned by spellcast digging bruises where they clutched. "Sten," the Warden pleads, and I am loathe to realize not for the first since I'd woken. "Stay. Here." It is only half a stone from a command, and for a moment I feel as if the storm truly had tossed the world off its course.
Was I to obey, as I had sworn during the Blight? Or was it my new duty, to take command for us both - to be the guide Kadan had proven to be in my own time of need?
"The rigging will need to be lashed, to keep the sails from tear." I pry his hand loose, startled to realize that we have touched more this past week than we had in two years of travel and strife. Odd, to be dwelling on such a thing with a storm over our heads.
His tone is imperious, "Let the crew handle it."
"Is that a command?" My curiosity is genuine.
"No," he backs from the wind and the sting of the rain, eyes wide in the thrashing lamp-light as thunder pulls itself through the timbers keeping us afloat. "No, I just -"
Freed of the root of my hesitation, I have left Kadan behind to take what action on deck was needed of me. If the Warden had need to explain himself further, I trusted him as much to do so under less pressing conditions. As I worked and stumbled and heaved with the rest of the crew, still through the tempest my own disquiet purveyed; had the Warden just shown fear?