With powerful thump on the gate and the vibration that shook through the ground, she wondered if this was time she wouldn't survive.
The gate had been built tall and thick to keep the elves penned into the alienage. For the first time in her life, Shianni was glad for it as the rest of Denerim around them was aflame. Thick smoke obscured the sky, painting it in tones of scarlet and black.
"There's no way we can fight them off!" Marin said, taking another step back toward the vhenadahl.
"He's right," his brother Alian quickly agreed. "We should run!"
Shianni knew as well as both of them that the few old and worn bows and the hastily fletched arrows weren't enough. Even if every resident of the alienage had a bow and knew how to shoot, it wouldn't be enough. Everyone knew that.
But there was nowhere else to run. The market was on fire. The docks were on fire. The monstrous ogre was slowly battering down the only other way out onto the King's Avenue. All of the elves were cowering in their homes, with nowhere to go and no hope that anyone was coming for them.
It was the alienage. It had one of the only bridges across the Drakon on purpose. If the city was invaded, soldiers could make a stand here with no worry about any collateral damage. Or they could just shut the tall, strong gates and burn the enemy within it.
Shianni looked between the narrow spaces in the gate, seeing the sea of black beyond it.
Vaughan Kendells. Howe's purge. Disease. Tevinter slavers.
"What do we do Shianni?" Marin asked again. At least he and his brother stood, even if their knees were shaking with fear.
"I don't know."
"Shianni!"
And like a story, a tall tale, no, a legend, she was there.
"Hold that gate!" she shouted, pointing her long, glowing sword and issuing the command to the sober warrior in the dull, steel armor who she could swear looked like the reviled father of the Queen. And he went without word.
"Wynne, I want you to drop something big on those darkspawn the second they're through that gate." The old mage nodded and shuffled along toward the gate too, as quickly as she could on old, tired legs.
"Cousin," Shianni said, as if in the midst of some kind of a dream.
"Shianni, thank the Maker I'm not too late." Kallian pushed her vibrant red hair behind her left left as she took a moment to breathe. Her scarlet armor was covered in black blood and she was breathing heavily, as if she had sprinted directly here. She wasn't convinced her cousin hadn't done just that. "I'll handle this. Get yourselves to safety."
"No!" The word was out of her mouth as quickly as Kallian closed hers. Shianni lifted the shabby bow off of her shoulder. "This is my home as much as yours! If you're going to fight, I will too."
Kallian might have smiled, if the city wasn't on fire. She knew Shianni never listened to her. Not once since they were kids running through the back alleys of the alienage together and trying to pilfer apples from the grocer when he wasn't looking.
Her cousin only gave a small nod. "I brought some help," she said, turning her head over her left shoulder.
Behind her, the legion of Dalish fighters marched in short lines, curved swords, clover shields, tall bows and intricate tattoos gracing their faces. As they came up the street, she could see the faces of the other elves, her people, poking cautiously out of windows and doors to take in the sight.
At the front of their column was a single mage, a blonde-haired woman carrying a staff and gazing at the dilapidated homes and scared faces inside of them. When she made it close, Shianni could see her eyes were wet with tiny tears that sparkled in the dancing light of the flames consuming Denerim.
"This… this is your home, Warden?" she asked with doubt in her voice.
"Yes," Kallian said. "These are my people."
"Our people," the mage corrected. She turned her gaze to Shianni. As she blinked, the glassiness in her eyes disappearing, replaced instead with stern determination. "We'll do whatever it takes to defend your home."
The loud crash and the splintered of wood broke the moment.
"We're out of time, Warden!" the booming voice of the steel-clad warrior shouted from the gate.
"Take up positions. Prepare to engage the darkspawn," Kallian ordered. "Don't let them through. Not a single one.
Kallian pulled the short blade from the sheath on her left thigh, giving it a quick spin between her fingers. Shianni recognized that one. Uncle Cyrion's knife. Fang.
Her cousin marched toward the gate. When it broke and came down, the warrior chargd headfirst into the ogre that felled the gate. There was a crackle of thunder as the Keeper summoned bolts of lightning that cut the sky, arcing into the deep lines of the darkspawn choking the street. The old mage glowed in a hazy blue light, her staff spinning in the air above her head as she chanted, a snap of cold biting the air.
The spells collided, a deafening peal of thunder as the column of wind spun across the battlefield, fierce wind and raging bolts of lightning spilling all around it. The arrows of the Dalish flesh through the gale. Darkspawn arrows flew back, cutting down archers. The Dalish warriors charged, shields and blades clashing with the rotting, corrupted monsters.
In the middle of it all, her cousin slipped up and down, blades singing through the air as she danced through their ranks, seeming slip just out of reach of every strike before it landed.
Shianni couldn't remember if she fired a single arrow in the few short minutes between the gate collapsing and the last darkspawn falling.
None of the houses were destroyed. Dalish had fallen, but none of her people lay dead. The Alienage stood.
Not a single darkspawn body lay across the threshold.
Vaughan Kendells. Howe's purge. Disease. Tevinter slavers.
Darkspawn.
"How do you expect to collect taxes from the Alienage when we can't even afford to feed ourselves?"
This felt like the third time this argument had lapped around, still getting nowhere. Shianni's seat was the last at the long table. Even when she didn't feel the need to shout, which was rarely, she had to shout just to be heard.
"The elves have been given ample chance to work and earn a wage. I cannot be blamed if they piddle it away on dice and drink," Bann Staffordshire said with a roll of his eyes as he turned toward the Queen.
"That's not what is happening," Shianni protested, wanting to slam her fists against the table. Two dockworkers get drunk and arrested from a tavern three weeks ago and suddenly it became a stereotype that defined the entire alienage.
She forced herself to fold her hands on the table and sit up straight in her chair as she turned toward the Queen. "Your Grace, the builder's guild and the shipping union are paying elves half, if that, the wages they are paying humans. The elves are working many more hours and being given all of the dangerous jobs. Ten elves have been crippled falling from scaffolds just this month. Thank the Maker no one has died. Yet. They don't even send the humans up higher than the second floor any more."
"That's hearsay," chimed in Bann Devon of Denerim's Southern Hill, who was influential with the builders. "Your Grace, there have been a few minor accidents. I'm afraid Bann Tabris is prone to exaggeration."
"Tell that to their families," Shianni bit back, allowing her temper to once again get the best of her. "Perhaps you'd like to come by the alienage and inspect their broken limbs yourself?"
"I'd rather not," Bann Devon said.
"You'll probably get fleas," Staffordshire quipped.
"That's enough," Queen Anora stabbed with her voice as cold as steel as she turned and shot a disapproving glare at the Bann of the Waterfront.
"Apologies, Your Grace," he said, lowering his head ashamed, but still grinning out of the left corner of his mouth that the Queen couldn't see but Shianni could from her place at the far end of the Council of Denerim.
The Queen then turned her attention back to the farthest end of the table. "Bann Tabris, Denerim is rebuilding and all of its citizens must aid in its rebirth. The crown recognizes the challenges faced by the alienage, but the levy being sought is many times less than the other boroughs and quite fair. Let me remind you we have recently replaced the alienage gates and repaired the market bridge. And all of the local guilds have been given a temporary quota to fill with elven labor."
"None of which we asked for," Shianni countered, a bit more roughly than she should have to the queen. "We need food. We need materials to repair or homes. We need wood and coal for the approaching winter. Denerim won't be able to collect any taxes from the alienage if we all freeze or starve to death over winter, Your Grace."
The Queen sat quietly and listened, not showing any signs of sympathy while waiting for Shianni to finish. The pleas fell on deaf ears, as they always did. The queen was made of ice and stone. She still wore the black garb and the black veil across her eyes to mourn her deceased father. His death atop Fort Drakon slaying the dragon had caused her a great amount of pain, but also given her an unparalleled amount of power as the daughter of the Savior of Denerim.
"Denerim will provide for its people," Anora said calmly. "And the alienage will provide for Denerim. I expect the tax payment will be made on time and in full, Bann Tabris."
Shianni withdrew her hands into her lap and bowed her eyes respectfully. "Yes, Your Grace."
As the council adjourned, Shianni pushed out of her seat as quickly as she could and exited the chamber.
She hated everything about the royal palace, from its hardwood chairs to its lavishly woven rugs to the countless sentries standing around in new, shiny sets of armor that each cost enough to feed three families in the alienage. She hated the hill it sat on overlooking the rest of the city, above the blue lapping water of the ocean, the fresh shingled roofs of the human homes on the south hill, the sturdy wooden frames and fresh paint being lavish upon the market and the dull, dirty alienage segregated in the middle of all of it. She hated that the Queen was always here and the King always seemed to be absent.
It was King Alistair's idea to name her as Bann of the Alienage. She tried to refuse it. But Kallian had encouraged her to accept it. She wasn't able to stay. Even if she was, she insisted she was only half the fighter Shianni was when it came to defending their people.
Shianni never could say no to her cousin, even when she was wrong.
Vaughan Kendells. Howe's purge. Disease. Tevinter slavers. Darkspawn.
Queen Anora?
Pay the tax, cut the food budget by a quarter, slash the fuel spending in half, decimate the fund for education and eliminate tribute for the Chantry. Mortgage the future of the children and lose the moral support of the sisters.
Pay the tax, maintain the food budget, keep the education, trim tribute to the Chantry, have some people barter for scrap wood to burn this winter. Have no reserves and risk gaining the reputation of elves being thieves and scavengers.
Pay the tax, maintain the food, purchase coal, fund the children's lessons, pay the Chantry sisters, borrow from the lenders to pay for it. Put the problem off until spring, have no plan to pay back the money with interest, scrape the elves for more tax they don't have.
Cut down the new gate. Sell it back to the crown. Use the money to pay the Queen's bloody tax.
Quit. Follow Kallian to wherever she was now. Leave the elves to their fate.
Run. Take everyone to join the Dalish clans. Bugger Denerim.
Take a break. Close the ledger. Get some sleep. Look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.
Don't give up. Preserve. Overcome.
Fight.
Survive.
The sun was barely up when the hard knocking on the door jolted Shianni out of sleep.
She wrapped her coat around herself as she quickly strode down the street, tying it closely around her as the cold late-autumn wind swirled between the buildings and the light, icy cold rain fell from the sky. The sky was grey and filled with tragedy.
A crowd was circled around and within it, no one was sorting through the wreckage. Alian was laying on the cobblestone street, his arms and legs all bent in different directions and a pool of red pooled underneath his brown-haired head. He was still wearing his belt, although his hammer was gone and the nails were spilled out of the pouch on the ground around him.
The wooden scaffold swayed in the gusty wind, the topmost platform hanging by just a few twisted boards. Below it was a heaping pile of stones, bricks, wood and broken tile shingles. Within the pile of rubble, she could see a single thin arm poking out, wrist and fingers limp and unmoving like some grim flag planted in a hill.
The city guard was beginning to file in and push people back away from the wreck and disperse the crowd.
"...a big gust of the wind and the elf falls off the platform into the roof beam. Snapped it like a twig and the whole damn thing came down like a house of cards."
Bann Devon recounted the story to the guard sergeant as if he was retelling a good yarn he heard at the pub the night before.
The guardsman just shook his head as he crossed his arms and looked at the collapsed building. "Maker-damned mess, this."
"What were they doing out here this morning!" Shianni shouted.
"Bann Tabris," Devon said, as he glanced over, noticing her for the first time. "I didn't-"
"They shouldn't have been out here! For Maker's sake, it's storming out!"
"They were already behind schedule. I know you think I'm in charge of everything in Denerim, it's flattering, really, but I don't tell people when to work and when not to. I just tell them when they need to be done. How they get there is up to them," he said.
"How many elves were working here?" she demanded.
"Bann Tabris, this isn't the time or the place-"
"How many elves?" she demanded a second time, more slowly so that he understood.
Bann Devon looked left and right, bit his bottom lip and crossed his arms. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Six."
"All dead?"
"One or two may still be alive at the bottom of the pile, depending on how it fell," he said. "But by the time we get to them…" He shook his head.
Shianni charged past him, her eyes turned up to the grey sky and the gleaming palace that stood jutting into it.
It took all of her willpower from hitting the seneschal in the face.
He had a crooked nose, an oily beard and his chin was always lifted slightly upward as if he couldn't bear to hold his eyes on equal level with her. He smelled of some kind of perfume mixed with sweat that wafted off his rich clothes every time he moved.
"The Queen is not here today. She went riding at dawn," he said, obviously lying.
"It's raining," Shianni said bluntly. "The Queen would never go out in the rain. Her perfect golden head might get wet." Or she might melt.
The seneschal was not amused. He stood, blocking the corridor to the royal quarters of the palace. Two knights stood guarding the open door leading back into the common corridor. There was no way to get past an of them unless they opted to let her past. And people in the palace barely tolerated her as it was, without her showing up uninvited and unannounced.
"I can tell the Queen you called on her," the seneschal said. "But I'm afraid that's all I can do for you today, Bann Tabris."
She was instead looking over his shoulder, down the corridor as two knights stepped in. Behind them, she could see the rich golden furs and the long, ornate scabbard at the right hip.
"King Alistair!" Shianni shouted, shoving the seneschal out of the way, but not stepping forward any closer than she already was. "King Alistair! I require an audience!"
The knights began moving toward the door to shut it, and the two sentries began stepping forward to remove her from the hall. But she could see Alistair's head and his eyes meet hers across the long distance.
"King Alistair! Six of my people are dead! Forced to work in unsafe weather today! And the builder's guild does nothing to prevent it! Six elves, dead!" The knights reached out to grab her arms and she stepped back swatting them aside. "Six, King Alistair! Something has to be done!"
The door closed and the King was gone. The seneschal dusted off his sleeves, as if the brief contact of her hand against his ruffled velvet sleeve had permanently soiled it. He glared at her. "Please show yourself out. Or I will have you removed, Bann Tabris. Forcefully."
Vaughan Kendells. Howe's purge. Disease. Tevinter slavers. Darkspawn.
"You want, what!?"
This time, Shianni did leap out of her chair, banging her hands down on the table as the wooden legs of the chair squealed as they scraped across the tiled floor.
"I lost an entire storehouse. There is no way to replace it before winter. I will lose out on an entire season of storage due to their negligence," Devon said to the Queen, ignoring Shianni.
"You lost a storehouse because you were pushing the workers to exhaustion. You lost a storehouse because you forced them to work in strong winds and rain before dawn. You lost a storehouse because you provided them with cut-rate mortar that never cured and crumbled like sand when the roof buckled. You lost a storehouse because you scaled back the number of supports in the roof and walls to try to rush the project and save a few coins because quality lumber is in short supply during the reconstruction! And you want me to pay you? Six elves are dead because of you."
Devon looked back and addressed the Queen again, not Shianni. "The elf who fell and started the collapse was drunk, Your Grace. He had been at the tavern all night before showing up in the morning."
"That's a lie," Shianni argued. "He couldn't even afford to feed himself, his wife and his two little girls, both of whom now are deprived of a loving father because of this reckless disregard for safety. I know. I know because these are my people. And unlike you, I give a fuck if they live or die."
"Bann Tabris," the Queen snapped.
"No, Your Grace. Don't Bann Tabris me. Don't Bann Tabris me until you and everyone else on this council are ready to give my people at least the most basic scrap of dignity," Shianni said. She was storming out, not bothering to heed any of the Queen's pointed commands for her to return to her seat.
As she slammed the heavy door of the council chamber behind her, Shianni swallowed, clenched her fingers into fists and glanced down at the brown and gold carpet underneath her feet. She kicked it in frustration and stepped over the wrinkle she left in it.
Shianni had six funerals to prepare for.
Shianni looked out the window at the slow flurry of snow falling outside, lightly covering the rooftops and streets in a blanket of white.
She tossed the letter back onto the table. The response from Keeper Lanaya was brief and disappointing. The forests were still recovering from the Blight and the clan had no additional food it could send north to Denerim for the alienage.
The Keeper was a distant friend, but a distant friend who couldn't help her now. Just like Kallian. Just two days ride north in Amaranthine, but she might as well have been halfway across Thedas. Shianni was on her own again.
"You look exhausted, child." Uncle Cyrion placed the plate of food down on the table, sliding it in between the piles of letters, reports and the leather-bound ledger and its black ink that never seemed to be as large or numerous as the red ink she marked it with. A small roll, a slice of cheese and a sizeable chunk of salted ham.
"Uncle, we need to ration our food," she scolded, scowling at the chunk of ham. It was large for her. For the expensive human inns closest to the palace, it would merely be a tasting portion prior to something much larger, richer and dripping with grease and fat.
"I'm old. I don't eat that much any more," Cyrion said with a smile.
"You need to keep your strength up, most of all," Shianni said. She was always worried that his cough would come back. Just because he had been healed didn't mean that it was gone. At this age, if he got seriously sick like that again, it might be the last time.
Shianni picked up the hard roll, nibble a corner off it and dropped it back onto the plate, disinterested with the entire offering. She instead glanced back at the ledger book, then up at her uncle.
"There's no way to make it work, not without hurting the alienage in some major way. I feel like I've thought of every option and all of them are bad," she said.
"You remind me of the way Valendrian used to talk," her Uncle said with a smile, patting his old, wrinkled hand on top of her knuckles. "He always found a way."
"I'm not Valendrian," Shianni said with a sigh. He was gone now, shipped off to Tevinter. One of the many elves she hadn't been able to save. He had always seemed intimidating, but perhaps it was just the shell of spikes he had to wear to survive. Shianni knew now what it was like to have everyone looking to her, as if she could someone how solve all of their problems for them.
Maker be damned, she couldn't help herself from wanting to try.
There was a soft knock on the door. "Come in," Uncle Cyrion shouted loud enough so they could hear.
The doorknob turned and a man wearing a heavy coat with the hood pulled over his forehead stepped in. He carried a sack cinched tightly with a cord in one hand and a bundle of firewood in the other. He lowered both down carefully, placing them on the floor, brushed the snowflakes off his arms and pulled his hood back.
"I wanted to get here before the snow started, but it's just impossible to get away sometimes."
King Alistair ran his hand over the top of his head, patting his disheveled hair down on top of his head as he straightened the collar on his coat.
"Your Grace," Uncle Cyrion said, stumbling out of his chair to take a knee on the creaky wooden floor of his home. Shianni didn't move, instead placing her elbows on the table and cupping her hands together with a hard stare.
"Don't," Alistair said, motioning. "Don't do that. Get up. Up until a couple weeks ago, people would be more likely to look the other way than do all the kneeling and bowing and saying nice things about me. It's rather disturbing, actually."
Uncle Cyrion stood back up as commanded and stepped ahead to pick up the bundles the king had brought, offering him the wobbly chair at the old and worn table. The King thanked him and sat, pulling his thick gloves off of his fingers and plopping them down on the table.
"What are you doing here, Your Grace?" Shianni asked rather guardedly.
"Oh, you know, taking a stroll in the snow. Thought I'd bring by some firewood and a few things from the market. Some flour, sugar, eggs, onions. Nothing special, but it was the best I could do on short notice."
"That's very generous of you, King Alistair," Shianni said. "But you can take it back with you. I'm not accepting gifts while the rest of my people are starving."
Alistair laughed at that, clapping his hands together as he leaned back into the chair. If he was trying to piss her off, he was doing fine job at it. Before she could open her mouth again, he was speaking.
"Kallian said you had that fire," Alistair said. "No, Bann Tabris, it's not just for you. My men are making deliveries to all the houses as we speak."
Shianni bit her tongue and glanced out the window, spying a man across the street knocking on a door and carrying the similar-sized bundles as the King had. A lot of people would snatch them up quickly. Others were certainly going to look at the humans suspiciously. She hoped no one would be stupid enough to turn it down.
"Does the Queen know about this?" Shianni asked.
"Maker, I hope not," Alistair said, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. "As far as she knows, I'm at the Chantry saying my prayers. In my defense, I think this will do more good than for the city than reciting the Chant. Although if she finds out I'm not there, I may need the Maker's intervention to save me."
None of this made any sense. The King never sat in on the council sessions. He rarely held audience. He spent most of his time out of public view. He wasn't even in Denerim most of the time, preferring to be on the road as far away from the capital as possible. He'd already made at least one trip to Amaranthine, she had heard, possibly more.
Shianni lowered her arms, letting them rest across the table. She allowed her shoulders to slouch and let go of a sigh, a mixture of relief, confusion and frustration.
"Why are you here, Your Grace?"
"There's no way the alienage is going to be able to pay its taxes and also feed itself and keep itself warm. Is that correct? It's my understanding that's what you said, unless the rumors are true and you are prone to exaggeration?"
"The Queen made it abundantly clear she wasn't going to help us," Shianni said.
"I'm not the Queen, if you haven't noticed," Alistair said with a smirk.
"I don't know that it's wise to cross her," Shianni said. Maybe Alistair didn't know that. She hoped he knew that. If he wanted to survive, he better know it or learn it.
"Oh, it's not. Anora is… Anora," Alistair said awkwardly, probably because he couldn't think of anything nice to say and decided it was better to say nothing at all. "We don't see eye-to-eye on certain things. She's been in Denerim for years now and has a way of doing things. And apparently the way I suggest doing things 'can't be done' because something or other.
"I understand there are rules and turning the city upside down while it's still half a city isn't the best idea in the world," Alistair said. "But they made me King. And making wrong things right is what I'm supposed to be doing. Right? Beisdes, I can't have you running around my palace screaming all the time. It really upsets the staff."
Shianni nodded, maybe even smiled a little bit. She pulled her hands back, dropping them into her lap, linking her fingers together nervously in two rings under the table where he couldn't see. She lifted her eyes up, almost bashful, if Shianni were capable of such things.
"Thank you, Your Grace. For caring," Shianni said.
"I owe you cousin much more than a few bundles of firewood and some groceries," Alistair said. "Kallian told me you were a fighter. I saw myself the way you dealt with the slavers. You were a person who was willing to stand up for her people, even when none of them were too afraid to stand with you. That's why I needed you as Bann, to help bash it into the heads of everyone else that things can't stay the same."
"I'm not accomplishing anything," Shianni said.
"No, not yet. But that's besides the point. I need you to keep fighting, to keep making your case. I've seen firsthand what elves can do when given an opportunity. I'll do what I can to help, but I need you to keep pushing. Can you do that, Bann Tabris?"
Shianni never could walk away from a fight. She could never turn her back on her people. When Vaughan took them all away to the arl's estate, she made sure he took her first. She fought him too, as long as she could until Kallian came for her.
No one else got hurt. That was enough.
Kallian had gone on to move all of Ferelden. She gathered an army. She fought and killed the Blight. Even with the capital burning around her, she made sure to come back to the alienage, to come home, and defend her people.
Shianni remembered that she used to be the big one, the one who pushed her cousin down and sat on her back until she ate a handful of mud. That was a long time ago, back when they were just two little red-headed girls running around getting into mischief. Nothing had really changed. They still both got into mischief, just on a much grander scale now. Kallian fought archdemons. Shianni fought the Queen, who could be just as bad.
"You can count on me, Your Grace."
Vaughan Kendells. Howe's purge. Disease. Tevinter slavers. Darkspawn.
Winter. Anora. Poverty. Racism. Bann of the Alienage. Doubt. Hatred. Scorn.
Denerim.
Shianni would survive them all.