"Should we stop it?" Sigrun was standing on a crate, peering through a window in the attic of Vigil's Keep down into the courtyard below. "It" was a conflagration of two Dalish women in the courtyard: their commander and a new recruit plucked from a killing rampage in the forest named Velanna. The fight had not yet gone beyond a verbal exchange in heated elvish, but both women were mages and the air had a charged feeling, as though the very dust motes were tense.
Nathaniel peered over Sigrun's shoulder into the courtyard, his brow knitting. "Maybe." Neither of them moved, however, until Nate heard Anders approaching from the storage room they had been sent to clear out. "Let's send Anders down to it."
Anders craned to see what they were talking about and understood the situation immediately. "Me? Not a chance."
"But you're another mage," Nathaniel protested.
"And my hair singes just as easily as yours does."
"You're afraid."
"Absolutely!"
It was hard to argue with such eager self-abasement, but Nathaniel muttered, "You have a shield of some kind, I've seen you use it."
Anders leaned his head and watched the two women for a moment. Velanna appeared to be mockingly repeating something the commander had said. "I don't know," he replied contemplatively. "It's actually kind of hot."
"Oh Andraste's blood! I'll do it." Nathaniel turned on his heel and descended the stairs at a fast clip.
By the time he reached the courtyard, Commander Adra had turned her back on Velanna and was walking towards him. He called out a warning to her just as a small globe of flame sailed towards the commander's back. Tecla half-turned and reflexively jumped out of the path of the fireball, which harmlessly exploded into a shower of ash and sparks on the stone wall of the Keep. She swore loudly in elvish- Nathaniel took it to be a curse, at least- but Velanna had already disappeared from sight.
"Are you alright?" Nate asked, reaching out a hand.
"Yes, of course." She began to pace back and forth, hands on her hips. The two women who shared such a similar background could not be more different. Even in appearance they were nothing alike, apart from the obvious elven features. Velanna was petite and delicate looking, which made her strident demeanor all the more striking. Tecla was tall for an elf, skin bronzed from the sun, and she wore leather armor just like the other soldiers, not a Dalish robe like Velanna. Appearances were not the only way they differed, however. If anyone thought that having another Dalish mage at the Keep would lead to elven camaraderie, the notion had been disabused from the first moment the two women clashed horns.
Nathaniel watched Tecla silently for a few moments, then gestured toward the Keep. "I'll be going then."
"I think I made a mistake, Nathaniel."
Howe turned back, surprised. They were both people of few words and their brief exchange had been all he had expected to get out of her. "Go on," he prompted.
Tecla paused, frowning, and explained, "I did not want to recruit her, but I thought she should do something good for the people of the arling. I thought she should..." The Orlesian elf searched for the word. "...I thought she should atone. But she is worse than ever. Her hatred, it is like the pot that boiled over and now it burns and burns itself. I think I must send her away." She stopped, watching him, her expression an obvious prompt for advice, perhaps for reassurance.
Nathaniel was speechless. The commander was actually confiding in him, something she had never done before, not with him or with anyone so far as he knew. For some time Nate had been concerned about her. Every military commander he knew operated with a second, someone who was eyes and ears and sounding board and errand-runner. Tecla had people helping her with the administrative affairs of the arling, but in the field she had no such person. Nate was the only one in their small ragtag band of Wardens who had been in military leadership before, unless one counted Oghren, who these days couldn't lead himself out of the privy. Nate had gone to Varel and Garevel and told them his concerns about the commander, offering his services, but that had gone over like week-old milk. Varel treated his offer with skepticism and suspicion. Garevel stood back with arms folded looking ready to carve the scarlet T for traitor into his chest, or perhaps the scarlet H for Howe, which had become synonymous for the same. Varel ended the conversation by saying that if the commander wanted a lieutenant, she would find one herself.
Now Tecla seemed herself to be turning to him for help. All Nate had really wanted was to feel useful. It had burned that his superiors still did not trust him even with so much as second, but maybe the elf did. After recovering from his surprise, he urged, "Don't do that. Not yet. Let me talk to her."
"You?" Tecla did not conceal her skepticism.
"Velanna sees humans as her enemy," Nate went on, reasoning. "It is easy to do that when the other side is just a faceless mass. If she can come to trust one human a little, maybe it will change her view of the whole." He wondered if Tecla realized he could be talking about her just as easily as about Velanna. The commander was ice to Velanna's flailing outrage and fire, but Nate suspected that the roots of her silence and drive to prove herself were not so different than Velanna's.
Warily the commander ventured, "How do you hope to accomplish this... change?"
He pulled a grin. "I have my ways, not to worry."
Tecla snorted in reply, then paused to consider. "Well, we shall see. I will take her on our next missions and if you think it will help, go ahead and use your 'ways.' I will try to stay out of it. But we will both have to watch her carefully."
"Deal."
Tecla started to walk away, then turned back and asked, "Why do you even want to do this, Nathaniel?"
Even after this small breakthrough, he was not ready to tell her the real reasons. Still keeping up his grin, Nate replied, "All in the interest of elven-human relations, commander."