From where he stood, Sinead observed Darla as she slept, curled in the covers of the majestic bed that belonged in the captain's quarters. She was wrapped in furs and blankets, in the centre of the mattress cocooned in the entirety of the bed's quilts, and yet Sinead could see she was still shivering, could hear her teeth chattering noisily as she slept, fitful and without peace. It was mid-winter but not particularly cold aboard The Iron Bard, at least below deck, and yet she remained in her state. He went to her side and swept a lock of her dark hair from the top of her head that was showing, moving the blankets so he could press a palm to her cheek.
Not much improvement since wrapping her up. No colour, little heat. It was as though she was lifeless, a cadaver, and only the shallow movement of her chest gave her away. At the contact she let out a tiny and gentle sigh, as though she sensed him from the unconscious realm and was acknowledging him the only way she could. Her air blew over the skin of his hand and he gave a short gasp of exclamation. "By the Maker…" Her very breath was like ice, pricking his flesh with goose bumps where it touched. "Don't fret, my love," he whispered to her, distressed, tense, but keeping his patience. For her. "We shall be upon your rescue soon."
As though it had heard him in the subtext, cried out to him, beckoned him, Sinead felt a pull to the map that lay spread on the writing desk where a single candle flickered uncertainly, and making shadows dance in the bowels of the ship where the quarters were. He often found himself staring at it, following lines with his eyes as they weaved and curved, swirling his pupils over words, instructions, scribbled in spidery writing. Sometimes it almost hypnotised him, scared him enough to look away, lock it up and leave it for a few days. Other times it bade him look at it, memorise its lines and words, almost like a failsafe in case he somehow lost possession of it.
He knew it intimately, could picture it clear and perfect in his mind as though he were looking at the real thing, because it was Darla's saviour. His saviour. The map would lead him to the ancient Tevinter artefact called The Life Gem, a creation the magisters of old used to cure sickness and sometimes bring someone back from the brink of death. Supposedly, the gem used ancient and dark magic to take the sickness from a person and absorb it, effectively curing that person of any ailments-including death. Sinead had been fascinated and filled with a sense of hope he had long thought abandoned when he had discovered knowledge of such a thing. When Darla had first fallen sick, he had been sure to be attentative, taking her to every and any healer he could get close to. He hired the best money could buy, sought out the rarest treatments-anything. Nothing worked; not herbs or magic or practitioner care. Slowly she began to die as the mystery sickness sapped her life and all Sinead could do was watch.
Until he learned of the gem.
Up to that point, Sinead had been spiralling into depression and hopelessness as his love grew weaker as the days came and went. She stopped eating, talking, moving, barely breathing. Somehow, for some reason, she clung to life, but Sinead had known it was simply a matter of time until she slipped away completely. But when he came upon a rumour of the gem, heard in the bustle of Nevarra where tales were spread, distorted, changed, he found out everything he could about it. Finally, some light seemed to be breaking through the storm. And when he had found the map, his spirits renewed, he looked for a ship and a crew, paid them until they were willing to help him on his quest, collected Darla and boarded. They had been cordial, but wary. Strangers had boarded their vessel, one harried, the other deathly sick-and female. Pirates were a suspicious, superstitious lot, but Sinead had given them every last piece of gold he had, the remnants of his fortune. He hoped they would stay true to their word.
He walked back to Darla's side, feet making no sound on the lush carpeted floor. He touched her again; longing for her skin to feel warm once more, to hear her laugh, see her smile. To take comfort from her loving embrace, to have her under the moonlight and watch the emotions play across her face. By the gods, he missed her. "Soon, love," he said gently. She did not stir this time. "Soon."
THE CALL
"Isabela," a tentative whisper stole across the once-silent air, dancing with the quiet, caressing it into breaking, "I hate repeating myself, but I really think this is a bad idea."
"Shh!" The dance was interrupted by the harsh torrent of sound, and discontent it was as it tried to settle once more.
"I just think this is going to make our situation worse," the dance attempted to pick up where it left off, "sneaking in to a nobleman's house to steal some maps is-"
"It's not stealing if you're taking back something that belongs to you." At this point, the dance gave up all hope of continuing its rhythm, abandoning the two concealed women who stood vigilant outside Count Karmicheal's study, waiting for him to leave it. From a crack through the great doors, candlelight spilled out along the floor and illuminated a strip of the hall in which they hid.
"I didn't realise those maps were yours."
"They're not mine per se. But they're treasure maps, and it's common knowledge that all treasure maps belong in the hands of pirates, not pretentious little rich men who don't even know how to read them."
"I just don't-"
"Shush, he's leaving."
Silence fell again as the light vanished, the man inside the study having blown out the candles. The big doors creaked open as he walked out, a thick book in his arms. He was humming a little melody, blissfully unaware of the would-be thieves cloaked and hiding behind a large statue of himself, carved by a mediocre artist at best. He had even left the study doors open, confident in his guards that stood watch at the entrance of his house, guards that were easy to incapacitate and hide for two highly experienced rouges. As the humming faded along with his footsteps, the rouges slipped out of their hiding place and when they were confident he was gone, snuck into the study.
The only light came from the pale moon that hung low in the sky, a sliver of a beam that shone on the nobleman's desk, cluttered with ink pots and scrolls and books. There was a fireplace, riddled with old ash that hadn't been cleaned out in a while and tall, tall bookcases crammed with tomes about all sorts of things, from ancient history to legends of the sea to medicinal practices. It was obvious this man was something of a collector. As the rouges crept across the room, their feet making no noise on the luxurious carpet beneath them, one stopped at the desk to examine the items that lay across it.
"There's all sorts of things here," she said, carefully shifting papers back and forth to look what was underneath them, "how are we meant to know when we've come across a treasure map? All maps look the same."
"Oh, Hawke," the other sighed, running her fingers softly over a few of the tomes that sat in a nearby bookcase, "you're such a landlubber…"
"I did tell you before that I'm a terrible sailor, Isabela," Marian replied simply as she scarcely avoided knocking over an ink pot; the time had long past to be offended by a statement like that, because they both knew it was entirely true. Spending months and months on the sea with Isabela, the pirate queen trying to teach Hawke everything she knew about being a pirate, Marian Hawke had proved to be quite the slow learner when it came to seamanship.
She started as a satchel flew across the room and wrapped itself around her neck. "Just put all the maps you find in there." Isabela's voice floated after it. "We'll sort them out when we get back to the ship."
With a small sigh Hawke did as Isabela said, carefully moving books and quills out of the way and stuffing anything that looked even remotely like a map into the bag. They knew they didn't have too much time to grab what they needed, because Karmicheal would undoubtedly notice his missing entrance guards and raise an alarm. He was a very rich man, Hawke had been told, and so that meant he had more guards on standby somewhere that would come running. That statement brought another thought to Hawke's mind and she voiced it carefully: "why are we stealing this man's treasure maps? Wouldn't it make more sense to steal his wealth, so you can pay this Abraham straight away?"
A week ago, Isabela had received something called The Black Spot. To Hawke, it had been nothing more than a blot of ink on a blank scroll but Isabela had paled considerably upon seeing it, refusing to speak of it, and Hawke had found her later drunk (or loaded to the gun, Isabela would reprimand her for not saying) in her cabin, lolled on her bed with an empty bottle of moonshine in her hands. The alcohol loosened her tongue and she'd revealed that The Black Spot meant, in the most basic of pirating terms, that she was going to die.
Later, Hawke coerced the woman into saying more and learned that a man named Abraham (who apparently had the most cutthroat crew of pirates to ever sail the seas) was after her because she owed him something of a small fortune and he had finally tired of waiting for her to pay up-now he was coming to collect. Hawke had tried to argue that the scroll could have been anything and from anyone, maybe even a mistake, but Isabela knew it wasn't because she had been waiting for it for some time.
Even though they had the fastest ship on the seas, Isabela had said running away wasn't an option because Abraham would find them and it would be a thousand times worse, and the places they could go were limited because of Hawke's notoriety. The champion had felt a twinge of guilt over that, but Isabela's lopsided smile when she said she had a plan reassured her…if only a little. That reassurance fled once they'd docked in Antiva and Isabela told her the plan was to steal some old treasure maps that were in possession of a rich nobleman who she knew liked to collect those kind of things, in order to hunt for some loot to give to Abraham.
"Really, Hawke, haven't you learnt anything from what I've been trying to teach you?" Isabela sounded exasperated; Hawke snickered as she placed a handful of scrolls into the satchel. "We pirates are a proud sort, in a peculiar kind of way. Abraham would never accept some noble bastard's money, especially not if he could just steal it himself; but if I find some real booty of good worth, maybe he'll let me live."
"I could just kill him for you, y'know."
Isabela sighed, and Hawke could feel her disapproving glare from across the dark room. She knew what Isabela's answer would be even as she'd spoken. It was some strange code of pirate honour that Hawke could never understand, especially how it came from groups of thieves and murderers. "Sometimes I wonder if you even listen to the words that come out of my mouth, or if they just go in one ear and out the other. Huh…that sounds kind of kinky, put that way…"
The sound of that off-key humming returned, accompanied with footsteps. Karmicheal was returning to the study, perhaps to collect something he had forgotten. The rouges froze for a few seconds, Hawke being the first to leap into action. With lightning hands she straightened all that was on the desk, attempting to place things the way they'd been before she meddled. She was frantic and not doing a very good job; suddenly a grip on her arm yanked her away from the writing desk and behind a bookcase, pushing her down to squat beneath a fancy little table that held a frivolous, gold-marked vase. The hand over her mouth was unnecessary for she knew to be quiet, but she couldn't deny the feeling of Isabela's warm skin on her face was nice. She could feel the pirate's breaths coming across her cheek; they blew a lock of her dark hair slightly, threatening to make Hawke sneeze.
Karmicheal entered the study, remaining oblivious to the thieves' presence for the moment. They could not see him, but Hawke and Isabela listened intently to gain a picture of what he was doing from their hiding spot. He kept humming, and they heard the clinking of moving ink pots on the desk and the sound of something heavy being dropped. Putting back that book he'd had in his hands when he left, maybe. Then he came into their vision, his back to them as he scanned his vast bookshelves looking for a replacement.
Much as Isabela had done, he ran a finger along their spines, stopping at one in particular and fishing it out. At this point, the tickle in Hawke's nose began to grow and she squirmed a little. She felt Isabela shift against her side, and then the pirate queen's fingers slid up Hawke's face to pinch her nostrils closed. Isabela was close enough now that her breasts were pushing against Hawke's forearm, and that distracted her from sneezing just as much as the woman's fingers on her nose. Karmicheal was making a noncommittal sound, putting the book back in favour of another. Isabela's breaths stopped coming when the man turned, but he didn't see the women squatting under the little table, and a discomfort in her chest told Hawke she was holding her breath, too. He moved instead to a different shelf and finally found a book he was satisfied with; the sighs of relief the women released when he left the study again were laden, indulgent.
"That was close," Isabela breathed in Hawke's ear and she tried not to shiver, "I think it's time to get out of here." Hawke could only nod her consent; she allowed Isabela to pull her to her feet and tightened her grip around the satchel. "Did you get them all?"
"What I could grab, yes," she replied, mourning the loss of warmth as Isabela pulled away. "Let's hope we've got something useful." It would be horrifically amusing if, when they searched their "earnings", all Hawke had picked up were badly written love poems or the starting points of an epic novel. She smiled when she imagined the look on Isabela's face if that were the case, glad the woman couldn't see it.
They snuck out of the estate the same way they got in, Hawke thinking on their conversation as they'd ported in Antiva.
"How did you come to know this man has treasure maps?" She'd asked, doing her best not to doubt Isabela's "captain logic" but clearly seeing faults in her plan. Isabela told her she had an ear to the ground in many places, Antiva being one of them, and when she told her "ear" that she was looking for some maps, he had offered up Karmicheal's estate by way of answer. Karmicheal apparently being a big collector of anything old, studious or pirate as the women had seen in his estate-many of his things being remnants of old relics or tomes and canvases of history-and Isabela's "ear" assured her that if anyone in at least Antiva would have a map to a good load of treasure, it would be Karmicheal.
Hawke had been thrown by the man's light guarding, though. She thought that, were she the owner of no-doubt priceless relics and the like and obviously had the money to do so, she would employ more men stationed at all entrances of the estate and inside, to catch burglars or would-be murderers. Antiva was a violent place, after all. Voicing her query to Isabela, the pirate had merely said it was their luck the guards were sparse that night. Hawke thought it odd, but it would be their luck if they had actually happened upon a real, useful map that lead them to enough fortune to appease Abraham. She knew there were things Isabela wasn't telling her about The Black Spot, pirate things that again, Hawke probably wouldn't understand regarding why they even existed, and she found herself doubting the true length of time Isabela claimed they had before Abraham came for her.
The ship, The Siren's Call II as Isabela had proudly renamed her, was waiting for them where they had left it at a nearby port where the rest of the crew had been left on board. There was not a soul above deck save for the lookout perched in the Crow's Nest, their flag, skull and crossbones wearing Isabela's trademark scarf flapping gently. As they boarded, the crewmate hollered down cheerfully. "Hail, captain! Get what ya need?"
"Aye, matey, that we did," Isabela called back, a little over-dramatically. Hawke snorted and rolled her eyes, Isabela turning to look innocently at her, the sheer irony of the pirate pulling off that expression lost to no one. "What?" She said as they crossed the deck to head below.
"Nothing," Hawke huffed, and Isabela gave her a look before letting it pass.
"I'll go tell the rest of the crew we're ready to leave because the sooner we're out of here the better, as those guards we knocked out are going to wake up soon and we need to be gone by then," she said, "and you can start sorting through what's in that satchel." With a wink, she departed into the bowels of the ship to locate the crew and Hawke shook her head, heading to Isabela's quarters.
There were simple, cosy, red satin drapes above the big, fancy bed in the centre replacing the terrible mustard coloured ones Castillon had, and anything that once belonged to him had been tossed overboard and replaced with things Hawke hadn't even known Isabela owned-like a lute (which she wasn't bad at playing), a ceremonial dagger carving and a golden sextant that sat proudly on Isabela's writing desk. Hawke knew it had been foolish to assume that Isabela owned nothing during her entire stay at Kirkwall, but seeing her with possessions was strange.
In the corner of the large quarters was a make-shift bed where she herself slept; Isabela had refused to let Hawke sleep in the crew quarters because the woman had experience when dealing with men on-sea. She and Hawke being the only women aboard the vessel, the men got rowdy on long trips and Hawke sleeping down there with them would have been a disaster. But Hawke would not share Isabela's bed like the pirate had lewdly suggested, for her own dignity and the sake of her fragile willpower.
Hawke was a terrible sailor and didn't belong on the sea. Both she and Isabela knew that, and yet Hawke remained. She didn't know if they both knew why. When Kirkwall had collapsed and all of them left on Isabela's ship, they had come to a crossroad where everybody needed to go their own ways, Aveline and Donnic starting a new life somewhere, Merril finding her redemption in a new clan of Dalish, Fenris starting his own life away from the Imperium, Varric heading anywhere and everywhere to start his own business, Anders determined to finish what he started…Hawke knew she could have gone with any of them, she was welcome to, but she had stayed with Isabela.
She stayed because the pirate asked her to, and whether she knew it or not, Isabela had nestled herself so deeply in Marian's heart there was no way she could say no to anything the pirate wanted. Isabela was content with their status as friends, calling Marian the best she'd ever had, and so was Hawke…to an extent. But the woman knew Isabela held no value towards love and its principles in that respect, and the only thing she would get from Isabela if she were to pursue more from their relationship would be sex; she wanted more than that, but knew she would never get it. So she stayed quiet, at Isabela's side as Marian Hawke, best friend, awful seaman, and pining woman-the third of which Isabela would never know.
Hawke banished those thoughts away. They got her nowhere and nothing except misery. If Kirkwall had taught her anything, it was to be content with what one had. She focused her mind to the cause, lit a candle on the desk and emptied the sack of maps. As Isabela had crudely put it, Marian wouldn't be able to use a map to find her own ass, and Hawke merely sighed and said it wasn't her fault she'd not been raised to read maps. When the Hawke family was young, Malcolm didn't need maps to relocate them whenever templars came sniffing-they just up and left their home as cleanly as possible and relocated to anywhere that was far enough away. Isabela had only given her a pitiful sigh as a reply when she said as much to the pirate.
What fell from the sack in front of her were indeed maps, Hawke knew, but what they lead to and what they were of, she had no idea. Contour lines and numbers and codes meant nothing to her, just scribbles on parchment, but Isabela would be able to make heads and tails of it. She had been trying to teach Marian how to read maps but to little avail. Some scrolls were old and decaying written in a language Hawke could not read and held little interest for.
One in particular looked older than the rest, edges torn and parchment stained. Marian picked it up and attempted to read it in the candlelight; the writing was spidery, scrawled, like it had been written in a hurry. Where the ink had dried the page was indented, like whoever had written it had pressed the nib of their quill hard. Marian wasn't sure if it was her imagination or the bad lighting, but as she squinted to tried to read, to discern what language they were written in because it didn't look like anything she'd ever seen, the words wriggled all over the page, sentences writhing like worms making them completely unreadable-like they didn't want to be read.
With a sigh, Marian rubbed her temples and put it back on the desk. Garbage, she thought, casting a disparaging look at the rest of the "spoils" and hoping there was something of worth there, or that Isabela would come around and let her take care of this Abraham person the easy way.
A click and soft sound of the cabin door opening and closing got her attention.
"So," said Isabela, slinking into her cabin. She stood behind Marian, who was aware of the woman's body heat, "what have we got?"
"I'm not sure," Marian admitted and rubbed her eyes, "it all looks like hogwash to me."
"Bah, let me take a look." Isabela pushed at Marian, who got up from the desk chair and perched on the end of Isabela's bed. "We could have struck gold and you wouldn't have a clue."
A little petulant, Marian watched Isabela sift through what they took. The pirate made small, soft noncommittal noises, weighing parchment to and fro and Marian rolled her eyes at the dramatisation of it all. "I'm telling you, there's nothing there," she said, but frowned when Isabela did not reply. That dusty, illegible parchment was in her hands, the one whose words Marian was sure squirmed about the page like worms (though probably just a trick of the light); but otherwise completely useless, unreadable. Junk. But Isabela was staring at it, a slow dawning expression on her face as though the swift and sure answer to her problems was written on its face. It was a strange expression that Marian was not accustomed to seeing. "Isabela, are you alright?" Hawke eventually asked when the silence stretched on and she became concerned.
"This is it," she replied, strangely a little breathy. Marian could not be sure because of the dim light, but Isabela's eyes seemed to sparkle. Marian's gaze switched from Isabela's sudden off-key expression to the torn parchment in her hands, confused. "This is the one, Hawke."
Welcome to my latest WIP. Hopefully you enjoyed this first chapter, so if you did please be sure to review. But I don't want a flame about the pairing choice because it was stated in the summary. PM or review if you have questions. Please. If you like the idea and think you might like where it is going or you have any suggestions, let me know. The basic outline for this fic is done and the chapters just need to be written. Thank you for reading!