They ran out of land in Antiva.
The whole country had carried the smell of life and decay, rich earth and new crops and the dung of the sheep and goats and cattle that ranged the flat, grass-covered plains. Jona Hawke thought for a moment that she'd look up the assassin they'd encountered months before, cash out the goodwill for a few weeks of extra protection.
Then she thought better. Perhaps Zevran no longer traded on the particular skills that brought him to her attention. Perhaps a man with a price would always listen to a higher bid-even if he rejected it in the end.
Merrill turned east two days before they reached the Venefication Sea, bright blue and warm. It teamed with living things the likes of which simply did not think about settling down raising small rafts of mussels or barnacles on the pilings at the Kirkwall docks. Hawke had never seen a place less filthy than the glass-clear waves and the blinding white sand on the edge of the forest that called her friend away.
They were down to three the day they reached the edge of Antiva and went west, as they'd always planned. A packed-dirt track ran along the cliff side a quarter mile inland. Anders trailed fifty yards or so behind; Jona walked just ahead of her sister, sword loose in its scabbard and shield already on her arm.
No one came for them. Justice kept his peace. Jona knew he wouldn't always, and didn't press their luck. Such as it was.
The party camped late and rose early, sheltering beneath the broad-limbed beach willows and not, particularly, attempting to keep the damp from collecting on their things. A mist rose up from the sea two or three hours before sunrise. The damp had become very much a companion on this leg of the trip, and it brought mildew with it. When we settle, she thought, when we find a place we won't be chased, I'm going to wash every piece of clothing we own til my hands bleed from the lye.
For now, while they traveled, she didn't let herself dwell on the dread that lived at the base of her skull. On the chill on the back of her neck. But she knew, she knew. They might never find a place wild enough, distant enough, quiet and small and un-ruled. And they would have to choose, when they settled, between the Chantry and the Qun.
Jona would sooner turn return Anders and her sister to the Circle herself than see them treated as Saarebas. Lips sewn shut, eyes sewn shut, their very selves stripped from them for their power. Bethany, at least, could talk her way back in. Argue circumstance for her flight. Anders would choose death before tranquility.
She woke to the dream of a brand and the first cackling calls of the sea birds, Anders glowing beside her in the half-light. Jona let him sleep and went to bury the remains of last night's fire.
Bethany was already awake. She carried their full water-skins over both shoulders, and net bag full of slightly under-ripe plums in one hand. She'd left her staff behind-
-What if she'd been attacked?-
-But she hadn't; they'd had precious little trouble since they parted ways with Fenris and Isabela on the docks outside Ostwick. Bethany can take care of herself. She can crush a man with nothing but her mind.
Mother would've been so proud of her, and Father would have been utterly horrified.
"You shouldn't go out wandering with no way to defend yourself, little sister," Jona said. Malcolm Hawke's voice whispered in her ear. Take care of them, keep them safe. I'll be counting on you.
Bethany ignored her warning and handed over one of the riper plums. She dropped the bag with their provisions, and started striking her part of the camp.
Quiet and efficient and thoughtful, as she had been on the passage to Gwaren in those days after the Witch left them to their own fate. Safe enough from the horde, and too much a distraction from the "things" she needed to do back in her home. Nothing but a smirk and a cloud of ash for her goodbye.
"I'll be leaving you in Minrathous," Bethany said, strapping her bedroll to her pack. "And there are a couple of gulls' nests with eggs, still, if we want to get some before we start off. Your choice."
"You can't just drop that kind of an announcement and then go off about eggs!" Jona hissed. She wished they bought a horse and cart when they had the coin for it; she would like very much to put something large and easily frightened between herself and her sister right now. It would force her to-to breathe, to calm, to stay her fear.
The mist clung to her skin in a film. They moved faster without a cart.
"Do you want me to apologize? I won't. It's as good a choice as any we can make, you know."
"You think you'll last ten minutes in Tevinter?"
"You think I'm so useless I won't? Nobody's going to notice one more mage. And they have a whole industry there, people like me, who build their entire lives making ice for the magisters' kitchens. I might do that while I ... "
Think of something better.
Bethany shrugged. She pulled an oil-soaked cloth from a pocket on the side of her pack, and rubbed down the metal parts of her staff. Blade at the top. Mace head at the bottom. When she ran out of magical energy or lyrium or both she could still break an attacker's skull, and she knew how.
Four months since she'd had the dust of Kirkwall's Chantry in her lungs, and Jona still hadn't the faintest idea what better they might aspire to.
We'll think of something, she'd said to Aveline. The guard hadn't believed her and hadn't needed to say as much aloud.
That something she was supposed to think of hadn't come up yet.
"They make slaves out of mages too, you know," Jona whispered.
"I won't get myself into debt, then. I won't gamble, and I'll be careful to stay indoors after dark. Once you're out of Tevinter, the two of you are safer without me, anyway."
Bethany tucked the cloth away again, and swung her staff in a couple of swift arcs that could have liberated a man's head from his body. Were she so inclined. The air itself smelled of burnt thyme and smoking oil, as it often did when Bethany worked her sorcery.
The words formed just beneath her tongue, Let's make a game of it, a duel. If I can disarm you, you'll stay with us so far as the Anderfels. If I can't, I'll let you go without a fuss.
She wrapped her hand around the hilt of the Arishok's sword, the wire and leather wrappings familiar now after so many years of faithful service. She could feel Meredith's blood in the blade, though her baby sister had landed the killing blow. Had conjured the stone from the ground that snapped the Knight-Commander's neck.
Jona's challenge died in her throat. All she wanted was Bethany, ten, to spring into her room far too early and beg that Jona braid her hair. I can't do it backwards, please, will you?
"You're the only family I have left," she said.
"Am I?"
Anders stirred, then, but didn't wake. He scarcely slept at all. More often, he volunteered to take first watch and stayed awake til Jona or Bethany got up of their own volition.
At some point this morning he'd regained his ordinary complexion, skin no longer crackling. For a few moments just before they hid the final signs of their camp and left, he would have peace. As Justice had turned to Vengeance, she wondered how long they had til Vengeance turned to Wrath. Could spirits change into demons?
Her sister might have given her the answer, if she would ask. She had six years in the Circle and all the answers their father had denied them all that time ago. Anders himself might know, but she'd given her ultimatum and he'd agreed to it.
We are finished here-with rebellion, with violence, with the mage underground and with affecting huge, sweeping change in the world. If you want me in your life now, you must agree that that portion of your life is over. The rest we'll face when we must.
And Jona had agreed she would bring up nothing from that chapter of his life.
Bethany was her only blood-kin, outside of Gamlen and Charade, outside of whatever cousinage Malcolm Hawke had kept from them or had not known about himself. The only kin that knew her, the only kind that mattered.
"You know the kind I mean," she said, at last.
Anders yawned. Jona turned from her sister and started packing the few remaining things that they'd left out. He inched from their bedroll, stood with a stretch, and touched the back of her head by way of greeting on his way to attend morning business. As he always did.
When Anders had realized he was allowed touch, permitted the warmth of her skin for his own, he had reveled in the privilege. It took him the better part of that first year, when she ached for the loss of her mother and he hadn't even the beginning of a theory on how to offer succor for that wound.
We'll need to divide up the supplies and the rest of the coin, when we reach Minrathous, Jona thought.
The practicality stilled her tin pot and plates clanged against one another when she stacked them.
If she turned around and went back to Kirkwall now, would the city welcome her? Would they settle her throat on the block and make her oldest friend strike the killing blow? Would she even still merit a swordsman for her executioner? Or would a blunt axe have to do for the treachery of mercy she'd committed?
"You should've woken me up," Anders said, now returned. He shook the sand out of their bedroll and folded it precisely, all sharp corners and neat edges he'd learned as a Warden and never discarded.
"I'll wake you early when you've slept every night for a week," she replied. Then, "Bethany found some gulls' eggs and plums this morning. Apparently we have to do some rock-climbing if we want the former."
Behind them, the sun crested over water, and began to burn away the fog.