In retrospect, perhaps double crossing a lyrium smuggler had been a bad idea.
The smuggler, Pia, smiled viciously, her sword poking sharp into Isabela's stomach. What had drawn Isabela to Pia was that she was obviously new to criminality and thus unprepared for the usual swindles. Unfortunately, this newness also meant she'd taken Isabela's betrayal personally.
"Enough of your lies, Rivaini," said Pia through clenched teeth. "I know you've been selling me out to the guard. And don't think you can rely on the so called Champion of Kirkwall to save you, either. He and his men are out of town."
"Are you sure?" asked Isabela. "Isn't that him right behind you?"
One of Pia's thugs started and turned around quickly. "Maker's breath, I knew I heard something!" he said, looking around wide eyed and then staring suspiciously at a pile of innocent boxes at the back of the warehouse.
Pia rolled her eyes and stayed exactly where she was. "Shut it, Roland, she's trying to play us," she said. "There's noone there."
"My mistake," said Isabela, cheerily.
"You're not getting out of this that easily," said Pia. "Two years I spent building up contacts to get past those damn dwarves and their monopoly, two years and when I finally get my lyrium into the city it all gets confiscated. Because of you and your damned "inside information". I'm going to kill you slowly."
Isabela saw something shift out of the corner of her eye and had to stop herself from smiling. Instead she open her eyes wide and tried to look scared. This wasn't too hard, Pia was pretty intimidating, she may not have been much taller than Isabela but she made up for it with heavy armour and a really nasty disposition.
"Goodness me," said Isabela. She let her voice slip into the innocent tone she kept for special occasions. "Did you say lyrium? Is that what your cargo was? But that's…that's illegal! And now you're threatening to kill me, oh dear! Oh, if only there was a big strong guardsman to save me from these vicious criminals."
"What the fuck are you on about," said Pia. "Since when do you care if something's…"
Pia stopped as one of her thugs made a strangled sound and fell to her knees. At the same time, there was a deep rumble beneath their feet and the shelves of cargo around them shivered dangerously. The packed dirt floor of the warehouse began to shift and boil and then erupted with dark, spine covered vines, the cursed barbs twisting up out of the ground to lash at the feet of Pia and her goons. Isabela grinned.
"It's an ambush!" shouted Roland, helpfully, as he hacked ineffectively at the vines. "We should…argh!" He cried out in pain as an arrow pierced his shoulder.
Pia narrowed her eyes. Instead of turning around directly she made a grab for Isabela, pulling her in front of her as she shook her legs free of the vines. The room was in chaos, Pia's men in various levels of distress as they fought off arrows and magical attacks, the ground strewn with fallen crates and clods of earth.
Pia took a defensive position against a wall and turned to face the direction the attacks were coming from, holding Isabela in front of her as a shield, the sting of her knife cold against Isabela's neck. "Show yourselves!" she shouted.
There was a pause. The arrows stopped, and the spine covered vines stopped their vicious twisting. And then from behind a pile of not so innocent boxes, striding towards Pia like a vision of orange and silver, came Aveline, sword aloft.
Isabela let out a happy sigh. Pia groaned. "Guard captain," she said. "I should have known."
"Surrender now and nobody needs to get hurt," said Aveline, in her best implacable guard captain voice. Isabela tensed. Chances were Aveline had decided it would be inappropriate to involve the guard, which meant they were probably outnumbered five to three. Well, five to four if she included herself. Either way, this could get tricky: two of the five smugglers might be injured now, but they didn't look permanently incapacitated, plus there was the fact that Isabela had a knife to her neck. And Pia seemed the sort to get really vicious when cornered. Isabela subtly shifted her hand so that the small blade hidden inside her glove fell out into her palm and prepared for a difficult fight. Aveline too wore a look of determination, and Isabela sent a silent prayer to the universe that wherever they'd hidden themselves Merrill and Sebastian were just as ready.
"I surrender!" shouted Roland, his hand trying to staunch the wound on his shoulder.
"Me too!" said the woman on the floor clutching her stomach.
Aveline's eyes widened in surprise. "Well…good," she said, rallying quickly. "Very sensible of you. And I am willing to offer leniency to anyone able to give useful information that helps prevent further smuggling."
The two remaining goons looked at each other and then at Aveline. They were poorly kitted out, and Isabela wondered if Pia had just wandered into Darktown and hired the first willing hoodlums to cross her path.
They surrendered with almost embarrassing speed. Pia made a sound of frustration.
"No!" she cried, angrily. "I am not going down like this!" The hand grasped around Isabela's stomach tightened, and Isabela felt the knife against her throat twitch.
Aveline clearly saw something dangerous in Pia's eyes, for her own opened in fear. "Wait!" she said. Isabela didn't pause for Pia to respond, instead she grabbed the blade in her hand and stabbed down into Pia's side between the plates of armour. Pia cried out and pulled back, her knife pulling up reflexively across Isabela's jaw. It stung like buggery and she had a dark premonition that the knife was poisoned.
Isabela put a hand to her face. It felt like a nasty gash, and her fingers quickly became slick with blood. Still, at least she wasn't dead.
Pia stared at her, eyes wild, from a few paces away. Her own wound was bleeding out through the chinks in her armour, but she still looked ready to kill. There was a tense moment, the air between them thick with the promise of violence. And then Pia dropped her weapons and lowered her eyes in defeat.
Well, that had all gone pretty well, under the circumstances.
When the prisoners were finally gathered together and bound Isabela wrapped her arms around Aveline and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "My hero," she said, swooning slightly (or possibly staggering due to blood loss, she wasn't quite sure)
"Ew," said Aveline, wiping off a minuscule smear of blood from Isabela's gash, now mostly sealed. Some people didn't know how to appreciate gratitude.
"Do I get a kiss?" asked Merril. "I don't mind a little blood. Obviously. Though I must admit I wasn't quite as brave as Aveline."
"Of course you get a kiss!" said Isabela, and kissed her on the cheek as well. Merril smiled and went back to checking the smugglers for weapons with Sebastian. He, meanwhile, looked up from his task with a faintly conflicted expression. Isabela winked and blew him a kiss.
Aveline hmmphed. "Yes, well, you're lucky I got your message in time," she said. "You can't keep relying on the rest of us to come to bail you out whenever you get into trouble. Not that we'd leave you to die. I suppose."
"But I did you a favour!" said Isabela. "Selflessly offering myself as bait to help you catch these nasty smugglers! You're my hero for letting me use you poor scarf as a bandage." Not that the poultice Sebastian had finally fished out his pack hadn't been more effective, but the scarf was prettier. Isabela shifted her head onto Aveline's shoulder. "And now I have a chance to see how lovely your neck is. Pity the rest of you is still covered up."
"It's a good thing I know you don't mean that," said Aveline. "Think of poor Fenris."
"I do mean it," said Isabela. "And I don't see that it has anything to do with Fenris."
Aveline stepped back and looked at Isabela with a frown. She sighed. "Well then, think of Donnic," she said. Isabela grinned suggestively. Aveline rolled her eyes. "Not like…oh never mind. Come on, let's get these miscreants up to Hightown so I can get back to my actual job."
"Which I have just made ever so slightly easier," reminded Isabela.
"Isabela, you never make anything easy."
Isabela could tell that Garret and the others had returned to Kirkwall by the time they got within a block or so of the Hanged Man. So could everyone else on the street.
Fenris's voice carried through the door as they approached. "I know what he says," he shouted. "And I'm saying, I don't believe him. I've seen plenty of abominations in the Tevinter Imperium, and plenty of mages willing to go to any length to remove them, and I have never heard of any spell that can do so, let alone anything as simple as a potion."
"And what would you have me do?" replied Garret, pushing his way into the room and looking angrier than Isabela could remember having seen him before. "Deny the man I love a simple request that could finally free him of his burden? Based on what, the paranoid conspiracy theories of a bigot?"
"You would call me a bigot?"
Fenris was so pretty when he was angry. (Every now and then Isbaela would tell him this, just to see the look on his face. Priceless!) It probably helped that he was very rarely angry at her, even when she did things he wouldn't have put up with from anyone else. A little nagging voice inside her worried about this, sleeping together was one thing (one really spectacular thing) but she didn't want him getting too attached. Still, regardless. Pretty.
Anders came in a few moments later, looking more pensive and bedraggled than angry or pretty. He stood quietly in the back while Garret and Fenris continued to argue, Garret's tone shifting from angry to conciliatory as he tried once again to persuade Fenris to sympathise with the mages. Now there was a pointless exercise in frustration. Anders made no attempt to get involved, which was suspicious if nothing else was. Varric entered last, looking like he was about ready to kill the lot of them, and Isabela felt cheerful about the fact that Garret had decided to take Varric along on their little trip up the mountains instead of her. She smiled at Varric and he smiled back for a moment before widening his eyes and saying "Rivaini, what have you done to your face?"
"Hello to you too," she said. She had to admit, the remains of the gash she'd gotten from Pia did look dramatic, the combination of a deep cut and (thankfully mild) poison had combined to leave an angry red welt that ran in a vivid line from the left side of her neck, up across her chin and ended just shy of the right side of her mouth.
Fenris finally turned away from Garret to look at her, and his expression changed so quickly from anger to worry it was almost comical. The look of terror on his face gave Isabela a little kick in her stomach, desperately pleased and disturbed all at once. She got into scrapes all the time, he couldn't go worrying about her every time her life was in danger. She tilted her head and gave a little shrug, imbuing her smile with as much unconcern as she could manage. In return Fenris's lips quirked from worry to something closer to a smile.
The three men walked around the crowded tables to the bar. "Isabela," said Garret, exasperated, "What have you gotten yourself into this time?"
"Seeing substandard healers, from the looks of things" said Anders, with a tone of professional disapproval.
Isabela waved them all away. "I'm fine" she said. "I had a slight altercation with some…business contacts, but it's all settled now."
"Business contacts with knives, I take it," said Fenris, looking a little less worried.
"Is there any other sort?" asked Isabela.
"Not in my experience," he said. "Still, I would suggest you avoid business meetings that end with you being stabbed in the face."
"Pfft," she said. "Anyway, it was all much less dangerous than you're imagining. They literally took one look at Aveline and surrendered on the spot."
Varric laughed. "That's fantastic," he said. "Tell me more!"
Isabela grinned and leaned forward. "Well, I was acting as bait to catch this smuggler…"
Once she'd finished her story (with a few alterations to make herself sound more dashing, of course) Isabela sat back and let Varric tell the much more exciting tale of what they'd been up to in the mountains, which involved lots of dramatic adventures involving spider filled caverns and giant dragons fed on the blood of human sacrifice. Based on Isabela's personal experience with dragons he was glossing over all the parts where they'd hidden behind rocks healing themselves and trying not to get set on fire, but that was only to be expected.
Eventually Varric finished and people wandered off, leaving Isabela at the bar with Fenris and several half finished glasses of ale.
He rested his head on one hand and watched her with an affectionate glower. "You will be the death of me. Using yourself as bait?" He ran his fingers lightly over her cheek, the metal of his gloves feeling cool and spiky. "You're lucky you're only going to be left with a rakish scar."
"I never scar," she said. "So enjoy my rakish look while it lasts."
"I will." He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Still, I wish you had told me," he said. "I might have helped."
"When you were halfway up a mountain?" She frowned at him. "You know me, when I need help, I ask for it. Which I did, and Aveline and the others were fantastic. You're my lover Fenris, not my…knight in shining armour, honour bound to protect me from the world."
Fenris gave a short dark laugh and turned to look at the floor. "Maker forbid. Garret or Sebastian would suit the role much better."
"Exactly," she said. "Which is why I prefer you."
He looked up at her and smiled, his expression warm and open. Her heart turned to mush. Fenris was always so happily surprised by the slightest hint of affection, which just made Isabela want to show him more. She could feel herself smiling like a gormless fool.
"Stop looking at me like that," she said, without much sincerity.
He leaned forward and rested his hand upon her thigh. "How would you have me look at you?" he asked, a smile still playing at the corner of his lips. His eyes lazily worked their way up her legs, past her hips, across her breasts and onto her face. "Better," she said. She noticed a flicker of a worried frown cross his face as his eyes passed over her chin.
"Oh, don't worry about that," said Isabela, and kissed him. Her chin was twinging slightly and Fenris smelled like someone who'd just spent a week up a mountain fighting monsters but she she didn't care. She'd missed this, kissing other people just wasn't the same. Fenris made a sound of approval and pulled her closer, his hand tight on her hip. Isabela's weight shifted and she could feel her stool wobbling beneath her. She pulled back with a gasp. "Wait a second," she said "I'm going to fall off my…" and then burst out laughing when Fenris stood, picked her up with both hands and put her on the bar, knocking over a few glasses in the process.
"There, perfectly safe," he said, and then kissed her again, his mouth hot against hers and his hand a comforting pressure against her back. She could feel beer soaking into her tunic, they were definitely both going to need to get out of these clothes. "Oh yes, very chivalrous," she said at last, wrapping her arms around his neck. "But not very comfortable."
"Do you have any other suggestions?" he asked.
"The phrase 'get a room' comes to mind," said Corff, from behind the bar. "We have several spare if your own is not satisfactory."
"No, I think my quarters will do," said Isabela. Fenris stood back so that she had room to jump down and Isabela smiled and took his hand.