While sore in many places, and with a very bruised ego (a man could set out to die and still wish to acquit himself well in the process), Zevran was surprisingly comfortable. The Wardens' camp was oddly homey for a place that concealed fugitives from two or three sorts of wars at least, but these people had already demonstrated that they were full of surprises. In most cases, that they existed at all, which must be his consolation for particularly abject failure. He had been sent after Grey Wardens, not Grey Wardens, their dog, their Qunari, and the all-girl orchestra. All three women eyed him with obvious distrust and contempt, though each in her own, charming way, and the giant ignored him so completely he had to admire the skill. His targets were in conference.
The human was quite what he'd expect from what he knew of Wardens. Large, effective, not especially bright. There was likely no great harm in him, aside from a swollen shoulder for the poor assassin who happened to not quite avoid the shield. Ouch.
The elf... Well, this Alim had been the one to spare his life, hold his oath. Of course he should regard that one with additional interest. It only felt so strange because he hadn't been able to be interested in anything at all for a long time, not really.
He'd been described as a boy, though he was a bit past that. It wasn't uncommon for humans to mistake elves for younger (and quite a bit more delicate) than they were. No surprise there. He was a handsome little creature, fine-boned and bright eyed. The frumpy mage robes merely served to emphasize what was arguably a unique prettiness, and that had always been enough to draw the eye of Zevran Arainai.
But Maker, there were sweet faces enough in the world, and unlikely leaders, too. There was no real call for this little bump in the road to a well-deserved death to strike a spark in him, no matter how small. He had no business caring about things.
"Bandage change."
He jumped. Maybe he'd be ashamed of it later, but he was still wounded, and if his mind had wandered enough to miss the breakup of the Wardens' council, so be it. He looked up a little blearily at Alim. "So many lovely women about, and yet here is my angel of mercy?"
"I'm the herbalist," he said with a little shrug, kneeling beside Zevran and unrolling a neat little kit. "Wynne says you're doing fine. I don't think she wants to be bothered, and Creation isn't my school of magic. Have to make do with elfroot." He babbled a bit, but it was a pleasant voice. Stripped of any real personality by education, perhaps, but tuneful. "Now, if you need something set on fire..."
"Not now, but I shall remember this skill of yours." It turned out he could force away memory and guilt long enough to enjoy being tended to by a rather soft pair of hands. Fire Mages (was there such a thing?) must not build up many callouses. He sat stiffly despite himself, though, still sore, and reached for an aching spot on his head to test the bump.
The Warden pushed his hand away casually. "You're as bad as Alistair. Sit still." He did his work well and thoroughly. It was a pity he couldn't take solace in the attention, because Zevran was fairly sure he'd never warranted quite this sort of tending. Crow-friendly healers were a sour lot and field medicine, in his experience, was a hasty, rough thing.
Looking for something to take his mind off it, his eyes fell on the intricately patterned sleeves Alim wore. A good way to get a headache. "I've always wondered. Why is it even lovely mages dress like grandmothers?" he asked, and then wondered just how hard he'd hit his head.
"To annoy templars," came the immediate reply. "It's why we do everything. Any small wounds I've missed?"
What an opening. He couldn't help it. Whatever his plans, whatever he deserved, he wasn't made for melancholy. He was made to flirt shamelessly with pretty little things that fell in his path. What the Maker had wrought he would not resist. He was long damned anyway. "Perhaps there might be. Help me out of my armor to look?"
"Why, bent buckle? It happened to Leliana the other day." Zevran assumed for a moment he was being teased back, but if he was, Alim formerly-of-the-Circle-Tower was the best actor he'd ever seen. Earnest helpfulness seemed to be the whole of his motivation. How did he even answer that kind of innocence?
With more flirting, of course. "In that case, the lovely sister has thus far been luckier than I." Oh. That was obtuse. Head injury. "To have such a handsome squire."
Alim snorted at him. He was used to being rebuffed. No one was perfect, even Zevran. But he couldn't remember an overture being treated as a fairly weak joke. "No more injuries, then. Well, until supper. Alistair's cooking. But there's a tent rigged for you." He rolled up his kit, then brushed off his knees as he stood. Fastidious, apparently. "I expect you'll sleep pretty soundly."
Oh, one more try. "I'll have all the inspiration I need to dream to."
And he was laughed at again. "There are three mages in your immediate vicinity. What do you think the Fade's going to be like around here?" He wandered over to bother the dark haired woman about something Zevran couldn't hear.
He stayed put after that. Several parts hurt too much for wandering about to be an attractive prospect, and no one seemed interested in chatting with the stray assassin. He tried to settle in and rest, wrinkling his nose at the prospect of Fereldan food, but his eyes kept flickering to Alim.
Most of the mage's evening was spent with Wynne, but after dinner he wandered a ways beyond the tents to frolic with the war dog like it was a puppy. It clearly outweighed him, dragging him around effortlessly as they tugged a broken arrow shaft back and forth. It was so sweet it made Zevran's teeth hurt. If Loghain was really afraid of this naïve little brat he was simply paranoid. Perhaps the others were a danger, but the Warden seemed to be a very lucky elf with a magical stick.
A very lucky elf indeed, to be any kind of naïve, come to think. How had he possibly managed that? There were no coddled childhoods in the alienage. A certain wariness followed even the relatively fortunate. One never knew what doom was coming, but it was some doom or other, sometime, and being ready probably wouldn't help much. Maybe it was that he was a mage. They might be reviled by the populace a bit, but they presumably had enough to eat and warm beds, and perhaps they were strange enough not to mind one child in their midst being smaller and pointier than the others.
An innocent elf. That must be what he found so interesting.
But turning over the thought as he lay in his tent (these people treated their captured enemy remarkably well, though he had the impression the giant would cut him in half if he tried to steal away), he realized that couldn't quite be it. No one who blasted their way through massed assassins or who'd accomplished any of what the Warden was said to have was innocent. He wasn't sure what to call that absence of weary, resigned terror. He was fairly sure he liked it.
He woke up stiff and sore enough to push away disquieting dreams with more mundane discomfort and crawled into the pale Fereldan dawn, feeling deliciously sorry for himself. At first he thought he was alone, but the breeze carried him a hushed conversation. Curious, and trying not to look too suspicious in case someone emerged, he edged closer.
"But the trouble is they're traditional for a reason. Nobody embroiders anything really powerful on a sash, but the patterns do shore up the minor enchantments that help navigate the Fade or focus a spell." Alim. This, at least, sounded like what a Grey Warden should be up to, magical equipment for fighting the darkspawn. Maybe he wasn't quite the featherhead he'd seen.
He walked into camp, carrying a bundle of firewood in company with the very dangerous redhead. She nodded seriously. "But there's no reason the colors have to be so drab, is there? And so shapeless! What is stopping you from inscribing your spells on something elegant? For you, I think, oxblood riding boots."
"I've never been on a horse."
"But that doesn't matter. The heels will give you a little more height and keep you from slouching. Red tones will be nice with your skin, and with a bit more shape, maybe you'll stop hiding those calves."
Ah. Featherhead. Zevran didn't bother trying to resist. She was proposing putting him in leather, after all. "Oxblood? No, ebony. In such a position as our friend's, boots must say not only 'look at me' but 'watch your step as well as mine,' no?"
She regarded him in imperious silence for a moment and said, acidly, "You have no subtlety."
"Perhaps you have no vision."
Before the glaring contest could escalate to something more, or Zevran could order his sleepy morning thoughts to proposition the good sister, Alim dropped his armload of wood and shrugged. "Let me know when you've decided. I'm going to wake Morrigan. We'll see if I live to wear any shoes at all."
The camp was waking up around them, and Zevran found himself merely exchanging a slightly miffed glance with Leliana before she went off to start the fire and breakfast. Another time, perhaps. He sat sulkily beside his tent for some time, watching the strangers who held his fate in their hands rouse and eat bland porridge.
Then Alim was beside him again with a bowl of the stuff and his bandages. "Eat. I'm going to look at that shoulder." Zevran hadn't gotten as far as armor yet this morning, so he only had to tug away a borrowed blanket to cluck at the ugly bruise and swelling. "Not good. Alistair hits hard."
Zevran wasn't used to having trouble getting a word in edgewise. Interesting challenge. "That does appear to be his skill set. A useful companion you have."
"He also makes sarcastic remarks. You two may need to duel to settle who holds that position. Tell me if this hurts." He gently tested the swollen shoulder.
Zevran winced. "Only in the way that pain usually does."
"Hold on." He picked up one of the knobbly stones that seemed to proliferate all around Fereldan, especially where one might want to put a bedroll, and whispered something unintelligible. The rock suddenly shimmered with a rime of ice, and he hurriedly wrapped it in a scarf and handed it over. "There, hold it in place until we leave. We'll try a hot compress tonight, but for now the goal is to keep the swelling down while we move."
Surreal, but delightful. "And where do we move to?"
Alim gave him an appraising look. Zevran expected a refusal to share information. He was an unknown quantity, and might carry their secrets back to all manner of nefarious characters. His expectations were not amiss. "Uphill all the way, unfortunately. I made you numbing tea for the trek."
"And yet you do not practice magical healing? You have lovely hands for the work."
"I'll learn someday, I suppose. Honestly, I'm barely past apprentice." Alim shrugged, still seemingly immune to flirting. "Bodies heal themselves, and I understand how that works, more or less. My mother taught me simples when I was small. Making things burst into flame, leeching the raw stuff of magic from the bodies of the fallen, that's stranger."
Zevran nodded, belatedly obeyed. The stone did help the ache, radiating unnatural cold. He'd never been especially skittish around magic. "You are a little terrifying."
"Thank you."
As he hadn't quite been told where they were going, he reached for a new topic. "So what about you was worth the exorbitant sum my employer paid to have you and your friend eliminated? I know several rumors and the official story, but I'm curious."
"He wants to be the king, and thinks we intend to stop him. Which we do, a bit, Alistair more than me, but truthfully, he's not nearly as important as he thinks he is." He tried to hand Zevran a small waterskin, but he didn't quite have a hand free. Alim's solution was to hook it in his belt. He was very casual about such contact. "Take a swallow from that any time the pain gets in your way. Mostly willowbark and valerian with a touch of elfroot. Loghain is very sure there isn't a blight, because, I think, it would be very convenient for him if there weren't, you see. He had the old king offed and most of the Fereldan Wardens because he's a thorough man, I take it."
"And you were so rude as to escape?"
"I'm awful that way. In any case, I don't care which clueless human is on the throne, and I didn't know any of the other Wardens well enough to be really motivated to revenge myself on him, but it gets Alistair up in the morning. Try the tea. I'll sneak you honeycomb if it's too intolerable."
Zevran obediently took a swig. Bitter, but it didn't even rank in the day's unpleasantnesses. "I have had far, far worse. You don't sound so very taken with the Grey Wardens."
"I've only room in my heart for one lying, clutching, coercive social club that murders you if you try to leave, and the Circle got me first. I'm sure you understand, Sir Crow." He shrugged. "They can all go hang for all I care, but there are Darkspawn all over, bothering my dog and preventing old ladies from crossing the street, so I'll get rid of them. And this irritating human lord who thinks he can get in my way."
Zevran took a moment to digest all this and then nodded with mock solemnity. "I'm already sworn, I realize, but you, I really could follow into very dire straits indeed."
"For starters, how about following me to your feet? We have a long way to go."
Since he offered an arm, Zevran took it. "Uphill?"
"Decidedly uphill. You like mountains, don't you?"
"Not the slightest bit. Is there something in the mountains that will help you grind darkspawn and usurper kings under your not yet properly shod bootheel?"
"Yes. Sort of. Obliquely. I have no idea what I'm doing. Eat your breakfast."
