Bran slips in the gravel at the top of the garden stairs, cursing louder than he ought to as he scrapes his hands on the stones. He's up in the next moment, almost sprightly for a man his age if he ignores the way his left knee wobbles. Absently brushing at the dust and dirt and what Bran realizes are a few crumbs of his dinner still clinging to his coat. He wonders just why in the world he's bothering - and this is why no one has any respect for them, and most haven't bothered pretending in years.
When he looks up again, it's right into the frightened eyes of two maids huddled together in one of the garden sheds, and he damned well knows they shouldn't be here because he shouldn't be here, the keen alarm of his own self-preservation ringing more than loud enough to drown out the rest of his thoughts.
"Where did you even come from? Get out of here, quickly. Go home."
The girls cling to each other with wide, frightened eyes, staring at him as if he's hiding some greater plan - as if anyone had ever bothered to make one for this. Dumar had come the closest, in those quiet moments after one of their less successful meetings - if the Arishok wanted Kirkwall, the best plan would be to see if he'd take Meredith along with it, and solve all their problems in a go.
It had made Bran laugh, back when he still knew how.
He stares, but the girls don't move, too frightened to take his warning or just too aware of what the Seneschal is for, making random declarations no one ever, ever listens to.
"Maker save us… then stay here if you must, but keep quiet, and don't let yourselves be seen!"
The girls nod, still silent, and duck down further into the corner, behind the tools and sacks and soil and he's moving again toward the Keep, and as long as he's moving he can tell himself there's actually a strategy waiting to meet him, and a goal.
A few crickets are singing to each other, falling silent as he passes, but Bran can already hear the distant, growing roar, a rising echo over the false calm of night. The Qunari are finally making their march on Kirkwall, dividing the city with that fabled, perfect precision. He's already passed one row of guardsmen moving fast in the opposite direction, a wall of steel and determination, but Bran's heard stories of the Qunari and read enough reports of his own to be all too aware of their chances.
It'll be like just that mad Antivan city, where they send bulls charging right down through the narrow streets.
Bran pretends it matters that he's trying to be cautious, the grounds of the Keep as silent and abandoned as a Blighted ruin and damn him for having enough of his wits about him to start dabbling in poetry. His job is not always tedium and monotony - occasionally it's even dangerous, but it has always had the decency to be horrible in simple, routine ways. A death threat, the occasional mugging or an extremely rare back-alley beating, and fewer of those as the years have gone on. What's happening out there now is nothing like what Bran knows, grand in scale and epic in scope. Men like him do not tend to survive such glories in the same number of pieces they start out in.
A fact neatly proven when he reaches the next door only to have it hold fast under his hand, and before Bran can catch himself he's plowed straight into it. He curses again, stumbling back to cradle a wrist that's not quite broken but far from amused.
"Serrah? Seneschal, is that you?"
The door opens - one of the city guard, not a Templar, not that Bran has any illusions as to when they'll come - and before he can think to say anything the man's dragging him through, barring it fast behind him. Which narrows Bran's escape routes to nothing, not that he'd come here for his own security, but it still feels entirely too final now. Yes, this is all turning out to be even less fun than those ten minutes the Carta had negotiated the price of his overlooking a few ports and warehouses with the benefits of being allowed to keep his balls through midwinter.
"It's good to see you're safe, ser."
Empty words - no one ever thinks it's good to see Bran do anything, let alone exist. He is the painting hung on the wall because a painting ought to be there, not because anyone gives a damn for what's in the frame - but this guard is young, shockingly so, and just like the maids Bran's left behind he's obviously hoping the Seneschal will know what to do. It's a title, right? People with titles ought to have some idea what in the Maker's name is going on.
You'd think there'd be a law.
"Where's the Guard-Captain?" Bran keeps moving toward the main hall, the polished floors oddly bright in the torchlight - everything lit up now, inside and out - and his footsteps too loud and even though he's been here with the Keep at all hours, working through the night with the Viscount until the dawn blurred everything senseless, it still feels foreign and strange and wrong tonight.
A window is open somewhere, and perhaps the roar that sounds like the sea but is not the sea, the clash of steel-on-steel is closer than before.
"We're not sure. The last we'd heard, she went down to the docks to speak with the Arishok. Serrah Hawke was with her."
Well, that explains everything. Bran's been keeping odds, for just what bit of her foolishness will be the last the city can bear - up until these last few days it had been running even odds between the Qunari and that entitled git of a prince who'd been following at her heels, the Chantry fool who'd been doing everything he could to drag Kirkwall into Starkhaven's concerns. As if they needed to borrow problems from the neighbors.
Much as he hates to, Bran has to blunt those uncharitable thoughts, at least a little. Hawke might be a constant irritation, so happy to rock a boat that's already leaking, and he's never quite sure if she's that ignorant or simply doesn't care. Maybe she'd been too lenient, too willing to entertain Saemus' folly - but given what had happened, Bran doubts anything in this world could have checked the boy in time. Clear enough, that Hawke had felt the grief of losing him as hard as anyone, real shame in her eyes when she'd faced Dumar, and as close as he'd ever seen her come to tears in what came after. Ruined, the way they'd all been ruined, the unbearable feeling of some distant door swinging shut, the glimpse of some brighter place lost forever.
"The Viscount is here?"
Bran's rather sure of the answer, the reason he'd come here first instead of the estate. Dumar doesn't really go home anymore. He doesn't do much of anything anymore.
"Still in his office. We tried to get him to safety, but… he said he was fine. We didn't…"
Didn't have the time to waste on a useless, broken-down old man. Bran waves away the rest, before he has to hear the boy try to think of a polite way to say it.
"No, you're going to tell me who's in charge and how they're taking care of this! It's an outrage!"
The voice booms out through the room, and as he reaches the top stair Bran realizes things are not as deserted as he'd thought, and he is nowhere near the first to arrive. A whole flock of nobles mill about the hall, entire families hurriedly assembled and gathered together, wide-eyed with confusion and either frightened or haughtily trying to cover their fear. Except for one man shouting at the guard, and a few of his friends scowling for show, the rest of them are all but silent - and there's a thing Bran had never thought he'd live to see.
He can hear pounding at the front of the hall, what might be some sort of makeshift barricade, or even the sound of those on the outside still trying to get in, to find shelter, though he cannot imagine what they think will help them here.
"Serrah, please…"
Bran could tell the guard to save his strength - he recognizes the angry noble, if not by name than by where he fits in on the list of daily troubles - and Seigneur du Massive Credit Extension is no stranger to the Seneschal's accounts. Fortunately for the guard, his arrival has been duly noted, and Bran is swiftly surrounded by a half-circle of angry nobles - ah, home again.
"You!" The lord bellows as the rest glare and seethe and cover up their fear, "what in the thrice-damned Void is going on here?"
"It would appear we are about to be attacked by the Qunari." Bran says, and he doesn't mean to sound quite that sarcastic but it's certainly welcome.
The Arishok never found whatever Hawke said he was looking for, or it had all been a lie all along, or both, or neither, and why not do a little of the killing and converting, since they were in the neighborhood? With all the time they've had to enjoy Kirkwall, Bran assumes there will be a bit more of the former than the latter - which means they're all in very serious trouble and he will likely never see a thin copper of any of the money this band of idiots owes the city.
Bran almost says it, almost says a lot of things, but over Seigneur du Idiot's shoulder Bran can see a woman with a child cradled in her arms and another clinging fast to her side, small fingers mangling the hem on her very fine gown. Her mouth is set in a thin, grim line, and she's holding on to them so tightly that Bran's sure she's already heard what he has - the very first thing the ox-men do is to take the children away.
"We can't do this here." Bran says, lowering his voice, "it's going to cause a panic."
"We're already panicked, you shit!" The man snaps back, because no one listens to Bran, especially when he's trying to be reasonable. "Where's the Viscount, then? He ought to be dealing with this! He ought to have dealt with it ages ago!"
Bran swears he can actually hear his temper snap. Unusual, really, but it is rather late and the world's falling to pieces and the man owes them so much money.
"If you don't like the way he's dealing with it, feel free to pick up a damned sword and charge!"
A mistake, he knows that even as cold regret instantly floods the anger, and he sees the man's hands clench into fists. Half a moment later, an armored glove grabs for the noble's arm, spinning him around before Bran has a chance to meet the Qunari fashionably pre-battered.
It's a guardswoman, not the Guard-Captain but of her make and mettle, with eyes as hard and unyielding as the plate she wears.
"Ser, I need you to calm down, or I will calm you down."
"You dare speak to me like that? I refuse to be lectured by some filthy, gutter-guarding-"
In only a few years, Guard-Captain Aveline's managed to greatly improve the quality of those under her command, and the woman lays him out with a single punch. He drops without a sound, only one muffled cry from someone too well-bred to appreciate the sudden silence. The guard snaps her fingers, gesturing toward the men left staring slack-jawed at their fallen leader.
"Go on then, pick him up and get him down to the barracks! Now! All of you! It's the best place in the Keep for a defense!" She yells, and in a much lower voice, as if to herself, "the only sodding place we've got."
She turns, and her eyes lock on them, all three of them standing still as the nervous nobles shuffle out of the room. Bran all but envies the fallen lord, it looks almost peaceful being dragged off in an unconscious heap.
"Where've you been, then?"
She scowls at the young guard, and the look she shoots Bran is familiar enough, obviously wishing the Seneschal were another squadron or a siege engine or even a sofa they might shove in front of a door. It's not like Bran is at all useful as he is, so her scorn is only fair. The guardswoman grabs the younger man, all but throwing him toward the front of the Keep. "Get up there and help them with the barricade. We don't have much time."
Bran watches him go, disappearing through the door, and realizes there is a good chance he's watching the boy rush right to his death. At least his own son is safe, off visiting friends in Tantervale and well away from this madness. He wonders what's happening in the city. It has to be absolute chaos, Kirkwall a disaster searching for an excuse at the best of times, and this, these last few fraught months have been anything but.
He thinks of the Rose. He thinks of Serendipity, and the wry, knowing look on her face for just such an occasion. As much a cynic as he is, though more prone to laughing about it. It is what keeps him coming back, when he can't imagine what romance is supposed to feel like anymore or if he even believe it exists. A good thing, really, that his wife died so young, before either of them had the chance to meet the man he turned out to be. The kind who pays for elves with stage names to smile at him in the dark, with wry and knowing looks that remind him he has no illusions left to lose about the world and that he's the better for it.
Bran can't imagine the Qunari think much of whores - but then again, the fragrant petals of the Rose don't think much of being told their place and their business, and he cannot imagine any rampaging army that could be worse than their night's usual clientele, especially when the ale starts flowing.
He thinks of Serendipity, and doesn't even know what it is he's hoping for, but Bran hopes it regardless.
"I don't suppose you know what's going on, ser?" The guardswoman says, studying him close, and has her answer before Bran can even try to disappoint her.
He glances toward the barracks. "How many are left?"
A slight shrug of a well-armored shoulder. "Enough for a squad, not much more than that. A few archers, some swords. Donnic went out with the rest, said they'd set up positions and send some back, but - no one's come back. We haven't heard from the Templars, neither."
If the Qunari get to the Gallows, if they reach the mages it will be a bloodbath, though Bran doubts that's the first thought on Meredith's mind.
"Any word on the Grand Cleric?"
She grimaces. "If you don't know, I can't help you."
Of anyone tonight, Elthina has the least to worry about, Bran is certain of that. Well protected by the Knight-Commander, surrounded by those who'd gladly give up their lives to see her safe. The kindly, wise, pleasantly benign Grand Cleric of Kirkwall. As tactically benevolent as the Chantry could ever have hoped for - and Bran can't bring himself to hate her, even knowing it's true.
"Serrah!" An archer sprinting from the higher hall, taking the stairs in twos. "Maker save us, they're on their way."
"How many?"
The guard's good enough not to let the panic show on his face, though Bran's certain he's not returning the favor. "Looks like damn near all of them. Carving a path right to us."
The woman nods, and the archer disappears as quickly as he came.
"I'll give you what time I can, ser. I don't know how much that will be."
It takes him a moment to realize she's talking to him, and Bran nods dumbly. He's lost his pace in this conversation, it's all going too fast. If he had a moment or two to catch his breath he'd be all right. If they could just start this whole day all over again, give or take the last ten years, he's sure he'd be fine.
"You might want this."
The woman hands him a sword. Bran takes it without thinking, the point clanging sharply against the ground as he badly misjudges its weight, his still-wounded wrist throbbing with new pain.
It's the moment that he realizes just how truly desperate this is, and that he really is going to die.
Over half his life, Bran thinks, that he's devoted himself to a hallway. Occasionally a staircase. Entire days spent moving perhaps a full three feet if he's fortunate, bringing news to make the Viscount's life more difficult or trying to wring something palatable out of his response. The daily business of barely being tolerated while fighting endless complications for questionable gains.
He's been here even longer than Dumar, not that anyone remembers. Bran cut his teeth on those final days with Threnhold, a minor clerk then, of no real importance - and he's come to appreciate the value in being unnoticed and unremarkable. Important people get memorialized in the great epics of history, usually just before they get set on fire or torn to pieces or devoured in some rather memorable way.
Threnhold had been an important man, and Bran's heard all the bickering, back and forth and back again, growing worse whenever Meredith rattles her sabers in the nobles' direction. The value, the virtue of all that he'd done, and why, and what it all meant in the end. As far as Bran could tell, none of it amounted to the weakest piss up the longest rope - Perrin a self-serving asshole and Guylian a self-righteous asshole, the Orlesians all bastards because… well, Orlesians and it had been all Bran could do then just to keep his head down and not end up as some punctuation on a footnote in history, a nameless addition to the glory of the final body count.
The same sort of way this is all going to end, if he keeps on with it. Bran ignores that thought as he reaches the threshold, pausing just before his knuckles rap against the door.
"Lord Viscount? Are you there?"
No answer, and even with the rising chaos Bran has to take a steadying breath before he turns the knob. Preparing himself for the worst, every time half-certain that he's going to find a body and wondering if it wouldn't be for the best and it's not even been a week. Not a week, even less than that since the funeral, and the weight of the Viscount's grief hits him like a silent landslide each time he opens the door.
The Viscount stands near the windows, what is now his favored place, hands clasped behind his back and looking out at nothing. Bran can't hear the Qunari getting closer, but of course they have to be. He pauses to set the sword down, not worth pretending he might know what else to do with it.
"…Lord Dumar?"
"They are quite remarkable, aren't they? The passion, the single-minded dedication. I had wondered for so long what my son saw in them, but it all seems quite obvious now. Such… certainty. Were you ever so sure of anything in your life?"
"If we hurry, we might…" Bran fumbles, so difficult to sound determined when he doesn't believe it, "… there's still time."
The Viscount lets out a soft, amused sound, not quite laughter. He looks ancient, older than he did a week ago, older than anyone could be and still be living.
"Oh, I very much doubt that."
It was never going to be good. It was never going to be glory and praise and banners in the streets, they'd known that right from the start. Dumar was barely even a puppet, just an extra shell in the game while Meredith passed her power around and everyone, absolutely everyone knew it.
Still, someone had to make a go of it, didn't they? To shrug aside honor for dedication, take up the harness and work the load unnoticed because if they didn't, who would? Dealing with all those problems that didn't get written about in the annals of history - the courts that were never fair enough, or crooked at the wrong angles. The sanitation that was never good enough before there were mabari all over the streets. All the permits and schedules and taxes and tariffs and more taxes and every tedious, unglamorous thing no one noticed until it wasn't done.
Bran still can't quite say how it happened, the logic that had pulled him from obscurity into… well, a new sort of obscurity. One that came with a title and infinitely more scorn. At first he thought Meredith would run them all out before the dust had settled, sweep it clear, but he'd been there and he'd been brought before her. Asked about his family, his job, his associations, with the Knight-Commander more bored with every answer he gave, until she'd passed him off to another Templar, who'd passed him off to another. At the end they'd just stopped talking to him altogether and he was Seneschal to a Viscount that no one wanted, no one respected or thought of until they needed a place to set their problems down.
Threnhold mistook being loud for being commanding, and mispronouncing his Orlesian as the sharpest of wit. Meredith preferred to take her subtlety straight to the forge, to hammer her opponents bloody while it was still red from the fire. Bran had watched it all, for years, and never thought either of them more than sadly absurd, but there was no arguing with the results. Threnhold had rattled the city's chains enough to ensure his destruction, had even managed to convince the nobles he'd done it for their sake on the way down. Meredith had wanted Kirkwall, and she'd taken it, hadn't she? Beaten down the old Viscount without hesitation and paused just long enough for the nobles to know what it meant, when she'd all but forcibly installed Dumar in his place.
Dumar isn't 'decisive' like Threnhold was - no matter how many of those decisions were foolish ones. He isn't ruthless or single-minded like Meredith - who takes credit for her gains but never for her mistakes, and likely does not know the meaning of collateral damage. If anything, Dumar is well-matched to the Grand Cleric - he listens, and pays attention, and sees Kirkwall as something other than the setting for his own great drama. He sees the lives of the people of the city as more than pieces to be moved about for his benefit - but he is not Elthina, and so they hate him for it. The nobles loathe him and the rabble mock him and still the Viscount keeps on, doing all that he can, never a victory in his name, never a defeat not laid at his door.
How does the Grand Cleric get away with it? All her power and yet somehow it's enough for her to smile and nod and let Meredith do as she will, It's all well and fine just to be an old woman who's nice to people - and Bran thinks he could be fairly beatific too, if all of his failings were excused, if he could pass each day just being polite and reciting a few verses that everyone agreed were so terribly wise. What great gift did Elthina bring the city, that Dumar hadn't polished to make it shine? What marvels of politics and understanding did she ever bring about, that Dumar hadn't fretted and worked over first, burning candles to guttering wicks with Bran right there beside him.
A lifetime's worth of service to Maker and country and Chantry, and at the end they'd looked him over and shook their heads and taken his son from him. Saemus murdered in a fit of Chantry pique and truly sorry and what a tragedy and well, can you blame us and what did he expect, running off with those Qunari?
Bran had been there, so many more years ago than it feels like, when the Viscount lit his wife's pyre, with Saemus watching quietly in the midwife's arms. As small as he was, the boy had still been so quiet - thoughtful, like his father, and destined to be punished for it and Bran had known it from the start. He should have pushed his son into making some better acquaintance, despite their difference in ages. Despite the politics, of not wanting to chain his child's ambitions to that stone, of not wanting to make any kind of target - and so he didn't, did he, and his son is still alive.
Bran's surprised he still has it in him for the relief and regret and shame of that, and Maker, what if he could have changed it? All of it? What if he could have, and he never tried. What if he should have been some other man all along.
"Where is the Knight-Commander?"
No urgency in Dumar's voice, hardly even curiosity. It is simply what is supposed to be said, even if they both know the answer perfectly well. Whatever Meredith is doing, their lives are of absolutely no concern to her.
"Serrah Hawke?"
Bran frowns, grumbling like a child - he can't help it, and is rewarded with the slightest chuckle from the Viscount, the barest flicker of the man he'd known. He wonders, not for the first time, what Dumar had seen in her, why she'd become an ally - she's no lady of Kirkwall, whatever title she might claim. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, the Viscount had always been a bit of an idealist, had quietly held onto it all this time despite a city's worth of evidence to the contrary.
He hopes he's wrong, that Dumar still had that much to lose. He'd give a great deal to be wrong.
"Out there, somewhere. No doubt making things more difficult." Although if Hawke did wish to get involved in this, now would be a good time.
Bran half-expects the Viscount to tease him, that he can't hate her half as much as he'd like because, whatever her methods, she does tend to get the job done. Instead, Dumar looks at him with what seems uncomfortably like pity, as if the Seneschal's the one who's had anything to lose.
"Do you regret it, Bran? This? All your life, for this? Was there ever a single day you didn't regret it? Imagine what you might have done elsewise, had it not been for..." he shakes his head, "I'm so terribly sorry, Bran. Truly, I am."
No glory, never glory… but there had been moments, hadn't there? Mixed in among the wreckage, those little glimmers of victory that had him dragging himself out of bed in the morning - whatever bed it might be. He's not a good man, Bran has long since reconciled himself to that, but there had been a certain satisfaction in seeing that the city wasn't choking on rubbish, that the air was clean in the day because they'd gotten the foundries running at night and the worst of them out of Kirkwall proper and into the countryside despite their grumbling. Kept the ones that remained from dumping their still-flaming chaff directly into Lowtown. Hardly perfect, but it had kept the damned place from burning to the stones every other summer.
Or how they'd handled the Blight year, and all its aftershocks, and it hadn't been easy and at times hadn't seemed possible, but they'd made it happen. Ferelden barbarians at the gates - and then as neighbors, as workers and family and new Free Marchers - and the best Guard-Captain Bran's seen in at least twenty years.
The occasional victory even over Meredith herself, though it usually took the Grand Cleric's attention to tip that scale. Elthina suggesting a gentler touch with the apostates than kicking every damned door in on the slightest suspicion of magic, of snatching away screaming children in the middle of the night. Working with the city guard instead of against them, chipping away at those Templar walls of secrecy, as thick and unyielding as any in the Gallows.
It was never enough, but at least it was something - and Dumar still knew when he was being played, always, even when he couldn't do more than take note of it. He'd done all he could with what he had to work with, one of those virtues the Chantry always crowed about - and this, Bran wants to shout back at them, this is the real truth of it. The end result of a life humbly lived. No wonder Threnhold had roared his way to the grave, that Meredith preferred to keep her mercy sheathed and forgotten.
No wonder the Magisters had clawed their way to damnation for the faintest chance at glory - what did it matter, in the end, if this was the reward for virtue?
"Marlowe, for the Maker's sake! We have to try. Please."
It won't work. Bran knows that even as he speaks. He has considerable experience with empty words.
It isn't that much of a distance, from the Viscount's office to the Keep's main hall. Whatever happened down below, Bran was certain he'd hear it - is expecting to hear it at any moment, the crash of wood and pounding feet and surely then, the screaming. Surely some announcement of the battle they are about to fight and most likely lose so that Meredith can gain her victory elsewhere.
Bran will wonder exactly what happened, later on, being crushed and shoved together in an indignity that borders on macabre satisfaction - the great noble families of Kirkwall reduced to a hushed and milling herd, all but the most deluded bluff and bluster far gone. All the posing and posturing vanished into stark terror, reduced to what he always knew they were.
An almost satisfying feeling, if he wasn't just as frightened as the rest of them - and if Bran weren't here now, feeling horror spark a path right up his spine as he hears the door creak open behind him. A gentle sound, with no great roar of battle behind it, no sound of dying men, the silence far more terrifying than all of these.
A lone Qunari stands in the threshold, somehow taking up more space than the doorway has to offer, and if it weren't for the blade slowly dripping blood down onto the stone it would seem as if the guards in the Keep had never been there at all.
"So, the Arishok finally wishes for his audience?"
The Viscount stands as noble and proud as Bran has ever seen him, his shoulders straight, his gaze clear. His only audience this single soldier, with those pure black eyes that show neither respect nor scorn and Bran - not thinking, not breathing - does what may be the only brave thing he's done in his whole life.
Brave, and futile, and really rather incredibly stupid, to move in front of the Viscount, to stand between this enemy and his goal. The Qunari takes a step forward, and Bran trembles and wonders what in the world he thinks this will accomplish and just how fast he'll be dead and what stupid expression he'll be wearing to the grave.
He's reaching for the sword he can't use, that he won't even reach in time when Dumar's hand gently catches his arm.
"No, Bran. There's no need for more of this. There's no need."
He turns, but the Viscount is already at his side, already moving past. A small, quiet smile on his face, the kind that belongs in a story that will never be written, that hurts like nothing has ever hurt him before. No fear or apprehension, just a utter stillness. A perfect peace, far beyond this insanity and foolishness, where nothing can reach him, no matter the sharpness of its sword or the size of its army.
It is just another day in Kirkwall, just another bit of nonsense to be fretted through, and Bran can't say another word around the stone in his throat, as Dumar nods at him - and that smile. Oh Maker, that smile.
"I've kept him waiting long enough, don't you think?