"Now remember what I told you," Adaia laughed, holding out a hand to Lyriana. She helped her up off the ground. "If you catch me off balance you have a greater chance of getting a fatal blow."
"Yes, mama," Lyriana said, leaping to attention and ready to go again, not even phased by the ten times her mother had bested her so far.
They practiced, hidden in a small garden in the alley where the brush had overrun the vegetables. It wasn't much room, but they were under cover and had a wall to them, so weren't likely to have their cover blown, at least not by someone who wasn't looking for them.
Lyriana was getting better in hand to hand combat all the time, but it was hard to practice with weapons, even fake ones as she had. They were made of wood and could barely hurt anyone, but they were good enough for practice and it was unlikely that she would come across a real blade anytime soon, if ever.
Her mother had a surprise for her, though.
"Look what I snuck out from under the floorboards," Adaia said secretly as she unraveled from the lining of one of her pockets a brilliant pair of silver blades with green and red stones on the hilt that shone and sparkled, even in the half light of the alienage.
Lyriana's tiny jaw dropped. They were beautiful. The light gleamed off the metal, even in the half light of the alienage.
"My grandmother gave them to me, she was Dalish," Adaia began as she let Lyriana pick up one of the blades. "They are said to have extra power to those who wield it of our line. I would really love for you to be able to use these someday, as she did."
Adaia lowered her eyes, but Lyriana barely noticed as she examined the fine blades. They must have been very old yet looked as sharp, clean and strong as the day they were forged.
"Mama, they're so beautiful," she said, imagining herself felling legions of men with them in battle. Mighty Lyriana, shem slayer.
"They're yours," Adaia said, smiling. "Not that you can take them out from under the floorboards without asking." She smiled and ruffled Lyriana's hair. "You have Dalish blood, girl. I can tell. You look just like my grandmother."
Lyriana looked down at herself and wondered how she looked like anyone, least of all someone who was wonderful as Lyriana's grandmother sounded. They lived free of men, even in some places drove them away. They lived apart, according to their own tradition, and Lyriana's great-grandmother was said to be a keeper, one of the highest honors of the Dalish, as she had heard it.
"Soris says the Dalish never existed," Lyriana said, frowning as Adaia put the daggers back into their sheaths and back in her pocket.
Adaia laughed. "That Soris," Adaia said, "Your cousin is cute but not bright like you and me. He couldn't find the Dalish in a Dalish camp, but don't worry I can."
"Really?" Lyriana's face lit with wonder. "Can we go, mama?"
"Of course, one day," Adaia said, her smile was broad but her eyes turned away. "Why do you want to go to see the Dalish anyway? Don't you like it here with me and your papa and cousins?"
"No, I hate it here," Lyriana pouted, flouncing on the ground in protest. Adaia smiled. Lyriana was only ten, after all.
"You hate it here?" Adaia said in mock amusement. "What's not to like about such a place as a beautiful alienage in Denerim?"
Lyriana frowned. "It's stupid."
Adaia shrugged. "I don't like it because it's dirty and the shems are always around to make trouble for us, but I don't know if I would call the alienage stupid."
"Well, that's what I meant, I guess."
"My sweet Lyriana," she said. "I love you so, but always remember how powerful words can be."
"Yes, mama." Lyriana sighed and rolled her eyes out of her mother's view. She had been lectured so many times and in so many ways on how to speak truth, find injustice, how to fight and make traps. Her friends were always running around playing, or getting into the shopkeepers hair, or finding a stray dog to play with and Lyra was always in this alley, getting lectures and learning to fight.
"Come now, Lyriana," Adaia said, standing, "just a little while longer. You look as sullen as your father."
Lyriana stood heavily and faced her mother. "What is the point of fighting? We never win."
She almost hadn't realized that she was thinking aloud, and opened her eyes wide, afraid of what her mother might do.
Adaia stood for a moment, in thought, and then turned to her, sighed deep and said, "One day, we will win. Don't you want to be ready?"
"We really will one day, win?" Lyriana's eyes lit up, hope brimming in her eyes. So few elves ever talked about fighting the shems, much less saying it would be a winning fight.
Adaia sunk to one knee and looked Lyriana in the eye. "Why do you think we'll never win?" Lyriana didn't answer. She didn't want to talk about things she knew her mother already knew. She was young, but being young meant almost nothing in the alienage. Death and rape and sadness had never been new to her.
After a few minutes of lingering silence Adaia said, gruffly but firmly. "Lyra, my love, one day there will be a fight we'll win. That's why I teach you. I want you to win."
Lyriana wanted to believe this so much. Her mother had never steered her wrong before, and she had no reason not to believe her, but when she looked around that alley, looked around her world, she saw no hope in it. Elves turned each other in to the human lord for a pittance, sometimes only a few bits, for crimes real or imagined. It barely mattered. Soldiers came in to rape or kill elves often, and no one lifted a finger. Lyriana's youth did not spare her that knowledge, but when she looked up at her mother she smiled. It was empty as a sail with no wind, but she smiled.
Adaia was not paying attention but was looking away intently, down the alley to the tree in the main circle.
"Mama?" Lyriana said and Adaia shooed her towards the brush in the vegetable patch.
"Stay down, and stay quiet," Adaia said, "and then run home."
"What's happening?" Lyriana whispered.
"Just run home as soon as you can, Lyra." Adaia handed Lyriana something small and hard, kissed her on the head and turned on a heel towards the alley.
Lyriana sat still as a statue, and heard nothing. She looked at what her mother had handed her. It was a small, white rock with carvings in it and she had no idea what it was or what the carvings were. She sighed, put it in her pocket and crawled slowly towards the edge of the wall, when her curiosity finally started to take her senses. She unhooked her scabbards with her little fake daggers, and crawled out.
She saw several city guards in the alley, all crowded around but not facing her way. They were also effectively guarding one of the only ways for Lyriana to run home.
She studied the alley, looking for options, wondering if she should hide until they ran away, but her mother told her to run home and her mother made her swear that she would do whatever she said when it came to her training. Though Lyriana saw little point in it, she enjoyed it, and she enjoyed knowing she had a secret, a dangerous one.
Lyriana noticed that what they were crowding around was her mother, who was now stripped naked. She let out a cry of shock, frozen to the spot, the image washing into her mind of these shems, holding her mother down. Lyriana began to scream.
They all stopped and turned to her, her voice was so frightened, so horrifying. Adaia's body fell to the ground, her blood running into the dirt.
Lyriana didn't know what took over her but she ran at the men, screaming a horrid war cry as she jumped at them and kicked and scratched at them.
The man whose shoulder she had jumped onto started screaming "Get the knife-ear off me, damn thing has gone insane," to the laughter of the men around him. He then let out a loud yell as Lyriana sunk her teeth into his ear, taking a chunk off and spitting it onto the ground.
A large knight in shining black armor, the mark of the captain on his helmet, pulled Lyriana off effortlessly by the pigtails. Lyriana screamed as he held her at arm's length away from him, like a disgusting insect and then threw her small body down the alley. Lyriana's shoulder hit on the edge of a broken crate as pain lashed through her. She lifted a hand, she was bleeding, and a large chunk of wood was lodged in place.
The Captain raised his hand, "Hobbes, go take care of the girl."
"No!" Adaia yelled from the ground. Her voice came out hoarse and ragged. "Please, let her go. Do whatever you want with me just please..."
Lyriana didn't wait to see what was going to happen. She knew that there was no way she would get out alive if she didn't run, so she ran. The chunk of wood pulled out of her shoulder, splintering off as she grunted with pain and threw it behind her. She heard a jingling of chain mail, but Lyriana was fast and melted into the shadows in the dark corners of the alienage. She watched as other elves scattered in his wake. He looked around and couldn't see where she went.
Lyriana sized him up. He was clearly younger than the others, a new recruit probably, and a man she had never seen in the alienage before. She could take him, she thought, blood pouring down her arm.
Hobbes turned after a moment and went back down to the alley, back to her mother.
Lyriana ran out of hiding and ran all the way to her home, threw open the doors to see her father standing above the fire. "Lyra?"
"Daddy," she said, sputtering as the man's blood dripped down her chin and from her fingertips.
Cyrion appeared, his face drawn with worry. "Your mother?" he asked urgently.
Lyriana was panting so hard she could only nod. Cyrion stood quickly and crossed to the table to get the knife. "Calm down, child," he said. His voice was trembling. "They will be coming, you know what to do."
"Yes, papa," she said, stripping off her dress as her father handed her worn pants and a tunic. As she laced the pants closed and was pulling on the boots, Cyrion cut off her two long braids in two short movements and threw the excess hair into the fire along with her dress.
A disgusting smelling smoke came from the fireplace. Lyriana watched her long, dark locks be consumed in the flame as a sickening smell filled the room.
"Quick, go wash your face and wash out your mouth," Cyrion said as he stood, taking the knife and hid it under his mattress. He put them away just as there was a loud knock on the door. "And don't say a word, no matter what happens," he whispered in her ear before running off to the door.
Lyriana scrubbed her face quickly, swishing bloody water in her mouth as she dumped it and spat onto the floor while clenching the muscle of her aching shoulder, trying to slow the bleeding. She was in shock; she stared at the wall as she sat on the floor and pretended to play with a doll her father had carved out of a piece of firewood for her. It was of the prophet Andraste.
"Are you Cyrion Tabris?" a voice barked. Lyriana knew it to be the Captain she had heard earlier in the alley. Her breath froze.
"Yes I am," Cyrion said with a bow, his voice smooth and natural. "What can I do for you, sers?"
The Captain walked into the hovel and scrunched his face. "It smells like a burning cat in here."
"I'm so sorry, ser," Cyrion said again. "We burn what we must to keep-"
"Save it knife-ear," said the man with his ear bitten off. Lyriana noticed there were less men here than in the alley and wondered furiously what they had done to her mother.
"Is this brat yours in the corner?" the Captain said giving a hard stare at Lyriana who said nothing.
"This is my nephew, ser," Cyrion said. "He lives with me."
"All your children look like girls," the Captain said, crossing in front of Lyriana as she looked up at him. "I never will be able to tell them apart. I could swear this was a girl."
"These rats always have children popping out of the mortar," one of the officers said with a sneer and the other joined him in snickering.
"Boy," the Captain said, pointing at Lyriana. "What is your name?"
Lyriana kept her mouth shut and looked to her father. "He is dumb, my lord," Cyrion said. "His name is Tiron."
"Tiron what?"
There was another loud knock on the door and the Captain turned away from Lyriana at last and opened it. It was another soldier. He whispered something to the Captain and he nodded and shut the door.
"Your wife, Adaia Tabris, was found with weapons in the alienage," the Captain said, a sneer passing his lips. "She is to be executed tomorrow afternoon, as is the law."
Cyrion's face twisted in anguish, "Executed? But sers, please show mercy!"
The Captain came to Cyrion and stared down at him. He had a massive frame and his black armor glowed wildly in the fire. Lyriana's father looked like a piece of grass about the get trampled by the hoof of a giant steed. "The mercy I show," he said coldly, "is not burning you and this miserable cesspool to the ground."
Cyrion backed up against the wall, his body shaking.
"You knife ears don't know how well you have it here," the Captain began again. "Traveling once, oh I can't remember the name of the city. I wish I could!" He had a large smile and leaned against the wall, his face very close to Cyrion's. "All the elves in one little quarter, away from us like the rats you are. And we give you freedoms, and get them thrown back in our faces by whores like your wife. You will see. You'll all see the price for breaking our lenient laws."
The Captain turned and walked out the door, his two officers trailing behind him. While the door was open he could see a town crier in the middle of announcing to the alienage, "-for the crimes of unlawful weapon ownership, attacking the honored guard of-" and the door slammed shut.
Cyrion stood as if frozen, for a moment. He then walked and put a cauldron of water over the fire. "You will need to clean that wound," he said, his voice dead. "We'll have to ask Valendrian to heal it tonight."
Lyriana sat silently, eyes fixed on the tiny Andraste in her hands. If she hadn't been learning to fight, if she hadn't attacked the man... would it have all been different? Would her mother be spared or would Lyriana simply be dragged kicking and screaming off to the dungeons, never to be seen again?
She got up and went to bathe and dress the wound. This, too, she had learned a bit of from her mother, and as she wrapped the shoulder and the blood slowed even more, she saw her mother showing her how it was done.
She put the clothes she had been wearing back on, accepting a different tunic Cyrion had laid out for her, and looked into the uneven mirror to see her dark brown hair now shorn to the ears, which made them stick out more than she thought she was able. Andraste's tiny figure stared up at her and Lyriana threw it across the room.
When she finally came out and looked to her father, his body slunk in the corner, sobbing with grief. He looked up at her, his eyes wet and anguished, gasping. He took her into his arms and held her head, kissing her on the forehead. "It will be okay, my love," he whispered as he rocked her and they cried together for longer than she could fathom.
When her eyes finally closed into a heavy sleep the name of the prophet Andraste was on her father's lips.