Part 1: The Cleaning Man
Simon was lucky. He was inside one of the most deeply guarded, highly restricted places in the world.
Just about anyone in Ferelden would give up a limb to be right where Simon was- and didn't want to be at all. In fact, he hated it. He hated it so much that he considered quitting for the fortieth time… today.
He sighed and looked at the small, weathered-looking egg lying off to the side in the incubation room. He walked over and patted it again, a daily ritual for him now. He hated the drakes, because his job was so hard. But he felt sorry for this egg. It was unlikely to hatch, so Velistara had pushed it aside.
But it might hatch, so she hadn't had it discarded.
Stained, mottled eggs such as this one could go either way. This one lay on its side in a shadow, and Simon rolled it into a patch of sunlight. He would probably hate this one, too, when it hatched. But while it was a small, defenseless, unwanted egg… it tugged at his heart.
He turned to look back at his full wheelbarrow and sank down beside the egg.
"I'm probably the only person in Ferelden who hates your mother," he told it. "And your dad. And your brothers and sisters."
He knew he shouldn't feel that way. It was entirely unfair. He'd been saved by the pair, quite literally. They'd plucked him from the hillside as an infant. He'd grown up among the servants and elves that lived in the White Fortress.
But he wasn't very grateful to be a drake-shit cleaner. He just wasn't.
It was a living, sure. He was alive, and he even made an excellent wage to compensate for it. He had a formidable savings that he almost never dipped into, with no one to spend it for and little to spend it on.
He wanted to be a Gray Warden. He wanted to leave White Fortress, and be a Gray Warden—not a White Warden. He didn't want anything more to do with drakes or dragons.
He also felt that the White Order was being corrupted. He'd said as much to Velistara once, in a rare moment when she'd drawn him into conversation before he cleaned her toilet. She'd looked at him and seemed to be pondering his words. "I will look into it," was all she had said. At least she hadn't tossed him out, he supposed.
Now he sat beside her egg, feeling sorry for it even though he knew it would soon be making shit for him to shovel, provided it actually hatched.
"I want to be a Gray Warden," he told the solitary egg, discarded as he had been. Then, receiving no answer, he got up and started shoveling more dragon shit out of the most highly guarded room in all the world.