"Aveline Vallen! Just the guardswoman I've been looking for," Wil Hawke throws her arms out at the back of a red-headed tower of a woman.
A red-headed tower of a woman who ignores her.
"So that's just rude. I came all this way to see you, shaming myself before the very grandeur of Hightown and the Viscount, and you're more interested in a…" her nose wrinkles as she tries to read the parchment sheet posted just beyond Aveline's heavily pauldroned shoulder.
"It's a duty roster, Hawke, and I'm not ignoring you," Aveline still doesn't turn around. "I just saw you."
Wil cocks her head and considers the past few weeks. Much of it has been spent tying up loose ends with Athenrial, running poor saps up for outstanding debts, and looking for the sort of work that required less dumping of bodies into bays, sewers and conveniently located mineshafts than smuggling had.
"It's been weeks." Pause. "At least a week, I think. It doesn't matter, though, because I miss you so, Lady Vallen."
"Don't start with me," Aveline whips her head to fix Wil with a stern look. "And you're right. We haven't spoken for a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping an eye on you and not liking some of the things I'm seeing. Watch yourself around that Bartrand fellow. I've not heard one good thing about him, or the company he keeps."
"Excusing the fact that you've been spying on us again, Bartrand's brother isn't that bad. Have you met Varric, by the way?"
Both women turn to the dwarf who is standing a fair distance away, beside a clearly uncomfortable Bethany. They are both positioned near the doorway to the main barracks and, while she's looking like she would rather disappear, he has his head held just so, as if he is tuning himself to the world around him.
"I've heard of him." From her tone, it's all been bad. "Enough to know that it's probably not the best idea to let him be eavesdropping in the barracks."
This brings Varric in, his face brightening in defense.
"Eavesdropping," he waves off Aveline's accusation with a scoff. "Such an ugly word. I am simply…gathering resources."
"With his ears!"Wil turns to Aveline, a smile twisting the corner of her mouth up. "Completely on the level. "
"We'll see about that." With a slow shake of her head, the guard returns her focus onto Wil and Wil notices, not for the first time, the faint lines that crease the outer edges of Aveline's eyes. They'd not been there when they met in Lothering and Wil wonders if it's the memory of her late husband that keeps Aveline driven to exhaustion, or what must be the thankless task of maintaining order here in Kirkwall. Speaking of order…, "I might have some work for you and Bethany, Hawke. If you're interested. I'd assume that's why you're here, but it's hard to tell with you."
Wil did have a tendency to just show up, sister in tow, to give Aveline a hard time. Or to pretend to give Aveline a hard time, while Aveline pretended that she hated every second of it. The truth was, both were looking for reassurance in the other.
Whether they'd ever be able to admit that….Wil has her doubts.
"Your suspicion is a correct one…about us looking for work," Wil studies her for a second before deciding that Aveline can be trusted with the truth. "We're trying to make money to partner with Bartrand on his expedition. Varric thinks fifty sovereigns and some secret Grey Warden knowledge of the Deep Roads will get us in."
"Is that all?" The smirk Wil gives Aveline in response is knowing, and the older woman can only shake her head. "I have no idea how you plan on earning that kind of coin, or whether I want you to succeed at all. However, you're the best person to help me out."
"So you'll be enabling these mad schemes? I would ask what you did with my Aveline, but I know better than to question good fortune."
"No you don't, and it's like I said. You're the best person for this. An ambush on the Wounded Coast. I have no idea what they hope to find, as it's been a quiet beat and there are no caravans scheduled in until next week. But I know what I've been told, and I need to do something about it. Give me a few minutes and I'll head out with you," she turns on her heel to return to the barracks.
"Friendly," Varric gives up his resource gathering and he and Bethany follow Wil out of the guards' annex into the grand foyer of the Viscount's Keep. "Although I'll admit it. I would not want to cross that woman."
"Oh, she's not so bad," Wil's shoulders lift in a small shrug. "And she might come in handy if this Grey Warden turns out to be less than cooperative."
"Not even, Hawke," Aveline has emerged and she's no longer carrying her guard shield, but her late husband's templar shield, the surface gleaming like liquid. "I refuse to challenge a Grey Warden. That's not a fight any of us can win."
"Ah, not any of us, Aveline. All of us."
"My ass."
And all Wil can do is laugh.
Laughing is not really happening in Lirene's Fereldan Imports. As a matter of fact, Lirene's Fereldan Imports might be where laughter came to die. Crowded, dark and smelling of wet dog despite a noticeable lack of dogs, Wil has no idea how anyone could come here expecting to find any type of help or hope.
Or maybe my life is just that good, compared to what it could have been. Tendrils of guilt wrap themselves around her disdain and Wil finds herself automatically dropping a handful of silvers into a warped donation box set up near the back of the room.
It takes them nearly an hour of waiting before Lirene is free to speak to them, interruptions slowing even the most standard exchange of information. Before Wil can open her mouth, a young man with blood-slicked hands and a palpable sheen of despair elbows his way past her and flings himself against the counter.
"You have to help me," emotion chokes his voice so he's close to incomprehensible. "Someone...someone. My son was run over. A merchant in his cart just..."
He breaks with a sob; Wil is forced to look away from this show of raw anguish.
"Maxwell," Lirene speaks in such a way that makes her voice crack out and over the din surrounding her. A boy of no more than fourteen materializes at her elbow and, a silent nod his only instruction, Maxwell takes the man with the injured son and leads him away. With him gone, Wil is gestured forward again to be fixed upon by hard brown eyes in a quietly exhausted face. "If you need assistance, I can take your name. But you don't look like you need assistance."
And if there was any more emphasis placed on need, it would snap beneath the weight of her contempt for Wil and her companions.
"Don't worry, we're not here for handouts or work," Wil keeps her voice as light as possible. "We won't burden your operation any more than we have to."
"If you don't need assistance, then are you here to trade?" Lirene is already over this conversation, her hands fidgeting with her logbook and her attention on the refugees past Varric, who is in the rear of their entourage.
"No, actually. I'm looking for a Fereldan Grey Warden," Wil watches the woman's face for an indication that Fereldan Grey Warden means anything to her, but her expression remains impassive.
"I'm sorry. The only Fereldan Wardens I know are ruling Denerim these days. Again, I'm sorry."
Neither I'm sorry is sincere.
Fortunately for Wil, Fereldans can always be counted upon to eavesdrop and insert themselves into conversations that haven't requested their presence. A woman who'd been perusing Lirene's small selection of rings is more than happy to play her role.
"That healer is a Grey Warden, right?" She looks at Lirene and then back to Wil, her eyes expectant. "That's what I heard, anyway."
This is...promising.
"Perhaps he was," Lirene's words are measured and snapped off with cold precision. "But he's not now, and I won't have him interrupted by...the curious and their stupid questions."
"Suspicious," Aveline's comment is quiet as breath and Wil has to agree with her assessment of Lirene's behavior.
"Then rest assured that I will only ask very smart questions," it's meant to be a reassureance, but Wil regrets saying it because Lirene's brows pull tight in anger and this must happen often, because the room around them goes silent as she explains:
"I am not laughing. The refugees in Kirkwall have no one who will help them but the healer, no one who is so giving with his time and his energy. You cannot imagine the compassion he has shown the poorest and sickest among us, and never asking for anything in return," Lirene finishes with a scowl. "His is a thankless task, yet he does it without complaint."
"Wow." Despite it being tinged with no small amount of open hostility, Lirene was speaking from someplace deeply true and Wil can't help but be impressed. "Tell me he's got killer eyes and a nice smile, and I'll marry him on the spot!"
She expects another rebuke, but instead the woman softens. Maybe she heard something honest in what Wil has said, which would be a neat trick. Wil herself isn't quite certain if she meant any of it.
"He does have the eyes, actually. But I've never seen him smile...," her gaze rakes down Wil's face, to her clean but worn tunic, and back up. "He appears burdened by unfathomable sadness. For that, and for his selflessness, I would not see him carried off by templars just for giving of himself so readily."
Something must have clicked in Bethany, because Wil feels a hand on her arm and hears:
"We would never turn anyone over to the templars, ma'am." Then, even though Wil cannot see her, she knows that Bethany is giving her saddest eyes. Giving, as if she doesn't mean every word she says. "Never."
Lirene relents, and tears a bit of vellum off of a scroll before scrawling a brief message across it.
"His name is Anders, and the truly needy know to look for the lit lantern in the undercity. Give this to him," she presses the vellum into Wil's outstretched hand and Wil doesn't wait to see what's written there.
She donated without being asked.
"I was expecting something...meaner."
Lirene frowns and puts her hand out, palm forward, as if to ward them away, and Wil does not push her luck further.
To the undercity, and the lit lantern, and a Grey Warden named Anders.
"Is Anders even a name?" Varric is wondering out loud. "I thought it was a people. Like Antivan, or Rivaini or...lesian."
"I think that falls under the realm of stupid questions, Varric," Aveline helps them break through the crowd that has only grown denser between them and the exit. "And, bless her, Hawke has promised to not ask any of those."
"He'll have to tell her if they get married." They fall out of the shop and simultaneously gasp in the open air, despite the fact that Lowtown was barely less close or pungent. Raising one black eyebrow in amusement, Bethany fixes her sister with a look. "I think we should place wagers on this."
"On what?" Wil's confused for a moment, then warmth spills across her cheeks as she recalls getting caught up in Lirene's barrage of compliments. "Andraste's ass, Bethany."
"No, I think Sunshine is right," his hand already on his coinpurse, Varric's figuring out how all of this could work. "Maybe we should take this to the Hanged Man, get some of the regulars involved."
"Why would they want to?" The idea of anyone betting on her love life is amusing yet baffling to Wil. Flames, the idea of her having a love life to bet on would be hysterical if it wasn't so pathetic. "Besides, it's too subjective. One person's killer eyes is another person's...killer eyes. And there might be a reason he never smiles, besides being a human tragedy who surrounds himself with sick refugees. And lives in a sewer."
"A dead tooth, maybe?" The coinpurse is abandoned. "You're no fun anymore, Hawke."
Aveline's completely thrown, "Anymore? How long have the two of you known each other?"
"As of right now?" Wil and Varric hold up their fingers in feigned confusion before Varric shrugs and admits. "Two days. Almost exactly."
Her mouth is opening for another question when Wil slams into a sudden and solid body that had not been in her path seconds before. The impact staggers her back and then the first flicker of fear sets at her stomach when she realizes they're surrounded by a group of at least eight, most of whom are wearing leather breastplates over their filthy wool tunics and all of whom are armed.
"Uh..." It's not very often that Wil is randomly accosted, especially in broad daylight. "Have we met?"
The man who seems to be leading them is Gamlen's age, graying but with an aura of strength that her uncle definitely did not possess.
"No, but we overheard ya asking 'bout the healer," his lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of jagged, broken teeth. "He's the one bit of hope us Fereldans have, yeah? Ya can't...it wouldn't be-"
"Ser, no," Bethany interrupts, her voice urgent, low. "We're Fereldan, too, and trying to avoid the templars ourselves."
Great, Beth. Why not announce to everyone here that you're a mage?
But it works. The man, although startled by her admission, withdraws with a quick nod towards King Alistair and he and his thugs slip back into an alley that runs past the foundries.
"Weird," Varric is obviously put off by this second show of support for the Grey Warden. "Maybe we should find another way in? This is starting to seem...complicated."
And, for a few minutes, Wil considers it. She's not terribly attached to the idea of going to the Deep Roads, despite the potential for wealth beyond her very healthy imagination. The only reason she and Bethany had approached Bartrand was because they'd seen an announcement in the Hightown market and thought it might be a step above the debt-collecting jobs they'd taken up.
But debt-collecting sucks, because everyone has a sad story to tell. And smuggling sucks, because...smuggling. It's not even a pretty word. And Bethany can't be a guard and I'd have to work with the templars and stay in those creepy barracks.
"Are they hiring waitresses at the Hanged Man?" Wil contemplates the tavern, which she's visited only a few times this past year, including her visit to Varric's rooms the evening before. It was absolutely what one might expect out of a tavern named the Hanged Man, in a place called Lowtown. Still, a job was a job, and she could hold her own against men with...eyes, and grabby hands. "I can do pretty much anything from surly, to flirty, to just a means to a drunken end. I'll even wear dresses and paint myself like an Antivan on Satinalia."
"I don't know, Hawke. The Hanged Man has enough bloodstains on the floor, I don't think it needs any help in that department," Varric is relenting. Reluctantly. "All right, all right. Let's go crawl through the upper sewers and try to avoid causing an international incident."
"And no stupid questions." I know how you can be, Aveline's eyes say it all. "I have no stake in this, I just don't want to hear them."
Fortunately for Aveline, Bethany begins to voice concerns about being seen with another apostate and Aveline is quick to volunteer to take her home. Despite Wil's protests that Beth is being silly, they end up compromising. Varric with Wil, and the other two women waiting well away of the clinic.
But first they have to endure how the undercity, or Darktown for the naming impaired, wore on them in a physical way as they picked through ragged clusters of refugee camps, usually five or six patchwork lean-tos centered around a fire-pit strewn with rat bones and long cold ash. Everywhere they look are women with dark -ruined eyes that have not seen direct sunlight for weeks, maybe months, and their equally wan children huddled just inside their shelters, too hungry to do more than sit up in the morning and stare until it's time to sleep again.
Their immobility is a blessing, really, since most of these "settlements" are merely a few feet distant from perilous drop-offs; the miners that used to work these tunnels had cut away hunks of earth and stone to form long, narrow shafts that now terminate in either water, shit, or more refugees.
"They should call this place Filth," Wil carefully sidesteps a pile of human excrement and pushes down on the co-mingling of pity and disgust that rises in her throat.
"What about Hoboville?" Despite living in what many would consider squalid conditions, Varric is clearly out of his element here. He steps with more delicate caution than even Bethany, who has moaned at least three times about her boots being ruined. "Oh, Andraste. I think I see the clinic up ahead. Or a light, at least. And we must be in the nice part of town, because I smell fresh air. Or something that's close enough."
"Then we'll stay back here," Bethany wedges herself into a corner provided by a rough cut staircase and gestures for Aveline to join. Wil wants to, once again, remind her that there are no templars here and they don't have to tell the healer or anyone else that she's a mage. Instead, she keeps her tongue and Bethany is visibly grateful. "Be nice to him, Mina."
Nice is Bethany's thing, not her own, but Wil had promised Lirene...
"Let's get this over with," Varric is shuffling ahead. "I'd normally do the talking, but you've more experience with mages who have a right to be nervous."
It's true, but it's not something that guarantees success, especially when she's actually being confronted by the Warden himself.
Anders, Wil reminds herself, although his name is the least of it.
There's his clinic, which seems carved from the darkness itself although, upon inspection, it's probably cleaner than Gamlen's shack in Lowtown and, at the very least, high venting gaps cut near the ceiling allow fresh air in to circulate.
There's his appearance, which is like the idea of an apostate that no one who'd ever actually met one might have; quasi-robes and pauldrons adorned with ragged feathers.
The man himself isn't quite as Lirene had described, his eyes less killer-in-a-sexy-way than angry when he turns to confront them, staff in hand and voice echoing with something not entirely earthly that turns the air around them insubstantial for the briefest of moments while he regards her and Varric expectantly, waiting for them to explain why exactly they were there and a threat to his sanctum of healing and salvation.
"We're not templars, if that's what you're asking," she means it to be a comfort, but the sigh that comes from beside her indicates how she missed the mark.
"Which is, of course, the first thing a templar would say," Varric looks up at her, one eyebrow cocked in amusement. "And a dumb templar."
"But I'm not a-," Wil stops herself before she goes too far; Anders is still in a threatening posture and she remembers Aveline's warning from earlier. If a fight broke out, she and Bethany probably wouldn't be able to make it to her before the mage fireballed her to death. Knowing this, she decides that her usual approach might work better. "I never really expected a Grey Warden to be much on healing or salvation. Or perhaps I have been horribly misinformed about the nature of the Blight."
It's Grey Warden that lowers his defenses, his face scrunching in disgust as if the words were something with a foul scent.
"Have you been sent here by the Wardens?" Amber eyes search restlessly between Wil and Varric, and his tone is indignant, accusatory. "Well don't even think I'm going back. Those bastards made me get rid of my cat. Poor Ser Pounce-a-lot; he hated the Deep Roads."
Oh. Wil doesn't even struggle against the amusement that surfaces in her, along with something else that's far harder to identify. Oh, this is perfect.
"You had a cat? Named Ser Pounce-a-lot?" Aveline's ears are probably burning red, even at a distance, but Wil can't help herself. "In the Deep Roads?"
"He was a gift," suspicion still colors his words, but his brow relaxes from its scowl and the corners of his mouth even twitch a bit in something resembling humor. "Noble, too, like my friend. Slightly less skilled at killing darkspawn, although he did smack a genlock on the nose once. We were going to make him an honorary Grey Warden, before...," clearly this is where things fell apart for the mage and his battlecat, the joy that had just been brightening his face and words quickly turning to bitterness. "It was decided he made me too soft, so I left him with someone I knew in Amaranthine."
"And that's why you left the Wardens?" Normally Wil wouldn't even consider such a scenario, where a man could just walk away from a notoriously secretive order of warriors and over a cat, but it's apparent that normal and Anders were two things that just didn't fit together.
He obviously dislikes this question and for a few seconds, Wil experiences a surge of conflicting emotions, as if his feelings were a physical presence. It's his eyes, she has to will herself to hold his gaze. Or maybe his magic. Bethany had a calming effect on her, but this is the opposite of that, as if he's pulling something up through her skin and forcing her to feel what he feels.
"Despite what you may think, I'm no deserter. I might miss out on a few parties, but the Wardens don't work like an army. You can leave."
"So you're not hiding from them here?" Shaking off the lingering traces of his anger, she frowns. I really don't want to get into this any further. "It doesn't matter. I'm as much of a Warden as I am a templar, and I just came to see if you could help us with an expedition we're planning to the Deep Roads. I'm willing to pay."
"Pay?" For a second his eyes widen in mock delight, then he resumes scowling. "If I wanted money, then I am going about it all wrong. The last thing I want is to go tramping around the Blighted...although."
That's when he gets the look. The look that Wil has spent the past four years of her life getting because she's capable and willing to do a lot of things that most people avoid. And with good reason.
"A favor for a favor," he runs a pale hand through his honey-colored hair, his fingers stopping to twist at the end of one strand. "I have maps of the Deep Roads in this area. If you help me, they're yours."
"Just that easy, Hawke," Varric is dubious again. Wil can't blame him, but the reward would be a substantial one, far more than they'd been hoping for in the first place. He realizes that at least, "Bartrand wouldn't be able to say no to maps, even if you delivered them by smacking him upside the head. As an aside, I recommend that you deliver them by smacking him upside the head."
"Ok." Please don't be a demon's bargain, please don't be too illegal or immoral. "But, just so you know. I don't do anything involving animals or children. Or dressing like a man. It's...a long story and I am nowhere near drunk enough to tell it."
"I have a friend, a mage named Karl from the Fereldan Circle," Anders moves closer to them, his voice dropping despite the fact that the only other people in the clinic, the man from Lirene's earlier and his recovering son, are wrapped up in their own business. "He's in the Gallows now. Until recently we've been exchanging letters. Each one he sent has been more desperate than the last, and now that they've stopped...well. I'm fearing the worst, and I can't just wait forever. I sent word for him to meet me at the Chantry tonight...if he does, I'm going to help him escape the Circle."
Of course you are. Conflicted once again, Wil considers it. On the one hand, she can't begrudge any mage their desire for freedom. Her entire existence hinged upon a templar helping her father flee the very prison where this man, Karl, is being held. But there were risks. Not only for her and Anders, but Karl, too. He'd be hunted, and viciously. Father had always made it clear that there were few things templars hated more than a mage who thought he could beat the system. Surely Anders knew that.
"Are you certain you want to make your friend an apostate?" Wil struggles through the word; years of Bethany strangling the label to make it fit herself and their father had turned it into something that never felt right on her tongue.
"Yes, an apostate" his lip curls in disdain as he spits it out. "Such a loaded word, my lady. I realize Andraste said that magic should serve man, and never rule over them. But freedom isn't mastery. I don't know of any mage that wants more than the same rights as everyone else."
That's not what I meant. It's subtle, but she senses Varric shifting beside her. If only Bethany were here...
"I agree," covering quickly. "Imprisoning mages is not the answer, but that's not a popular opinion. Especially amongst the ones who hold his phylactery."
As quickly as he'd shifted from cat-induced nostalgia to anger, Anders slips into something resembling...well, he looks surprised. In a pleasant way. And he's almost smiling so...there is that. Stuff it, Lirene.
"Excuse me, then. I mistook your concern for judgement," even his eyes have warmed and...no, no Wil. You're not falling into that trap. "I'm starting to think we might work together better than I thought. No matter, I will be at the Chantry at midnight. If you want my maps, meet me there. If everything goes well, then we can all walk away free."
And if it doesn't go well? Wil refuses to press this line of thought, instead dwelling on how Anders has withdrawn himself to attend to the man and his boy without so much as a dismissal. His demeanor has once again shifted to something...detached, distant. He's doing a job he can get lost in, playing a part in which he can set aside what appears to be an abundance of volatile feelings.
Varric is thinking the same thing. "It's probably a good thing that his talent is in healing. Kirkwall might be a pillar of smoke on the map of Thedas, otherwise."
"Let's go. We have an ambush to stop, and then I'll have to figure out what to do with Bethany this evening," Wil touches her forehead, a small gesture of frustration. All of her efforts to keep herself and her sister beneath the notice of the templars, and here she is planning to help a mage escape from a Chantry. "I really wish he'd just taken the coin and left it at that."
"Oh, cheer up, Hawke. I think you'd get bored if things were ever that easy."
Easy. She snorts and can feel a wry smile twisting at her lips.
"I'd just like some middle ground for a change," they're out of the clinic and back to drowning in sorrow and dead air. "Something in between...outright refusal and having to set myself up for an untimely end. You know? Just once."
"Good luck with that," Aveline approaches them and she at least has the good sense to not press for details. "You practically scream 'set me up for an untimely end.' Among other things. To the Wounded Coast, then?"
"Aye aye, captain," Wil bumps Aveline's elbow with her own, her mind latching onto annoying her friend. Anything to keep it from the healer.
"You're asking for it, Hawke," Aveline is already exasperated. "Bethany, how have you put up with this your entire life?"
And then it's out of the darkness and back into the light.