Regardless of her suggestions, Fenris does not attempt to leave the familiarity of his room. Orana comes at the usual time the next morning, and the morning after; if the mistress has spoken with her she gives no sign. Neither is the cook's behavior unusual in the slightest, the man effervescent as always as he places a plate of wine-dipped bread and smoked meat on the rough, cheerful table centering the kitchen. His grip is awkward given the two missing outside fingers of his right hand, but he manages well enough, and it is—comforting to listen to his easy conversation with Orana, nothing more significant than the week's menu and the cough of one of the servant's daughters, familiar in a way nothing else in this house has yet been.

Halfway through breakfast, the back door opens and a tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair stumbles into the room with an enormous, panting hound hot on his heels. He's younger than Fenris and dressed simply, rough cotton shirt and worn brown trousers tucked into boots, but of more immediate interest is the fact that he is, from head to toe, soaking wet. Foreign and Fereldan-born, certainly, by both his face and his curses, but too familiar with the kitchen as he ducks under the row of hanging herbs to be a stranger to the servants' rooms.

The dog barks joyfully at the assembled audience, spies Fenris in the corner, and takes two sniffs of his knee before circling to lean heavy against his leg, neck presented for scratches. Fenris hesitates, then obliges; the dog gives a head-to-toe wriggle of delight and presses harder against him, and something in Fenris's chest lightens for the first time in days.

"Oh no," Orana tuts, a towel materializing from nowhere as she shepherds the soaked man off the rush mat. "Again? And you come inside like this to drip on my floor."

The man scowls, rubbing the towel briskly over his hair. "Sorry," he mutters, and shakes himself like an animal; a drop or two flicks over Fenris's arm, and the man throws him a longsuffering look as he slides a handspan further from the source of the drips. The dog barks again, overjoyed. "Sorry about that. It's not my fault she can't hold her temper, is it?"

"Your home again?"

"She won't let it go! Another move now would be murder on Mother, she knows that. But every few weeks she gets her teeth on the bone again, and next thing you know push leads to shove and I end up in the pond."

Orana shakes her head, smiling, and the stranger tosses the towel back to her with a sigh before turning to the cook, who hands him a plate of his own with obvious amusement in his face. The man must be a field hand by his size and sun-browned arms; his appetite, as he drops to the bench across from Fenris and begins to eat, is no meager thing either, and when he glances at his empty glass, Fenris offers the clay pitcher at his elbow.

"Thanks," the man says, pouring out a healthy amount of the much-watered wine. "Don't think I've seen you around here before. You must be the new one."

The new one. "Yes. My name is Fenris."

"How d'you do, Fenris. Better than me, looks like."

He can't quite keep back the smile, and at his side the dog's stubbed tail begins to wag. The combination of wet-plastered hair and excessively dour expression is too ludicrous; he remembers a similar disagreement among two house-slaves that had ended with Arnus splashed just as liberally with yellow paint. "An argument with your wife?"

"My sister, the harpy."

Orana, arranging the tea service by the window, glances over her shoulder. "She comes, messere."

He doesn't even have time to process the honorific. The man snaps, "Of course she does," and then all at once the door crashes open and the mistress strides in, equally soaked, her face black as thunder.

"You are rotten to the core, Carver Hawke," she announces, and slams the door behind her so hard the windows rattle. The cook still smiles; Fenris's amusement withers in one instant like fire has killed it. One of the dog's ears flattens back against its head.

"Me? You're the one who pushed me in the pond! Turnabout's fair play, so far as I'm concerned."

"I'm not talking about that, you ass. I'm talking about the sheets you threw on me after!"

"You were coming after me!"

"They were from the clean lines!" She slaps her hand on the table, furious, and Fenris cannot check the flinch. She hasn't even noticed him. "Now Bethany's going to spend the whole afternoon washing the load a second time herself because she feels guilty about asking the servants for a single bit of help, again, and it's entirely your fault."

"Ahh—" Carver Hawke (the mistress's brother, her brother, no slave) plants both hands on the table and pushes the bench back enough to rise. "I'll talk to her. Orana, can you send someone out in a moment for the laundry?"

The elf nods without looking up from the kettle, tea streaming into the service's pot with a heady, fragrant aroma. "Of course, messere."

"Ooh, don't you dare think you're getting off that easily. I don't care who you talk to, but if you'd just think for two seconds before you opened your great enormous mouth—don't!"

But Carver, more than a head taller than his sister, has already looped his muscular arm around her neck, bending her forward until he can rap his knuckles on her skull. "Uncle."

"Never, brat!" She squirms to no avail, her wet hair coming loose around her face as she pulls fruitlessly at her brother's arms. The cook is laughing, the dog panting happily as Carver smirks, and then the mistress's eyes flick up to Fenris's own through her hair in seething frustration and she cries, "Fenris, help me!"

He moves.

Liquid light in his veins, the lyrium singing, two heartbeats to cross the room and drive the heel of his hand upwards into Carver's chin. His teeth clack together as he recoils, his arms loosening around the mistress's neck; Fenris follows through in the same motion, bending Carver's fingers backwards until he twists away in blind effort, eyes tearing, to escape the pain. A hard kick to the back of his knee and the man's leg buckles, sending him to the ground; one more twist of the arm he still holds, and—it is over. Carver lies flat on his stomach, Fenris's knee pressed hard into his spine, one immobile arm extended back into the air where Fenris grips him by the wrist. Fenris's other hand presses inflexibly into Carver's damp shoulder to pin him to the tile, barely yielding for every breath the man gasps into the stone.

The cook no longer laughs. Orana still stands by the window, her hands over her mouth; Fenris pays them no mind, waiting for the next instruction of his mistress. Only—

Only, it does not come.

After the second minute, he chances a glance upward. His mistress still stands just beside him, her shirt-tails dripping, but—

His grip tightens involuntarily. Carver groans, enough to make the mistress flinch, and even Fenris cannot pretend not to see the horror in her face before she smooths it into nothing again. Even the rest of the room has gone wholly still, the sausage beginning to burn with a hiss and a curl of thin smoke. The dog's hackles have shot past its shoulders; if he friended it before, there is no trace now in the bared, snarling teeth.

"Please," she says, each word measured, "release my brother."

He does immediately. Carver rolls to his feet, coughing, his face red and furious, and when he rises to stand beside his sister Fenris's heart abruptly lurches. He cannot bear to beg again; instead he drops his fists to the stone floor to hide their trembling, bows his head, and waits.

His mistress's voice is very quiet. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Carver says, just as low. "Did you know?"

"No."

He snorts, bitter and mocking. "Of course not."

"Carver, please."

He snorts again, though less angrily, and Fenris hears the clap of a hand to a shoulder before the heavy boots and the tick of dog's nails turn towards the hallway behind them. "I'll see you at lunch," he mutters, and the door closes with a click behind them.

Fenris shudders. He knows what this means; reprieve now could only herald a worse beating later, outside of his sister's sight and protection, made harder by the cold planning of it. It has always been better to take the blow in a rage, and now—now, he has made an enemy of a Hawke. Impossible to salvage that.

"Are you all right?"

He could not leave his room now even if he wished; he has recognized at last the booted tread outside the kitchens, and if Carver is one to wander the halls as freely as he suspects there can be no avoiding him. He must—

A hand falls on his shoulder. "Fenris."

He licks his lips, abruptly aware his mistress has been calling his name, has knelt in her still-dripping trousers to look him in the eye. Orana and the cook have vanished from the sunlit kitchen. "Domina. I have shamed you."

"Not at all. I was an idiot. I shouldn't have asked that of you."

"I was—I have trained for such things all my life. I was his bodyguard. I have been—I thought—"

"I know. It was my fault. I'm sorry."

"Domina," he says, and shudders again.

Soft noises above him, a clink of silver; then the mistress is pulling him to his feet, handing him a hot cup of tea in china finer than anything he has ever held. He has no great love for tea, but it gives his fingers an occupation, and as she coaxes him to the bench again he takes enough of a swallow to spread warmth through his chest. It helps more than he expects.

She watches him for some time in silence, still enough he cannot gauge what she desires from him. At last, she says, "What was your routine with Danarius? Your daily activities, I mean."

Not what he expected. Still, easy enough. "I—rose before dawn, for training in the practice yards with the quartermaster from the fifth to the seventh hour. A half-hour to bathe and eat, and then I waited at the master's side until he woke."

"And during the day?"

He spreads one hand without thinking, unsure what she means. "I attended to the master, domina."

"You went with him everywhere?"

"I was his bodyguard."

"Ah. Of course."

"At dinner, I served. Afterwards, if he pleased, I ate from what he left, and then I served in his rooms until I was dismissed, or he slept."

"You spent every waking hour with him."

"Yes, magister. Unless the master ordered else."

She folds her arms, brow furrowed, and leans back against the table beside him. "Would that be easier for you? To keep to a routine like that? Or would you prefer to go on as you have?"

"As I have?"

"You're obviously not happy here," she says, and his initial spike of alarm is only partly softened at the lack of cruelty in her voice. "Every time I've run into you you've jumped out of your skin or been stoic as my mabari on bath day, and there's only so long someone can take that before they snap. If it would be easier for you—I mean if you, personally, would prefer it—we could arrange a schedule to your liking, so at least you'd have some structure to your hours."

"Domina." He grips the teacup again, sets it carefully on the table. "My hours are yours."

"And I'm giving them back to you."

Impossible to see the trap, and yet he knows there's one hidden, knows as surely as Carver will revenge himself that there is pain here he cannot see. All the same, the lie does not come. "I would be grateful, magister, to know my duty by the time."

She smiles. It's the first time he's pleased her so openly, and the flush of pride that ripples through him has precious little to do with the tea. "Then it's done. I'll have Bodahn work with you on something agreeable, and over the next few days we can try it out. We can adjust it as you see fit, of course."

"This slave is grateful, domina."

"Don't thank me yet." She pinches her nose between thumb and forefinger, then rests her cheek on her own palm. "I swore to my sister when I set the terms with Danarius I would not issue you orders you couldn't refuse. I would ask, however, that if you can possibly avoid it—please do not hurt my family in the future. Any of them, even Carver, regardless of my own clumsy suggestions."

Fenris ducks his head, angling his body towards his mistress with as much contrition as he can convey. "As you command, domina."

"That's not—oh, flames. Thank you, Fenris."

He bows again from the waist, and when she stands to leave, he follows.

Bodahn, as it happens, turns out to be a remarkably genial dwarf with a neatly trimmed beard and a touched son. Fenris likes him at once despite himself, likes him more when the first thing he does after his mistress's departure is lead him on a brief tour of the estate so that Fenris may orient himself at last. Sandal trails after them, pleasantly vacuous, his fingers twisting around a small, uncarved stone.

The villa is set square around a lush courtyard lined in a covered, colonnaded walkway. Stone benches have been hidden in the shade of a grove of olive trees in one corner of the yard, herb beds and a small statuary garden in the other. The flagstones from the night before stretch from the western wing to the east, curving around a circular stone well placed square to the grassy lawn that surrounds it. The entrance's atrium anchors the southern wall, the long avenue fronting the estate spilling from its doors; the kitchen roots the north, centered between the larder and a grand dining room.

Fenris's own bedroom lies in the western hall alongside an empty guest room and a small closet meant for storage. Orana lives in the east, framed by a white-and-wood room with a beautiful pianoforte and an upright harp half-hidden by a dusty cover. The eastern wing holds the library too, a small spiral staircase among the stacks reaching upwards to the table where Fenris had first found the mistress, her books still spread across the wax-stained surface. Bodahn does not show him the family rooms on the second floor, though Fenris has enough of a map in his head now to realize the mistress's room rests directly above his own. If there is meaning in that, he cannot find it.

The lawns north of the estate reach only a few hundred feet before being broken by a tall, sturdy wall of cypress trees. Well-tended, they do as much for privacy as for beauty, and even from the high windows of the parlor Fenris can see the careful sand-and-gravel paths that wind around the trees and between them, truncating at a smaller garden divided into neat, trimmed beds. A slave kneels at one of them even now, a broad-brimmed hat shielding her from the Tevinter sun as she trims the dead stems from a rosebush, and Fenris snorts. Fereldan flowers, transplants not made for Tevinter heat, and he will dance swordless in the arena's heart if they survive the summer.

More importantly, however, the late afternoon tour concludes at a small indoor bathing room only a few doors down from his own. The square pool stands four steps deep, its edges decorated in colorful tile made brighter by the high round window set above it, but what startles him more as he steps into the water is its pervasive warmth.

"Magic?" he asks, too relieved by the heat seeping into his markings to watch his tongue.

Bodahn laughs, sets at his elbow a small tray with oils and soapstone and scents in white jars. "My son," he says, clapping the pale boy on the back. "Clever with his hands. His touch for runemaking once saved the eldest Hawke girl's life. Of course, she was trying to save him at the same time. It's how we met, actually."

He can see them now, red-glowing stones set at every corner of the bath; he touches one as Bodahn departs with his discarded leathers, just to see, and comes away unburned. After that he moves quickly enough, scrubbing himself head to toe in a luxury he has not enjoyed for weeks, and sighs in satisfaction when he realizes the water will not cool while he remains in it. He does not touch the scents, clearly too fine for a slave's use, but he does in a moment of boldness steal a palmful of cedar oil for his hair. Danarius had preferred his hair soft—and at the thought, he finds another jar with a thicker cream he recognizes and begins to apply it in liberal strokes to his arms and legs. She is not hideous; neither has her touch yet been ungentle. Surely he might have fared worse.

Soon enough, though, he's clean even by his master's exacting standards, and he retrieves the white towels and spare clothes laid out on the low bench set beneath the window. The trousers are two inches too short, but the loose black shirt fits well enough with sleeves tapering to his wrists, and as he knots the wide cloth belt around his waist the door opens behind a smart knock. The dwarf follows the sound immediately, bustling like a denmother as he collects the wet towel and removes the tray of scents to its shelf again. Fenris takes note of both things, the better to know their places when the mistress asks.

"Now," Bodahn says at last, turning again with pen and parchment in hand as Fenris pulls on a clean sleeveless over-robe, the last of the borrowed clothes, "let's find somewhere quiet and see about that list, shall we?"

He does not realize until Bodahn opens the door ahead of him that he means to deliver the schedule immediately.

His first instinct is to go still. The entire Hawke family has looked up from their dinner at the dwarf's entrance, the matrona with her sorbet spoon still halfway to her mouth, Carver's fingers still twisting into a damp cloth to clean them. Everything about the dining room is tall; the coffered ceiling stretches higher than most, frescoes painted in orange and gold across the cream, and the dark-polished table runs a dozen places too long for the five of them clustered at one end. No couches, either; even their chairs are foreign, straight-backed and lined with striped cream fabric, and the dog, less enormous than before, lies under the nearest chair in clear hope of table scraps.

"And here we are," Bodahn says cheerfully, striding around the table to deposit the paper to the table beside the mistress's empty dessert dish. "One schedule, arranged and approved."

She dips her fingers in a small porcelain water-bowl and dries them hastily on her napkin before taking the sheet. "Thank you, Bodahn. Fenris, would you like a seat? Have you had dinner yet?"

He does not know how to decline with the eyes of every Hawke in the room on him, so he moves with jerky, uneasy steps to the open place at the mistress's left. "No, domina," he murmurs, and fixes his gaze on the table.

"Good evening, Fenris," says her sister, and he flicks up his eyes to find her smiling at him. "I heard you had an interesting morning today. Toby—do not beg."

The dog. He swallows hard enough to hurt; he says, acutely aware of both Carver and the mistress's parents not an armslength from him, "I—am unsure of your meaning."

"Bethany." The matrona now, ignoring her son's audible scoff as she leans around her husband. "Don't make the poor boy uncomfortable."

Carver rolls his eyes, giving his sorbet a baleful prod. "He made me uncomfortable."

"Don't sulk," Hawke teases, only to jump when her father raps her knuckles with a fork.

"From Carver's telling, you provoked it."

"Provoke," she says, her voice prim despite the abused hand pressed to her lips, "is a very strong word."

"Not strong enough, coming from you."

"Carver!"

"Stay out of it, Bethany."

"Ooh, you stubborn—"

"Children," snaps his mistress's mother with a concurrent wuff from beneath the table, and they subside with little more than sideways glances at each other. An elf in crimson strides through the door with an empty tray for the dishes; as he passes, the mistress stops him with a hand to his elbow.

"Another plate, Lydas? He hasn't eaten yet."

Lydas. Fenris knows him. He'd served Danarius once, years ago, as blood slave; his master had eventually cut out the man's tongue for screaming. He had been gaunt then, flat and frightened; now his pale hair has grown in again from the shaving to curl wildly around his ears, his cheekbones no longer sharp enough to cut. Two years since he last saw him? Three?

The man nods with a smile and a bow, and Fenris is left to writhe with humiliation. Hadriana had enjoyed this game, too—but his misery is interrupted as the mistress's father, the taller man with a dark beard and grey streaking along his temples, turns to face him at the table. "My daughter tells me you are a fine warrior, Fenris."

He licks his lips. "I have spent many years with a sword, pater. My master—my—Danarius went to great lengths to cultivate certain skills from his slaves."

"You must have had trainers."

"Yes, pater. Women and men of varying origin, depending on what they might offer." The slave Lydas returns without a word, depositing before Fenris a plate of salted beef doused with gravy, small red tomatoes, and a crusty wheat-cake slathered in olive oil. A fork and knife follow, matching the mistress's silver utensils, and Fenris closes his eyes. "They often stayed for months until I had mastered their teachings."

"It sounds rigorous. Speaking of, Eppie, what is that paper?"

"Fenris's daily schedule. Don't look at me like that, he requested it. Bodahn transcribed." She flattens the paper to the table between them, then touches Fenris's arm. He is pleased that he does not flinch. "Can you read, Fenris?"

"No, domina."

"Then I'll read it to you while you eat. Tell me if this is right." He blinks; she gestures again at his plate, and he hesitantly lifts his fork.

The beef, as it happens, is delicious. Even better, the mistress's family loses interest by midmorning on his schedule and begins to talk amongst themselves while the mistress reads, and the pressure lifts enough to allow him to enjoy the savory flavors in something like peace. The listing is accurate to the last minute—not that he'd particularly doubted the dwarf—but he is still unsettled when the mistress looks at him over the paper's edge at the end and asks for his certainty.

He passes his hand quickly across his mouth as he swallows the last of the tomatoes. He almost regrets not adding more to the schedule, so that she might offer him a second serving while she read it. "Yes, domina."

"It's a lot of time looking after me. You ought to know—I'm not a very exciting person."

"You are a magister."

"My father is a magister. I am…" she laughs at herself, the sound not entirely unpleasant, "the political thorn in his side. With a very fortunate label."

"It is…" he spreads his hands between them, at a loss. "I am meant to guard, domina."

"If you want it, then it's yours. Keep in mind, though, it is also yours to alter as you see fit. There is no need to consult with me or any of my family on the matter if you don't wish to."

"Magister," he tries desperately, but they are interrupted by her brother calling Fenris's name. Carver stands next to his father now in the open doorway to the large sitting room adjacent, the both of them giants with their foreign height, and Carver's arms twist awkwardly before him in a ghost's hold before they fall to his sides again. "Fenris," he says a second time, "come here a minute, will you?"

His mistress scoffs, but when she does not check the order Fenris rises and approaches her brother warily. "Carver," she calls behind him, "you're being an ass about this."

"No, I can counter it! I can; I practiced with Cato. Father thinks I'm in need of more training."

Malcolm Hawke sets both hands on his son's shoulders. "There's no need to prove anything to me. I believe you."

Carver shakes him off irritably, unbearded mouth pursed in a frown. "Then I'll prove it to myself. Fenris doesn't mind, do you?"

His mistress rises behind him, but Carver is already bouncing on his toes in the open space between rooms, his fists lifted between them as Fenris comes to a stop, too close, too quick.

The next few seconds happen very fast. He knows Carver says something of just like this morning, yeah? and he hears the violence in it; his mistress shouts her brother's name as the fist hurtles at his jaw; the impulse to defend himself surges, but—he remembers more his mistress's voice, strong, saying, do not hurt my family.

Fenris is an excellent slave.

He comes to only moments later, the room in uproar. His head lies cradled on something soft, turned to his right by gentle hands at his jaw; behind him he can hear Bethany and her mother alike snapping furiously at Carver. The man himself seems little inclined to his own defense past murmured words he cannot make out, but of more import is the soft white-blue gleam of magic filtering through his closed eyelids.

He forces them open through sheer will to find his mistress's upside-down face only inches from his. Her eyebrows have creased in concern, the corners of her mouth turned down; at his glance, she lowers her hand back to her knee and the glow recedes, if only for a moment. The dog—Toby—lies pressed full against his side, nervous whines in every other breath.

His head in is her lap.

"Are you all right?" a deeper voice asks, and in the space beyond his mistress her father's face swims into focus. "Can you hear me, Fenris?"

"Yes," Fenris says, not as crisply as he would have preferred, and closes his eyes against the too-bright candles. "I am well. Domina."

"You are not. Your cheek's already turning purple. Please, let me heal this."

He does not realize until she says his name again that she means to ask for his permission. He cannot find the words in him to reassert her mastery and lifts a meaningless hand instead, clumsy assent, clenching the other into the borrowed cloth belt around his waist. His head aches, Carver's strength the rooted thing of a lifelong farmer, and he is unused to accepting such blows without a fight.

"Easy," says Malcolm, and Fenris feels the magic ripple again into existence at his ear. He does not care enough to worry, not now. "Can you feel it? Like the air's gone soft there. Follow it down, find the source, and work from the bottom up."

"It's a signature Carver shiner. I'm excessively familiar with them."

The man gives a soft laugh as the magic begins to burrow threads of warmth into his cheekbone. "It's different on a face not your own, daughter."

"Rude." Her fingers skate over his cheek twice more, blue light seeping between his eyelids, and then—she draws away. The glow of magic dims and the itch of his lyrium with it, and in its wake Fenris realizes the clouding of his head has gone completely. Not once had there been pain. "There. How's that?"

"Good," he says, too surprised to guard his tongue. Contrition follows swiftly in a hot rush as he scrambles to his feet, but the mistress has already begun to rise.

"Excellent. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to murder my brother."

More shouting follows. Carver stands to tower over his sister; she strikes him in the chest with the heel of her hand, and somewhere in the midst of the argument Fenris gathers the only reason she did not intervene sooner was because she expected him to defend himself against her brother, as if it were a natural thing in the light of her order. Carver—agrees with her, somehow, while protesting furiously against his own fault all the same, and after some minutes blames his father instead for the incentive. Leandra decries the fighting in her house, Bethany the particular argument; Malcolm spreads his hands, voice low and soothing, and tries to peacemake among his household.

Of them all, it seems Fenris alone can admit who bears the fault. Another error of his own, another mark against his name—and worthless, as if these foreign barbarians might ever do their errant slave the courtesy of correction. To leave him stumbling, blind, even the most basic tenets of service stripped from him—cruel. No wonder Danarius spoke of them with such scorn.

The fight concludes. Carver stalks away in annoyance, and his mistress decides after a flurry of conversation with her sister and father that they will apologize to Fenris by taking him to market in a few days, an effort to find clothes that fit him better than Malcolm's secretary's castoffs. Bethany forces a smile and tells him he must choose whatever he likes, and the matrona assures him not to think a moment of her son's anger.

Hawke touches his shoulder as they leave at last and asks again, softer than before, if he is well. Fenris nods stiffly, furious enough to meet her eyes straight-on; she smiles without a trace of understanding, and in that moment, he thinks he hates her.