People always complained that Ferelden smelled like wet dog. Varric found it funny. Because it was a harbor city, Kirkwall smelled of crisp air and salt, but if he inhaled too deeply, there was the distinct aroma of dead fish.
Maybe it was just him, but Varric would choose a live dog to a dead fish.
The gallows still had a looming, ominous, majestic beauty to them. Even with the alienage completely decimated and scars carved through Hightown, he was certain that with or without people, Kirkwall would decay slowly throughout the centuries so that scholars could look to it and ponder just what exactly went wrong.
Hawke handled their travels in the same no nonsense way that she always had. Varric remembered their past treks across the Free Marches as having been faster, but maybe that was just a trick memory played on him. Maybe it had to with the toddler that spent most of their travel time slung on her mother's hip as opposed to actually walking.
Hawke did it without complaint. She even joked with him when she forgot the precarious nature of their position.
"Do you remember when Fenris was the only squatter in Hightown?" she asked. Ina pawed at her collar and Hawke idly shifted the tyke to her other hip.
"None of these new ones will be nearly as friendly as the elf." Varric eyed the massive stone steps that led up to what was left of Kirkwall's Circle of Magi. Bricks battered by the sun, time and strife. "I'm not in the mood to take a shiv to the spine for the crumbs of cheese I have in my travel pack."
"Is that what you're calling the mold on our bread?" The corners of Hawke's mouth curved up as she tended to Ina's babbling. "I 'la' you too, precious girl." She looked up at Varric and shrugged. "Is it too much to hope that Ser Cullen would gift us a meal?"
"We'll see," Varric said.
The last time he'd spent any time in the gallows, there were bodies decorating the very steps they were climbing. A grim thought, but no less unsettling than empty streets. A single merchant sat with a cart of goods, probably the only man with coin enough to hire a guarded escort.
They traded the dusky sky streaked with pink for the high cathedral ceilings of the Circle. The red carpets imported from Orlais had been beautiful once, but time had frayed their edges and some stains refused to be scrubbed out.
A skeleton staff dotted the enormous hallways, mostly templars interspersed with the random tranquil. Not a single mage. Hawke didn't say anything, but her grip tightened on Ina until the babe whined.
"Excuse me, how can I help you?" He was a broad shouldered wall of muscle. It was an obvious intimidation tactic, with how he tapped his fingers along the hilt of his blade as he came upon them. His round, boyish cheeks and kind blue eyes betrayed him, however.
"Keran?" Hawke cocked her head to one side and grinned.
"You?" Keran's hand dropped immediately to his side and his posture softened. "We sent people looking, there have been Seekers, but they've all come back empty handed."
"I've been a little preoccupied," she replied as she shifted the baby on her hip.
He blinked and his eyes grew wide at the sight of Ina. "Oh!"
Hawke's laugh echoed down the corridor.
"We're looking for Knight Commander Cullen," Varric said. It felt too open in the Great Hall, too exposed.
Keran nodded. "He's in his office." He walked them up the stairs and accompanied them down the hallway. Outside Cullen's door he paused. "I'm glad you're okay."
"Me too," Hawke said. "How are you and Macha doing?"
"Macha's dead."
"Oh." She pulled Ina closer to her and Ina reached for her mother's hair. "I'm so sorry, Keran."
He offered them a forced smile. "It was my failure, not yours, but thank you, Serah."
Perhaps Varric had been wrong in his initial evaluation of Keran. There was nothing boyish to the man's face, now. They walked into Cullen's office and left him at the door.
For a man who often bemoaned paperwork, Cullen was nose deep in it. He barely acknowledged their entrance, trapped behind his desk with a stack of papers narrowly avoiding the wick of a candle. Gray had sprouted sporadically along his temples before it receded back to his original brown. Varric, too, probably had a bit more gray to his hair than he was ready to admit as of yet.
"Pardon me for not greeting you properly, Champion," he murmured. "But my workload's been heavier since we've absorbed the remaining city guard."
Varric felt himself reaching for the safety of Bianca, like a child lurching for his mother's skirt. "How have things been, Cullen?"
"You know how they've been, Varric." Cullen placed a letter over the candle's flame. "What is it that you want?"
"No small talk?" Varric asked. "I heard a real good story about a Chantry sister with brilliant red hair-"
"We left on friendly terms, Hawke." When the fire lapped up to his fingers, Cullen shook the destroyed document vigorously to snuff out the flames. "But you must understand that the Champion is not a sign of gentle change. I can't help but wonder what calamity is on your heels."
"The personal sort," Hawke said. She walked to his desk and sat her daughter atop it. Ina squirmed and sent papers fluttering to the ground. "Ina Beth, say hello to the nice man."
Ina babbled something in that half gibberish-half language she was so fond of before she offered Cullen a wave.
Cullen actually looked a bit relieved. He pushed the candle out of Ina's reach. "I had wondered why your name never appeared in any of the skirmishes in my reports."
"I would gladly stay in my forced retirement," Hawke said. "But I think Ina is touched with magic."
Cullen studied the girl as her grabby hands made their way to the feathered shaft of his pen in its inkwell. He gently flicked the child's nose, but his eyes were steely as he looked her over. "Has she displayed any talent?" he asked. "Small, unexplained house fires are a common first sign."
"No." Hawke laughed softly. "Just family superstition so far."
"Knight Commander? I was told you asked for tea."
That lifeless voice had Varric's throat closing in on itself. It wasn't fair. She still smelled how she always smelled. Sun warmed skin on a summer's day. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend, but when he opened them...
Bethany Hawke stood there with a tray of tea in her hands, her brown eyes dull and bland, that brand of tranquility etched into her forehead, an unforgiveable scar. She looked like Bethany, smelled like Bethany, but there was a hollowness to her voice that echoed of broken promises.
Varric resigned himself to always wanting things he could never have. He stroked Bianca.
"I never asked for..." Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Keran. Of course. Thank you for the tea, Bethany. Did you know your sister was here?"
"Hello, Esther." She should have been smiling that shy little half grin, she should have been doing that little head tilt of hers. Instead, she stood placidly in the doorway.
It was what Bethany had wanted. Varric had to keep telling himself that. It was what she wanted.
Hawke had enough emotion for the both of them. She snatched Ina back up into her arms with a ferocity that left the tyke fussing. "There's no Circle in Kirkwall." Her lip curled up and revealed an angry flash of teeth. "What are you doing with my sister?"
Varric had heard rumors that Cullen had once suffered at the hands of mages. Horrible torture and other indignities. Varric respected the man for his ability to stay more rational than people like Meredith despite his past. Cullen remained in his seat, the only sign of his disquiet was the long exhale when he folded his hands on the desk. "The tranquil are useless to the mages who wish to fight," he said. "Yet most common people view them as mages. I've been trying to have my men collect any stray tranquil, so that they can be protected and live out their lives in peace."
"I like it here, sister," Bethany droned in that monotone voice. "The Knight Commander takes good care of me. Even Fenris treats me more kindly than he used to."
"Since you had your connection severed?" The words quickly left Varric's mouth in a grumble before he could stop himself. "Yeah, I could see that."
"Fenris is here, too?" In the dimly lit office, Hawke's eyes were sunken pits in her face. "It figures."
"The Chantry has their Seekers," Cullen said. "We have a wolf."
"I wish you wouldn't call me that." The rumbling bass came from behind Bethany. Varric could see the elf's lyrium tattoos gleam in the candlelight.
"And now you've joined us as well." There was no amusement in Cullen's face. "Was this Keran's idea?"
"No." Fenris walked into the room and headed toward Hawke. "I heard that some old friends had a fool notion that they could sidestep all the consequences caused by their poor decisions."
"Bethany, I don't believe you've met your niece, yet." Hawke breezed past Fenris and presented her daughter to her sister. Ina was kicking her legs and trying to free herself from her mother's grasp. "Her name's Ina Beth. I named her after you. Sort of."
"She has red hair," was all Bethany would say.
"There is no Circle in Kirkwall." Hawke blocked the doorway with her body before she set her daughter down. "How do I train her? How do I keep her safe?"
Fenris sniffed. "Typical."
"Unless you have something useful to say, I suggest you keep your comments about my child to yourself, Fenris." When Hawke used that tone, it was usually a cue to Varric that he had seconds to grope for his crossbow.
"Nothing good ever comes from magic." There was more disgust than anger in Fenris' voice. Varric decided that the day Fenris actually backed down from something would be a lovely one, indeed. "You know this. You have so many firsthand examples of this. Now you're paying the highest price for your indiscretion and still you expect to charm and negotiate your way out of it."
Ina had fallen on her bottom and began to crawl and pull her way toward Cullen and whatever interesting thing she saw behind his desk.
"She is a baby!"
"So was Danarius, once."
"Oh, you pitiful little man." Hawke raked both hands through her hair. "Don't you dare try to condemn her for my actions."
Cullen scooped Ina up into his arms and sat her on his knee. "If I may, Fenris." When he had both their attentions, he continued. "The safest way to train a fledgling mage is to have a fully trained mage."
"Which we don't have," Fenris snapped. "The only thing we can do is submit the child to the rite of tranquility."
"You'll kill me first." Hawke's daggers were in her hands without her usual, carefree flourish. Just a flash of steel and a snarl.
Ina was crying in earnest, now and Cullen bounced her on his knee to no avail. "Hawke, put those daggers away and take your child, please," he said. "Submitting a child to the rite of tranquility is ludicrous, Fenris. Especially because we have no confirmation that she is a mage."
"So we do nothing, then?" Fenris asked. "We lack another alienage that we can conveniently burn to the ground."
Hawke flung a hand back toward her sister in an angry gesture. "That is not a solution! That will never be a solution!"
Varric casually made his way over to Bethany and her forgotten tray of tea. "I hear there's still a garden out back," he said.
She nodded. "There is. Unfortunately the nightly frosts haven't been particularly kind to our flowers."
He nodded back at her. "Any daisies?"
"No." She should have been smiling. She should have been doing something, anything. She just stood there, while Varric breathed in her memory and desperately tried to forget. "There was a rose bush that I was convinced was dead, though. A single flower bloomed from it yesterday afternoon."
"Enough!" Cullen's shout was loud enough to cut through the noise and silence Ina. The girl's eyes were enormous as she blinked three times and then resumed her crying. "Fenris, I want you out walking our perimeter. Hawke, for the love of sweet Andraste, take your child."
Hawke walked over the Cullen and collected her daughter. "Shhh, sweetling, you're alright. Everything is alright." She stroked the girl's coppery curls and rubbed her back.
Fenris stalked out of the office without so much as a head nod. He'd get over it. Maybe.
"You need a mage," Cullen said.
"Sure," Hawke replied. "And my estate in Hightown, too. How about a chamber pot made out of solid gold while we're at it?"
There was a reason why Varric initially didn't want Hawke to come back to Kirkwall. "Hawke," he hissed.
"Not all mages are at war with the templars." Cullen opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. "I'll send a letter to my contact in Ferelden."
"And you think this contact will respond?" Hawke asked.
"I won't make any promises," Cullen said. "But as the scion of the Amell family, I can't help but think your name will carry a certain amount of fascination for him."