3. Judgment
Léonie Caron
The Maker curse all paperwork and those who inflict it upon his poor servants.
I have an office, of course, adjoining my quarters, but the long map table in the library is the only place that can accommodate these blasted treasury ledgers. And despite all of Mistress Woolsey's very careful instruction, I fear that I shall never truly be able to make these endless columns and figures make sense. Garevel is a fine seneschal, as great a steward of this keep as his predecessor had been — but we are both soldiers, not book-keepers, and he hates standing over these heavy old books as much as I do. I wonder, and not for the first time, if it would be easy to pry Woolsey away from Weisshaupt once more.
A messenger appears and waits nervously in the threshold to the library, and Garevel is all too happy to put down his pencil and meet her there.
"Please tell the Warden Commander that the party from Denerim has returned," the girl says, in her soft nervous voice.
Oh, now that — that's all the encouragement I need to forget about these numbers.
"Thank you," he says, and hands her a copper, and then he crosses the room to the map table. "Commander—"
"Ah, Garevel, I heard," I say, a sweetness in my heart. "Come, let us welcome them back to the Vigil."
"I'm sure that you'll have a lot to catch up on," Garevel says, his tone just the right side of innocent. He spots another young page passing us in the hallway, and catches him by the elbow. "You. To the kitchens. Have some refreshments put together and sent to the Warden Commander's office. Wine, cold meat, cheese." Another copper from that bottomless pocket of his.
"Yes, ser," the boy says, and sets off at a run to the kitchens.
There is ink on my hands, and I bring a rag with me to clean off what I can, wiping at it as we make our way across the keep.
There are parts of this keep that had to be rebuilt after that last great battle, their walls a little rougher and a little cleaner than the old, smoothed-off stones of the existing structures. We have both been broken and remade here, the Vigil and the Order and I. Forty Wardens live here now, and those who surround us — cooks, armoury, pages and squires. Ten more in Denerim with King Alistair and his queen Elissa. We are small, yes, but we are strong.
We make our way around the outside edge, past the new armoury, and then out into the mounting yard, and I break into a wide grin when I see they have all returned safe, and at Nathaniel most of all.
Two weeks they were gone, just that. Just a journey to our brothers and sisters in Denerim, and a little recruitment on the way, for anyone who would prefer to join with us. But we Wardens live dangerous lives, and it was not so long ago that Nathaniel had been gone for long, worrying months in the Free Marches, and I am grateful for safe travels even when the journey is small.
Besides, the days just feel right with him around. Garevel is a fine seneschal, yes. But this place feels incomplete without Nathaniel.
It is rare for him to smile and I feel especially lucky to receive one, a faint little thing at the corner of his eyes and his mouth. "Several pouches from Denerim for you," he says, handing me a group of slim, rough leather envelopes. They will be the usual business of the order, of course, although by Nathaniel's tone I sense that there is some more to be told. Behind him, all climbing out of a wagon, are some new conscripts, all guarded and curious. And one more, his head bowed, being led away towards the little cellar we use as a dungeon.
"Trouble on the road?"
"I'll tell you later," he says, his eyes following the figure as he is taken into the building. And then he looks back at me, something strange and hurt in there.
"Garevel has organised something for my office. Let's talk."
"Yes."
He gives me the smallest of updates on the way back — the Wardens in Denerim are also growing, a group led with some enthusiasm by the Queen herself. I am very fond of Elissa Cousland.
I close the door to my office, and very gently — so as not to make it too painfully obvious to anyone outside in the hall — I set the big wooden bolt in place with a quiet, firm thud.
"Something troubles you."
"This, first," he says, and he crosses the room with just two quick strides. Both his hands are on my waist, and he pulls me close to kiss him, long and hard and not altogether gently. There is some kind of sadness in him, some urgency in the trail of his fingertips along the planes of my waist, though I have barely a moment to wonder what it could be, distracted as I am by the sensation of his hands.
"Why, what is it, what's happened—?"
"Shh," he says, and pulls the hem of my shirt from my breeches.
Oh, I see.
We know each other's bodies as well as we know the hills and valleys of this arling, every touch of our hands travelling well-worn paths. I coax him backwards towards the desk, the better to embrace him, for he is a good deal taller than I am. It might be more civilised, perhaps, to move to my quarters in the next room, although with the urgency in his touch and his voice I don't think that he really minds. I am eager, and quite willing, and I unlace my breeches and let my eyes flutter shut as he strokes me with the ball of his thumb, the slight roughness of his callouses a delight against my most sensitive places.
We have had years now to learn the things that bring us both pleasure. It is not long before I am whispering his name into his mouth as he looks at me, looks right into my eyes, not willing to go any further until he is sure that I am satisfied. He, too, comes quickly, with a rough sound at the back of his throat, and I stroke his hair and I breathe him in — rosin and leather, the dust of the road, the heat of his skin.
"I missed you," I tell him, when he seems sufficiently recovered.
"Forgive me," he says.
"For what?"
He leans back a little to meet my eyes. "For my… impatience."
"Oh, love." In truth I enjoyed this, a little reminder of the way things were when we were somewhat younger, when we first fell for one another. "What's gotten into you?"
He sighs and looks at me with those eyes of his, the very colour of storm clouds. "It's good to remind yourself that you're alive."
"Something happened, didn't it?"
"I need to talk with you about that prisoner," he says.
I would never have recognised him at first, but now, to look into his face — yes, it is him. His hair is darker, dirtier. His clothes are rags. He looks like he has walked through the Void itself these last years.
"Anders?" I say, and my throat catches on the name. He drags his eyes up to meet mine, as if with a great effort. It can only be him, and yet…
"It is you."
"More or less, Caron," he half-whispers, with the ghost of his old smile.
It tears at my heart to see him this way, so ragged and worn-out. And his skin — I am not imagining it, surely, but his skin seems paler, the veins in his arms more prominent. His eyes have begun to lighten and change. His cheeks have begun to sink into his face. I have always had a talent for sensing the taint in another, and when I concentrate on him for a moment I get that strange Warden sense of his presence — the mark in all of us brothers and sisters, the same way that we can sense the ghouls and the darkspawn. He was always so vital, so strong, but he is different now, the song of his blood more like that of the nameless scrambling beasts far below us.
Unmistakable.
"How long have you known?"
"Two weeks…. No, I suppose almost three, now."
Not long, then. I wonder how it is that he has deteriorated so quickly.
"Is it true, Anders? About Kirkwall?"
He sighs. "Does any of it matter if—"
I slap my hands against the bars and he jumps in surprise. "Of course it matters."
Nathaniel steps forward, his voice a dangerous whisper. "You were hours away from the templars, Anders, so the least you can do is tell your bloody story."
He gazes at us both. "Alright," he says.
And tell it he does.
Sometimes the only place to find answers is far from the walls of this keep. I take a handful of arrows and a short bow. There are fast-growing pines in these areas, planted to replace the ones that had been burned away in the darkspawn assault, the ones that were lost back when we first came here. The young forest is beginning to attract birds and small animals — not so many that we can hunt here every day, but enough that we can have braised hare every now and then.
Dusk is the best time. I settle into the crook of a tree and wait, still, for something to come.
Anders. That day we heard what had happened to him and his group — he and Justice had been leading them south for an investigation of a credible report of lingering darkspawn in a small town. Nothing for days, and then a messenger arrived with reports of a terrible fire and bones and the smell of death… he had come with a piece of charred armour, the silver griffon motif at its centre showing the truth of the story.
No one returned.
We mourned, of course. To lose brothers and sisters in any way is a deep tragedy. To lose Anders and Justice in particular hurt in a very particular, very special way. I did more than mourn; I grieved.
To think that they are still alive — he is still alive — what do we call this now?
To think what he has become.
I should hang him. I really should. If not for what he did in Kirkwall, then for what he did in that forest so long ago.
But for all the things I have seen, for all the men and women I've put to the sword, for all the creatures I have faced in the dark — well, if you asked me to be the one to put him to death, could I do it?
If I could do it, what then?
Would that silent presence in him come out? Would there be a repeat of that horror that took so many from us those years ago? And what if he succumbed to the taint with such a power in him?
If I sent him to Denerim, to Kirkwall?
If I do not, and people find outt?
These are the thoughts that circulate in my mind as I watch and I wait. A hunter is patient. A hunter has time to wait.
Nathaniel appears beside me, silent.
"Have you been looking for me long?"
"First place I tried," he says. Inside, I smile.
A pair of rabbits appear, then, lazily making their way through some soft grass. I have an arrow already held loosely in my fingers and bring it quietly, slowly to my bow, and wait until I am sure that they plan to stick around.
I nock it, draw it.
I let it go.
And the arrow strikes the rabbit a little short, a little to the right, piercing its shoulder instead of slicing neatly through its head.
Merde.
"What have I told you about the power with that bow?" Nathaniel grumbles behind me, but I ignore him and go to the fallen rabbit. It is alive, its breath almost imperceptible and shallow, doing that trick that prey animals do when they are desperate to make the predator think that they are dead.
There is only one kindness to be done, only one right path, but as I take the little animal in my hands something flip-flops in my stomach, and I freeze up.
"What?" Nate asks.
"I just…"
There is a sob ready to fly from the back of my throat and I don't know why this has to be so bloody hard.
He takes the rabbit from me without a word. I look away; I know what he's doing, and I don't need to see.