AN:Here we are at chapter4! yay!Wow I really hate writing long conversations, but I keep running into them... *sigh* Elemmire and Alistair bothered me my entire vacation and insisted that I come back home and write more. As always, thank you to all who review my story and take the time to even read it, you make me :)
P.S. there may or may not be a LOTR quote in here somewhere. +100 approval from the author if you can spot it.
P.P.S. Peter Jackson, please don't sue me for using it.
Disclaimer:BioWare is still not mine, and therefore neither is Dragon Age or any of their fun characters.
Alistair's nerves where shot. The closer their band of misfits got to Redcliffe, the more fidgety he became. When the turrets of the castle finally appeared in the distant haze, Elemmire put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and it spooked him so badly that he jumped, tripped over his own feet, and landed heavily on the ground, much to the amusement of the swamp witch and the chantry sister and the concern of his fellow Warden. He couldn't tell what the Qunari felt on a good day; exasperation, no doubt.
"Maybe we should take a break?" The blond girl suggested; which caused Morrigan to role her eyes in annoyance.
"If we stop every time Alistair acts like a fool, we shall be standing here until the darkspawn are upon us." She snipped.
"I'm feeling a little ragged actually, and it might be best to try and wash up a bit before we meet the Arl. We'll hardly seem like people worth backing if we look like vagrant peasants covered in mud." Elemmire replied, giving the apostate a wan smile. The woman merely gave her a brief suspicious glare with her golden eyes before shrugging and walking away.
Alistair looked up at his friend gratefully from where he had landed in a heap and mouthed the words 'thank you'. She grinned at him and offered him a hand in rising, which he took silently. He knew he had to tell her.
When they had all spread out and taken a moment to scrub the dust and grime from their faces and hands in a nearby stream, Alistair decided his armor could probably do with a wash too, especially after his earlier fall in the mud. Gathering it up, he looked around and spotted the person he wanted to talk to sitting under a shady tree. She was thumbing her way through a thick book with one hand and using the other to hold an apple she was eating absentmindedly. Her huge war hound was stretched out beside her; the picture of contentment. She glanced up at his approach and smiled, gesturing for him to sit beside her in the space not occupied by dog.
They sat for a few minutes in companionable silence, enjoying the brief reprieve from constant walking. He scrubbed industriously at his armor, trying the work up the nerve to spill his biggest secret, because he knew it was inevitable that it would come up somewhere in their conversation with the Arl, and he would lose her trust, and possibly her friendship. He couldn't let that happen, not when the genuine camaraderie between them and their occasional playful banter was all that was keeping him from sinking down into the death and despair that was slowly eating its way through this country.
"Uh. L-look, can we talk for a moment?" He stammered, setting his armor aside. "I- um, need to tell you something I-uh, probably should have told you earlier…" He saw the concern in her face and grimaced. This was so unfair! They had just gotten to the point where they were talking easily to each other, it was the first time he knew what to say to a girl since he was eight, and she was the closest thing he had to a true friend since…well, ever. And now he had to ruin everything.
"What's on your mind?" She asked, closing her book and tossing the apple core to Dagnir, who crunched it noisily.
"I told you before how Arl Eamon raised me, right? That my mother was a serving girl at the castle and he took me in? The reason he did that was because…well, b-because King Maric was my father. Which made Cailan my… half-brother, I suppose." He braced himself for her impending wrath, but she merely sat there, face completely blank, and her wide eyes blinking not unlike a startled calf.
"You're having me on." She said finally, a smirk beginning in anticipation of the snarky retort she was sure he had at the ready. He didn't answer; his face a mask of guilt and shame, his dark eyes pleading for understanding. She gaped in horror.
"Dear sweet Maker…you're not kidding are you?" She sounded almost breathless. He shook his head sullenly. "You're the- and you…and I-" Complete sentences seemed beyond her grasp for the moment.
"I would have told you, but…it never really meant anything to me. I was inconvenient, a possible threat to Cailan's rule, and so they kept me secret. I've never talked about it to anyone." He told her pleadingly, but she just continued staring at him in shock and disbelief.
"Didn't mean anything?" She shrilled when she found her voice. "Sod it all, man! You are the last Theirin, the only heir to Calenhad's throne- and you don't think that means anything?" Dagnir's ears perked up at the shouting and he gave them both a curious glance before deciding he wanted no part in their argument and trotted off to find the Qunari.
"Well, sorry!" He replied heatedly, his own ire rising at her indignation. "It's hard to remember the glory of your bloodline when you're sleeping in a hayloft!" Her eyes softened in sympathy, but she still shook her head at him.
"I can't believe this…" She groaned, "Not only are there only two of us, but you're the bloody prince! What were you thinking, putting me in charge and letting me put you out on the front lines?"
"I don't want some kind of special treatment for it!" He exclaimed frantically. "Everyone who knew either resented me for it or they coddled me…even Duncan kept me out of the fighting because of it. I didn't want you to know, as long as possible. I'm sorry." There was bitterness in his voice and he wouldn't meet her gaze.
"Ugh!" She practically roared in frustration, rising to her feet and pacing in front of him. "Of course they would! Cailan and Anora had been married for five years, and never had an heir. You are all that is left of four hundred years of Ferelden royalty! You are special, you need to be kept safe- and I… Oh Maker's blood… I called you a moron yesterday, didn't I? Andraste's flaming pyre, I directly insulted the rightful King of Ferelden… somewhere in the Fade, my mother is having a heart attack."
"I am not the rightful King of anything!" Alistair declared petulantly, crossing his arms and huffing at her. "I am the son of a commoner, a Grey Warden on top of that, and nothing 'special' that needs constant babysitting." To his absolute horror, she knelt before him with her arms folded across her chest, and bowed her head in respect.
"Begging you pardon sire, but don't be a fool." She told him in a solemn voice. "A madman sits on Ferelden's throne, and you are the rightful heir. Your country needs you, Alistair." She gazed up at him through her pale blond bangs, freezing him in the deep blue depths of her eyes. "You are our king, our prince -my prince- and if by my life or death I can protect you, I will."
"But I don't want to be king!" He practically whined. "I have never wanted it!" She made no move to rise.
"It is your duty, Alistair." She told him evenly.
"Duty?" He scoffed, surging to his feet and looming over her kneeling form. "What about my duty as a Grey Warden? What about ending the Blight? Is that not enough duty for you? All my life, this one thing has cast a shadow over everything, ruined everything- an unfortunate accident of birth. Then I became Grey Warden and found honor and brotherhood and acceptance…And you're telling me to throw it away to become the King and live the rest of my short life being constantly reminded of how I'm not as good as King Maric, or Cailan?" Her silence only rankled his nerves further. "Forget it." He snapped as he stormed off, "What do you know about being told you have to do something, or be something, just because of who your father was?"
When they finally began their trek down the surrounding hills into Redcliffe Village, the group was consumed by a frosty silence. The rift between the two Wardens made the atmosphere thick with tension, and the rest of their party felt it heavily. Even Morrigan felt it was in her best interests not to barb the lone figure that was brooding at the back of their formation.
Alistair was hovering somewhere between resentful rage and severe depression as he tromped along at the back of the line, staring avidly at the tops of his boots. He had been so sure that she would understand…or at least hear him out. But no, she was just like everyone else, placing his blood in a position of more importance than who he actually was, or what he actually wanted to be. He was just… Alistair, and when that had been all she had known of him, every smile she sent his way had been a blessing, every laugh a piece of hard won joy; because it wasn't for the 'Bastard Prince' or the 'Rightful King', it was for him, exactly as he was.
He was so caught up in the downward spiral of his dark thoughts that he didn't notice the constant worried glances being sent his way by his fellow Warden from the head of their troop. After pausing a few times, unsure of how to breech this first argument between them, she seemed to find her resolve and stomped her way back to where their should –be sovereign was sulking, causing the rest of them to halt in their tracks.
"Cousland." She blurted at him suddenly.
"Sorry, what?" He asked, completely bewildered. She took a long shaky breath.
"My full name is Elemmire Lysithea Cousland." She told him as if it explained something, staring at him expectantly.
"Uh, nice to meet you?" Alistair replied uncertainly, but then the wheels in his brain started rotating. "Wait… that name sounds familiar… and you're from Highever… Maker's breath! You can't mean- Cousland as in Teyrn Cousland?"
"I am his youngest child," her eyes grew sad, "Perhaps his only child, if Fergus is…"
"But that would make you a…a Teyrna? Maker's blood! And you were getting after me for keeping secrets!" He exclaimed. His mind was in a whirl, it had been obvious that she was from some noble house, not only did her manners and general way of speaking give her away, but she owned a mabari, and they were not an inexpensive common kind of dog. Not only that, but Dagnir was extremely clever, even for his breed, and handsomely proportioned, it was plain to see that he was a thoroughbred. Yet, he had never imagined that she was a Teyrn's daughter! Perhaps the child of a minor Bann who lived near enough to Highever to consider it home who had gotten ambushed by highwaymen, or darkspawn, and thereby lost her family when Duncan had found her. Surely nothing so trivial could have taken out the powerful lord and his entire family with the number of soldiers that would have undoubtedly been accompanying them…
"But you said your family was…" The final word of his sentence caught in his throat at the pain in her eyes. "What happened?" He whispered.
"The Arl of Amaranthine, Rendon Howe," She spat the name like the vilest of expletives, "Told my father that his troops were delayed due to poor weather. My brother left with almost all of our men, and in the dark of night, when the Arl's men arrived, he sent them to slaughter us in our sleep." Her voice cracked in fury and sorrow; it was the first time Alistair saw tears in her eyes. "My nephew, Oren, was only six years old…they slit his throat like a butchered calf."
No words. Not a single one that he could think of could free her from the agony that twisted the features of her face. No sword or arrow or mage's spell had managed to wound her in the way that the memories of those screams in the night did now. He felt helpless in the wake of her roiling grief.
So he abandoned speech, it had never done him much good anyhow, and simply crushed her fiercely to his chest before she had a chance to protest and he had time to think about what he was doing. Their armor clanged against each other and bit awkwardly into their flesh, but there was something right about it; how this comfort could not be given without some pain as well. She trembled in his arms, he couldn't tell if it was from anger or anguish, and ever so slowly sagged into his embrace.
"I'm going to kill him." She swore into his collarbone, "I'm going to make him pay."
"We're going to make him pay." Alistair corrected firmly, "You're not alone in this. We're both Grey Wardens, that makes you my-" She leaned back to look up at him and he suddenly realized how close they were standing; he gulped. "-sister." He finished hoarsely.
"I think I like the sound of that." She said with a shy smile. He stepped away from her quickly, blushing furiously and rubbing nervously at the back of his head. She shuffled her boots and suddenly seemed very interested in the clouds floating overhead.
"The p-point I was trying to make," Elemmire stuttered after a few moments of intense awkwardness, "is that I do know what is like to live in the shadow of your parents." He gave her a doubtful look.
"I am by no means trying to belittle whatever suffering it might have caused you." She assured him. "But I know very well what it is to place family honor before personal comfort and duty before happiness."
"And it didn't make you miserable?" Alistair asked.
"Some days," she conceded. "Usually the ones that involved me putting on something frilly and spending the evening surrounded by potbellied older men with wandering eyes- and hands." She grimaced, "Or being fawned over by their drunken wives as they try to convince me to marry their dimwitted sons."
"And you would subject me to this?" Alistair baulked, looking horrified.
"Don't worry Alistair, they would never ask you to marry their dimwitted sons…though they might try to put you in something frilly." She smirked.
"You know what I meant." He glowered, unimpressed with her attempt at humor.
"Yes, the whole dealing with deceitful conceited nobles part is awful and boring," She sighed wearily, "But it's not about them- not really. It's about those hopeless people in Lothering. You wanted to help them, didn't you? It's about the sick and hungry who line the streets of every village we've passed through; if we leave our land in the clutches of people like Loghain and Howe, who will be their champion? They need people like us- people like you- in positions of power. Being a Theirin, or being a Cousland for that matter, means being born to a certain amount of privilege, but being given that privilege means that we are slaves to those who were born with none. We belong to more than just ourselves, Alistair."
"It never seemed like much of a privilege to me, being a cast-off stable boy shoveling horse droppings, though I suppose it was better than starving to death in a gutter somewhere, and as far as belonging to more than myself… Well, I wouldn't really know, no one ever really seemed to…" He trailed off, uncomfortable at revealing his loneliness. She placed a comforting hand on his forearm.
"The way the Arl treated you was abhorrent, you should have been raised as his ward, not his stable hand. While I understand why he felt he should not raise you as his son, there was no reason to bring you up like some commoner's cur." She told him gently, "The Rebel Queen birthed your father in a barn, or so the stories say, and he barely saw the inside of a castle until his coronation, yet he is heralded as one of our greatest heroes, 'Maric the Savior.' Humble origins are nothing to be ashamed of."
"It wasn't that bad…" He mumbled, kicking at nearby pebbles. "And I'm nothing like my father. A great leader of men? Someone soldiers and nobles alike look to on the battlefield for inspiration and strength? That's not me. I'm just…Alistair. Everyone else will tell you so, I'm just goofy awkward Alistair, who never does anything right… I couldn't save Duncan…or Cailan, and you want me to rescue an entire nation? You've got the wrong man."
"And I'm just Elemmire, the silly noble's daughter, whose head was always off in the clouds somewhere. The first time I was going to be in charge of troops would have been when my father left for Ostagar. I was clever and educated, but everything was a distant theory, no blood, no death. Until Howe's men stormed our keep I'd never killed a man, or even been in a real battle, but here I am, struggling to lead us, because you told me I could…because you told me I should."
She snarled at him fiercely, but then something in his expression seemed to make her crumble, and she sighed wearily, "I always thought being a Grey Warden would be some kind of wonderful adventure, swooping in on Griffons destroying evil easily…but its not. There is nothing grand or glorious here, this is dust and decay and misery. Elemmire the Grey Warden can't save her country any more than Lady Elemmire Lysithea Cousland of Highever could, but we have to try Alistair. I have to believe we can save someone."
"And you think my being on the throne would help?" He asked, slightly dumbstruck.
"I know it would." She told him seriously, the intensity of her blue eyes daring him to doubt her. For a few moments all he could do was gape at her in awe, and then he burst out laughing.
"You would be an amazing queen." He grinned at her.
"Is that a proposal?" She laughed at him.
"N-no!" He stammered, flushing beet-red. "I meant you would make a far better queen than I would ever make a king, that's all. You are a better leader by far, you aren't afraid to make tough decisions, and you can talk people into to doing just about anything."
"Including talking you into claiming your birthright?" She asked in a slightly teasing tone.
"Talking me into at least considering it." He sighed, "I still think putting me in charge of anything is a terrible idea, but…I do want to help people, if you think I could. Just promise me that this is a last resort, if there is no one better to place on the throne…I'll do it." He held out a hand to her and she shook it firmly.
"It's a deal…my prince." She smirked at him as she walked back towards the head of their party.
"Great," He groaned, "I'm going to regret this. Somehow I just know it."
"Nope" Fergus sighed contentedly, "I still feel completely justified." He carelessly wiped what was most likely spittle and blood off the back of his hand and smiled smugly at the man kneeling on his carpet.
"I'mb thooo glad," Alistair said thickly, dabbing the blood from his bruised nose. "I whood hate to think that thomthing tho trivial as bunching me in the face might ruin your day." Apparently, he had reached his limit of how many head injuries he could take before becoming mulish.
"Still, you cannot say you did not have it coming, my friend." The elf sneered down at him.
"Yeth, of courth!" The former Warden continued sarcastically, "Everyone dows that its only polite to bunch subone after they rescue your sibling- only natural! …and I'mb not your friend." He snapped.
"No you are not!" The Antivan snarled like a feral cat, "You are a pathetic, worthless, son of a-"
"Zevran! Fergus! What in the Maker's name is going on in here?" An angry voice with a pleasing Orelisan lilt cried from the doorway.
As she moved into his field of vision, Alistair's breath caught in his throat. In a sweeping gown of the deepest midnight colored velvet, with her hair curled and braided and spilling down her back like a waterfall of red-gold, she looked every bit the lady she had always claimed to miss being. Her limbs were still white and willowy; her movements still perfect in their quiet practiced grace, and her crystalline blue eyes gazed at him with a mix of sorrow and forgiveness.
"Leliana," He said her name like a prayer, soft, pleading, and disbelieving. "What are you doing here?"
Flowery, prone to random outburst of giggles, slightly ridiculous, and so seemingly meek, she had stirred his macho man instinct to defend something- preferably whilst brandishing something pointy, so when Elemmire had tried to send her back to the chantry, he had stuck up for her, insisting that she was the benign sort of crazy. With her full pouting lips and her bright flashing eyes, not to mention the way she swung her hips when she walked…she had just been so pretty, in every way that Alistair had assumed a woman should be; which caused him no small amount of embarrassment, as it often led to him making a complete ass of himself when talking to her, or near her…or at all. But for all her soft curves and enticing smiles, Leliana had not been the one who had crept in like a thief in the night and stolen his heart. Instead, she had become something of an older sister to him, and seeing her now, he realized it wasn't just Ellie he had been missing. They had been something of a family once, a strange, loud, bickering family, but they had all looked out for each other, which was more than Alistair could say of the people he'd been around for the last five or six years.
"Alistair," She smiled as she knelt beside him, pulling out a handkerchief and a health poultice from some cleverly concealed pocket in her dress; apparently she had been expecting this to some degree, and began tending to his battered face. "It is good to see you again… though you look truly awful."
"Bruises and blood are all the rage in the Free Marches." He told her; he tried to smirk playfully, but it wound up as a sort of a grimace, smiling hurt right now.
"Oh, really?" She grinned, playing along, "And I suppose the fashion also calls for scruffy beards, unkempt hair, and clothing with questionable stains? Why did no one tell me?" The poultice was cool against the pulsing heat of his bruises as her nimble fingers healed him with practiced ease until there was almost no pain left at all. Well, not physically, at any rate.
"Don't coddle him, Lily," Fergus rumbled from behind his desk. "You'll ruin all of my handiwork." She whirled away from her patient to glower at the Teyrn.
"Oh, so you're proud of yourself, are you?" She hissed at him, "It takes a real man to beat down an already wounded, unarmed, and half-starved opponent."
"No…but he still deserved it," Fergus grumbled obstinately. He must have seen the rage building in her eyes though, for he hastily added. "I'll apologize if you want, of course. No need to get yourself riled and upset the baby."
"Then do so." Leliana commanded coldly. To this, the Teyrn murmured something Alistair found quite unintelligible, but it seemed to appease the red head, who walked behind the desk, where Fergus rose and yielded the chair to her.
"Baby?" The Ex-Warden asked, stumbling up from his crouched position to stare at her.
"Four months along now," She beamed at him, placing a pale hand against the slight swell of her abdomen. The pregnant bard gestured for him to pull up the chair placed near the doorway and sit across from her.
"Whose?" Was all her former companion managed to get out as he slumped down in his seat, all of this was just too strange to fathom.
"Well, mine of course," Leliana giggled at him, "and my husband's." She sent an overly warm glance up at Fergus and he responded with a brief caress of her jaw and running his fingers along her white throat with a look in his eyes that was almost indecent.
"You're the Teyrna?" Alistair exclaimed. She merely nodded, still smiling broadly, but looking a bit sheepish as well. He stared at her like she was the strangest thing he had ever seen, which was untrue, since he was pretty sure that running into his should-be-dead former lover and her pet assassin in the backstreets of Highever topped the list for right now. He had so many questions that he didn't even have the faintest idea of where to start.
"How long have you…When did you?" It seemed coherent speech was beyond his mental capacities today.
"Just under five years." Leliana supplied, guessing at his intent. "We got married shortly after Duncan was born."
"We got married because Duncan was born." Fergus corrected blithely. Alistair simply stared at them for a moment, something dark and hateful welling in his heart as he drank in the picture of everything he could never have; the tenderness and contentment in the Teyrn's face that was so achingly like his sibling's made the ragged ruined man before them nearly sick with envy.
"But perhaps we should start at the beginning," Leliana said hesitantly, perhaps catching something of the jealousy in her former comrade's eyes.
'The beginning', Alistair wondered idly where that had been. At one time he had thought it had all started with that slightly faded flower and some fumbled words, but now he wasn't so sure. Maybe it started the first time he had been bold enough -stupid enough- to kiss her, or maybe it went back farther, when he had realized that his heart made a strange sort of squirming in his chest every time he caught her smiling at him. Or perhaps it all went back to Ostagar, to the instant he had seen the sunlight catch in her golden hair for the first time, her face tight and ashen, her wide blue eyes so incredibly lost. Which one was the moment that had sealed his fate, had doomed him to fall for this woman who was so brilliantly manipulative that if someone had told him that one day she would betray him, would tear out his still beating heart from his chest, and in front of people, he would have beaten them to a bloody pulp before walking away laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of such a notion.
"Wynne told us what happened…" The Teyrna's lightly accented voice pierced his rambling thoughts, "at the landsmeet." Alistair glowered and said nothing. Leliana's eyes shifted about nervously, "I understand why you were angry, but…Why did you leave?"
"Are you serious?" The man in question exclaimed furiously, slamming his hand down on the desk in front of him, "Being a Grey Warden is supposed to be the highest calling- an honor- an order of the finest warriors, and she let that- that filth become one of us. After everything he did to us, after all the times he tried to hunt us down and slaughter us, she let him live. She would have had me stand beside the man who killed my commander and my king and call him brother. I wouldn't do it- I couldn't."
"I seem to recall her sparing the life of quite a few people who tried to kill you, one of which is standing in this room, you did not feel the need to storm off in a rage then." Leliana said, her tone low and dark, and so unlike her normal self.
"I did object actually, and rather loudly too, but it doesn't matter, this was different." He growled, ignoring the dark looks the Teyrn was sending him, "Conscripting someone absolves them of all their previous crimes, after everything he did, poisoning Arl Eamon, the Mage's tower, Ostagar… She was just going to let him go- no worse than that, she was going to let that murderer be remembered as a hero!"
"Elemmire had a kind and compassionate nature, if she could find a way to spare someone, she would." Fergus snapped at him, "If you loved her half as much as everyone seems to think you did, you would know that. How could you hate her for something like mercy?"
"Don't you try to tell me how I feel or felt about anything," Alistair snarled right back, "What would you have said to her if she had let Howe live? The man who destroyed your home and butchered your family in the night? What if she had forgiven him and became engaged to his son? Would you have sat idly by and called that bastard's son your brother?"
"SILENCE!" Fergus bellowed, rounding the desk angrily, possibly to crunch a few more bones in the blond man's face.
"I never would have asked her to show Howe pity." Alistair continued to rage, despite a deadly-looking Cousland fisting his shirtfront and hauling him to his feet, "I understood, I didn't think so at first, but I know now; some people deserve death. It wasn't murder, it was justice, and she denied me the same right I had to take mine for the betrayal of Duncan and all of our brothers at Ostagar. He saved her life, and she let his death go unpunished."
Alistair could feel the sickening fury from that day slithering back inside him. Time and spirits could only mellow so much of the writhing swell of hurt and anger he had felt when she had ignored his pleas, and betrayed his trust. When the rumors of her death had reached him, he thought he could finally have peace, as awful as that sounded, and bury his pain alongside the one who had inflicted it. But she was alive, and she was here, and he had comforted her- kissed her, after all those moments of 'I'll never forgive her' and 'I wish I could hate her' as he spent nearly six years miserably alone, pretending that he wasn't physically and mentally pining for her with every fiber of his being and placing the weight of her death solely on himself with damning thoughts like 'If I had been there…' It was enough to make bile rise up in the back of his throat.
"Enough." Zevran said sharply from his place against the far bookshelf. "You are both wrong." Everyone in the room froze at his words, Alistair in particular was surprised that the Antivan would do or say anything that might save him from an additional beating.
"Our Warden was not being merciful, though I will not deny that it was her policy to save all who could be saved. Perhaps the girl you knew would have stayed her hand for mercy's sake alone, my dear Teyrn, but the Blight…it changes people, no?" He slowly glanced around at everyone in the room, watching them measure the truth in his words with his sharp tawny eyes.
"Did she tell you something, Zev?" Leliana asked, her voice soft, but her tone surprised.
"And if so, why didn't you tell us sooner?" Fergus rumbled.
"Because I swore not to." The Elf sighed, unfurling himself from his casual- looking lean against some of the Cousland's more expensive books and taking a few steps towards the center of the room, "It could have put you all in considerable danger if things had gone…wrong, which I suppose they did. It still might, truth be told, if Anora ever became suspicious about her father's death, though that seems unlikely. Outside of that, I held my tongue out of professionalism and respect."
Alistair's mind whirled at the implications hidden in the assassin's words, he could only draw one conclusion from them, but it seemed so completely wrong when held up to everything he thought he had known about his former lover, that he couldn't form the words to speak his question aloud. As if reading his mind, the Teynra did it for him.
"Are you saying, Zevran," She began slowly, carefully, "that you were hired?"