Fenris fell asleep more quickly than he expected, lulled by fatigue, the ship's rocking, and by Anders' heat and weight in his arms. If he dreamed, he had no chance to remember when Anders jolted him out of sleep with barely audible whimpers and clutching fingers scrabbling for purchase on his chest.
"Shh…" He closed his hand over Anders' fingers before he could leave scratches and murmured empty reassurances in Arcanum that he could only hope would penetrate the veil of nightmares.
Because he could. Because there were times in his life when he would have given anything for someone to tell him that the darkness would end if he could just hold on. Because hearing Anders in pain...
He set his jaw and finished the thought because he could not allow himself to flinch from it now. Because hearing Anders in pain brought him an echo of that pain.
When had that happened? It was easy enough to pinpoint – when he had walked down a long corridor, seeing that chair, and Anders strapped in it. He had walked step by step back into a nightmare he had spent years running from. He had felt the empathy that could only come from knowing exactly what those straps felt like, what the sleep deprivation felt like, what the utter helplessness and aloneness felt like. What being made into a thing felt like.
He did not pity Anders for his experience, because he would not be pitied himself, but he understood, and now Anders understood some of what had molded Fenris into what he was, even if only by a fraction.
Anders finally stilled, his breaths coming slow and hot against Fenris' collarbone, all the stiffness slipping away until he was just a heavy weight against Fenris' side.
Only a fraction.
He waited until he was certain that Anders was deeply asleep again before he slowly, carefully extricated himself, moving Anders' arm, his leg, freeing himself and sliding away, out of the warmth, out of the bunk, into the cold air in the pitch dark cabin.
He should have known that a man who had survived life as a Grey Warden would not be so easily escaped. He heard Anders stir and blankets shuffle in the dark. He could picture Anders feeling around in the narrow bunk, trying to find where Fenris had gone.
"Fenris?"
The cabin lit with the tiny wisp of magic that Anders summoned. "Fenris?"
Fenris turned his back to Anders and found his tunic in the dim light. "Go back to sleep."
He could feel Anders' gaze burning into his back, but he didn't turn around while he jerked on his tunic, buckled on his armor, settled his sword across his shoulders, and finally pulled on his gauntlets. He expected questions or accusations or pleas, but all he heard was a sigh when he drew on the first gauntlet.
The spell wisp winked out as soon as he had the other gauntlet on, leaving him to find the cabin door in utter darkness.
• • •
He avoided Anders for the rest of the short voyage, finding reasons to help with tasks that kept him away from everyone, climbing the rigging, hauling the ropes, keeping watch high above the deck where he could watch Hawke and Isabela, Valentia, the crew, and Anders. Isabela spent the time teaching Hawke some of the basics of sailing a ship the size of the Silverite Maiden. Perhaps she hoped her dream of a ship of her own would come true soon and she might convince Hawke to come away with her. Valentia stayed near the ship's bow, watching the empty horizon for most of the day and early evening.
Anders did exactly what Fenris expected of him. He moved among the crew, speaking to them, letting them show him cuts and wounds, stiff joints and bad backs. In a few cases, after speaking with a man for a time, he would take the man below deck for ten minutes or even an hour before they would come back up into the cold winter daylight, the sailor smiling and laughing, Anders smiling before sending him off to pick up his work again.
Sometimes Anders would look up and search Fenris out among the rigging, shielding his eyes with his hand against the cheerless sunlight. He would search until he found Fenris' silhouette, and his smile would fade before he turned away to find someone else to talk to and help.
Fenris spent the second night on deck, curling up with a borrowed blanket long after Anders had given up on waiting him out and had gone down to the cabin they were supposed to be sharing.
The captain shook him awake near dawn, crouched beside him, putting a hot mug of coffee into his numb hands before he had time to do more than blink blearily at him.
"You and your man aren't getting on?" Mustow asked, holding his own mug up to his face to let the steam warm his lips and nose.
Fenris covered his confusion with a sip from the mug that scalded his lips and mouth, but woke him more surely than the coffee could have. "I said we were still adjusting."
"Still," Mustow said, "it can't be so bad, else you wouldn't have married him in the first place."
Fenris shrugged and hung his face over the mouth of the mug. "Right. I would never have married him."
He didn't look up to see the expression on the captain's face, part quizzical, part annoyed, part simply confused. It was all born out of a lie he had been forced to perpetuate, and he felt no pride or joy in fooling a good man.
He did not have to endure more questioning at any rate. He caught the movement from the corner of his eye before Valentia joined them. "Your ship is off course," she told Mustow.
The captain rose from his crouch to frown down at her. "We're using the chart you gave us. If we're off course, it's not our fault."
Valentia pointed up to the grey pre-dawn sky. "Do you see the tail of the White Hart? If you were not off course, we would be sailing directly toward it, would we not?"
Fenris unfolded his legs, not even wincing at their stiffness, though it drove down into his bones when he rose to his feet. He followed Valentia's pointing finger, but her words meant little to him. He knew nothing of sea charts or navigation beyond following the rising and setting of the sun, but Mustow was frowning and turning back to the helm.
"Wyland, are you awake back there?" he bellowed as he strode back to take the ship's wheel. "Why are we off course?"
Fenris followed out of curiosity, Valentia just ahead of him. The hapless Wyland stumbled back from Mustow's push.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm following the chart."
"You've been drinking again," Mustow growled, hauling on the wheel to correct the ship's course. "You know what I told you would happen if I ever smelled so much as a drop of beer on you."
"I never did!" Wyland protested. "I never did! I'm following the bloody charts!"
"It isn't him," Valentia said, putting a hand on the captain's arm. "It's where we going. It does not want to be seen. Follow the compass only and we will be there by mid-day."
"What are you talking about?" Mustow asked, pulling his arm out of her hold. "If you lied and you're putting my ship in danger, I'll put you over the side."
"I am not. When you see land, my daughter, her friends and I will take one of your dinghies the rest of the way. You may stay at a safe distance until we return."
"You're going to ask?" Mustow said with a frown. "Or tell me?"
"One pouch of coin is asking. Two is telling," Valentia said. "You come out of this well ahead with no risk save to a single small boat you can easily replace." She pointed back to the wheel. "Just follow the compass."
Mustow looked past Valentia to Fenris, but what was Fenris to say? He shrugged. "I am here for Isabela's sake and she wants this."
Mustow glowered at Valentia, but he returned to the helm, checked the compass, and put the ship on course to an empty piece of sea.
• • •
Fenris saw it first and called to one of the hands who was up in the rigging securing a line. "Over there."
The hand followed Fenris' pointing finger and gave a surprised, wordless shout before calling down, "Land!" He scrambled down out of the rigging with Fenris fast behind him while the crew gathered on the deck.
Valentia was at the captain's side before Fenris' feet touched the deck. He saw her take Mustow's spyglass from his hand and raise it to her eye before she nodded and passed it back.
He caught the last words of her order to the captain, "—dinghy. We'll go when it's within rowing distance."
Isabela sidled up behind them and took the spyglass from Mustow's unresisting hand, raising it to sight along the horizon until she found was she was looking for and moved to the railing without taking the glass away from her eye.
"Do you see it?" Hawke asked.
Fenris had to smile at the way Hawke kept reaching for the spyglass and stopping himself, fingers opening and closing covetously while he bounced up and down on his toes.
"Isabela—"
Fenris lost track of Hawke's pleading as Anders stepped close and shaded his eyes to stare in the direction Isabela was pointing the spyglass. "You should be glad," he said too quietly for anyone but Fenris to hear. "Once we're done here, we can go back to Kirkwall and you can go back to pretending I'm just some body to guard, or stop pretending and just finish running away."
Fenris' stomach dropped before it clenched. There it was; Anders was no longer going to allow the pretense that nothing was amiss between them.
"This is neither the time nor the place," he told Anders, because that much at least was true. They had "tests" to face. Tests that Valentia had felt warranted two people skilled with blades and stealth, one lyrium warrior, and an abomination. Whatever the tests might be, Fenris was certain they would be fighting for their lives at least once before the sun set.
"No, it never is," Anders said, taking a step away from Fenris. "It's never the right time. I don't think you want it to be the right time."
Isabela let out a squeal of delight, drawing Fenris' attention away from Anders. "I see a mast! Three masts!"
Hawke finally managed to get the spyglass away from her without it going over the railing and into the water. He put it to his eye to search the horizon. "Where?"
When Fenris looked away from their byplay, Anders had moved away, heading for the ladder that would take him below decks, and people were calling to Fenris to help them get the dinghy ready before they reached their destination.
• • •
The land mass turned out to be a bleached white semi-circle thrust out of the ocean and darkened by algae and… was that moss? Fenris did not know, and Isabela only murmured, "You don't see atolls this far south. Coral dies if it's too cold."
"Looks dead to me," Anders observed.
Hawke and Fenris had taken the oars and were faced away from the atoll, feet braced on the bench behind them for leverage while they hauled on the oars and trusted Isabela to guide them.
"Call it blood magic and forget about it," Hawke advised. "We can be naturalists later. Right now I want to get out of this flimsy little boat and onto that big one over there."
The ocean had been relatively calm when the dinghy had been lowered into the water and the five passengers had climbed down, but the closer they drew to the atoll, the rougher the water grew from crashing against the white walls.
"Hang on!" Isabela called, and Fenris clenched his fingers on the oar handle only to have it thrown out of the oarlock by the force of the wave that lifted and dropped the little dinghy.
Isabela caught the oar before it could hit her in the side and shouted, "Watch it!"
Behind him he heard Anders shout a curse over the growing roar of the surf against the walls of the atoll. "We're not going to make it in!"
If they went under, Isabela had cautioned them that the coral would not be their friend; it would tear the skin right off their bodies, and this close to the atoll's walls, it was mere feet beneath the dinghy's hull.
Isabela shouted her orders to Hawke and Fenris. Harder. Wait. Port. Starboard. Pull. Pull. Pull, damn you or we're going under! But Fenris saw her eyes widen in fear, lips parting to shout a warning, and when he cast a glance over his shoulder, he saw a wave rising that looked certain to swamp the boat and either take them under or smash them into the coral walls.
Anders shouted – no screamed – the words of a spell and thrust out an arm cracked and fissured with Justice's rise to bolster Anders' magic. Fenris felt the magic in the air right down to his bones, but the wave froze and Isabela shouted at him to stop staring and pull!
As the dinghy surged forward, Fenris had an opportunity to examine the wave. His first impression that it was frozen was entirely correct. It was – as far as he could see while still rowing so hard that even his sword-trained muscles burned – frozen all the way to the sea floor a few feet below them.
Then Isabela was calling hurried orders, navigating them through the opening in the atoll and into…
…into the stillest water Fenris had ever seen.
Beside him Hawke dropped his oar and followed suit to stare.
"What am I seeing?" he asked, but Fenris had no means of answering.
The rough surf that had pounded them on their way into the atoll stopped dead at a line in the opening in the wall, and the walls that they had all mistaken for coral showed themselves to be something very different. He could pick out long thigh bones and staring skulls, the curving cages of ribs and the wide butterfly shapes of pelvic bones. Not all were human or even elven. He saw skulls with horns, and others that were three or four times the size of a humanoid's skull, but whatever the species, the truth was that this semi-circle in the middle of the sea was made wholly of bleached bones. The air itself was so thick with magic that Fenris felt the steady thrum of it through his markings and in his lungs until it felt as though he were breathing treacle with each breath.
"Maker," Anders said in a reverent whisper.
Isabela shook herself out of the shock they all shared and leaned over to tentatively dip a finger in the water. Fenris was at the wrong angle to see the result, but when she sat up and flicked her finger, the water droplet moved as slowly as a floating butterfly on a summer's day before it dropped back into the water.
"Valentia?" she asked of the woman who had sat stoically through the whole wild ride into this calm.
"It is part of the magic that protects the ship and the thing I must retrieve. You have nothing to fear."
"You could have told us a little sooner," Hawke said, twisting in his seat to face her. "Do you have any other surprises to tell us about?"
"The ship will be trapped," Valentia said carelessly. "Surely you can manage that."
Anders snorted. "Have Hawke watch for the ones on the floor."
Isabela snapped, "Don't make me throw you overboard."
"Enough," Fenris said. "Let us get you your ship."
Isabela lost some of her anger and smiled toward the ship that sat sedately in the middle of the silent lagoon. "She's old-fashioned, but she looks fresh out of the shipyard for all that."
"What do you call that kind of ship?" Anders asked while Hawke and Fenris bent their backs to the oars again.
"A galleon," Isabela said. "Three masts, three decks not counting the stern castle and forecastle – main, cargo, and steerage. She'll wallow like an overfed noble, but with a full crew, most pirates won't find her worth the casualties."
"You would know," Valentia observed. "Consider this a chance at an honest living."
"They also," Isabela went on as though her mother had not spoken. "Can be outfitted for the most cunning smuggling you've ever heard of. Athenril will need a change of smalls, she'll be so hot for my baby."
Fenris noted the proprietary manner with which she already spoke of the ship and smiled to himself. He could already see Isabela at the helm and Hawke at her side.
Together, Hawke and Fenris maneuvered the dinghy alongside The Lovers' Wake, gliding past the gilt lettering with the ship's name over turquoise blue paint at the prow that confirmed that they had indeed found the legendary ship in an atoll made of bones where nothing moved, not even a breeze, with the exception of their small rowboat.
Isabela stood easily and lifted the aft seat to take a rope and hook out of the storage space underneath. "I always like this part," she said before steadying herself to throw the hook up over the Wake's railing easily twelve feet above them. The hook caught on the first throw, and once Isabela gave it a hard tug to test it, she was swarming up the rope with an ease that made Hawke whistle appreciatively. Although that might also have been the view up her short dress.
She disappeared over the railing and left the rope dangling before reappearing with a rope bundle that she hooked at the railing before she let it drop, unrolling along the way to reveal a rope ladder. "Come on up, nothing's moving up here, but stay close to the rail when you get up."
Valentia went first, climbing the rope ladder with as little effort as climbing a ladder up the side of a house. No doubt this would be much more challenging if there were any waves at all, but on a sea as stable as turf, the task went easily, with Anders, Fenris, and finally Hawke following her the ladder, but not before Hawke tied off the dinghy to Isabela's original rope.
Just because nothing was moving now was no reason to be complacent.
The air was even thicker on the Wake's main deck, but it took Anders' startled, "Oh!" to draw Fenris' attention to a fresh oddity. He was passing his hand in front of his face before turning it to examine his palm. "Look at the dust."
"What about the dust?" Isabela asked absently while she and Hawke looked around for signs of the traps Valentia had warned them about.
"It's frozen," Anders said. "Look where the sunlight passes, you can see it just hanging there, and if you pass your hand through it…" He demonstrated and turned his palm toward Isabela. "It catches."
"Lovely. Magic dust," Isabela said after a cursory glance at his palm just to humor him, but Fenris followed Anders' directions and saw the dust in a thick haze in the sunlight. How many years of trapped dust hung in the air around the ship?
"No," Anders said with forced patience, "not lovely. Do you know what happens in grain silos if you set a spark to all the dust hanging in the air?"
Isabela folded her arms under her breasts. "Get to the point."
"It explodes," Anders said. "Kaboom! Maybe this magic dust won't catch, but maybe it will, so no fires, no lanterns, try not to even strike a spark. I'll provide the light."
"Fine," Isabela said. "No fire, but just you remember that, too, "Ser Suck on a Fireball.'" With that she turned away from Anders and back to her mother. "Which way, Valentia?"
Valentia pointed. "Down."
"Cargo or steerage?" Isabela asked impatiently.
"Just down," Valentia said.
Hawke caught Isabela just before she took the steep flight of stairs under the forecastle that would lead down to the cargo deck. Wordlessly he pointed at the first step, and together they crouched over something for several minutes before there was a loud snap and Hawke stood up to toss away pieces of a wickedly barbed mechanical device.
"Mind that," he warned the others. "There's a nasty contact poison on it just for people like me and Isabela. Remind me to get new gloves when we get back to Kirkwall."
Hawke and Isabela cleared the way down the stairs with Anders following close behind them to provide light from his staff. They found another barbed trap at the bottom where the narrow stairwell opened out into a large, pitch black cargo bay.
Twice they stopped to disarm traps in the floor, each time cautioning that the poison on the trap was as dangerous as the mechanical portion.
Fenris was tense, waiting for something to finally come to life and attack them. He could not bash a trap with his sword when most of them were so cunningly concealed that it took a trained eye like Hawke's or Isabela's to note it in the first place.
After the cargo bay was cleared, there remained two doors at the fore just behind a set of stairs that led down again, and a narrow hall aft. Isabela turned to Valentia, hand on hip and asked, "Well? This deck or steerage?"
Valentia took the beads off her belt and ran them through her fingers before shaking her head. "Down, I think, but the magic that protects this place protects even against my sight."
"How did you know it was here at all if that's the case?" Anders asked.
"I had help," Valentia said and held up a hand to silence Anders' next question. "That is all I will say."
Fenris ventured away from Anders' light to glance at the stairs that had to lead down to the steerage deck, but they led into complete darkness and he wasn't about to venture down there when so much of the ship had already proved to be trapped. He would not be the one to trigger a trap that would blow a hole in the hull to sink the ship with them in it.
"Anyone else have any feelings about this?" Hawke asked.
"I do," Anders said. "Can we go home now?"
"No," Hawke said. "Any other feelings? You know, magical ones? Sparkly ones? Ones that would get us off this ship before something tries to eat my face or make babies with me?"
"More like make babies in you," Isabela said, peering down the hall toward the aft cabins.
The constant, oppressive feel of magic was so heavy for Fenris that he could offer no suggestions. Anders shrugged and lifted his staff as the light at its tip brightened. "I can't feel anything over the background magic and before you ask, that goes for Justice, too."
Fenris watched with interest when Valentia followed Isabela toward the hall. Isabela glanced back at her mother and opened her mouth to say something before she closed her mouth again. Valentia was watching the floor rather than Isabela and missed that, but Fenris saw it and wondered right up to the moment that Valentia stopped mid-stride with her foot awkwardly poised just over the floor.
When she slowly withdrew her foot, Isabela blithely said, "Oops. Trap."
Hawke gave Isabela a meaningful look and hurried over to disarm the trap.
They searched the rest of the deck, finding empty crew cabins and traps on every door and in every cabin, sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the ceiling or even in the walls. Hours passed while Hawke and Isabela painstakingly found and disarmed trap after trap until the tension of waiting for a real attack had worn everyone's nerves – save Valentia's – down to frayed threads.
"Not even an old coin," Isabela complained when they finished searching the last of the cabins on the cargo deck.
"The girl has a table laid with a feast and complains that the cheese is too hard," Valentia observed. "That was always her way."
Isabela rounded on her, one finger raised to point at Valentia's chin. "One, you don't know me to know what's my way or not. Two, I am not a girl."
"Ladies, please." Hawke put himself between Isabela and Valentia. "I want to get out of here before the captain decides we've died in here and leaves. I don't know much about ships, but I don't think we can crew this thing with just the five of us."
Isabela glared at Hawke before tossing her head and pushing past him, back out into the cargo hold. She caught Anders by the sleeve on her way to drag him and the light back with her, forcing the others to follow or be left in the dark.
The top of the stairs down into steerage was untrapped, but Isabela proceeded cautiously down each step until she reached a door at the bottom. At least Fenris thought it was a door from his vantage near the top of the stairs until Isabela spent a full minute running her hands over its surface before standing up and cursing. "There's no handle, no lock, not even a seam I could fit a blade into to pry. Turn around, we'll try the cargo hatch."
The cargo hatch was a ten foot by ten foot square, two-panel door in the deck directly under a similar opening in the main deck that allowed larger cargo to be lowered directly into the cargo or steerage holds with a winch. Considering the steep and narrow confines of the stairs off the decks, the cargo hatches were vital to get any real use out of the holds.
The hatch was largely unobtrusive, set flush with the deck with pry holes set into its surface to be used to lever it open.
Isabela took a pair of long metal pry bar from where it was stowed near the hatch and gave one to Fenris. "Just do what I do."
He took the pry bar and was ready to set it into the hole when his markings flared brilliant white in reaction to a strong surge of magic directly out of the pry hole. Acting on instinct he turned the bar and used it to knock Isabela's bar out of her hands before she could set her own in its hole.
"What was that about?" she snapped, rubbing her hand over her bracer as though to soothe the jarred wrist beneath. "It better be good."
"There's magic in there," Fenris said, pointing to the pry hole. "Who says there can't be more than one kind of trap here?"
Anders came to crouch near the hatch, waving a flap of his coat over the hole – "To clear the dust," he explained – before he held his hand over one of the pry holes and slowly lowered it until flickers of lightning crackled between the hole and his hand. The magic lit his face from below, casting shadows in unfamiliar places to make his face a mask of the man Fenris had come to know. He stayed there, electricity dancing between his hand and the trap until sweat beaded at his temples and started a slow roll down his cheek and jaw.
Finally he fell back on his ass and shook his head. "I can't do it. I'm not sure I know a mage strong enough to do it. If you stick a big metal pole in there, you're going to end up a cinder, and maybe us along with you if you set off the dust."
"We'll have to find another way around," Hawke said.
Fenris considered the situation, turning a slow circle to remind himself of what he knew of the deck and ship so far. They had searched the entire deck and found no other way down to the steerage deck, there was a blockage at the bottom of the stairs into steerage, the cargo bays were trapped, and sparking a fire might or might not send the entire ship up in an explosion.
"If we're all here for something we can do…." Anders said slowly.
"Then one of us has a way through this," Isabela finished just as slowly, casting her eyes over each of them before she straightened and pointed a finger at Fenris. "That magical fisting thing!"
Fenris knew exactly what she meant as soon as the words left her mouth and nodded. "Yes. Of course." He said it without emotion and turned toward the stairs. How could she know what it felt like to phase through a solid object? How could she know what she was asking?
"Take this," Valentia said, holding out Hawke's dragon amulet to him.
He took the amulet and frowned. "Am I supposed to wear it?"
"No. But it holds remnants of old magic. It may be useful to you."
Fenris suppressed the urge to spit and merely tucked the amulet in a belt pouch to leave his hands free. Anders followed behind him on the stairs to light his way and softly said, "Be careful," when Fenris drew a deep breath to steel himself and let the power surge out of his body, casting a brilliant glow in the stairwell's close quarters.
He pushed his hand through the solid black barrier, letting his breath out with a slow hiss at the pain of feeling his body coexisting with another solid object before it broke through on the other side of the barrier into empty air. With a last glance up the stairs at Anders, he bared his teeth and pushed his entire body through the barrier and out into the dark hold on the other side.
On this side, lit only by the glow that came from the lyrium, the open hold was eerie and seemingly endless after the blue-white lyrium light exhausted its range. The barrier was just as solid on this side as it had been on the other, but he saw the light gather and swirl in a circular depression on its surface like a wisp of Anders' magic caught in a dust devil.
Knowing the number of traps they had found on the cargo deck, Fenris was loath to explore without Hawke or Isabela to search out any others.
"Pfaugh." He resisted the urge to spit on the deck and possibly trigger a new trap, then pulled the amulet out of his pouch and held it up to the swirling light on the barrier.
His ears popped at a sudden release of power and the barrier disappeared, letting Anders' mage light flood down around him.
"The way is open." It was obvious, but he felt he had to say something after walking through a magical barrier and bringing it down and in the face of the relief that broke over Anders' expression on seeing him.
"Listen to him," Anders said, pressing himself flat against the wall of the stairwell to let Isabela and Hawke go ahead of him. "'The way is open,' like he does this every day."
Fenris moved back up into the stairwell to stay out of the way while Hawke and Isabela resumed their methodical search for traps. While he had been occupied, Anders had taken the time to cast another illumination spell on one of Hawke's daggers, making it easier for him to search without Anders at his back the whole time.
Anders tentatively reached out to brush fingertips over an unmarked piece of skin on Fenris' arm and said, "I'm glad you're okay."
Fenris twitched his arm away. "We are still in danger."
"Right." Anders dropped his hand. "Forget I said anything."
When Fenris looked up, Valentia was silently watching them from the top of the stairs. Let her watch, seer or not, she could not fully understand what she was seeing. Her gaze made him remember the amulet he still held.
"Take this." He tossed the amulet and saw her unerringly snatch it out of the air. It seemed that Isabela had inherited more than just her looks from her mother.
"Come on down," Hawke called after too much silent waiting. "There aren't any traps down here that we've found so far."
Anders sighed and pushed himself away from the wall to wait for Fenris to precede him down into the steerage hold. It was just as open and empty as the cargo hold, interrupted only by the thick column of the main mast that anchored the entire ship around itself. The foremast and mizzenmast reached only down to the cargo deck, anchored fore and aft to bisect the empty crew quarters there.
There were two more doors in the deck's aft wall. One was a normal wooden ship's door with its high threshold and heavy wood, the other was reinforced with steel bands.
Isabela pointed to the reinforced door, "Probably the brig, and I didn't see a pantry, so that would be my guess for the other."
Hawke sighed and stepped forward. "I don't think we're going to find Valentia's whatsit in a sack of potatoes. I say we try the brig first."
No one was surprised when the door was locked, nor were they surprised when neither Hawke nor Isabela was able to pick the lock.
Anders voiced everyone's opinion. "Of course not. That would be too easy."
Everyone's attention turned to Fenris. Of course.
He braced himself, let power flood his markings again, and moved to push his hand through the door.
It encountered unyielding wood and an answering thrum of lyrium from the bolts and bars of it throughout the door that reinforced it at every point he might use to penetrate.
"Hn." He shifted two feet to the left and pressed his hand against the wall. Again lyrium sang back at him, denying him access.
"Check the pantry," he said. "I'll try that wall. The door and this wall are reinforced, I can't get through."
They waited until Hawke and Isabela declared the pantry also free of traps before Fenris tested the wall between the pantry and the brig only to find it was also shot through with lyrium.
"I can't. If these are tests for all of us, this is not my test."
This time all eyes turned to Anders, who widened his eyes. "What am I supposed to do?"
"How do we know?" Isabela asked. "Use a spell, ask Justice, glow. Just figure something out."
Fenris remembered what Anders had let slip about Justice's… feelings about lyrium and tugged Anders' sleeve to draw him aside enough to quietly say, "The lyrium. Can you—" or Justice "—sense anything about the lyrium in the door and walls?"
Anders gave him a flat look before he nodded and pulled his sleeve out of Fenris' hold.
Fair enough, he supposed, but Fenris did not like the way that stung.
Anders moved to face the door into the brig, his shoulders rising and dropping with a heavy sigh before he stiffened and brilliant cracks opened in his skin. He raised a hand to the door to pass it just over its surface before he paused at chest level with his hand over the center of the door.
Fenris felt a chill at hearing Justice's voice doubling with Anders' when he spoke. "There is a circle here, open in the center." He turned eyes made blind with the light of the Fade to Valentia. "Give me the amulet."
She put the amulet in his outstretched hand without speaking or flinching away and Anders turned to press it to the spot where his hand had hovered.
The door swung open as silently as if its hinges had been oiled that day and all the power that had held this ship in stasis flooded out of the door with a force that staggered Fenris back before he braced himself against it as though against a gale.
Valentia came forward to take the amulet from Anders' nerveless fingers while the cracks closed, the light faded from his skin and eyes, and he slumped as he became to all outward appearances, just a man again. He slid down against the wall between the brig and pantry door rather than stand against the silent howl of the power that pushed out of the room.
He met Fenris' eyes and all Fenris could think was that he would never have a relationship with just Anders, and he did not know if he could tolerate a relationship with both Anders and a Fade spirit, no matter how worthy Anders and Justice's old friends claimed it to be.
Perhaps Anders read that from his face, or perhaps he was only thinking of waking alone yet again, but his jaw tightened and his shoulders straightened before he broke away from Fenris' gaze to crawl to the door to watch Valentia.
Now Fenris realized that Hawke and Isabela were not simply silent in the face of the magic sweeping out of the brig, they were immobilized, as frozen as the dust motes or the water under the ship. He pushed through the invisible force to his friends, reflexively shouting over the silent energy as though that would reach them in their stasis. "Hawke! Isabela!"
He clasped Hawke's biceps to shake him just as the silent roar stopped entirely. The crushing press of magic and power was gone, and the world swayed under his feet, staggering him.
Hawke swayed along with everything else, but his expression was a mask of shock. "How did you get here?" he asked. "And what just happened? Are we going to sink?"
"No," Anders said, pushing himself up off the floor. "The spell broke. Everything's moving again, including the water out there. I think you and Isabela were caught in the spell once the door was opened because you two don't have magic of your own to protect you."
Valentia came to the door of the brig carrying a stone coffer barely larger than a loaf of bread in both hands. Fenris saw the amulet gleaming in a circular depression on its lid and understood both how the spell had stopped and how they had been used.
"No." He started toward her, reaching for his sword. "This is too powerful. This is too much."
"Fenris!" Hawke clasped his bicep before he could finish drawing his sword. "Don't! This is Isabela's mother."
Fenris let his arm drop. "And will that help us when she turns that power on the world?"
"This is not for me," Valentia said. "It is only to repay a debt I have owed for too long. I swear to you that no harm will come to you or yours because of this."
"Why should I believe you?"
Isabela answered for her. "Because she's a bitch and she might be a liar, but she lives by her word. If she swears, she means it."
Fenris clenched his fists until his claw tips drew blood in his palms, then turned away. "I will not stay here."
"Well," Isabela said, looking at the coffer in Valentia's arms. "Doesn't that seem a little anticlimactic? Shouldn't we have had to fight something to get here? Killed a guardian or something?"
Valentia gave her a level look before turning away with the coffer. "Murder is not always the key to getting what you want. Was teamwork not trial enough for you?"
• • •
Valentia sat in the dinghy with the coffer held tightly in her lap while Hawke and Fenris pulled at the oars and followed Isabela's instructions to get out of the lagoon and out into open sea again.
"I'll get a crew in Kirkwall as soon as we get back," Isabela said between shouts of Pull! "And then I'll come back here and get the Wake in to port and then we'll see. I can't wait to show everyone that Captain Isabela is back!"
Getting out of the lagoon was no easier than getting in and Fenris had to bend all his strength and attention to following Isabela's orders to keep their tiny boat from being swept up on the bones by the buffeting waves. He ignored Anders' shout that he had spotted another ship until they were past the crisis point and pulling away from the atoll with every stroke of the oars.
"That's—" Isabela froze in mid-observation. The waves around them froze, beside him Hawke stopped mid-stroke, the air grew thick and heavy with a familiar magic again, and Valentia was rising from her seat.
Fenris turned in time to see her jump over the side onto water frozen so firmly by the unbroken contact of the coffer's spell that she could stand on it. Anders shouted and snatched at her, but she dodged away, running across water that froze under her feet with every step while the magical calm spread out in a circle around her, weakest at its edges and strong enough to stop time for all but those protected by magic at its center.
She ran toward the ship that Anders had spotted, its lines and masts familiar in silhouette. "That's—"
"—the Bright Star," Anders said at the same time.
She was twenty yards away by the time the magic weakened enough for Hawke and Isabela to pull themselves out of its influence and into motion. Isabela finished her sentence as though she had never been interrupted. "—the Bright Star. Quique, you bastard."
Her eyes narrowed, darting from Valentia's empty seat, across the water, settling on her mother's running figure. "You bitch!" she shouted at Valentia's back while the woman barely slowed her pace as she ran across hillocks of water and darted around the tallest peaks of frozen waves. She seemed to be searching for something else to shout and settled for "That's Hawke's amulet!"
But Valentia kept running, and the sea thawed around them until they had to row or be swept back to the atoll.