Rattle and Rook

Annie watched the silver piece cartwheel into open air above her, trailing its fatty arc of cherry and flesh, before lunging forward with outstretched hands.

There was one half-sucked breath of oxygen, then a strangled gobbling sound. The man's chest was seizing – yet Maker preserve him, he could not breathe. His throat constricted rapidly, vocal cords popping like bowstrings wrapped around a novice archer's finger – and Andraste save this faithful's soul, for he could not scream. Muscles went rigid. A sunburst of sweat dappled the tower's floor. Well-polished riding boots dragged themselves backwards through dust, alligator soles sliding belly-flat back into the swamp.

Leske's palms loitered in mid-clap, his wrists extended, charcoal eyes watching the murder with a mute sense of triumph.

The balls of Annie-Lynn's leathered feet left thick skid marks against limestone. She watched, entranced, a fine scarlet line that bloomed across this human's pronounced Adam's apple as it frantically jiggled in place. The dying man made clucking noises – peppered, self-entitled barnyard sounds like those from the smarting beak of any proper hen-house chicken.

When the dagger finally fell, it sent a sparse flower of blood drops careening in every which direction.


Dice, garnet-red, combusted across the poorly-tiled floor.

"Oh, sod it!" Leske had cried, shoving away from their makeshift gaming board with a furious scowl. His large fists popped themselves together before pant legs shouldered their dust. "I'll be a damn nug's uncle if I pay you one measly little copper, Brosca. You're a rotten, cheatin' broad. Sure as the Brand on your face!"

Annie had been far too busy celebrating her fourth consecutive victory to heed these unsporting words. She pumped a fist, cackling out laughter, and promptly launched the now-empty scrap metal casting canister in the direction of her sour friend. "Aw!" the dwarf snickered, scrambling to merry feet. Leske caught the launched tin can flat against his dented brow. "Are we feelin' a bit cross to have just proven ourselves the most-unluckiest duster in all Orzammar? Well, go soak yer' head in a barrel o' vinegar, mate! This round's mine."

Annie-Lynn sprung like a hungry fox kit, sunk stubby fingers deep into the flesh of her companion's cheeks, and mercilessly shook them out. The following roar of pain could've sounded no more anguished had it burst from a gutted genlock's peeling lips.

"An' so's your next shiny cut!" Leske had only biceps and his puff of indignation to counter Brosca's marsupial laugh.


Alistair's unprotected nails cracked painfully when he grabbed a fistful of stolen chainmail coif, tugging Annie out of the falling human's path – that powdery, blue-blooded body timbered like a lissome aspen. Her hand had lingered only inches away from rescuing the now stationary blade. Seconds too late to retrieve it, there Warden Brosca's able knife nevertheless remained; trapped beneath a growing shadow. Her galena-grey eyes traced that last wheat-shaft's length of sunlight sliding down its metal ridge before the guilty weapon disappeared.

Their victim gurgled wildly when his vertebrae engulfed its glittering, pointed edge. Yet still he fell – elbows popping against pavement, meat of both forearms slapping audibly against the plasma-wet rock.

Leske's applauding harrumph did well to project the ripple of catty, chocolate satisfaction Annie-Lynn felt at that very moment. She wrote a smear into the freckled mural of cooling burgundy with one boot's toe.


Annie had stuffed the entire sodding fistful into her mouth before Ma' found time enough to lift one bony finger.

"Stone take me, you wicked little child! What in the hells has gotten into that thick mug of yours?" Kalah screeched, voice a cold-edged eagle's rasp. Scarce months and countless drained rum bottles later would soften this hard mother's shrewd pecks into a stumbling, cotton-tongued drawl – but for now, Madame Brosca yet lipped down the daggers entrenched beneath her gums. For now, Annie-Lynn was still afraid. And deep below these glorious clumps of starch and flour that nestled eagerly upon her gut, there bubbled up the first caramel pangs of nausea.

Defiant – always heedlessly, numbly defiant – the eight-year-old hurried to swallow. She choked.

It was no harmless mistake, true enough; this act had been executed with pure, gluttonous intent. Annie well knew there were not enough coins jingling in her mother's badly-stitched burlap purse to pay for any pastry treats beyond those stale, week-old butter cookies that a pitying Baker Taldur sometimes sold them. They no doubt would've been bound for the incinerators, otherwise – far too subpar for any noble's tooth – yet both young Brosca girls muddled through their weeks for Monday mornings with desperate, quivering anticipation. The mere thought of crunching into a basket of sweets usually began dousing their houseless palates with saliva a full day beforehand. Yesterday, fortnight's worth of mouth sores were worth that brief, elated taste of cast-off luxury.

Today had been different. Today, Annie-Lynn had thought on how those unrefined granules of sugar would cut her throat with every dry gulp – and she'd been shaken by a sudden, poignant despair.

Yes, Kalah's lastborn daughter had reached into the merchant's kiosk full-aware that what she'd been about to do was wrong. Paragons forgive her… because Mother never would.


"You ain't lost it – eh, Maddy?" Leske admired the preciseness of his comrade's butchery, tracing over lacerations as though they were gilded lines in a smith's handiwork. Calloused dwarven hands expressed their praise with a series of gruff pats upon Brosca's upper back. Alistair's fist was still clenched, skin freshly squeezed of color, in the scruff of her uniform collar. She could feel the metronome pulse of Ferelden's rightful king whacking through his arteries to hurtle against her adrenaline-stiff spine.

Once-templar and Gray Warden all, the killing still frightened Blondie; Annie could tell. He did not cringe, quail, or turn a cheek…yet there was something pale and unfamiliar that flooded the lad, dilating pupils and twisting his toes inward, when life drained from human bodies. Whereas hacking down darkspawn dually disgusted him and fed Alistair's deeply-nestled hatred on Duncan's behalf, glimpsing his face reflected in the fading eyes of a fellow Man scared Maric's son more than he could say. As the blood toll swirled higher at their party's hips, he felt that already fragile line between victor and victim thin. It took so very little force to snip it clean apart. The notion leveled him, grounded the surrealism that often accompanies death – but it was also terrifying.

"Reeling with fever an' all! First Beraht's sorry hide, and now this bloomin' outrageous son-of-a-nug? Brosca, you are a sodding beast." Annie-Lynn shared Leske's general vulgarity closely enough to appreciate this crass declaration as a compliment. She had expected the loud, flat-palmed swat on the rump, too – but not thoroughly enough to prevent her skittering hop and a few choice expletives. "Hah-hah! Ancestors kiss that great, glorious backside! You're bleedin' incredible, duster."

Annie looked coldly into the failing man's gloss-coated eyes, his throat puffing like a shad tossed to the grass. She could see that he wanted dreadfully to say something to her; longed to spit, curse, damn his slayer or vainly beg for mercy. Cleanly-shaven gills flared, pupils rolling frantically into their sockets. He spluttered, gargling – the top half of his torso lurching violently upwards to avoid its final slump onto a dirty tower floor.


Annie-Lynn couldn't breathe.

"Spit it out!" the woman was screaming, dealing her child a wallop to the back that echoed in her heaving lungs. Kalah's face burnt venomous red, outshining a bundled length of carroty hair. "Spit that out right now, you misbegotten ghoul! Else I'll take a belt to you within an inch of your evil little life!"

The smallest Brosca girl would not have obeyed, even if she'd been able. Instead, both hands grabbed a dammed gorge with tightly-shut eyes. A multitude of tiny black braids that scattered about her face distorted the sight of Kalah's wild, enraged shrieks. Annie could not tell whether the livid woman was more upset with her daughter's blatant disobedience, silent gagging, or a startled Baker Taldur's summons for a guard. She'd been panicked – body thrumming its distress – yet somehow unafraid. The dough currently blockading her throat would suffocate this sinful child faster than Mother's empty threats ever would.

It was the first thing she had ever stolen – the virgin crime in a long list of offenses to come. Yes, Annie-Lynn recognized and embraced the foulness of her behavior; deserved whatever punishment might come. It had been a conscious decision. The rosy-lipped dwarven girl would not resist when retribution due arrived for her transgressions. She would pay penance for it now – asphyxiating in the weekday souk, with Orzammar passing indifferent around her and a lifetime gone unlived.

But oh, Stone, how wondrous that cake had been! How irresistible – with its august chocolate base, baronial and bittersweet, all lounging beneath a bravura of melting toffee. The aroma was so heavy she could almost taste it; nearly see her reflection in the glistening sheen of freshly-whipped frosting. Those two opulent layers comprised the most sumptuous feast the casteless waif had ever seen. Annie had wanted it more than anything she had yet wanted in her short, threadbare life.

Brosca's daughter had been fifteen seconds from blackness when Kalah – eyes widened with sudden, horrified realization – bent her violently over a knee, rapping fist-against-diaphragm until she heard a gasp rake through Annie-Lynn's chest. Coffee bean oxygen tore into her lungs, carrying its sweet burn to the sinuses. Strangled sounds erupted from the clogged byway of her gullet. Mother's gaunt hands had never felt warmer when they seized her child's teary cheeks, pressed a kiss into the blushing nose, and then slapped Annie harder than she'd ever had or would.

The yearned-for delicacy had been reduced into a sad, deadly mound of dark-colored grains coughed out upon Orzammar City's cracked merchant square.


Arl of Denerim no more, Rendon Howe's neck snapped the moment it hit Fort Drakon's unforgiving stone.

"Cake," Annie whispered. Then she pulled her dagger from his small intestine, and watched red droplets hit the floor.