Author's note – I think three years is long enough to go between updates, so let's get this one moving again.

Apologies for the delay, & my thanks for your patience!


First rule of writing: never become a part of the story.

Or maybe that was the second rule, the first rule being: never tell the truth if a lie sounds better.

Varric Tethras scrupulously adhered to the first rule, but from the moment that his bastard of a brother had introduced him to Devon Hawke, he'd been breaking the second rule on an all-too-regular basis. From the Rivaini's duel in the Chantry to chasing blood mages and rogue templars through Darktown to nearly getting his ass roasted by a batshit crazy magister who just might have been the very first darkspawn, he'd let himself be drawn along on one caper after another by the Fereldan rogue.

And the shit of it was, he had to lie when he wrote about it, because no one would believe the sodding truth.

The current situation looked to be no different. After years of increasingly uneasy coexistence between Kirkwall and the contingent of shipwrecked qunari, a rolling clusterfuck kept going by both sides had culminated with the horned bastards attacking the city.

Devon had worked her ass off to keep the ever more fragile peace, even managed to earn something like respect from the qunari Arishok. He had named her "basalit-an" (though from what Varric knew of the qunari, it probably meant something like "I will kill you last"), not that it seemed to be worth much at the moment. As he, Hawke, Aveline, Daisy and Blondie raced through the streets of the burning city, the qunari they encountered tried to kill them with just as much enthusiasm as they were showing to everybody else.

Emphasis on tried.

Devon wasn't quite as pissed as she had been after finding out that Bartrand had gotten her sister thrown in the Gallows, but it was a close second, which meant that both her blades were poisoned, and not the kind that just made people dizzy or knocked them out. She moved from kill to kill like a whirlwind, Falcon at her side, and the rest of them mopping up, catching anyone trying to flank Fearless Leader, and in general just trying to keep up with her.

Damn it, Rivaini, you picked a piss poor time to prove me right.

He'd tried to tell Hawke from the beginning that the pirate's only commitment was to her own interests, that she couldn't be depended on when push came to shove. Not that he didn't like her; Isabela was interesting enough company, as long as you kept one hand on your coin purse and one eye on the door to watch for the trouble that followed in her wake as surely as pilot fish trailed sharks.

But Hawke liked trouble, thrived on it as much as Rivaini did, and he'd let the warnings slide away, telling himself that they were both big girls, when he knew damn good and well that for all Devon Hawke's insouciant demeanor, she cared about the people she let get close. And you didn't get much closer than Hawke and Rivaini, no matter how much they tried to deny it, but he'd started to think that maybe - just maybe - Isabela had changed. Not completely changed, but enough.

But evidently he was a fool, because not only was Rivaini nowhere to be found, but she'd taken with her the one thing that would have sent the damned qunari on their not-so-merry way years ago. The one thing that might stop this bloodbath now. Varric still wasn't clear what the sodding book was, or why it was important enough to park for four years in Kirkwall, then tear the place apart over, but they currently had exactly two choices: lay down and die ...

Or fight.

Fight, it was.

Devon spun away from a qunari with his throat slashed from ear to ear, her own wounds healing in a swirl of whispered magic from Blondie, his glowing sidekick apparently not considering the wholesale slaughter taking place enough of an injustice to warrant an appearance.

"Get to the Chantry," Aveline ordered the terrified noble that the qunari had been dragging in the direction of Hightown. The massive stone edifice was unlikely to burn, and just might be sturdy enough to hold up to a siege. Since the attackers had already taken the Viscount's Keep and the adjacent guard barracks, it had been designated as the fallback position by the city's defenders.

The sound of explosions brought them all around, staring at the sudden light show visible over the rooftops.

"Gaatlok?" Devon wondered warily. The hornheads' explosive powder was as dangerous as it was mysterious, and if they'd put it into play, shit was going to get ugly, but Blondie shook his head.

"Magic," he stated confidently. Flame and lightning spells, from the look of it. The qunari hadn't counted many mages among their original number, and they numbered one fewer after the one poor bastard had immolated himself a few weeks back. That meant -

"Aveline!" Donnic ran toward them, his armor and visible skin stained with a paste of soot and blood, none of which appeared to be his own. Aveline didn't embrace her husband, but she did pause long enough to give him a once over, while he did the same for her. Romantic but practical; two peas in a pod, even if their courtship was another of those things that no one would have believed, if he'd written the truth. And Hawke had nixed 'The Edge of Desire', the much more plausible version he'd been working on with Rivaini. Could've been a best seller.

"Knight-Commander Meredith has allowed the mages from the Gallows to join the battle," Donnic told them.

About fucking time. The words died on his lips when he caught sight of Hawke's face, pale beneath the blood. Shit. He knew what was coming, so when Devon turned and sprinted down the nearest alley, abandoning their original plan of killing as many qunari away from the main force as possible en route to Hightown, he was already moving to follow her. The mages were formidable, but also vulnerable, and the qunari regarded them with a particularly virulent loathing. They sewed shut the lips of their own mages; safe bet they would target those on the other side for immediate elimination ... and Sunshine had only recently been accorded full Circle Mage status. Lucky her.

"Gather as many of the guard as you can and get to the Keep!" Aveline barked out before turning to race after Hawke without even a kiss goodbye for Donnic ... who was already running the other direction, anyway. Those two kids needed to learn to make time for romance.

Just not right now, maybe.

Varric knew his way around Kirkwall pretty well, but in her years in the City of Chains, Devon had found routes and back alleys even he had never traveled, so he just focused on keeping pace with her as she zigged and zagged, making turns seemingly at random and ignoring the knots of combat that they passed until they burst out onto the street at the foot of the steps leading up toward the Viscount's Keep.

Things were looking lively on the terraces above, and the fight didn't look to be going in the favor of Kirkwall's finest. Devon paused long enough to refresh the poison on her daggers, then charged up the steps and hurled herself at the first horned bastard she saw, slicing and spinning away as a massive sword cut through the air where she'd been a heartbeat or two earlier. As the qunari turned to track her with a wordless growl, Varric brought Bianca up, sighting in between the broad shoulders and letting fly. The bolt sprouted right where it was supposed to, the growl turned into a gargling roar as the qunari sank to his knees, groping over one shoulder to try to reach it, and Devon stepped back in, the sweep of her blade opening the unprotected throat in a gout of blood.

She was turning, searching for her next target, when a massive concussive wave sent all of them tumbling ass over elbows and slammed Hawke into a marble wall. As the dazed rogue tried to rise, a qunari mage lumbered toward her, features hidden behind a bronze mask, lips sewn shut with crude looking stitches, but hands glowing with power

"Hawke!" Merrill scrambled for the staff that had tumbled from her grasp, while Varric groped for the scattered bolts from his quiver, which had scattered like jackstraws across the paving stones.

"Devon!" Aveline gained her feet, slamming the hilt of her sword into her shield with a shout. "Me! Fight me, you big bastard!" The big brute hesitated, half turning toward the distraction, when suddenly the pulsing nimbus of magic surrounding his hands vanished like a candle that had been blown out. A scowl formed on the stitched lips, and he looked down at his hands in puzzlement just as the tip of a sword burst from the center of his chest in a spray of blood. Knees buckled beneath the robes, and the qunari collapsed toward the stones, sliding off of the impaling blade as he went; behind him, their savior wrenched the blade free, and with a single, powerful stroke sent the head tumbling down the steps, leaving blotches of blood with every bounce. Falcon, limping back from where he'd been thrown, paused briefly to sniff at it, then sneezed twice and returned to his mistress' side.

Devon, in the meantime, had made it to her feet; she and Aveline were facing the owner of the sword. Taller than even Aveline, the woman looked down at them with ice blue eyes in a not unattractive face framed with pale blonde hair that was nicely set off by the drops of blood in it.

"Knight-Commander Meredith." Aveline's greeting confirmed Varric's suspicions as to the identity of the woman … not that the golden circlet around her head left much doubt that they were facing the one who really ruled Kirkwall. A slight tip of his head, and Daisy faded back behind a row of planters, eyes wide with apprehension, while Anders slipped out of sight around a corner, but the templar's attention remained focused on the two directly before her.

"Guard Captain," Meredith acknowledged Aveline with a perfunctory glance while returning her sword to its scabbard. The glacial gaze shifted to Devon next. "I know you," she announced, looking the Fereldan up and down appraisingly. "The name of Hawke has turned up in my reports many times … too many."

Varric held his breath. He didn't think that the Knight-Commander knew about the black-market lyrium trade that Hawke and Rivaini had all but cornered over the last two years. For his money, it seemed like a good deal for the Gallows; Devon had her hooks in quite a few templars, but the only things that she used her influence over them for was to ensure Bethany's safety and make sure they looked the other way when she snuck in to visit her sister. Somehow, though, he doubted that the Knight-Commander would see it that way.

If such concerns had entered Devon's mind, she gave no sign. "No thanks are necessary, Knight-Commander," she shot back with a cheeky grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Always happy to help out the ones taking such good care of my sister." Meredith's eyes narrowed, but Hawke had kept the insolence perfectly veiled, the threat beneath the words all but hidden.

"Your assistance to my templars is appreciated," she said at last, her tone carefully measured, "but your drunken escapades with the Rivaini pirate are not."

"Oh, I don't think that's going to be a problem any more," Devon drawled with a dismissive wave, "and I'd say that you have bigger concerns right now, wouldn't you?" She jerked her chin toward the sounds of combat and the smoke rising up from better than a dozen fires.

"Indeed." Meredith studied her for a moment longer, then turned away, staring toward the upper terraces. "The qunari are taking their prisoners to the Viscount's Keep; likely, they have already seized control there. We must deal with them."

"We have been," Devon replied tersely, crouching to wipe her bloody daggers on the fallen mage's robe, then freshening the poison on each blade, "but if they're in the Keep, it's not going to be easy to get at them. Where are the mages from the Gallows?"

"There." Meredith waved a careless hand in the direction of the most intense sounds of combat as she turned to go. "Get to the Keep and reconnoiter. I see if I can find more of my templars."

"They're not protecting the mages?" Hawke demanded, blue-green eyes suddenly matching the coldness of the Knight-Commander's gaze.

"Some undoubtedly are," Meredith replied without breaking stride or looking around – which, given the look on Devon's face, was just as well, "but I doubt that many survive."

She passed within an arm's length of Varric without sparing him a glance, and Bianca was all but begging him to loose a bolt or three into her retreating back – shit happened in the middle of a war, right? But he knew better than to take the time, because by the time he'd turned back around, Devon had given Falcon a healing potion and resumed her sprint toward the thick of things, Aveline close behind.

"Blondie, Daisy, let's move!" he called out, drawing Bianca and setting a bolt into her groove as he moved to follow.

"She's gone?" Merrill glowered balefully in the direction the Knight-Commander had taken, nearly tripping over the dead qunari mage in the process. "She's not nice at all, is she?"

"That's putting it mildly," Anders growled, longer legs easily propelling him past dwarf and elf. "She'd likely be just as happy if every mage up there died. She -"

Varric cut him off before he could launch into his standard diatribe on the abuses heaped on mages. "If Sunshine is one of them, Hawke just might decide to help the qunari out." Unfortunately, he was probably a lot closer to the truth than he wanted to be. "Less talk, more run."

By the time they caught up with Devon, Aveline and the dog, four more qunari were dead, and Hawke needed healing again, her left arm twisted at an angle that made Varric wince.

"Hold still," Anders ordered her, aligning the broken bones gingerly. "This is going to hurt -"

"Hurry up!" she snapped, barely seeming to notice what he was doing, her head turned, staring up the next flight of stairs. The faint glow of healing energy had barely begun to blossom around the broken arm when a fresh volley of light and sound erupted above them, coupled with shouts of alarm and screams of pain. Blondie had healed a broken collarbone for Varric the previous year, and it had hurt like a sonuvabitch, but the knitting bones had nothing to do with the agony on Hawke's face right now.

"Falcon, go!" she shouted, and the mabari shot up the steps with a snarl that had made grown men piss themselves. "The rest of you, get your asses up there and help them!" Her entire body was coiled as tightly as Bianca's gears at full draw, but she held herself motionless, waiting for Anders to finish his work as Varric followed Aveline and Daisy upward.

Three flights later, they burst out into a charnel house. Corpses littered the marble paving of the terrace: human, elf, qunari, and every last one of them had bled crimson in a tide that obscured the pale stone. The battle was still raging: tight clusters of combat, with the qunari attacking the surviving mages with implacable savagery. A quick glance around confirmed that Sunshine was not among those standing, so Varric drew a bead on the first hornhead that fell into Bianca's sights, trying to ignore the sinking feeling. Maybe she hadn't left the Gallows. Maybe she was elsewhere.

Maybe.

He squeezed the trigger, and Bianca obligingly buried the bolt to the fletching between a set of broad shoulders, but the bastard had already dealt a mortal blow to the young mage he'd been attacking, and qunari and boy fell to the ground together.

Damn it.

"With me!" He pivoted at Aveline's rallying shout, drawing and reloading all a matter of muscle memory, taking aim at a cluster of four qunari who were attacking an older elf. The mage had created some sort of barrier around himself that was holding them off, but it looked as though that was taking all that he had, leaving him unable to cast any offensive spells. Aveline charged, leading with her shield and knocking one of the attackers away, right into Falcon's waiting jaws. As woman and mabari reduced that one to so much dead meat, another stiffened suddenly, hands flying to his throat as he staggered back, blood fountaining from his ears, nose and eyes.

That would be Daisy doing her thing. Varric didn't look for the elf; her attack had opened up a clear shot to one of the two still on the attack. He narrowed his eyes, watching the sword arm rise and fall.

Right … there.

Another squeeze of the trigger, another twang! of the string, precisely machined gears flowing together smooth as silk, and feathers sprouted in the gap where the plates that shielded the arm met the cuirass. Draw, load, aim, squeeze: another bolt struck home in the bared throat as the target threw his head back in a bellow of pain that was cut short, and fell, leaving one standing.

Just as the elf's barrier gave a final shimmer and vanished.

Shit.

Varric hurriedly reloaded and took aim, but pulled up as Devon charged past him at full speed, launching herself at the last qunari with a savage shout. She was in and out with the speed of a mongoose, blades flashing in the light of the moon overhead, and the qunari turned away from the elf, glancing contemptuously down at the deep cuts on each muscled forearm, took two steps toward his attacker and dropped like a stone.

Varric swiveled, Bianca up and ready, seeking targets, finding none. That was the good news. The bad news was that, besides them, the elven mage was the only thing standing.

Aveline stepped in, supporting the elf as his legs wavered beneath him. "First Enchanter Orsino, are you all right?"

Well, that explained why he'd had better luck holding off his attackers than the others, but Varric had a suspicion that it wasn't going to go over so well with Hawke.

Orsino nodded, stepping away from the Guard-Captain, looking around with a dazed and disbelieving expression. "I told them to run," he muttered, grief settling over his features like a shroud as he looked from one broken body to another.

"Why did you have them here at all with no protection?" Devon demanded in a fury, daggers still clenched in her fists.

"There was supposed to be a templar escort," the elf replied, shaking his head slowly, brow knitted as he tried to remember, anger sparking in his eyes as he went on. "They left us to pursue a group of qunari. We tried to retreat, but we were -"

Falcon's howl cut off his words and brought them all around to see the mabari pawing at one of the limp forms, dark hair and bloody robes all that was visible.

Aw, crap. Sunshine …

"No." The word was little more than a whisper, the blood draining from Devon's face as she took a faltering step forward, then another, and then both daggers clattered to the stone, and Hawke sprinted the rest of the distance, dropping to her knees beside Falcon.

"Beth?" Hawke cried in a choked voice as she scooped up her sister, turning her over gently and peering into the pale, still face. Varric thought that he could discern some movement of the chest … but not much. Not enough by a long shot. "Beth, c'mon. Look at me. Open your eyes, Bethy, please!" Her hand searched frantically over the robe, came up bloody, and she stared at it with wild eyes. "Anders!"

"Let me." Orsino's intervention saved Varric from having to decide whether it was worth the risk to warn Hawke about asking an apostate to use magic in front of the highest ranking mage in the Gallows. On the one hand, she'd dropped the daggers; on the other, he knew they weren't the only weapons the rogue carried, and in her present mood, she'd probably use her bare hands.

The mage knelt opposite Hawke as the rest of them gathered close. Aveline's features were set in grim sorrow, and tears streamed down Daisy's face. Anders looked no less distressed, but when Varric tilted his head, he nodded, and both of them turned their attention outward, ensuring that no surprise guests dropped in.

Not the most inspiring view, but he set his line of sight above the scattered corpses and blood-soaked stone, focusing on the points of ingress as Orsino began to murmur a healing spell, the words slipping by Varric's keen ears with the susurrant sound of wind blowing through leaves, never quite intelligible. Weird, that. One of these days, he was going to have to ask Blondie or Daisy how that worked. Or Sunshine, assuming she -

Behind him, a sudden, ragged intake of breath was quickly followed by a spate of coughing and Hawke's glad cry. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, Varric smiled at the sight of Devon fiercely hugging Bethany and sent a quick prayer of thanks toward the Maker, along with a promise to pay it forward by some suitably charitable acts in the future. For this favor, he might even set foot in the Chantry, because sure as shit, if Sunshine had died, Hawke would have -

A discreet cough from Anders brought him around, Bianca ready for action until he identified the newcomers. Better late than never, right?

Nah. He didn't think so, either.

"First Enchanter Orsino." The Knight-Commander, now at the head of a shiny brigade of templars, looked down on the group dispassionately. "You survive."

"No thanks to your templars," Orsino replied coldly as he stood, fire in green eyes clashing with ice in pale blue. "If not for Serah Hawke and her companions, both myself and Mage Hawke would have shared the fate of these others." He gestured around at the carnage.

"The templars' duty is to defend the citizens of Kirkwall, as is the mages'," Meredith replied, barely sparing the dead mages a glance. "They made good use of their curse, and drew the attention of these foul creatures from the innocents." All delivered in a tone of calm conviction, though it looked as though her subordinates might not be quite in step. A few were regarding the dead with expressions of dismay or shame, though nobody seemed inclined to contradict the Knight-Commander.

Devon helped Bethany stand, the younger Hawke leaning heavily against her sister, the paleness of her normally rosy cheeks and the bloody robe with the hole in the front a reminder of how damn close a call it had been.

"I thought it was the duty of the templars to protect the mages?" Hawke challenged Meredith. To all outward appearances, she was calm, her expression dispassionate, but anybody who knew Hawke knew that was when she was at her most dangerous. Meredith didn't seem to recognize that, but a couple of her subordinates did, judging from the sudden apprehension on their faces, and Varric figured that more than a few Gallows customers were going to find their supplemental lyrium supply cut off for the next month or two.

"We've no time to waste talking," Meredith said dismissively. "We must strike back before it is too late."

"And who will lead us in this battle?" Orsino demanded, glaring at her. "You?"

The temperature dropped twenty degrees or so. "I will fight to defend this city as I have always done!" she countered haughtily.

"To control it, you mean!" he snarled. "Nearly a score of my charges perished here while you were off posturing! I will not toss any more lives into the flames simply to feed your vanity!"

Meredith's eyes narrowed, and the chill deepened to the point that frostbite seemed imminent, but Varric's attention was on Hawke. With Bethany safe and the Tome of Koslun gone, he wouldn't have been surprised to see her walk away and leave Kirkwall to the qunari, maybe use the confusion to spirit her sister away from the templars.

Blue-green eyes flicked between Orsino and Meredith, her lip curling in disdain. "As amusing as this little pissing match is, you might want to give some thought to fighting the qunari instead of each other." She glanced briefly at Bethany. "Varric, I want you to take Beth and -"

"No." The refusal came from Sunshine, who shook her head. "I'm not leaving."

Unsurprisingly, Devon was not pleased by this statement. "Don't argue with me, Beth," she growled. "You're in no condition to -"

"I'm not arguing." Sunshine stepped away from her sister's support and stood alone, her expression determined. "This is as much my fight as it is yours, and I am not going to run from it."

Hawke glared at her for a long moment, but Sunshine refused to wilt, and at last, Devon let her breath out in a frustrated hiss, dragging the bloody fingers of one hand through her hair. "All right, but stay in back, or I swear I'll tie you up and stick you in the first closet I find." She jerked her head toward the staircase that led upward. "My people, let's move."

She had retrieved her daggers, and they were halfway to the stairs before Meredith recovered from her astonishment sufficiently to speak up. "You are not authorized to remove a mage from templar supervision!" she barked.

"Then you might want to stop wasting time talking and follow me," Hawke called over her shoulder without looking back or slowing. "We're going to kill qunari."

"Is she proposing to lead us?" Varric heard Meredith fuming behind him. "She's not even of this city!"

"Neither am I," Orsino countered. "Nor were most of those who died here, but you seem to have had no objections to our fighting to defend Kirkwall."

A long silence, then the clatter of multiple suits of armor creaking into motion. Moments later, Meredith strode past Varric purposefully.

"Do you have a plan?" she demanded as her long legs brought her alongside Devon.

"Not until I see what we're up against," Hawke replied with a shrug. "I generally make it up as I go along."

The Knight-Commander's expression grew thunderous. "That is not sound military doctrine!" she huffed.

"And leaving mages to be slaughtered is?" Devon didn't bother to try to hide her disgust. "Lucky for us all, I'm not military, or I'd be recommending you for a court-martial for dereliction of duty."

Meredith's fair complexion abruptly went scarlet, but Hawke's attention had shifted forward, and she lifted one hand in a gesture that brought the rest of them to a stop. Most of the rest of them, anyway. A bit of clatter from the rear announced that some of the templars had been watching Meredith. Hawke sent a deathglare over one shoulder before creeping forward and peering around a corner.

They actually hadn't run into any more qunari since they'd left the slaughter on the terrace below, and Varric had begun to hope that their numbers had been whittled down enough that they'd decided to call it quits (hey, nobody could say that Andvar and Ilsa Tethric's baby boy wasn't an optimist), but the look on Hawke's face as she ghosted back to them put that notion to bed.

"Looks like they're digging in," she reported grimly. "There's about twenty of them guarding the main doors."

"There a back way?" Varric asked, but she shook her head.

"You and I might be able to sneak in, but none of the others could make it."

"Then we attack them," Meredith spoke up confidently.

"Twenty qunari are enough to make mincemeat of everyone here," Devon replied flatly, catching Varric's eye and giving a slight shake of her head that likely meant that she was nearly out of the poison that had done such a neat job of evening the odds on the run over. "If we had more mages, we'd have a better chance … oh, wait: we did. They're dead." She glowered again at the Knight-Commander, and Varric could see her giving serious consideration to just taking Bethany and leaving.

"A diversion, then?" Orsino suggested.

Hawke looked dubious. "They're not easy to distract."

He offered her a thin smile. "I believe that I can get their attention."


In a night that had provided no shortage of memorable moments, seeing the First Enchanter with his robes hiked up past his knees, running like a nug through Dust Town with a dozen or so smoldering qunari howling on his heels was definitely going high on Varric's list of things to jot down for future artistic embellishment when he got back to the Hanged Man.

Assuming he survived, that is.

As the rest of them left the various nooks and alleys where they had concealed themselves, Bethany looked worriedly in the direction that Orsino and his admirers had disappeared. "If they catch him -"

"Then we'd better get inside so that we don't waste the chance he gave us," Devon told her sister gently, shooting the Knight-Commander and her templars another look of scathing contempt. "Nice to see there's somebody in the Gallows with balls."

"You said yourself that we stood no chance against so many!" Meredith protested in outrage.

"Didn't stop him, did it?" Hawke countered, stalking toward the steps that led up to the Keep. For a moment, Varric thought that the Knight-Commander might actually draw steel on the Fereldan, so murderous was the look that she shot in Devon's wake. Varric kept a wary eye on Meredith as he followed Hawke, his finger resting on Bianca's trigger.

"Are you trying to goad her into attacking you?" Aveline was demanding of the rogue in a heated undertone.

"Nope," Hawke replied, her lips continuing to move in silence: Three … two … one …

"We should divide our forces and attack them from different directions," Meredith spoke up authoritatively. "We will go around to the servants' entrance and come in that way." Without waiting for a response, the Knight-Commander led the templars out of sight around the Keep.

"That was what I was trying to do," Hawke said smugly. "She's not going to attack me; not as long as she can get us to do the hard work while she gets the credit."

"Until she gets you killed, too!" Bethany whispered tearfully. "Devon, they're gone, they can't stop us! I'll go, just come with me, please! Don't do this!"

"Can't go," Devon replied. "Not after Orsino took that risk to draw off the guards." She paused, then added with a wink, "Besides, I'm not that easy to kill, Beths. You know that." The marble flagstones outside the doors were littered with the charred and smoking corpses of the guards who hadn't survived Orsino's fireball. Devon picked her way around them, paused at the great doors, listening briefly, then shrugged, threw them open and darted in, blades ready. A handful of qunari were lingering in the massive vestibule; the group made relatively short work of them, now that Daisy and Blondie didn't have to keep their magic under wraps.

As the last hornhead was falling, Aveline dove down the steps toward the barracks, her face a mask of dread. The rest of them kept watch above; a minute or so later, she was back, relief warring with worry in her expression.

"No one there," she reported, "and it doesn't look as though there was a fight. Hopefully, they were all out in the city when the Keep was attacked."

"What's the plan, Hawke?" Varric wanted to know as they approached the doors of the great hall.

"Ideally?" Devon shrugged. "Talk, if the Arishok will listen." She didn't look particularly hopeful, however. "I'm going to have to get that damn book back, convince him to let me try," she muttered, anger sparking in her eyes. "It's the only thing that's going to stop this. Damn her!"

No need to ask who she was talking about, but if anyone could track down Rivaini, it was Hawke. "Deal me in," Varric told her.

"And me," Aveline said grimly. That was going to be a lively reunion. And loud.

"You're going to find Isabella?" Merrill asked. "Oh, I'll come, too, except …" Worry touched her delicate features. 'Hawke, you're not going to hurt her, are you?"

"I don't think she can be hurt, Merrill," Devon replied flatly, a bitter light in her eyes. "She doesn't give a damn about anybody but herself."

"But that's not true, Hawke," Daisy protested. "She cares about you; I know she does!"

"Then why isn't she here?" Bethany asked, an anger that was seldom seen touching her cheeks with color. "Why did she leave Devon to clean up her mess?"

"Enough," Hawke said wearily when Daisy looked ready to burst into tears. "Let's deal with what's in front of us." She stepped up to the wide double doors; behind them, the agitated murmurings of a crowd could be heard.

"Sounds like most of them are still alive," she remarked, grasping the handle as a rumbling voice rose above the rest.

"Here is your Viscount!" The Arishok's roar was punctuated with screams and shouts. Hawke hurriedly opened the door and led the way inside. The Arishok and his warriors stood atop the steps in front of the Viscount's throne; below, crowded together in the gallery, were the nobility of Kirkwall, many of whom were scrambling to get out of the way of an object that was rolling along the burgundy carpet, alternating flashes of pale and red all that could be made out until it fetched up against Hawke's foot and they all found themselves staring down into the sightless eyes of Viscount Dumar as his circlet rolled past and into the vestibule.

Well, crap. Granted, the man had been nothing more than Meredith's lackey, from all reports, but this didn't bode well for peaceful negotiations.

Qunari weren't small to begin with, and the Arishok was half a head taller than his subordinates, with the massive, curling horns adding another foot. Deep-set eyes swept contemptuously over the crowd, coming to rest on them, and Varric held his breath. There were a lot more than twenty qunari in the hall, and – unsurprisingly – there was no sign of Meredith and her templars.

"Shanedan, Hawke," he rumbled. "I expected you."

The words were not followed by an immediate attack, but Varric did not allow himself to relax.

"I do hate being predictable," Hawke drawled, stepping forward. "But given the circumstances, it seemed warranted." She glanced around at the collected nobility. They looked back with a near-pathetic hope, considering that a good many of them had spent the past three years scorning the Fereldan 'pretender'. "Shanedan, Arishok," she said, inclining her head slightly. "I have come to ask that you end this."

The qunari's features might have been carved from stone. "Maraas toh ebra-shok," he intoned. "None of these is worth your effort, Hawke. You alone are basalit-an."

"I know, but what can I do?" Hawke replied with a shrug. "I've already invited half of them to a ball to celebrate Summerday and the caterer won't refund my deposit. You know how it is."

"I do not," he disagreed with his usual blindness to anything remotely resembling humor. He lumbered down the steps to meet her; the top of her head barely reached the center of his chest, but she faced him with no sign of fear. "This is what respect looks like, bas!" he announced to the nobles. "Some of you will never earn it!"

"I think you have their attention," Devon told him. "There's no need to -"

"There is every need," he disagreed. "Look at them!" He threw a massive hand toward the onlookers, who shrank back fearfully. "Like fat dathrasi, they feed and feed, and complain only when their meal is interrupted. They do not look up. They do not see that the grass is bare. All they leave in their wake is misery. They are blind. I will make them see!"

"The other cities will come to Kirkwall's aid," Hawke warned him, "and the other nations will assist the Free Marches. You're going to start a war with the south."

"Then there will be war!" The Arishok's voice rose to a shout, and one woman fainted. "I am denied Par Vollen until the Tome of Koslun is found, but I can no longer ignore the disease of this society festering everywhere I look." He turned away from Devon, pacing with an agitation that Varric had never seen him display and a barely-leashed expression that sent a chill down the dwarf's spine. That would be a whole lot of crazy, if he actually tipped over the edge. "If I am to remain here, I will bring the Qun to this place! These kabethari will become viddathari, or they will die!"

"I'll find the Tome!" Devon promised him. "You have my word; just give me two weeks!"

"I have waited long enough!" The Arishok spun back to Hawke, towering over her, but she did not flinch. "For four years, I have searched and waited," he thundered. "Tell me, Hawke: how do you propose to find it in a fraction of that time?"

"I believe I can answer that."

The reply did not come from Devon, but from the direction of the doorway behind them. Every eye turned, Varric's included, though he had recognized the voice at once.

Well, I'll be damned. He might get to write a happy ending for this one, after all.


I got hung up on this chapter originally over POV. I intended for it to be Aveline, but it was refusing to flow. Then stuff happened, and everything got set aside for a while, until Inquisition brought the muse out of hibernation and at the same time dropped Varric's commentary squarely in the middle of the qunari attack. Still took some time to get done, as my primary focus is on finishing 'Moments In Time' & the random plot bunnies insist on popping up to distract me on occasion.

As I've mentioned before, this one will (thankfully) be much shorter than MIT, but that one will still be the first one completed (and yes, the end is now in sight). I doubt there will be another update to this story before MIT is done, but I do have this one planned out to the end and beyond. Schedule and muses permitting, it should be accomplished without further lengthy interruptions.