Nine: The Shattered Rose
For they die, those toothsome children,
and it is with us they stay. They cry within the dry stone,
they rise with the floodwaters and press their hands
against the Veil.
—from the Canticle of Demons, stanza six: of the Harrowed
Kathil:
Anders had her chin in one hand, moving her head to and fro. "Really, Kathil. This is normal for you? Your neck—"
"Is as fine as it ever is." Kathil's eyes felt gritty and dry, her hips were aching abominably, and she had been summarily marched into the infirmary upon their arrival at the Vigil and told that she was going to get checked out without delay. Protesting that she was just tired—they were all tired, they had been at a forced march for three days with little rest and no sleep—had done no good. "I'm all right. Leliana needs your attention more than I do."
Anders blew out a breath and let go of her chin. "I'm doing the small things first, and that includes checking out all of you before I start working on Leliana. That knee of hers is going to take some doing, though it's a lot better than it could have been. You didn't do a half bad job putting it back together, but it's complicated by the previous injury to the knee."
She frowned. "What previous injury?"
"She broke the kneecap sometime in the past. I could feel where it had healed together, though it was a little...strange. I didn't want to wake her to ask her about it."
Kathil checked her annoyance, shoving it down where all the nasty and brutish impulses lived in her soul. "The hammer shattered the kneecap, cracked the head of the bone of the lower leg, disconnected a bunch of ligaments, and tore the muscle of her thigh partially away from its mooring."
Anders was staring at her. "What? Unless you've been taking lessons while I've had my back turned, there is no way you got her from that state to what I saw just now. You slept through your classes with Wynne, I am given to understand." He frowned. "Though now that you mention it, that would explain why the breaks felt odd."
"Jowan did the lion's share of the messy work and realigned the bits of bone," Anders' expression darkened, and she bit back a snide comment. "I worked with him and healed the flesh so at least she could move the leg again. You're right that I'm not much of a healer. Jowan is, but only on specific kinds of injuries—tendon, scar, aligning things that are out of place. Together, we're almost a whole healer."
"You're biased." The words came out of him like a small explosion. "You and he were always cheek by jowl. I suppose I couldn't expect you to see him for what he is."
A sense of calm descended on her, like icewater spreading through her. She hadn't expected to have this conversation now, and she was not in the mood. "A blood mage," she said, and knew that there was an inexorable expression on her face. "A Grey Warden. Someone prone to a particular brand of foolishness born of a good heart and an ambitious soul. We do what we must, Anders, and in this case I recruited a man who had betrayed me and everything that I thought the two of us believed. Can you think of any better place for someone of his talents than on the front lines of a battle that will outlast all of our lifetimes, Anders?"
Anders had rocked back on his heels, as if something in him was seriously contemplating making for the door. His jaw was clenched, and she knew that there was quite a bit that he wanted to say but couldn't quite bring himself to. The silence was condemnation enough.
But he blew out a breath, and his expression smoothed. "Right. Well. Now that that awkwardness is out of the way, I should finish my examination."
Annoyance returned like a gust of wind. "Haven't you seen enough? I'm well—at least, as much as usual."
"Hm." And there it was again, that stubborn persistence that had meant that he had kept running away where someone else might have given up. "How are you doing with feeding Cerys? Breasts doing all right? How's she feeling?"
She glared. "They're sore, but I'm told that's not unusual. Cerys has been fussy, but we've also been on the run. She'll calm down once we get settled back in."
"Shirt off, please. I want to have a look." At her blink, he chuckled. "Seriously, Kathil, you're not my type. The soreness is probably normal, but best to make sure."
On the balance, she decided he was telling the truth. She shucked her shirt. "I didn't think you had a type. Other than 'breathing'."
"Mmmm. Suppose that's true." But he wasn't paying much attention to her words. Instead, he was looking at her scarred shoulder with intent fascination, as if he were Oghren and her shoulder were a kind of alcohol he'd never encountered before. "Wow. Suppose that explains why you don't have much mobility in your neck. You can use the shoulder, though?"
"It's my weak side, but yes." Just how weak, she successfully hid from just about everyone. "It's more flexible than it looks."
Anders was poking at the scars. The sensation of his fingers was a distant pressure, punctuated by a bright prickling where the skin between the scars was largely intact. "The flesh looks almost...melted."
"The creature that gave that scar to me had an overabundance of claws, teeth, and acidic spit,"
she said. "I survived, but it was a near thing."
"I can see that." All business now, Anders poked and prodded her breasts. "Everything looks all right, I'll give you some salve that will help with the soreness. Let me know if you start running a fever, though." He handed her shirt to her, and she pulled it over her head. "I'm still working on that fellow you sent back with Alistair. It's going to be a near thing if he pulls through. The amputation they did was a butcher job, which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't developed an infection in the bone they left. He doesn't have very good odds. Better here than at the Amaranthine chantry, but still not good."
"I am under the impression that most of the people who knew anything about healing in Amaranthine died when the city came under attack," Kathil said. "We did what we could for him, but like you said, I'm not much of a healer, and it wasn't anything Jowan could work with."
The thing they were not saying filled the space between them, the fact that Albert was dying—and well they both knew it. The poor man's only fault had been being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bringing him here had possibly been the wrong decision, but she couldn't have done anything else and still been able to look Nathaniel in the eye when he returned from his trip with Oghren.
"I will do my best," Anders said, and turned away from her. He pulled a vial from a rack on a nearby table and handed it to her. "Take half of that tonight before you go to bed, the other half tomorrow night. It's a restorative. And don't look at me like that, I promise it's not a sleeping draught."
"Good, because I'm still up two or three times a night with Cerys." She tried to smile at Anders and failed. She opted to hop off the table she'd been sitting on. "Speaking of, she's probably hungry, and I think Cullen is next on your list."
"Send him in." But Anders wasn't really paying attention to her, now. He'd moved into the infirmary more or less immediately upon arriving at the Vigil, and even before the Joining he had started to make the place his own. She knew Anders enough to know that the constant flirtation and joking were only the most visible aspects of his personality. Beneath the winks and nudges there was a man who was confident to the point of arrogance on the few subjects he actually was an expert about. He was not quite Wynne's equal as a healer, but in a decade or so he would be.
And he had a deep well of anger, one that even she was wary of provoking. You didn't run away from the Circle seven times unless you were quite terrifically angry with everything the Tower represented.
Musing, she collected Cerys from Cullen (who looked like he'd rather face a dragon in his current exhausted and bedraggled state than have Anders poking at him) and walked towards her chamber. Halfway there, she spied a familiar figure down the hall, and waved. "Garavel! Hold up!"
Garavel turned towards her, and there was perhaps a bit of resignation in the way his shoulders slumped. "Yes?" he said as she drew even with him. "Did you need something?"
"I want you to put together a list of everyone in the Keep who is affiliated with the Chantry," she said. "Priests, brothers, lay sisters, Templars, everyone. Be sure to include whether or not they're officially assigned to the chapel here."
The new Seneschal's look of confusion deepened into dismay. "Can I ask why? Are you going to—?"
She shook her head sharply, cutting him off with a slash of her hand through the air. "No. I'm not going to lead a...purge. I'm just curious, is all. We've had some trouble with the Chantry in Amaranthine."
"I heard," he said. "I'll get it together for you. If that's all?"
"How is Varel doing?" she asked. "I haven't seen him yet."
"All right, I think, but he looks like his head's spinning every time I see him. He's in his office all the time, locked away with books. The last time I saw him, he told me that we had to hire a castellan. I don't even know where to find a castellan. Clovis, the old one, served at the keep all his life, and he didn't have anyone apprenticed to him."
"I'll write some letters." Perhaps Alistair's seneschal would have an idea. Or her half-sister in Waking Sea. Or Teagan, perhaps, if he was still on speaking terms with her. She was quite certain that Eamon was not.
Kathil let Garavel go, and walked down the long corridor towards her rooms. Once there, she took half of the restorative, wincing at the bitter taste incompletely masked by the large amount of honey in the formula, She fed Cerys and curled up in the middle of the big bed. She only had the energy to remove her boots.
She closed her eyes and tried to banish all of the lingering grief and guilt, the strange sense that Justice had departed and left much of his story incomplete. There was nothing I could do, she told herself, but the guilt lingered.
Some time later, she awoke to a familiar presence in the bed. Zevran slept facing her, the pair of them curled around Cerys like leaves around a blossom. She could hear Cullen's sonorous breathing on the other side of Zevran. On the floor on her side of the bed, Lorn snored. If she listened very carefully, she could hear Fiann's lighter breathing near the foot of the bed.
She closed her eyes and took stock of her body. Her hips still hurt, and there was a sullen fire in her shoulder that was creeping into her neck. Everything else ached but not as much, not compared to the banked flame ever-present in her blood. Strange, the things one gets used to.
Cerys was a warm presence, stirring by chest, one hand seeking. Kathil shifted and pulled up her shirt. Cerys's seeking mouth latched on to one aching nipple. She nursed, and Kathil dozed. After three months, this was nearly automatic. They both fell asleep once more as soon as Cerys had her fill.
The next time she woke completely, the room was brighter, sunlight leaking in through the shutters on the windows. Zevran kissed her forehead. "Little bird, it is nearly noon, and there are people lurking outside the door."
She stretched, feeling the twinge and ping of overused muscles. "If what they wanted was important, they'd be knocking."
As if in response, there was a rap on the door of the chamber. She groaned, and Lorn gave a low woof. The knock came again, louder. "Go away," she called out. "Whoever you are."
"Commander, there's someone here to see you." The door muffled the voice, but it was definitely Sigrun. "She says it can't wait."
Kathil frowned. "Who is it?"
There was a pause. "You really had better come out here." Sigrun's voice was tight and strained. Beside her, Zevran's body had gone taut, and Cullen lifted his head.
Kathil got out of bed, still in yesterday's rumpled traveling clothes, and padded across the stone floor. She threw the bolt and opened the door. Sigrun was standing there, and next to her was a woman in shabby clothes, a human only a head taller than the little dwarf, a bared blade held almost casually in her right hand. She barely came up to Kathil's shoulder.
The woman lifted one hand and raked her dark hair back from her eyes. There were tattoos on the backs of her hands, curling around her fingers, slipping into the shadows in her sleeves. Zevran made a sound, almost a choked noise.
This was Ville, the Crow assassin that Zevran had spoken of. And now that Kathil was looking, the woman's eyes drifted a little, not focusing on Kathil's face but instead in the general direction of her head. She was born blind, Zevran had said. Let me assure you that it does not hamper her effectiveness as a Crow in the slightest.
"I tried to tell her that you'd see her when you got up, but she wouldn't let it go," Sigrun said, and shrugged. "Far be it from me to stop people from risking death by annoyed mage."
Kathil nodded, and quirked the corner of her mouth at Sigrun. "I have two of the most beautiful men in Amaranthine in my bed, and finally the privacy to do something about it. This had better be good."
Ville sniffed, raising her pointed nose a little. The blade in her hand slid into a hidden sheath and disappeared. "And yet you still wear clothes that smell like road dirt and sweat. You are fresh from the road and unwashed, as are the two men in the bed. Speaking of..." She smiled. "Zevran. It has been a while, yes?"
"Ville. It has." Kathil heard him get to his feet, and risked a glance over her shoulder. Unlike Kathil, he had taken the time to undress before bed. The black tattoos on his body curled around his hips and over the lean muscles of his abdomen, symbols laid in scar over his chest. "What do you want?"
She spoke a long sentence in Antivan, tilting her head. Zevran snorted in response. "I will do you the favor of not translating that, Ville. Largely because I have no wish to see how a contest between you and my wife would end."
"You are no fun, my desert thorn. I shall come to the point, yes?" Her Antivan accent was much thicker than Zevran's, lending her voice a liquid sort of music. "You are having trouble with a certain Seeker of the Chantry. So strange, that a Seeker would cross the Waking Sea from the north on a qunari ship. Very strange indeed. So I, being the curious woman I am, followed. I imagined that it might have something to do with a very interesting package that was sent to the grandmaster of the Blooded. You have enemies, Warden-Commander. And they are afraid of you."
Kathil pressed her lips together, chewed briefly on the inside of her cheek. "You'd better come in and close the door. Sigrun—"
"I'll keep watch." Sigrun's narrow-eyed glance at Ville forestalled any other requests Kathil might have made of her. Ville stepped over the threshold, and Sigrun closed the door behind her.
Ville walked to a chair and sat down. She's been in here before. Or at least someone has well enough to tell her where the furniture is. "Put some clothing on, Zevran," the assassin called. "While I know perfectly well you are fetching when naked, there is no need to distract the Wardens."
"I thought you said she was blind," Cullen muttered.
"I am," Ville replied. "The sound of a clothed body in motion is different than when it is unclothed, no? More importantly, I know that Zevran sleeps nude whenever it is safe to do so. Ensconced in this fortress with his wife and his lover, he would feel safe indeed."
Kathil ground her teeth. "And why couldn't this have waited until tomorrow?" she asked. Zevran and Cullen both started pulling on clothes, moving cautiously, not taking their eyes off of Ville.
She folded her tattooed hands almost primly, the tattoos giving a brief illusion of entangling. "Your arrival back at the Keep has not gone unnoticed. Even now, there is a group of men, Templar-trained mercenaries among them, gathering outside your fortress, discussing how best to take you and your child. It seems there was an...incident, on the road, yes? They have come to the conclusion that they cannot take only the child. They must subdue and capture you as well."
"Two attacks." Kathil surveyed Ville with a frown. "One between here and Amaranthine. One in the Blackmarsh."
The assassin chuckled. "Did I not say you had enemies? Several of them. The Chantry Seeker who came on the qunari ship plays a conservative hand, though perhaps not conservative enough if your lack of surprise is anything to go by. One person, in a strange land, not officially sanctioned—there are no resources to spare. The Seeker could not have been responsible for two attacks, not in the short time you were gone."
"So who was responsible for the other attack?"
"Who can say?" Ville shrugged one shoulder. "Rumor is running wild about the Warden-Commander and her pet maleficars. Think about where and when and how, eliminate the impossible." She flicked her thumbnail against her index finger. "Then choose from the improbable."
"You did not answer my question," Zevran said. His voice was low and rough. "What do you want?"
"Mmmm. Always so impatient, my thorn. It is one of your greatest flaws." Ville sighed and wrinkled her nose. "I am primera of the Rosa Quebrada. I see much in my duties. Rumor, innuendo, these are as much my stock in trade as garrotes and poison. And there was a most amusing rumor about...two and a half years ago, no? My old student, my very dear friend Zevran Aranai, he was back in Antiva after years away, and he was boasting that he had a new master, a Grey Warden. But when I investigate—pfft! He is gone. Now I am intrigued. It has been a most boring few years. So I begin to ask questions. And when I ask questions, I am met everywhere with blank walls. I begin to wonder if my pupil spoke the truth." She shrugged one shoulder. "For if he speaks the truth, then this Grey Warden has stepped on a stage that is far larger than she realizes. So I leave the Rosa Quebrada in the capable hands of my cuidador, and I pursue."
"Why?" Zevran asked. He drew even with Kathil, holding Cerys. "You have never done anything merely because you were interested."
"Well." She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "Could you not believe that it was merely affection for an old friend? No? Pity." The tip of her tongue slipped out from between her lips. "You are a symptom, my desert thorn, you and your Wardens. A harbinger. A storm is rising to engulf the whole world, and it will sweep away all who are unprepared. It is happening in Orlais, where the Empress shifts uneasily on her glittering throne. It is happening in the Free Marches, where one man is single-handedly overturning the government. In Antiva, the Blooded are falling, and they have no clear successor, no one Crow cell whose star is rising to take their place. In Tevinter, a single magister dies and the whole country begins to crack. And in all this chaos, the qunari are moving." Ville pursed her lips. "And in Ferelden, the backwater country that defeated a Blight on its own, there is a new schism brewing in the Chantry. It may be the crack that destroys the world, my thorn. Or the wound that saves it. So I am here because I believe that your Grey Warden will wish to buy what I am selling, and because I will not be caught unprepared by the rising storm."
Kathil took a deep breath. Antivans. Sodding mad, every last one of them. "And what is it that you are selling, Ville?"
"Alliance. The Rosa Quebrada are on the rise, but we do not have nearly the advantage we need to make sure that we take the place of the Blooded. Your name is known, Warden-Commander Kathil Amell. Even the Antivan princes flinch when the name of the Amells of Kirkwall is spoken. An alliance would be to our mutual benefit, especially if that alliance came with some very visible assistance."
Kathil opened her mouth, and closed it again. "The Amells...of Kirkwall?"
Ville raised an eyebrow. "Ah, but she does not know? She does not know. Hah! Zevran, my thorn, you have kept this from her. Tch. Naughty boy."
Zevran shrugged. "The name is likely a coincidence, no? One does not expect Marcher nobility to simply turn up in Ferelden."
"And Amell was my mother's name. Her given name." Kathil glared at Ville, who was smiling slightly. "She had no family name, as far as I know. I was given her name when I was taken to the Tower, because my father's family name is...recognizable."
"Mmm. Possible, though unlikely. The Amell family is known for being mage blood, root and branch, as much as the Marchers would like to deny it. And when one finds a mage with the family name Amell..." She shrugged. "Besides. My compatriots tell me that you look very like an Amell. Though you are quite short for one."
Kathil shook her head, trying to clear it. It doesn't matter. Focus. "You said something about assistance in return for alliance? We don't exactly have much to spare, you know."
"It would be a very small thing, no?" The little smile on Ville's face flashed into a grin. "Something symbolic. Crows, we love symbols, do we not? Symbols and signs and omens. There is a sword, Warden-Commander. It hangs behind your desk. Made of the bones of a dragon who was old when the Tevinter Empire was founded, forged by a smith with a feverish, restless gift. Emblazoned with the wings of a griffon. Commissioned, I believe, by your predecessor."
"It's called Vigilance. Laurens gave it to me when he left." She shrugged when Zevran glanced at her. "It's balanced wrong for me, and it's not a mageblade. I was going to give it to Cullen. So we give you the sword, and in return?"
"In return I give you information. I have been here for weeks, and my ears are very sharp." She rose to her feet. "And there is the matter of why I chose to, shall we say, barge in on you. I can always tell when murder is singing in the air, and the song is very loud just now."
"Whose murder?" Her breath snagged in her throat.
"Two murders." Her head dipped forward, and her dark hair fell to obscure her expression and her drifting eyes. "Give me alliance, and I tell you who dies this afternoon. Along with so much else."
Kathil took a breath. "Zevran, you know her. Can we trust her?"
He raised an eyebrow. "No. But she tells the truth. The Quebrada Rosa—the Shattered Rose, in this language—it is second only to the Blooded Feather and the Tiernas as precedence is reckoned in Antiva, and they demand the highest prices of all. A sword such as the one she describes...the Antivan nobility is a superstitious lot, and Grey Wardens occupy a prominent place in the list of monsters under the bed, so to speak. Be good or the Wardens will come and take you away, mothers tell their little boys. If one wishes to take power, allying oneself with a nightmare is not a poor move." He gave Ville a long look. "She will act according to her nature, and the sword is a magnificent price. It is perhaps less dangerous to trust her than it is to turn her away."
"Faint praise, my thorn." But Ville was smiling. "So? What shall it be?"
Kathil thought, turning over the possibilities in her mind. "You'll leave? Go back to Antiva?"
"Ah, she is jealous! So charming, no?" Ville put a hand on her hip. "I will sail away soon. I trust my cuidador, but there are limits to the amount of time I may be away."
"One assassin in the Vigil is quite enough." She glanced as Zevran, then Cullen. Zevran looked troubled, but nodded shallowly; Cullen just spread his hands and shook his head. She held out her hands to Zevran, and he handed Cerys to her. The infant was awake now, and squirming. "All right. You'll have your sword."
Ville touched her fingertips to her mouth. "Wise woman. The targets are your Mistress Woolsey, she who holds the keys to the treasury and so very many sums in her head, and your Arl Varel. The signal is the nighthawk's cry when the sun is full up, this afternoon. The assassins are among the guards. The agente holds their families to guarantee their cooperation."
"Who ordered the killings?" Kathil asked. She felt as though giant hands were on her shoulders, pushing them together with a crushing pressure.
"It is a long chain, and not a very interesting one. Let us say that this is repayment of a favor owed to one of the Blooded, who work for a crowned prince. Not crowned for long, of course. And the payment is late, as the one who it is to be paid to is already dead." She tipped her head toward Zevran. "The failure of the agente here will ripple all the way back to Antiva."
"The names of the guards?"
"Jothan and Kevit," Ville replied. "Jothan attends Mistress Woolsey. Kevit is assigned to Varel. The agente is one of the merchants in the outer ward, and he goes by the name Marko. All three should vanish. The two guards..." She shrugged, making that dismissive gesture again. "Best not to take chances."
Kathil took a long breath. "If you are playing us false—"
"But I am not, am I?" She grinned. "I will return later, to collect my prize." Between one breath and the next, Ville was gone.
The hairs on the back of Kathil's neck rose. The assassin had to still be in here, but she suspected that if they looked they would find nothing more than dust. "Let's get moving."
Two guards were no trouble to take out. The merchant was only a little more challenging, as he was staying in plain view in the outer ward. But a well-timed distraction provided by an ox that found itself with its bollocks a bit frosted gave them the space they needed to make the merchant vanish. Ville had indeed not played them false; the man had Crow tattoos under his shirt, and there were coded messages stashed in a hollow in the stock of the crossbow that was, from the look of it, well and often wielded.
Once they had taken care of the bodies and found the families of the unfortunate soldiers, the sun was sinking and Kathil still hadn't had a bath or anything to eat, much less drilled with the new Warden-mages or gotten to sit down with Leliana. She was almost as cranky as her daughter, who had evidently had enough excitement for one week and was letting everyone around her know it.
"If I can just get her to sleep—" She stopped as a wave of frustration rose in her, followed swiftly by the choking tears that ambushed her on occasion when she was feeling overwhelmed.
"Here," Cullen said, and held out his arms. "The bath is full, if not precisely warm. Let me take Cerys for the moment. You go wash."
She took a deep breath, and shuddered. Let them help. You don't have to do this on your own. "Thanks," she said as she handed Cerys over to Cullen. The baby kicked fretfully at the blanket wrapped around her, but her wails subsided into hiccups. Why does it seem sometimes like she prefers everyone else to me?
Kathil took her frustrations off to the bath. She didn't have a lot of energy, but she could heat the bath to warmer than blood temperature. The stone tub was still cold, and leached heat as if that was exactly what it had been designed to do, but for a blissful few minutes after scrubbing herself down the water was still warm enough for relaxation.
"So. Family, is it?"
That was Sati, lounging against the side of the stone tub. Kathil was dreaming, she knew she was dreaming, and yet here was Sati, her dark skin shining with water, her fingertips leaking just a little bit of reddish light. Strange. I don't remember those scars on her thighs. "My family is here. It doesn't matter who I'm related to by blood. Blood ends the day the doors of the Tower close behind us."
"Still. I wonder what they're like. The Amells of Kirkwall. It has a nice ring, I think." Sati moved abruptly, water sloshing against the sides of the stone tub, and straddled Kathil's lap. "Hm," she said as she lowered her mouth to Kathil's. "This is interesting, is it not?"
Her lips touched Kathil's, and that was not Sati's mouth but another entirely familiar mouth on hers, tongue probing. Kathil felt herself rise without moving, her awareness pressing into her own body. Suspended between dream and waking, all she could do was to pull the person above her down, wrap her arms around a strong back. Zevran.
She did not let him up for a long time, and when she did they were taut against one another, tension singing in them. "Come to bed," he said, his lips brushing hers. "There is a Templar waiting for us there."
"Cerys?"
"Asleep," he said. "In her cradle, with two warhounds guarding her." He rose, pulling her upright, and they stepped out of the tub. Zevran snagged a towel from the chair and wrapped Kathil in it, then pulled her into his arms.
She set her lips against his neck just under his ear and breathed in his scent of leather and stone and musk. Zevran shifted against her. "Are you jealous of Ville?" he asked. "Truly?"
Kathil snorted and took his earlobe in her teeth, gently. "Worried?"
"Mmm. Should I be?"
She bit down, heard his hissing intake of breath, then let go. "I have every faith in you, Zev."
And it was not an answer; but it was answer enough.
Zevran:
They folded into each other as if it had been not months since the three of them had been together but days. Despite the day they had all had—or perhaps because of it—all three of them were fairly ravenous.
All to the good, since seeing Ville once more had provoked an…unexpected reaction in him. After all these years, he would have thought that the power of her presence would have faded. It had not. Not in the least.
And it was not desire for her that was riding him. It was something else, something he could not name and dared not think about too closely. But even if he did not understand it, he could use it.
The body was made for desire, after all.
Kathil chuckled as she drew one leg up and traced a toe down the inner side of his calf. "I think that Zevran gets to be in the middle tonight. It's his mission we're celebrating, after all."
"Ah? Is that what we are celebrating?" He made his voice light, teasing. "I thought perhaps we were merely celebrating being alive. I must confess that I am surprised that we are."
Cullen had propped himself up on one elbow. He looked down at the two of them. "So am I. And Ville. She's…something else, isn't she?"
"She is." He gave Cullen a slow smile. "I would not bed her, were I you. Non-Crows who go to her bed do not survive the experience. Though I am assured that they all die exquisitely happy."
He snorted. "Wasn't planning on it. I think I have my hands full. Speaking of hands—" He traced fingers down Zevran's chest. "Let's put ours to good use."
They did, and he indulged in a long, slow kiss with Cullen, feeling Kathil's hands trace down his spine, electricity waking in his skin. "Let us," she murmured into his ear. Her lips kissed their way down to the sensitive join between neck and shoulder. Her teeth grazed his skin, and wordlessly he pressed his body back into hers.
She bit down, and the sharp pain of it was sweet release.
Cullen's hands were busy, sliding down over his belly to take Zevran in one strong hand. Kathil's hand was still in motion, tracing over Zevran's buttocks, dipping in between.
Zevran gave himself over to the moment, abandoning thought to pleasure. This, was his only thought. This. Ever this.
He spilled quickly—it had been some time, after all—but the truly remarkable thing about mages was that the spells they used to refresh a warrior exhausted from battle could be repurposed for all sorts of things. He lay on his back, Kathil's mouth on him and Cullen keeling by his head. Evidently, the two of them had been plotting. He approved.
He approved even more in another configuration, Cullen behind him, Kathil before, the arrangement of legs taking some doing but the rhythm between the three of them undeniable and inexorable. The thing he had felt when Ville had been present returned, coiling within him, demanding. He gasped and hissed a word, and Kathil curled her fingers so her fingernails met his flesh.
Yes.
"Mine," she whispered, voice harsh. "Ours." Her fingernails dug in and brought with them cold fire, and he shuddered as Cullen shoved himself in to the hilt, and Zevran would have arched his body but there was nowhere to go—nowhere to flee—
Pain and pleasure were one and the same, and the barriers between himself and what he carried shredded and vanished.
Some time later, the room had gone mostly silent. Kathil had fallen asleep a while ago; her head was pillowed on her arm, and her lips curved a little in an uncharacteristic smile. Cullen and Zevran had continued, but there was a limit to endurance, and they had finally reached it.
Desire sated for the moment, he and Cullen lay loosely intertwined. The Templar bent his head forward to kiss Zevran's forehead. "So? Was that an acceptable reward for a job well done?"
Zevran raised an eyebrow. "Ah, but there is no good answer to that, is there? If I say no, I disparage a truly extraordinary evening." He smiled, lazy and satisfied as a cat. "And if I say yes, then there is no incentive to do it again."
"Oh, there's incentive." The other man threw one leg over Zevran's hip. "I think there's incentive enough for all of us."
Desire's song was muted, and the things that Ville's presence stirred up had retreated. But as they dropped down towards sleep, he thought that he saw a shadow pass between them and the window, feel a current of air stir where nothing should be moving.
Whatever it was, it was gone before Zevran could begin to react.
He may have slept, then, and he may have dreamed. Ville's hands shone in the darkness of sleep, wreathed with lines like smoke.
Cullen:
He was watching Kathil pace in front of a small group of mages, gesturing sharply. "All right. I know Anders' specialties—healing and hexes. Kinnon?"
Kinnon shrugged. "I'm a generalist. Maybe leaning a bit towards the Spirit school."
"Keili?"
She glanced to one side, and muttered, "Primal."
A troubled look passed across Kathil's face. "And Jowan is Primal, Blood, and shapeshifting."
"How about yours?" Anders asked, a lazy, dangerous edge in his voice.
"Arcane warrior, ice spells, and spells that disable or kill other mages." Kathil smiled at Anders, but the smile didn't reach her eyes; Cullen wondered what was going on between the two of them. "And a few other things besides. Each of you except Keili will probably end up picking up another specialty in short order, and that will determine where and how you fight. First, though, you'll need to learn one of the most important things a Warden-mage needs to know. Cullen?"
He got up from the bench where he'd been sitting. He wasn't exactly thrilled about it, but he did agree that it was better him than one of the others. "This is going to hurt," he warned them, and took a breath. Then he released the cleansing, feeling the Veil solidify around them.
Anders, Keili, and Kinnon staggered, paling. Anders in particular looked sick to his stomach, turning fish-green. Jowan put one hand to his head, swallowing.
Kathil barely turned a hair. "Believe it or not, you get used to it," she said. "It is entirely possible to learn how to function through a cleansing. You can still use your weapon, whether it's staff or sword. And the one thing that a Templar is not expecting is for you to be able to move just after they've used the cleansing. They depend on there being that time after the cleansing where you're sick and stunned. I'll let you recover, and then we'll pair off and do some sparring."
Anders recovered first, probably because he'd been hit with the cleansing more than once during his numerous escape attempts. He moved stiffly, though, and he would not look at Cullen. He faced off against Jowan, who was next to recover. The two of them tossed primal spells at one another, almost good-naturedly.
Almost.
Kathil turned her attention to Kinnon and Keili. Keili was shaking her head as if trying to clear it, but pushed away Kathil's hand. "I'm all right," she said, and a little thread of dread was winding its way through Cullen's gut. He'd seen what Keili was capable of, once. She had gone through her Harrowing just after Kathil had been taken away from the Tower. After Keili had awoken, she'd gone to the chapel to pray—Keili was always in the chapel—and the next thing anyone had known the chapel was filled with flame and Keili was screaming about apparitions with swords.
They'd had to replace most of the pews, and nobody had ever known why Keili had gone briefly crazy. The Templar who'd been standing guard hadn't been willing to talk, and he'd died during the attack on the Circle less than a year later.
(Though they had found the statue of Andraste in the chapel broken after the siege, the remnants of a glass vial and a little smear of dried blood among the ruin, and no one had even ventured a guess as to what had happened there.)
It had been a little creepy, how quiet she'd gone after that. Actually, a lot creepy. They'd been used to the Keili who would occasionally beg them to run her through; the new, silent Keili was not someone any of them knew.
And now she was here, and a Warden, and he was still reserving judgment.
She and Kinnon started halfheartedly sparring with each other, batting flames back and forth. Leliana arrived, and Zevran with Cerys, and the bard was talking about something that seemed to require a lot of excited gesturing. Zevran had a dubious expression on his face; Cullen heard Leliana mention celebration and wedding and dancing, of course, and smothered a smile. Ah. That.
Then his heart stuttered in his chest as he felt the Veil rip open, felt a mage nearby draw on far more power than a simple sparring session called for—
Heat washed over him as the sound of a fireball hit him. He turned to see Jowan rolling to his feet, face blackened with soot, calling on power of his own. He sent an earthen projectile back at Anders, and abruptly the two men weren't sparring, they were actually attempting to murder one another.
Reflexively, Cullen gathered his will for the cleansing—this was what he was here for, to step in if things got out of hand—but paused as he felt Kathil's hand grip his forearm hard. "Don't," she said. "Let me."
He opened his mouth to reply but she was already stalking towards Jowan and Anders, power almost visible around her. Her hands were empty, and bare. The two mages paid her no attention at all; Anders cast a hex on Jowan, who hissed and went for the little dagger he wore in his belt.
Kathil was between them, and flung her hands outward. Power concentrated and the world rocked briefly. Then power poured from her hands, raw force hitting both Anders and Jowan. They both flew backwards like dolls thrown by a tantruming child. Anders crashed into a pile of crates, and Jowan went rolling into a haystack. Incredibly, Anders barely seemed to blink, getting to his feet and starting to spit the words to a spell.
She raised a finger to her lips.
It was not noisy, that spell. Nor was it flashy. But Kathil ripped away Anders's power and drained it into the earth, leaving the healer gasping for breath and sagging against the broken crate he was next to.
Silence fell.
"If you gentlemen are quite done, I want both of you in my office." Kathil's voice was quiet and steady. "Now. You will explain to me—"
Beneath their feet, something stirred.
Cullen felt it as a lurch in the pit of his stomach, the abrupt awareness that somewhere nearby something out of nightmares was opening its eyes. Lorn and Fiann broke out into strange, urgent howls, and all of the mages in the courtyard went pale. "Maker's Breath—!" That was Kinnon, who was holding onto his staff for dear life. "What was that?"
"It felt like...something woke up." Jowan was climbing to his feet. His hair was full of bits of hay. "Something underneath the Vigil."
Cullen knelt next to Fiann, who had quieted but whose eyes were rimmed with white. The warhound licked her nose, over and over again. The Veil had settled back to its normal self, but there was a feeling of pressure, of watchfulness, still hanging in the air. "Maybe if we don't bother it any more, it'll go back to sleep?" Keili suggested. Her eyes were wide, barely controlled panic in her voice.
"We are never that lucky," Kathil said. "It's not something I've felt before. But I get the impression it's below us. There are tunnels beneath the Vigil." Her frown was deepening. Lorn pressed himself against the backs of her legs. "Andraste's little apples, I wish this had happened after Nathaniel had gotten back. He's the closest thing we have to an expert on what's underneath the fortress. Maybe Sigrun's been into the tunnels."
They were drifting together in the center of the courtyard. Leliana was only limping a little as she walked towards them, leaning slightly on a stick made of polished, deep red wood. "She mentioned something about a door down there, something dwarven-made. She may be able to guide us." She smiled. "And of course, you would not dream of leaving me behind, would you?"
"Your knee—"
"Is fine as long as I do not try to do acrobatics," Leliana said. She cast a glance at Anders. "Or so this fine fellow claims, yes?"
Kathil frowned deeply. "Yes, but who knows what we're going to find down there?" Leliana's jaw went hard and stubborn, and the two women looked at each other for a moment in silence. Something wordless passed between them. "Fine," Kathil said. She looked like she was thinking hard. "Zevran, Leliana, Keili, Jowan, Sigrun and I will go down beneath the Vigil. And Lorn, of course. I suppose I'll need one or two of the Templars as well."
Strange, that almost sounded like— "I'm not going with you?" he asked.
"No." She ran a thumb over the pommel of her sword. "I am not taking the entirety of what passes for the leadership of the Fereldan Wardens with me. I need someone senior to take care of things up here, and keep Cerys safe."
Just in case we don't come back.
The words were hanging in the air, unspoken.
Cullen bowed to necessity, though the idea that he was being left in charge filled him with a formless dread. "All right," he said. "Don't be too long, or else I might have to come down after you."
"I'll feed Cerys before I leave. A bit of goat milk won't do her any harm for a meal or two, though I hope it doesn't take that much time. Kinnon, if you could find Sigrun and Bran for me?" Kathil gave Anders and Jowan a gimlet glance. "Don't think this is going to get either of you off the hook. I want to know what your sodding problem is with each other, but I don't have time for the story right now. First thing after we get back, the two of you are going to talk to me."
"And there is one more you will need to take with you, no?" A new voice broke in, Antivan accent rounding and blurring the edges of the words. Ville strode out from behind the pile of crates Anders had crashed into. "I wish to guard my investment, after all."
"Wonderful," he heard Kathil mutter under her breath. "I'm sorry, Mistress Ville, but the answer is no."
"Is it, then?" Ville tilted her head. Her hair obscured her eyes, but there was a slight smile on her lips. "I have a sense of direction and position that is unequaled in this muddy little country. And unlike even the most perceptive dwarf, I need no light to navigate by. Or to kill by."
Kathil looked at Cullen and then Zevran, her expression guarded. Then she shrugged. "Fine. Come, if you like. We leave in a quarter hour—those who are going into the tunnels, meet me by the door into the basement."
There was a flurry of activity then, kisses and hugs and a baby fed and then handed to Cullen to rock to sleep, and then they were gone, into whatever it was that the Vigil was built atop of.
Come back safe, my loves.
Duty was a grindstone, and a comfort. He would hold onto it, until they returned.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
-Pablo Neruda
