Zevran regained consciousness and was immediately greeted by an unpleasant throbbing in his skull. Lifting a hand to his brow, he bit back an oath and slitted his eyes open.

"He's moving!" someone hissed from…somewhere nearby. "Tell Taeodor!"

Taeodor…Taeodor…where had he heard that name recently? Zevran grimaced against another dull ache, lowered his arm and stared with bemusement at the metal bars directly above him and the orange stone ceiling beyond. Had they run out of beds at the Ferelden embassy and tossed him into a dog cage?

A thoughtful inhalation through his nose told him that no, he couldn't smell dog. He smelled…

"Ser! Ser Zevran!" a voice called, soft but urgent.

Zevran turned his face.

…slaves.

The Antivan sat up so fast his head spun and a vocal curse escaped him.

The stone chamber was large, windowless, lit by candles in wall sconces, and dominated by ten huge cages and four much smaller ones. Nine of the bigger cells were filled with elves, no more than twelve to a cage, gender separated, and the tenth held male humans. There were no children, and only two cages held women. Of the four considerably smaller cells that were lined up against the wall furthest from a set of double doors, the chamber's only visible exit, Zevran inhabited one and the rest stood empty.

Except for a wooden waste bucket and a blanket, his cell was completely bare.

Taking stock of himself, the assassin mentally added that save for his smallclothes, Zevran too was completely bare.

"Ser, it's Taeodor from outside! I'm friends with Shianni's brother Soris!"

The Circle Tower? What in Andraste's name am I doing here?

The cage was large enough for one to stand. Zevran attempted this and fought a wave of vertigo, leaning unsteadily against the bars. He ran both palms over his face, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for a moment in an attempt to regain some focus, then slid his fingers back into his hair and glanced to the Ferelden elf who was still trying to get his attention.

Like the other slaves he was wearing an undyed cotton tunic that reached almost to his knees. His cage was closest to Zevran's, maybe two arm-lengths away.

Might as well start with the obvious question, hm?

"What happened?"

"Your master sold you to Magister Ezio," Taeodor said.

"My mast—?" Zevran scowled. "The human who was with Shianni and me, yes? Grey leather? Short black hair and beard?"

The other elf nodded while three of his fellows clustered nearby to listen in. Two more stood beyond, casting frequent glances towards the distant door. Zevran kept an eye on it himself and continued to feel his way along his tight blond braids.

"When you passed out," Taeodor said, "Ezio gave the shem an offer—four gold sovereigns if he could take you to the Circle right there and then."

"And what did the human, Xai, say?" Zevran muttered, fingertips pausing, gripping at the heads of two pins and pulling carefully.

"The human…" Taeodor hesitated. "The human haggled him up to seven sovereigns." Meeting Zevran's stare, he mumbled, "Shianni was beside herself. I thought Ezio would set her blood on fire again. Look, what is she doing in the Tevinter Imperium with you? And who exactly are you? What's going on? I couldn't understand most of the discussion your human had with the magister, but I caught enough to make it sound like Shianni's some sort of Ferelden dignitary!"

Zevran rolled two tempered pins into his palm and hunkered down by the lock securing his cell door. It looked a little more complex than he was capable of, and his tools could barely be called picks, but…

Sticking them in and feeling around, he said, "Shianni is an envoy of Queen Anora, come here to reclaim the elves illegally smuggled from the Denerim alienage during the Blight. I am…assisting her."

"Sure you are," one of the other elves muttered.

"Never fear." Zevran forced a chuckle. "The human is a Grey Warden and this is all a part of the plan! I am the man on the inside, as it were." He flicked another furtive glance at the door and jammed one of the pins in viciously, his frustration mounting. "Tell me what you can of this place. How big, where the exits are…that sort of thing."

Taeodor began to speak and one of his companions cuffed him. "Are you insane? He could be a plant!"

"You didn't see what happened outside," Taeodor retorted. "I told you what he did! He's not one of their agents!"

"You don't know that for sure!" The elf glared at Zevran, arms crossing. "He says he knows Shianni, so let him prove it."

"Well…" Zevran frowned. "She has a brother Soris—"

"Taeodor said that before!"

"An uncle Cyrion and a cousin Ciela—"

"The Tevinters know that, so of course you would."

The assassin sighed and rocked back on his heels, rubbing his temples again. "Vaughan," he said after a moment. "On Soris' wedding day, Vaughan and his men abducted the bridal party, which included Shianni…and threw a party of his own, as it were."

This made them stare at him in silence. Or avert their gazes and look uneasy.

"Satisfied, my friends?"

"Ciela or Valora could have told—" one ventured, without much conviction, but Taeodor interrupted.

"Get Tor," he told one of his companions quietly, who nodded and walked back through the cage. Taeodor crouched down, one hand curled around a bar. "We're one floor below ground level," he said. "It's easy enough to find the stairs, just through the door on the other side of the next room and to the right. There's at least one floor below us and I think there are eight above, but I'm not sure, I've never been above the fifth; we're not allowed. I've heard the sixth is where the really valuable blood slaves are kept, amongst other things. For the price Ezio paid, you probably would have ended up there yourself after being screened."

Zevran's attempts at jimmying the lock paused as he glanced up. "Screened? This is like…putting a horse through its paces, yes? Admiring its gleaming coat, flowing mane, and so forth?"

"Something like that," Taeodor said carefully.

"They put you through some magical tests and try to find your limits," one of the other slaves explained. "Your…breaking point, really. The strong ones are taken upstairs."

"We hear talk," another chimed in. "They're used for the big rituals, all the powerful stuff that would drain us dead in a heartbeat."

Zevran hrmed. "Did anyone from Ferelden impress these magisters so?"

"Only Ciela Tabris and Valdaran Dasu. We haven't seen either one of them since."

"And the rest of you are here?" Zevran asked, looking around.

"No, we're spread out. There are two more chambers like this one on this floor that I know of." Taeodor shifted position as an older elf with a dark Rivaini complexion, long greying black hair and a number of swirling tattoos joined them.

"Kamator," the newcomer introduced himself, and reached an arm through the bars towards Zevran.

"Is shaking hands truly necessary?" Zevran asked dryly. "Under normal circumstances I would not mind, but it will be a literal stretch in our present situation, no?"

"I don't want to shake your sodding hand, Antivan, I want your lockpicks," the man muttered. "Hurry it up."

Zevran pulled the pins from the lock and stretched as far as the bars and his arm would allow so that Kamator could reach them. The Rivaini made an unimpressed sound when he saw what he had to work with, but said, "Be right back," and pressed through the gathered slaves, presumably towards the door of his own cage.

"What's escaping going to achieve?" an elf asked. "If Shianni's here, officially here to get us out, wouldn't a jailbreak stir up trouble?"

"You are all staying here," Zevran said, trying to follow the progress of the Rivaini. "I, on the other hand, have places to be." And possibly a Grey Warden to kill, he added darkly to himself. "The exit is one floor up, I presume? Is it guarded?"

"The doors are always open in my experience, but there are two golems," Taeodor said. "They'll try to stop you from leaving if they sense you're not a mage."

"They can't sense you at all if you're not, though," the Rivaini elf, Kamator, grunted when he'd hurried over and crouched by Zevran's door. "So if they don't see you…"

"Much obliged, ser. That is good to know." The Crow observed as his lock was fiddled with, and after a moment of silence he smiled when the faint click reached his ears. "Again I am in your debt. Might I interest you in a daring escape?"

The older elf snorted quietly and dropped the hairpins back into Zevran's palm. "Optimistic one, aren't y—"

A noise from the heavy door on the other side of the room silenced him, horror congealing his features as his head whipped around. Kamator took a quick step away towards the door of his cage, but it was too late. The heavy doors were creaking open, voices could be heard and there was a loud snapping sound as one of the other slaves shut the cell he'd come from.

Zevran barely paused to think. He pushed his barred door open, grabbed Kamator's arm and hauled the startled Rivaini into the cage before slamming it shut—with himself on the other side. Ignoring the older elf's curses, he dove out of view of the new arrivals behind Taeodor's cage where the bodies of the slaves would temporarily conceal him. Rolling to a crouch and reaching for his assassins' calm, he cocked his head to listen and waited.

Two colourfully robed women entered the chamber, one young and the other matronly, chattering to each other in Tevinter.

"Mages?" Zevran whispered up at Taeodor and got a silent nod in reply. "I don't suppose you have a weapon or sharp rock handy? No…no…I didn't think so."

So. Two mages, no armour, no weapons. Not the sort of odds Zevran liked to work with. He'd killed a number of people while stark naked, naturally, but a bed or bathtub was usually involved in those situations.

The Crow pressed himself further back, bare hands splaying on the flagstones as the women approached Kamator. When their voices suddenly betrayed confusion he looked up, made a quick decision while they appeared suitably distracted, and breathed a silent prayer. With a hand around the horizontal bar at the top of the cage and a bit of footwork, he slithered over the top of the Taeodor's cell belly-down before moving as fast as he dared to angle his body for minimal visibility.

A height advantage might not be much, but it was better than nothing.

"What," the older mage demanded suddenly in the King's Tongue, "are you doing in there, Kamator? Where's the Antivan elf Magister Ezio brought in?"

Zevran almost held his breath. The room had gone almost completely silent.

"The Antivan's gone," the Rivaini muttered sourly, his eyes on the floor, "as you can clearly see."

"And you are in his cage why?" The woman waited for a reply, frowned, then said, "Don't make me resort to other measures to pry the truth out of you."

Kamator sighed in a resigned sort of way. "I was helping him escape, Alcandre. He managed to get some lockpicks in here because some damn fool didn't check him as thoroughly as they should have. I helped him out, then he betrayed me"—the elf grabbed the bars of his cell and shook them viciously for emphasis— "by shoving me into the cage when he got out!" He raised his voice suddenly and yelled, "Hear me, you sodding Antivan! When they drag you back here by those girly braids of yours—!"

Zevran awarded the other elf full points for acting talent as he swept into a glorious tirade. It was impressive enough that he gave serious thought to the possibility of attempting to flee to the outer room, but then he glanced over the mages and saw the hilt of a dagger peeking out from above the broad blue sash of the older woman.

He grinned tightly and coiled his muscles, positioning his feet against the bars beneath him.

Perfect.

"How long ago did the Antivan escape?" the mage was trying to yell over the slave's diatribe, going red in the face from effort. "Kamator!"

The Crow launched himself into the air.

There was a squeal of fright from the younger woman as the older crashed down beneath Zevran's weight, then a scream as the dagger flashed free and drove into the mage's throat. The girl ran, tripped and fell heavily when Zevran leaped after her and caught an ankle with blood-smeared fingers, and then the assassin was on top of her with the still-slick blade pressing to her neck, his weight pinning her down, and one finger brushing softly against her lips.

"Shhh…"

The girl went limp but for her trembling, and whimpered at the sound of her companion's death throes as she bled out behind Zevran. The kill hadn't been as clean as he'd intended—he hadn't expected the dagger he now held to be a curved Dalish dar'misu, and that had taken the path of his thrust off-course.

Zevran moved his free hand from the girl's mouth to one of her wrists and got a secure grip, feeling the pulse hammering under her skin. In such intimate quarters one didn't need a Templar's skills to have a mage at one's mercy. He may have never taken a contract on a blood mage before, but he had dealt with regular casters from time to time.

At any rate, the commotion did not seem to have caught anyone's attention. Luck was on his side, or so it would appear, but that could vanish at any moment. He was much too exposed here…and in more ways than one.

"Kill her," one of the human slaves said, breaking the stunned silence. "She's a Tevinter mage. Kill her while you can."

The girl sobbed a soft gasp. "No! Please, I can help you!"

"Indeed you can, my dear," Zevran agreed, smiling down at her. "As you have no doubt noticed, I am a little…ah…underdressed." He felt her stiffen in reflexive fear beneath him, but he had no interest in threatening her from that quarter. "Tell me where I might find my equipment."

"You're crazy, knife-ears! She'll betray you!"

"Will you let me live if I tell you?" she whispered, and he chuckled.

"It wouldn't hurt your chances."

He gazed calmly into uncertain green eyes, watched her swallow, then she said, "The next room…one of the cabinets against the wall will have your things. All except…except…"

"Yes?"

"The glowing amber and amethyst r-rings you had on. Alcandre said they were Tevinter artefacts and k-kept them, I told her she shouldn't but she's always pinching things before they're properly catalogued and I'm just an apprentice and she's wearing them under her gloves, now please…please I've told you what you wanted to know!"

The watching slaves had started to mutter amongst themselves, and the growing enthusiasm from a number of them for the spilling of more mage-blood was having a marked effect on the girl at Zevran's mercy. Tears of terror were flowing freely down her face.

"Close your eyes," he instructed, half because he wanted to assuage her fear somewhat, and half because her eyes were almost the same shade as Asleena's and he didn't want to look into them when he did what he knew he must.

Zevran was not cruel, or he did not consider himself such, but he was imminently practical. This was enemy territory and it would be reckless to leave someone at his back who could raise the alarm or subdue him with a single spell…

…that's what he told himself. A year ago he wouldn't have even hesitated.

A year ago…a lifetime ago.

This is no time for going soft and allowing things to get complicated, Zevran. People die.

He sensed relief melt through the slender form beneath his body as he withdrew his weapon.

She didn't even shudder when he slid the blade with expert precision between her ribs and into her heart.

Ignoring the cheers from some of the slaves and the strangely foreign unclean feeling the kill had left him with, he returned to the body of the older mage and rifled quickly through robes, retrieving first a heavy collection of keys, which he tossed to the caged Rivaini elf, then the Dawn and Dusk rings, which he returned to his own fingers.

"You didn't say you were an assassin!" Kamator hissed as the Antivan ran quickly on bare and silent feet to the antechamber, dar'misu still in hand.

It looked half storage-room, half office, and true to the apprentice's word his gear was stowed in a large wooden cabinet. Listening hard for any hint of approaching steps from the closed outer door, an exercise in futility thanks to the noise coming from the prison cells, Zevran hurriedly pulled on his clothes, leathers and weapons harness. The dagger he'd stolen he wiped clean, spared a second to appraise its quality with a professional eye, then sheathed at his hip.

Shouldering his pack, he glanced back to the slave cages room in time to see Kamator returning to his own large cell. The Rivaini caught his eye and gave a little jerk of his chin, as though to say 'Get out while you can.'

"Not keen to escape, then?" Zevran called, raising a brow.

The other elf snorted, tossing the keys back towards the mage corpses. "Oh, is that what you're doing? I thought you were trying to get yourself killed!"

Zevran only flashed a tight grin and headed for the door. The rising clamour from the cells for release, compassion, more blood, was mercifully cut off when he slipped out into the corridor and closed the heavy portal behind himself, but he had to take a breath and pause a second for the pitiful voices and rattling of metal bars to stop finding an echo in the vaults of his memories…

Now is not the time for freeing slaves. I…am sorry.

The inattention cost him.

"Going somewhere, knife-ears?"

Zevran's head whipped around and he jerked away from the voice. A human mage, frowning and arrogant-looking, and two red-garbed slaves with oddly vacant expressions stood a short distance away on his left.

There was blood dripping from one of the mage's clenched fists.

A slim blade slipped into the assassin's hand and he snapped his arm forward, sending the gleaming length of steel spinning end over end for the mage's head. He saw the man's eyes widen with shock a fraction of a second before his hand made a minute gesture…and one of the slaves lurched sideways into the path of the flying dagger as though dragged by invisible ropes.

The grey-haired elf's face didn't even register pain when the blade sank between his blue eyes. As he collapsed and bled across the stone floor, the mage's hand thrust outwards in a move like a punch and a stone fist slammed squarely into Zevran's chest, hurling him backwards and knocking him off his feet.

Gasping around bruised ribs and a pounding heart, Zevran sacrificed a second dagger in a deliberately misaimed throw then scrambled to his feet when the mage forced his remaining slave to stand in front of himself.

There was the sound of metal ricocheting off a wall, then of leather boots on stone as the assassin fled for the stairs and the blaze of conjured fire began to paint the corridor in sullen shades of crimson and gold behind him…