Spire

by LoquaciousQuark

A legal loophole after "Alone" results in Hawke inheriting the entirety of Danarius's estate, including all his slaves—and Fenris. But Tevinter is not friendly to foreigners or fugitives, and as Hawke and Fenris struggle to save both his freedom and her slaves, they find themselves mired in political and magical intrigues whose sinister depths extend beyond anything they've faced.

10. Chapter 10

AN: So sorry for the delay! In apology, please have this extra-long chapter to make up for it. (That totally makes up for it, right? ...Right?)

It's so fascinating to me how different a scene can end up once written as opposed to how it looked in the outline. I will never understand how minor, background characters suddenly spring out fully-formed like Athena with nothing more than a side-eyed glance in their direction, but it's one of my favorite things about writing.

And now we're nearing the end. It's both funny and incredibly frustrating that even as long as this is, there are still so many little scenes and thoughts and knick-knacks that just didn't make it into the fic, but I suppose that's the way these things always go.

---

Chapter Ten

-.-.-

Blind fools of fate and slaves of circumstance,
Life is a fiddler, and we all must dance.
From gloom where mocks that will-o'-wisp, Free-will
I heard a voice cry: "Say, give us a chance."

Chance! Oh, there is no chance! The scene is set.
Up with the curtain! Man, the marionette,
Resumes his part. The gods will work the wires.
They've got it all down fine, you bet, you bet!

—Quatrains, Robert Service

-.-.-

Dear Hawke,

I hope things are going well in Minrathous. We haven't heard much here, but what has made it through makes me wonder if you're lighting up the city with your sparkling wit or with actual fire. Please don't get yourself arrested. I don't think they're quite as careful with their prisoners as we are.

I got your letter about incoming parcels. It wasn't easy, but I pulled a few strings and you have approval to bring in any packages willing to come under the code of asylum. Just give us some warning so we can bring the appropriate papers to the docks. But I'm warning you: if you liberate the whole damn country and bring them all to Kirkwall, I'll liberate your head from your shoulders.

And as to your questions about Kirkwall: when I wrote to you last, I told you everything was fine and not to worry. I wish I could say the same thing now. There's nothing real, nothing I can put my hands on, but the city's getting tense without you. Meredith and Orsino are at each other's throats more often than not. Last week Orsino was going on about templars and magic in the middle of the square in Hightown when Meredith showed up and the two of them just about burned the square down shouting at each other. It took the Grand Cleric herself to defuse the situation. Can't say I've ever seen Meredith called a "good girl" like that, though. Wish you'd been here to see it. You'd have laughed hard enough to split a seam.

Donnic sends his love. Tell Fenris and Varric hello for me. And Isabela.

Aveline

-.-.-

The straw dummy goes up in a flash of flame and smoke.

Hawke settles back on her heels as bits of straw and rope float down to the grass, still smoldering and ember-red at the edges. She's thankful in a way that she has so few near neighbors here—in Kirkwall, they'd have called the guard on her for the racket hours ago—but at the same time if she were in Kirkwall, she wouldn't be practicing for a potentially-fatal duel against a magister either.

"Not bad," Varric offers from his bench by the hedge. "If he comes out in hay armor, I'd say you've got it made."

Hawke snorts as Lydas pulls down the charred dummy and replaces it with a fresh one. "If you'd like to volunteer as target, I have absolutely no objections."

"No, no, I'm good here. But I'm sure Lydas wouldn't mind, would you?"

Lydas throws Varric an obscene gesture from behind the dummy stand, then makes his last few adjustments before jogging back behind Hawke. She checks to make sure both he and Varric are clear; then she closes her eyes, counts to four, and a lightning bolt leaps from the cloudless sky to incinerate the grass six inches left of the straw man.

Hawke opens one eye. "I meant to do that."

"Naturally. One day from a duel with a very powerful magister who also happens to be spearheading his own little invasion, and you're missing on purpose."

Hawke grimaces and clenches her fist. The dummy explodes in flame.

"Subtle."

"Oh, shut up." She stalks over and drops heavily to the bench beside Varric, burying her head in her hands as Lydas dutifully extinguishes the fire and starts to knock bits of charred, smoking straw to the grass. Effigy number five—and she still feels no better about this duel. Hawke drags her fingers down her face, staring at Lydas; then she says, "I wish I was less afraid of this fight."

Varric closes his little black ledger with a snap. "Afraid? Pfft. You've got this one in the bag, Hawke."

"It's just so different. Even from the Arishok. When that happened, I had about thirty seconds' warning—no time to get nervous, or to overthink things, or…I don't know." She sighs and covers her eyes again. "I don't like having so much time. I feel like I'm thinking so hard about this I'm defeating myself before I even get to the arena."

"Because you are. Hawke, you kill more bad guys in a year than I can put in my novels. Readers just won't believe it. This one's no different just because he speaks a different language."

Ara's head appears in an upper window, calling down to Lydas about some china platter; a moment later, the blonde heads of the young brother and sister flash by behind her, laughing. Lydas makes several sharp, quick gestures in answer and Ara disappears again with a noise of annoyance. Hawke says, "What if I lose?"

He snorts. "So what if you lose? You know the terms; you were there when we signed the contracts. This is a pride match only—all you have to do is knock the guy out. The only way property changes hands is if someone dies. Which won't happen."

"Which shouldn't happen."

"Which won't happen. Maker, Hawke, what's gotten into you? Why so maudlin?"

She leans back on her hands and stares up into the cloudless sky. Bluer than Kirkwall, bluer even than Ferelden and she is tired of it, tired of the oppressive heat, tired of blood and two faces and the heavy weight of iron chains. "Oh…I don't know. Thinking of Kirkwall, I guess. Thinking of going home and leaving this place at last. Thinking of what'll happen to this place after we go." She hesitates. This is not a fear she can express to Fenris, not a sentiment she would ever voice aloud in his hearing—if he knew she carried this doubt he would have them both out of the city by nightfall. But Fenris is not here and Varric is, and of all her friends he is perhaps the one she trusts to give the most honest answer. "Varric, what if he kills me?"

He pauses a moment, then tells her, "We'll have a very elegant funeral with lots of choked-up singing and slender white candles. And you laid out very lovely on a bier. And then we'll hunt down the bastard and gut him."

"Huh. That actually makes me feel a bit better."

"Good. Now stop whining about dying and finish up. I have some notes to finish up from that interview I had with Priscus's assassin and no time to waste bucking up the stalwart Champion."

"Oh, thanks," she mutters. Varric grins and pushes up from the bench, dusting off his coat; Hawke watches with a sigh and adds, "At least he talked, I guess."

"Like I said: a judicious application of silver. But—I will say this, Hawke," and he turns to look at her, his eyes uncharacteristically serious, "I won't be sorry to get away from this city. There are too many secrets here, even for me, and nothing here is dwarf-sized."

She tries for a smile; it falters, then fades, and Hawke settles for touching his shoulder instead. "I'm glad you're here, Varric."

His rueful grin is stronger. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, Hawke," he tells her, and then he heads for the house with a wave.

Hawke watches him until he disappears into the shadow of the doorway, Lydas following at his heels with a coil of unused rope slung over one shoulder. The last intact dummy perches on his wooden post, his blank, eyeless face staring at her in something like accusation. "Stop staring," she tells the straw head. "What, you've never seen a little crisis of courage before?"

Predictably, it says nothing. Hawke rolls her eyes and continues. "Oh, sure, judge me if you like. At least I've got feet."

Silence.

"What's the matter? Twine got your tongue? Get one of those horses out here to nibble on your face and then you'd talk, I bet."

A breeze picks up, just enough to tip the dummy's head an inch sideways on its neck, giving it an aspect of curious inquisition, and Hawke looks away. It would be so much easier if she simply knew she was doing the right thing here in this city, placing as she is all her hopes—and all the hopes of the people under her protection—squarely on her shoulders alone. Just one fight, just one—but when the price of her failure is invasion, unchecked war, and the death of thousands of innocents, she cannot bring herself to take it so lightly. Disgrace she can handle, has handled before, and will again; wholesale slaughter is another thing entirely. Even if they don't know it, the people of Alam are counting on her. Fenris is counting on her. And all she can do is her best.

But she's seen already that her best is not always good enough.

Her mother's face flashes through her mind, and her father's, and Bethany's, her history littered with her dead. It feels as though she has been trying to scale the twisting stairways of one of Minrathous's towering spires for untold days, one foot dragging after another, exhausting, despairing, with no idea how far she has come and no hint of how much she has left to go. Worse, she does not know what she is climbing towards, whether her journey's end will see her sunlit and triumphant or simply falling from that untold height to her death, the outstretched hand driving her there belonging to a man with war in his eyes.

Her fingers are trembling. Hawke knots them together in her lap, cursing under her breath. She is the Champion of Kirkwall, for the name of the Maker; at this point surely she should be beyond uncertainty and anxiety and needling fear. But—she is human and she isn't, and she wants—she wants—

She wants her father to pat her head and tell her everything will be all right.

Hawke shoves the thought away as soon as it appears. She might allow herself doubt on very special, rare occasions, but she will not tolerate useless, painful dreams of hopeless impossibilities. Her father is not here. She has Varric instead, Varric and Isabela and Fenris all beside her, all believing in her. She can't let them down. She won't.

Hawke lowers her head into her hands again, closing her eyes against the hot sunlight spilling over her back and arms. She doesn't do this often—not instinctively, anyway—but now seems as good a time as any to see if she still has even a fraction of the Maker's attention, and before she can stop herself she takes a breath and begins to pray. It doesn't last long and it is far from eloquent, mostly half-whispers for Fenris's safety, and for her household's safety, and for everyone who has dared to lift their voice in her support; when she thinks of it she adds her friends still in Kirkwall, and smooth seas to sail home by more for Varric's sake than anyone else's. She does not ask for her own safety. She thinks only, I do not want to leave Fenris alone, and hopes the Maker understands.

Still, when she is finished she feels a little less worried and, somehow, a little closer to Bethany. "Still miss you, sister," Hawke adds on softly, hoping that if the Maker does not hear at least Andraste will be able to pass the message along. Then, enough—she pushes decisively to her feet and beats the last bit of drifting ash from her shoulders. No more wallowing—no more fretting in indecision. She knows what she has to do; she has only to do it.

Hawke marches towards the house, giving the straw dummy a hearty slap on the back as she passes it. Its head wobbles just a bit, but manages to stay upright. "Good for you," she tells it. "Carry on."

She thinks it might be smiling.

-.-.-

To the magister Jaculus:

I realize that the sanctions exist, but as I stated in my first letter, I am willing to take the responsibility for both your part and mine if you will consider my proposal. This conflict is unnecessary, and I would spare both of us the pain and inconvenience of a duel if it were avoidable. I have one goal left in this city, one purpose, and whether I must shed blood or only coin to achieve it matters very little to me. There must be a compromise possible that will please us both!

Please. Consider my offer. There is still time to call off the invasion of Alam.

Magister Euphemia Hawke

-.-.-

It is strange, Fenris thinks, how little and how much at once has changed since he was here last. The flowers and herbs are different from the ones he remembers but the gardens are still the same; the stone of the mansion is lighter in places, or darker, but it is still the same stone. He need only half-close his eyes in the clear morning light and the two elves ahead of him on the other side of the fountain are Danarius and Hadriana, sneering in place of those soft smiles, their fingers crooked in imperious command instead of gently linked together at their sides.

Startled, they both rise as he comes around the fountain, and Fenris recognizes the defiant young man and the dark-skinned woman from Hawke's accidental venture to the slave markets. The woman bows before he can speak. "Are we needed at the house, Master?" she asks, her voice surprisingly low-pitched.

His grip tightens on the long iron bar in his hand, but he forces his face to calmness. "No," he says, and then because he cannot help it, adds, "I am not your master."

The woman hesitates, glancing at her partner; his brows draw down and he opens his mouth, but Fenris has little patience for explanations at the moment and none at all for slaves careless enough to fall in love, and he cuts them off with a raised hand. "Never mind," he says tersely, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that whispers of his own hypocrisy. "I am only passing by."

The woman bows again, uncertain, but Fenris has already turned away. He has his own destination today, his own shades to exorcise, and he will not allow his dwindling hours in this city to keep him from his revenge. He has waited too long for it.

It doesn't take him long to reach the small, square building at the end of the eastern wing, and after only a brief pause he slips inside. This room, at least, is unchanged. The granite slab at the far end is still solid as a grave; the shallow, rectangular pool still dazzles with the sunlight falling down from the open roof; the map of laid-silver and slate under the water shines almost as bright as the lyrium in his skin. He swallows, refirming his grip on the iron. No Hawke to anchor him, now, no strong hand to keep him clear on what is real and what is only the spectre of memory.

That she has been here at all is a truth he can barely comprehend.

Fenris steps further in, letting the door swing closed behind him to seal the room in a dim, cool half-twilight, the shadows broken only where the sun falls in a straight white shaft into the pool. The water nearly glows beneath it, haloed so brightly that it hurts to look at it directly—but he is not here for that anyway, and his toes press silently against the shade-chilled stone as he heads for the back of the room.

There are no words for how eager he is to be done with Minrathous. It is not just the soul-burning hate he feels, either, when he sees a slave cowering at the feet of a magister or an elf girl with hollow eyes and too many scars on her wrists or Damia's indulgent sighs at Hawke's refusal to be part of either. Nor it is the fact that he himself is sickened the longer he is here—he knows he has been harsher, lately, with Hawke and with the others, quicker to loose his ever-present anger at this place at whoever dares to draw it, in part because he can be angry, can voice his disagreement without repercussions, and in part because every day spent in this city stretches him thinner and more hollow, scraping at his careful walls like fingernails to drag him back down into its gilded filth.

The truth is—he misses Kirkwall. Misses the language, the broken flagstone in his foyer, even the rust-colored swill of the Hanged Man and Corff's unapologetic cheer behind it. Misses Corff. And Sebastian, and Aveline and Donnic and late-night games of diamondback. And to his surprise and faint irritation, he would not mind seeing even Anders and Merrill, missing them in the way one misses a familiar, yapping dog before reuniting with it and remembering the annoyance.

A peculiar thing to have, friends.

But first things first. Fenris puts one hand on the granite slab at his waist, his thumb just touching the shackle that once pinned his left wrist to the stone, holding him steady while Danarius burned him and bled him and smiled—and then he tenses all the muscles in his arms until the lyrium ignites, lazy tongues of white fire curling up his fingers, his wrist, his forearms, until his hands are glowing blue. He digs the tips of his gauntlets into the rough granite around the shackle's bolts and pushes, driving in his hand as far as it will go, the needle-sharp steel digging deeper, deeper—

There. Fenris pulls his hand out again, shaking out the numbness left by phasing through things harder than flesh and bone, and levers the end of the sturdy iron bar through the shackle's loop. It takes only a moment with the weakened stone, only a swift bunching of his back as he bears his weight downward—and the thing shatters, the two-inch bolts shearing out of the granite as easily as paper, iron tearing free like an old, dried scab to clank flatly on the stone at his feet. Fenris pauses a moment to run his fingers over the crumbled hole as big as his fist left behind, then moves with purpose to the others. Regardless of whether she achieves victory or defeat, he and Hawke will be gone from this place in a matter of days. No need to leave a thing meant only to torture standing ready to be used by whatever magister might stumble across it.

His own personal history with the table, of course, is merely an afterthought.

By the time all four shackles are little more than heaps of twisted slag on the ground around him, Fenris is sweating and the strength of his brands is running dry. But he swallows, straightens his shoulders, and flexes his wrist for one more aching, painstaking line drawn deep through the center of the table.

Then he takes a step back, takes a breath—and brings the iron bar over his head with every shred of strength he has left.

It is so simple. It astonishes him how easy it has been to destroy this thing, how it takes only one final blow to shatter it into pieces. His first memories had been here in this place, in these shackles; his first words had been to name the shadowed man that stood over him as his master. One blow—and both the stone that had birthed him and the magister that had made him upon it are broken; one blow and the man that lovingly and carefully forged piece by piece this altar to his torture, to his loss, to the sacrifice of everything that was once him—is dust.

The granite slab cracks clean in two. Overbalanced, the split ends of the table thump down hard on the black stone beneath them with heavy, hollow booms, cracks spiderwebbing out from each point of impact like the fist of the Maker himself has struck them down. The iron bar follows with a clang, forgotten. Fenris cannot quite catch his breath.

Aveline had told him once he had to know where he was from to know where he was headed. Fenris turns his back on the broken granite, the broken shackles, the broken pieces of the place where he was made, and steps forward, towards daylight, towards clean air, towards Hawke.

There is nothing to chain him here any longer.

-.-.-

Serah Hawke,

I received your most recent letter concerning your visit to the amphitheater. I rejoiced to hear of your victories there—may the Maker grant you many more allies in your fulfillment of His work! I pray daily for your safety and the safety of those in your care. Fenris, if you are reading this, I am aware you are not in her care. You may stop glowering at me from across the ocean. (If he is not there, Hawke, then I very much hope you are keeping an eye on him. His soul suffers under the strain of that city's evil.)

If you happen to attend a Chantry service there, I would be most interested in hearing about the service. I cannot imagine a man's voice leading the Chant, but I suppose the Maker's sons may sing as devoutly as His daughters. Although, considering it is Tevinter, perhaps I should not count heavily on piety.

We are all much the same since you left us, if the shadows under Anders's eyes are perhaps a bit deeper. He had us mucking through the sewers the other day for bits of drakestone and sela petrae for his clinic. If I did not know the man was a healer…but grace is given to us in great abundance. Surely I can spare a measure for a man so driven to aid his friends. (He is very, very driven, Hawke. I wish you were here to temper him. Some days I wish you were here to beat sense into him. I fear my bow is not as hard as his head.)

Elthina suggested I recommend a passage or two from the Chant to comfort you in your trials. It is impolitic of me, but I could not help but think the Canticle of Shartan the most appropriate.

Affectionately yours,

Sebastian

-.-.-

For a mansion built on the backs of slaves for a man who was, by all accounts, almost absurdly depraved, Hawke thinks the grounds are surprisingly lovely by daylight. It's all due to her groundskeeper's good taste though, she supposes as she leans more heavily against the window of her study overlooking the gardens, and his harder work, but the elegant beds of hydrangeas and green ferns are a better balm to a farmgirl's soul than all the gold trappings of the house. Dear Canut. She drops the side of her head against the cool glass and smiles; from here she can see Clodia and Cato on one of the far paths by the fountain, their heads close together, Cato's face softer than she has ever seen it herself. Not that she should be surprised—he's only been here a few weeks, hardly enough time to learn the layout of the building much less come to trust a foreign magister, but she had hoped to see him smile, just once, before she ran out of time.

Her own smile slips. One day. One more day, and everything is decided.

"Varric told me you were here."

Hawke straightens, glancing over her shoulder at Fenris. "Just taking in the sights one last time."

He pads across the study, his feet silent on the rugs, to stand behind her at the window. He says, "It will not be the last time."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Hawke asks, but before the air can thicken with anxiety she gestures to the fountain. "Look. Cato's courting."

Fenris snorts. "Careless."

"Hypocrite," Hawke says without malice, and after a moment Fenris's weight shifts closer to her back. She looks down at the envelope in her hands and out the window once more; then Hawke sucks in a breath and turns to face Fenris squarely. "Did…ah, did Varric tell you why I was looking for you?"

"No," he says, one eyebrow lifting.

"Well." Hawke rubs her thumbs over the envelope's edges, wishing she'd thought out this part a little better. "You know what tomorrow is. Of course. And it's not that I don't think there's not going to be a chance later, because I'm sure there will be—and it's not like that matters anyway since everything's on file with the magistrate but—I thought. That is…I wanted to give this to you. Myself. Now."

She thrusts the envelope at him a little clumsily. Fenris's other eyebrow has long since risen to join the other, but he says nothing as he takes the envelope and carefully slits it down one short edge before sliding out its contents. A single sheet of paper, nothing but black ink on vellum, but—

At the request of the possessing magister in accordance with Imperial law, this court, as witnessed 6 Solis by the undersigned magistrate, does hereby totally and irrevocably declare the bondslave Fenris to be—

Free.

Hawke watches his lips shape the word, lingering on the curves and points of each letter, his white hair falling loose to hide his eyes. Her heart is pounding in her chest.

But he is quiet. Still as a stone beside a river, unmoving, unchanging, neither approval nor condemnation in the blank tightness of his mouth. Surely he'd known this would happen—but perhaps she should have chosen another time? Perhaps she should have waited until they were free of the city, safe on Isabela's ship; perhaps she should have left him alone to read it—

Surely he has been quiet too long; surely his hands are too tense on the edges of the page. Hawke clears her throat. "Not that, ah, you weren't already," she offers. It sounds very loud in the quiet room. Has her voice always been this loud? "Now it's just…legal. No matter what happens to me."

Now Fenris looks up, and the sheer weight of the expression on his face slams into Hawke so hard that for a moment she cannot breathe. There is so much sorrow there, and grief, and an old, weary rage—but in his eyes there is also the fierce and potent light of sudden triumph; of an exultant, unfettered swell of gladness that brings an unexpected lump to Hawke's throat.

He turns, takes two steps as if he would like to pace, then swivels again to stare at her. "Hawke. How—when did you—"

"The same day I did the others. Isabela came with me as witness." She laughs and it sounds like a sob. "You sound so surprised. You knew this would happen."

"No slave dares to dream of this. The hope is too dangerous."

He looks down again, shapes again the word free, and shakes his head as if the very word is an impossibility. Hawke grins through the threatening press of tears behind her eyes, at once exhilarated and inexplicably sad. "Well," she says, linking her fingers together at her waist, "now it's done. You're a free man. You don't belong to anybody."

She means it lightly, but something in her words seems to penetrate the cloud of disbelief that surrounds Fenris all the same. He blinks, slowly, his eyes turning from the page in his hands to someplace else, someplace deeper, focusing inward until Hawke has almost begun to worry—and then he lifts his head and his eyes snap to hers and in the space of two heartbeats the letter is on the desk and Fenris is there, right in front of her, his hands on her shoulders, on her neck, his fingers curled around her jaw, his thumbs sliding over her cheeks.

He holds her steady, holds her true, and his voice is as strong and as proud and as free as she has ever heard it.

He says, "I am yours."

Hawke's eyes slip closed. This is too much—her heart already ached and now it is filled to bursting and it is too much, and when Fenris's mouth brushes carefully across her own she cannot check the tears that force their way down her cheeks. To his credit, Fenris seems to understand the unbearable press of so much so quickly; he neither withdraws nor attempts to console her, only holding her cheeks in his hands and her forehead against his own as he waits for her to regain mastery over herself.

"Sorry," she says at last, when the tears have slowed and her breathing has steadied and Fenris's skin doesn't feel quite so hot on her own. "I, ah. Was not expecting that reaction."

"So I gathered," Fenris tells her dryly, but she does not pull away and he does not release her. Instead he kisses her twice more, still quietly, still gently, and when Hawke wraps her arms around his waist with a sigh he obligingly pulls her closer. "Although," he adds by her ear, "I would suggest that you restrain yourself when you are with the others. They might find such a reaction…"

"Completely inappropriate and maybe also a little crazy?"

"Perplexing."

Hawke drops her head against his chest, smiling. "If you insist," she says, and then: "Will you come with me?"

She feels his lips press against her hair; then he says, so quietly she can barely hear it, "Always."

-.-.-

To the so-called Hawke—

And even now you pretend to the mantle of magister. You tarnish the name, little bird, and you insult me with the presumption.

Keep your begging. I am not a coward, and I will not yield Alam.

Jaculus, Magister

-.-.-

They don't even believe her at first, which does not surprise Hawke in the slightest. They even laugh when she tells them about the year's salary waiting for each of them at the exchequer. It's not until Dalos pulls the top page from her hands and carries it over to the better light of the kitchen's bay window that the room even begins to fall quiet; not until he reads aloud the words totally and irrevocably that Ara sucks in a harsh, biting breath and Cork begins to cry. Then they are all around her, hands outstretched, shouting and staring and calling to each other in something between disbelief and open abandon as they tear open the envelopes and unfold the pages within.

Ara catches Hawke's attention, standing as she is under the window so that her short blonde hair looks like fired gold. Her eyes are moving frantically over the page, darting here and there without fixing on any one word—then she looks up as if she feels the weight of Hawke's gaze, and before Hawke can even think to move Ara has crossed the room to thrust the sheet of paper at Hawke's chest. Her hand is shaking.

With furious desperation, she says, "Read it to me."

So Hawke takes the page, moves to stand beside Ara so that she can follow along. She reads it all the way through, from At the request of the possessing magister to the words declare the bondslave Ara to be free to even the smaller lines at the bottom, the ones that read immediate and binding and all present and future issue and so signed and sealed this day by Magistrate Orsis with his grand signature and Hawke's more narrow, looping handwriting following after.

Ara closes her eyes. "Again."

Hawke reads it again, and then a third time through, and then at Ara's request shows her the three characters that make up her name in swoops of graceful black ink. She does not comment on the tears standing in Ara's eyes, or the trembling in her fingers as she refolds the letter along its creases, or the thickness in her voice as she turns and calls Marcus to her side. He is so pale his light hair looks nearly brown, but the smile splitting across his face is bright enough to light the room. Ara takes his arm like a lifeline. "And—and Marcus? Show me his—"

"Here. M-a-r-c-u-s."

"His is longer."

Marcus laughs—laughs, for the first time Hawke can remember—and slides his arm around Ara's shoulders. "But yours the more precious," he says, and Ara colors from throat to ear-tip. But she only looks up at him, her eyes soft, her smile softer, and as Marcus pulls Ara close Hawke safely slips away.

The room has quieted now, she realizes, each of them drawing apart to examine their new freedoms. Cork is still openly crying, his forgotten serving spoon clutched against his forehead as he slowly sounds out the words in his own letter. At the table Lydas sits as if struck marble, staring into nothing, his face white, the fingers of one hand resting lightly on his throat; Hawke moves forward, concerned—but his eyes draw into focus on the wall, and then on her face as she approaches, and though they shine with unshed tears they are warm and utterly at peace. She puts a tentative hand on his shoulder, unsure of what to say, but Lydas only covers her hand with his own, gently, and it turns out that says enough for them both.

From here she can see that Dalos has Palla seated on the other side of the table, kneeling in front of her with as much open happiness in his face as she has ever seen. "Issue," he is explaining, his hands wrapped around his daughter's. "Children. All present and future children, mine and yours. Free."

"Then—we can go home," Palla says, choking on the realization. "We can go home for good."

"Home—Vol Dorma—Ferelden—anywhere we like. Anywhere you and your mother and your brothers want to go."

"Home first," Palla says firmly, and Hawke laughs as she slides free of Lydas. Fenris has been waiting for her against the wall by the door with his arms crossed over his chest; as she nears him he pushes off to meet her, his hands falling to hang loosely at his sides.

"What do you think?" Hawke asks, her voice low as they leave the kitchens at last. "Held back my tears appropriately, did I?"

"Hmm. How near to them are you now?"

"They prickle at my very lashes."

Fenris laughs and lets the door swing closed behind them, giving what privacy they can to those still inside. "Perhaps you should find a handkerchief before we continue."

"Better get a tablecloth instead. This is going to be a long afternoon."

Hawke finds herself to be right, in a way; the afternoon is long, with over seventy more letters to deliver, each by hand and each with a face and a name, even if she doesn't know it, but even when the shadows begin to grow longer and the sunlight more golden with setting Hawke still cannot keep the gladness from her face. The gardens erupt with cheers when she tells the field hands, Canut dropping his pitchfork to give her a delighted kiss on each cheek; Cato even forgets himself enough to award her a brilliant smile at long last when she corners him and Clodia by the fountain. In the house, the little girl who'd had the cough—Silva—does manage to give Hawke a hug around her knees, and the little brother and sister pull her down to kiss her cheeks, but most of the children are too young to understand more than the facts that the mistress is there and that their favorite nurse is weeping.

"But I don't understand," she tells Hawke, wiping her face furiously with the corner of her apron. "Where are we supposed to go? Some of the children are too young to travel—some of them have no parents any longer. They won't survive on the street."

Hawke puts a hand on her shoulder. "They won't be thrown out. I promise. You and the children, and Dalos and Canut and all the rest—all of you are welcome to go or to stay here as long as you like. But know that if you do stay, it'll be as paid help—you're free men and women and you'll be paid the appropriate wages for your service."

"But you—can you even do this? I've never heard—and you've been here so short a time…"

"Oh, it's all legal. Apparently being a magister has some perks." Hawke gives her a wry grin. "I'm only sorry it wasn't more."

She shakes her head, speechless, and lifts one of the little girls to her hip. "Maker keep you, Mistress."

"I'm counting on it," Hawke tells her, and she and Fenris leave them to it.

The sun has set in earnest by the time they climb the stairs to the second floor at last. The halls are quiet, dimmed and purpled with twilight haze, only the occasional distant shout breaking the mansion's peace. And—it is peace, Hawke thinks as she pushes open the vine-carved door to her and Fenris's room, despite the atrocities committed here and the blood shed on its stone and the countless nameless horrors Danarius once allowed within these walls. She will not pretend she has wiped them clean, will not deceive herself into thinking her efforts anything more than what they are; she has only bandaged the wound and stopped the bleeding as best she can. Their shadows are their shadows still, and no effort on her part will lift those.

She has given them only what she was once given herself: a fighting chance.

Slowly, Hawke pulls the curtains closed on the largest window, finding herself less eager than usual to watch the stars track silently across the sky tonight, marking away the last few hours she has before battle. Her head is suddenly so heavy and the tears still press behind her eyes, but she forces them back. No reason to waste her sorrow. No reason to waste her strength.

Fenris's voice comes quietly through the stillness, closer than she expects. "You did—a remarkable thing today, Hawke."

She snorts at herself. "Some signatures and a bit of paper, that's all."

"Don't make light of this." Fenris's tone is stern as he turns her away from the window, though his eyes are gentle as he adds, "I cannot think of a single other occasion in the history of this city where so many were freed at once by a single magister. They owe you a great deal."

"They don't owe me anything. I just didn't want them to—go to someone else. A real magister."

"And what are you, then?"

"A pretender to the throne," she tells him, her lips twisting. "Magister by happenstance doesn't look good on legal documents."

"They are still legal."

"And thank the Maker for that," Hawke sighs, leaning into Fenris's chest when his hands settle at the small of her back. "The Maker and sheer blind luck."

Fenris says nothing to that, apparently allowing her the meaningless victory even though he clearly disagrees. They stand together for a long time, breathing, being; then, at last, Hawke straightens and, without preamble, presses her lips to Fenris's. He draws back only a moment in surprise before coming back to meet her, tilting his head to fit her better, letting his hands slide up her back to pull her closer against him. Hawke revels in that, revels in his taste and his heat and the pressure of his fingertips on her spine—but when she tries to deepen the kiss he pulls away, his head turning to the side, his eyes flashing with regret.

"You should rest," he says. "Tomorrow is too important."

Hawke rests her hands on his chest. "Tonight is important, too."

He closes his eyes, but he does not step away and his hands do not loosen on her back. "Hawke…"

She moves closer, letting her forehead rest against his own. "I'm afraid of tomorrow, Fenris," she whispers, and does not try to hide the weariness in her voice. "Remind me of what I'm fighting for."

His eyes open at that, and Fenris looks at her as if seeing her for the first time all evening, as if he has forgotten until now that the mask of confidence she wears for her household is—only a mask. He sighs, very gently, and brushes one hand down the slope of her cheek. "You will not fail," he tells her, guiding her backwards even as he does so, one step at a time, towards the bed. "You will not falter. Your purpose is just and your—magic—is strong. He will not stand against you."

The backs of her knees hit the bed, and Hawke laughs despite herself. "You almost said that without grimacing. I'm so proud."

But Fenris does not rise to the bait, instead pressing gently at Hawke's shoulders until she sinks to lie back on the crimson coverlet. He follows after without waiting, his knees settling on either side of her thighs, lowering himself over her until the white ends of his hair brush over her forehead. His eyes burn like coals as he murmurs, "Na via lerno victoria."

Hawke finds one of his hands at her shoulder and laces her fingers through his. "Only the living know victory."

"Live for me, Hawke," Fenris breathes, and kisses her.

They do not speak after that. The room grows darker with the passing of hours, the rustling household quieter, and somewhere in the small hours of the morning, untended, the fire at last goes out.

-.-.-

My very dear Hawke,

Oh, lethallan, how I wish you were here! I hope it's all right to say that, since I really didn't set out to make you feel guilty about leaving and I know, honestly, that you had to go, but there's really nothing like hearing a dear friend's voice and letters just aren't the same. I found a litter of stray kittens last week and Orana and I have been taking care of them, which reminds me that perhaps you shouldn't spend too much time in your library before I've had a chance to clean it out. Purrfoot has taken to leaving headless mice behind the books and every time I think I've gotten them all, I find another one. I suppose she likes your selections.

It feels like something very exciting's about to happen in Kirkwall. I saw Carver when the Wardens passed through the other day and he told me that half your letters come blacked out now. Isn't that curious? Like a hunt-the-riddle game. He told me to make sure to tell you to be careful, because even though he couldn't read a lot of it he didn't like what he could, so. Be careful.

Oh dear, you'll have to forgive the pawprint in the corner. Purrfoot just knocked over my inkwell. Anyway, we've been keeping the bandits and spiders manageable for you until you come back. Anders and I have started a competition over who can collect the most pouches of pebbles. I have forty-three. He keeps saying he's not playing.

Bodahn says to tell you Sandal's put the teacup back together. Orana says bona fortuna! I hope I spelled that right.

I miss you quite a lot, Hawke. And Varric and Isabela and Fenris too, I can't forget them. And even though Carver already said it, here's one from me too, lethallan: be careful. I'll see you soon.

Love,

Merrill

-.-.-

Hawke is awake before the sky even begins to lighten. By the time the clouds have paled to grey and gold she is already bathed and pulling on the metal boots and gauntlets and wide leather belt of her Champion's mantle; by the time the first edge of sunlight shafts through her window she is already down the stairs, alert, intent, her hair tied back and her father's staff gripped in one hand. She stops by the kitchens only for a moment to liberate a glass of water and a piece of dark, buttered bread from Cork—and does he ever sleep?—before heading for the front door. The carriage will not arrive for a half hour yet but she cannot be indoors a moment longer, cannot stand the walls closing in on her with all their polished trappings. The marble steps down to the avenue are hardly the stoop she remembers from Lothering, but for they are good enough for what she wants—what she needs—and she drops to the top step without the slightest hint of ceremony. There, Hawke eats her bread and drinks her water, and as the sun begins to rise in earnest she does her level best to think of nothing.

She is not as successful as she would like.

Still, by the time Fenris steps out to join her, armed and armored himself, she is as prepared as she supposes she can be. He pulls her to her feet as the carriage turns into the far end of the avenue; behind them, Ara steps out of the fading dawn shadows to complete the arena's traditional requirement of three.

It is so quiet.

In truth, it reminds Hawke of nothing so much as the stories of ghosts she and Bethany used to trade in the middle of the night, when the moon was high and the fields silent with stars and the whole town asleep but for the two of them. The carriage wheels make almost no noise on the dirt as they draw closer, the horses' steady gait as muffled and measured as a funeral procession. The coachman pulls to a stop, flicking his crop delicately and without noise, and Hawke squares her shoulders and steps forward.

"Mistress."

A man's soft voice—and as loud as the crack of a whip. Hawke turns.

Dalos is standing in the doorway, Lydas and Marcus behind him, and Cork and Canut and even Palla wiping the sleep from her eyes. His fist lifts to his chest; he bows his head, then straightens to look her in the eye, and echoes of the movement ripple through each one of them until even Palla is smiling at her with her hand over her heart. Dalos says, "Good luck."

"Thank you," Hawke says, too numb to even cry, and steps into the carriage.

There is no one on the streets. Hawke knows her match is not set to begin until the eleventh hour and it is yet early, but there is no one, not a servant or a slave or even a stray dog. Ara sees her confusion. "The revelries last night," she offers from her seat across from Hawke and Fenris. "It has been over two years since the city has seen a sanctioned duel."

Hawke sighs and glances back out the window. "I'm here to entertain."

"And to bleed," Fenris adds sourly. No one says much after that.

When they arrive at the arena at last, Hawke cannot help but note how different the thing looks without the crowds of bloodthirsty magisters and the heavy rust-thick scent of blood. Here, in the early morning stillness, it is almost possible to see the nobler purpose for which the building had been intended in the elegance of its architecture, the fingers of pale gold light spilling down the fluted columns, the inscription above the gate: ad honorem.

Hawke shakes her head to disperse the image. Nothing but a passing fancy—and she needs every part of her wits about her if she is to win this fight. Her hand tightens on her staff.

Without a word, the three of them disembark from the carriage at the eastern entrance, the one through which all hopeful combatants enter and later men remove the bodies of the dead. Ara pays the driver, then falls into step beside Hawke, both of them following Fenris into the corridor's dim and yawning throat. There is still no sign of any life other than theirs.

Fenris had explained this to her once, before they'd gone to the arena that first time so long ago. One magister would challenge a second; the second would accept; both of them would draw up careful contracts and citations of offenses and terms of both victory and defeat—including the illegality of blood magic, as the city's law required—until the whole thing seemed more a duel of penmanship than magical talent. They would set a day and arrive at the arena well ahead of time in order to prepare—which, as far as Hawke could tell, involved a good deal of excess bathing and massaging and scenting for someone who was about to try to freeze off someone else's limbs. While they were preparing the crowd would arrive, the herald would read out the list of offenses and the terms of the match, and then they'd open the gates and just like that, the duel would begin.

Hawke, though, has little need of any of it.

She has no interest in the enormous inset bathing pool, no tasks for the dozen or so slaves in white tunics that dot the walls of the preparation chamber at regular intervals despite the early hour. No need, either, for the thoughtful rack of very sharp-looking daggers and assorted blades; she has her staff and her little knife, and she will not weight herself down with more than that. Instead, she places herself very carefully on a low bench by the far iron gate, the one that guards the ramp up to the arena's ground level, and she waits.

The room smells like death. Hawke dislikes that realization and its implications and casts about for another; her gaze lands on Fenris as he prowls the edges of the chamber in restless tension, his eyes marking each point of escape as if he is a beast caged, and finds even less solace. Ara has her eyes closed and her hands folded in her lap on the opposite bench. Hawke hopes she is only praying. Her fingers flicker with uneasy sparks, dancing along the dark, polished wood of her father's staff; Hawke lays her staff beside her on the bench rather than incinerate it wholesale at such a decidedly inopportune moment, then drops her head into her hands and breathes, in and out, in and out.

Over an hour has passed by the time Hawke realizes she can hear, faintly, the roar of a distant crowd. She leans her head back against the wall, trying not to think of all the souls who have sat here before her and not lived to speak of it, and counts to ten. And then to a hundred, and then two hundred, and by the time she loses track around six hundred and fifty the roar is definitely louder and certainly more wild, and she cannot stop her leg from jittering in anxiety. Her hands are rough with calluses and old blisters, too much effort too quickly; she picks at the edge of the one of the calluses until it aches, worrying the flesh with her fingernails like a child unraveling a blanket. Less than an hour to go, now. Fifty minutes—maybe forty. How quickly did heralds speak?

She wants to calm down, desperately, but her heart will not stop racing. Not with the cold lump of dread in the pit of her stomach; not with the growing apprehension needling up the back of her throat. If only there was something left to do—but the papers are signed and filed, Isabela's ship ready to flee at a moment's notice—and Fenris had laughed at her plan, but "get to the ship" sounds like an absolutely marvelous idea at the moment—why won't time move faster?

A hand settles over her knotted, white-knuckled fingers.

Hawke looks up in surprise. She hadn't even heard Fenris approach, much less settle to the bench beside her. His fingers are cool on hers and she doesn't know whether it's his calmness or her fevered disquiet causing the difference, but the touch seems to leach something thick and stifling from her chest that she hadn't even realized was there. His eyes are steady on her face, his restlessness gone—or at least well-hidden—and Hawke sucks in an uneven breath as she drops her forehead against his temple.

"How did this happen, Fenris?" she asks, quietly, an echo of a question she asked him long ago in another city, another lifetime, where a finch landed on the flowers below her window and Minrathous was nothing more than the name of a shadowed city without substance. Without suffering.

He smiles; he remembers. He tells her, "One letter at a time."

"Vetui—to forbid. I remember."

"How fortunate for us both that you did not try to tie me to the pier."

"My impeccable foresight," she sighs, and adds, "Too bad I didn't foresee you constantly flinging yourself at death."

He snorts and she feels the air brush over her cheek, though he does not pull away. "As I recall, I was not the one who lashed herself to the bowsprit of a ship during a storm."

"Certain sacrifices must be made in the name of bravery."

"In the name of stupidity."

"Semantics," Hawke says with a quiet laugh, and then sighs again. The crowd is chanting something; she can hear the rhythm rolling under her feet. She says, "Fenris…"

"Hmm?"

"Darevi basia unum."

He turns his head at that, the faint hint of a smile curving up one corner of his mouth. "Placet," he says gently, and he kisses her. It does not turn heated, but they do not pull apart until Ara softly clears her throat at Hawke's other side.

"Mistress," she says, "it's time."

Hawke's mouth goes dry as sun-parched bone. Her heart is pounding out of her chest and it takes her two tries to get control of her rubbery knees, and she is suddenly, terrifyingly aware of the bellowing voices above her. Awaiting her.

Fenris puts one hand under her elbow as one of the silent slaves unlocks the iron gate. Ara steps forward only long enough to quickly kiss Hawke's cheek and hand over her father's staff; then she moves back, her face pale, and Hawke and Fenris turn away. The ground slopes gently upward, the polished stone of the preparation chamber abruptly cutting off into light brown dirt, the smooth walls giving way to rougher, unfinished rock stained with old, dried smears of blood that grow thicker the closer they come to the end. The sun is high in the sky and brilliant, a sharp square of dazzling light marking the end of the tunnel ahead of them, so bright Hawke can hardly stand to look at it without tears.

They stop, just at the very edge where the shadow gives way to sunlight. A faceless guard waits a handful of paces away at the last gate, black in silhouette and silent.

Fenris grips her shoulders, then, turns her to face him so that he is the only thing she sees. His jaw is so tense lyrium flickers down his throat; his eyes are alive with green flame. "I will be here," he growls. His grip on her shoulders is so tight that it aches. "If it goes poorly, forget the Fog Warriors. Forget Alam. Hawke, if the battle turns against you, call for me."

The dry brambles of her throat catch hold of her voice and she has to try twice before she can speak. "The gates will be sealed. Enchanted. Even you won't be able to get through."

His hands slide to grasp her face. "There is nothing in this world that would keep me from you, Hawke," he snarls, and before she can talk herself out of it Hawke crashes her mouth against his. There is nothing gentle here, no tenderness, no sweet reassurance—she kisses him like she is dying and then she wrenches away, yanks her gauntlets into place and grips her father's staff, strides forward into the harsh and unforgiving light of the Tevinter sun.

The gate slams closed behind her.

She lifts her chin, breathes in the smell of dust and death and blood, listens to the deafening howls of ten thousand voices crying out for her slaughter.

No turning back.

-.-.-

Distantly, Hawke is aware that the herald is finishing her introduction, that half the crowd is roaring her name against the cloudless sky even as the other half jeers and whistles in scorn, but her attention is elsewhere in the seething mass of humanity. The private box for the magisters is full to bursting, many of their slaves banished to the shadeless risers in front and to the sides, but Hawke can make out the tall figures of the Arras brothers and Lady Damia seated near the front of the box with their faces solemn and unsmiling, and she sighs in relief. Not wholly friendless, here—and even with the Archon lifting his white hand in amused welcome from his more private dedicated box, Priscus standing anxious at his elbow, not wholly hopeless either.

The western gate opens.

Jaculus sails forward like the flagship of an armada, elegant and proud and glittering in the sunlight. Today he is in scarlet and gold, his long, tailored tunic a shade lighter than his close-cut trousers but fitted just as impeccably; his dark hair hangs in the same neat braid down his neck, and when he lifts his new white oak staff in salute to the chanting crowd Hawke realizes he has had the rising sun of Tevinter embroidered on his back. How subtle, she thinks, and wishes she'd thought of it.

As the herald shouts his name, Jaculus comes forward to meet her with a benevolent smile and a hand outstretched for her own. "Barbarism even to the last," he tells her pleasantly, and lifts her fingers to his lips.

Hawke does not bother to return his smile. "You underestimate me, magister."

"Considering I have no estimation of you at all," he murmurs as he releases her, "I suppose that is possible. But be wary, girl—party tricks won't save you this time."

"How fortunate I do not intend to rely on them."

His mouth curling in contempt, Jaculus steps backwards, matching Hawke stride for stride until they are roughly thirty paces from each other. He does not look away. Neither does she.

"Magisters! Are you prepared?"

A battle of pride. A battle only for name and reputation, only for victory by submission—but this is Minrathous, where laws mean very little to most people and even less to the more powerful.

"The magisters are ready. By the leave of the Archon Inasir Nomaran and in his name, I declare—"

Jaculus smiles. His eyes are dead things.

"—that this duel may now—"

Her heart hammers against her ribs.

"—Begin!"

Their staffs slam into the ground at the same moment. The air between them ripples as a wave of force thunders across the arena, whipping the dirt in its path into a frenzied cloud; Hawke throws herself sideways as his magic screams by in a froth of dust and sharp little rocks that dart like needles. She looks back to track the path of her ice but he is already closer, his lips peeled back in a snarl, his veneer of civility shattered and vanished with the frost on his gold tunic, but when he snaps the staff at her she is ready, her own staff thrust upright so that his attack shears away to either side of her like a forking river.

She pulls fire from the skies and he shields himself in shimmering opal; he yanks stone from the earth at her feet and she roots her magic into an ice-thick wall. They trade blows for several minutes, neither landing one on the other, bits of fire and ice and earth ricocheting into the lowest benches to shrieks of both delight and pain from the spectators. Some shout; one throws a rock that passes so close to her face she feels the wind of it. Jaculus laughs at that—but Hawke must have her own supporters, because a few moments later a hail of dirt and gravel sprays out from the crowd and the magister has to turn away to shield himself.

Hawke reaches for the place where her soul touches the Fade and grasps a fistful of flame—but before she can loose it the earth trembles under her feet and cracks open and rocks reach up like clawing hands to drag her under. She stumbles backwards—not quick enough!—and one of the crags catches her across her calf to tear open a line of agony. It takes a sharp twist and a hand planted hard on the ground but she yanks herself free, flings the fire forward in a wide scything swath of raw power. Somewhere Jaculus lets out a sharp sound but she can't tell whether it is distress or mocking amusement over the crackling flame; she does not wait to find out, whirling her staff into a blaze of light and throat-choking heat until the end of it explodes in fire. Jaculus cries out again and her heart leaps—

—and then the scorching wall splits open so that the air shudders with heat and he strides forward, not unscathed, not unscarred, his sleeves smoldering and his braid lit with sparks but his eyes—blazing to put her fire to shame.

He lifts his hand and speaks and she burns, agony searing in a line from stomach to sternum as if he has torn her in two. With a shriek she bends forward and then backwards and the pain does not ease; through her sudden tears she sees him nearer and she drags together enough sanity to put her hand to her forehead and blast him backwards. The pain cuts off like a blown candle and Hawke nearly collapses at its absence, but Jaculus is already climbing back to his feet, already sputtering something thick and noxious and dangerous from the end of his staff. There is barely enough time to breathe, let alone act, but Hawke tries anyway, pulls fire from the Fade and hurls it forward—

Jaculus lifts his staff. The fire strikes it and recoils, ricocheting upwards like a missile screaming for freedom's sky.

She tries again. This one he sends into the crowds, a dozen spectators leaping sideways as her magic cannons towards them. Hawke grits her teeth and Jaculus smiles—but no time to waste, no time to let the terror scrape deeper into the lines of her face. Hawke swivels on one heel and lunges backwards, ignoring the gasps and shouts of the horde in the stands, calling down a storm of fire in blind desperation as she races to put what distance she can between herself and the magister at her heels. She can hear his feet on the dirt behind her, implacable, impossibly steady—she hits the far wall of the arena and turns, flattens herself against it, grips her staff so hard her knuckles are white as Jaculus strides towards her through the charred and coal-glowing debris at his feet. His staff still spews that black smoke; as he draws closer he spins the white-polished wood around one hand and then the other, allowing it to trail a dark and intricate pattern around him like the caress of the Void itself.

"Come now, my little bird," he says, his voice as gentle as a lullaby. "Why do you still beat against the bars of your cage? Lay down your staff and rest."

Pinned against the wall—but pinned, not defeated, not yet. "Try it on someone else, you snake," she snarls. "You haven't beaten me."

He lifts an eyebrow. "No?" he asks her, and faster than she can track it a shard of rock slivers open her cheek. Hawke lets out a cry and flinches to the side—and another slices through the meat of her upper arm deep enough to scrape bone. She screams at that one, clutching her free hand to an arm suddenly more blood than skin—and before she can even lift her head a rock the size of her fist thuds into her stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and then another to her knee, and to her thigh and her shoulder and the swell of bone at her hip—and to her temple with all the subtlety of a hammer.

Hawke drops like a stone, dazed, deafened, mute with shock and pain. The sky is so blue—so blue—the crowd roaring—her head splitting—

Jaculus kneels beside her. His lips curve around a word. Hawke forces herself to understand as her fingers scrabble at the dirt.

"Surrender."

She whispers something—nonsense—an answer that is lost to the breeze and the burning flames. Everything hurts—

Jaculus leans closer. "Again, girl."

She lifts her eyes to his, knowing her face is as open and easy to read as any book. "I said," she breathes, "shut up."

And she smashes the end of her father's staff against his mouth.

The thing explodes with white light, bright enough to blind even through Hawke's tightly clenched eyelids. Jaculus lets out a broken, hitching gasp and his pressure jerks away from her shoulder like a kick from a horse; Hawke rolls the other direction and shades her eyes as she shakily regains her feet, her staff held across herself with more apparent strength than she feels.

At the tip of the staff, lit like a sun, is a small, polished white stone: a rune, carved exquisitely in the shape of a bird.

The light fades, slowly, enough to see Jaculus bent at the waist, his free hand over his mouth, his eyes tightly closed. Blood dribbles between his fingers. She waits until his eyes snap open, until he straightens with a groan and black hate in his eyes; then she lifts her chin and says, again, "You haven't beaten me."

Jaculus snarls and strikes the dust with his staff—but there is no wave of force, no wind-tearing blast of raw magic to knock her from her feet. There is only a gust of air that lifts the ends of her hair from her neck, gentle and without bite. Blank shock flashes across his face before he steps forward and clenches his fist at his heart, but save a faint tremor like the earth turning over under the arena's foundation, nothing happens. The crowd bellows around her, torn between their lust for victory and the deprivation of the show; Jaculus himself looks as though he cannot decide whether to kill her or be sick.

"What is this?" he spits between torn and swelling lips. "What have you done to me?"

"I have a friend who dabbles in enchantment," Hawke tells him. Enchantment, and the reparation of broken teacups.

"This is—I am silenced!"

"Not quite. Just…quieted." Hawke takes two quick steps forward and rests the bladed end of her staff, very carefully, over the thudding pulse in his throat. "Now," she tells him softly, "surrender."

Jaculus looks more like a wild animal than a man, his black and silver hair sliding free of its braid, his eyes afire with rage. "This is base deception. You lured me too close. This is outright treachery—!"

"No treachery," Hawke says without moving. "Your long and time-honored traditions explicitly permit the use of runes in battle. Surrender."

He lifts his hands and his staff together, but nothing emerges but a thin, wavering trail of smoke that vanishes like a breeze. Hawke presses the blade-tip a breath closer. "I will kill you," she warns.

Disdain passes over his face as swiftly as a shadow. "You do not lie well, Magister," he says, and drags the blade of his dagger across his wrist.

Blood magic explodes around him like a bomb, blasting Hawke back with its thick and oily pressure. She throws a hand up over her face but it is a twig standing against a gale; she stumbles backwards, acutely aware of every bruise and every bleeding cut now bared for him to devour. If only it had been a true Silence; if only she'd struck when she had the chance—the grease of his magic clings to her skin and she chokes once, then again at the too-heavy scent of blood filling the air. The maddened screaming of the people in the stands is so loud her chest rumbles with the strength of it. Somewhere in the stands Priscus goes white; somewhere the Archon leans forward in his chair.

Jaculus smiles.

"You've ruined yourself," Hawke snaps, trying to hide the fear in her voice. This had not been part of the plan, not like her runes and her ruses and her midnight plots with Isabela; they had both been sure no magister would resort to the illegal practice with so many eyes to see, even if that magister was Jaculus, and—she has no hidden trick to counter the outright use of blood magic. "Ten thousand witnesses—even here you won't—you can't—"

"One may do many things," Jaculus tells her, "if only one leaves living."

And he attacks.

This is not the careful testing of his early blows; this is not the measured strength of a man seeking only victory. His magic bears down on her like an iron hammer, like a swollen tide that eats away stone, inexorable and unrelenting. Her mock weakness she abandons without a thought—a ploy like that will kill her now as surely as a knife between her ribs, and without waiting she swings her staff forward and snap-freezes him to the ground from the waist down. Jaculus falls backwards, startled—but his weight breaks his feet free and the rest falls away with a blow from the end of his staff, and even as Hawke follows her ice with white-hot flame he has swiveled his staff to point its very tip at her heart and she flinches back—

She flinches—

She cannot move.

For a split-second she can feel her heart stop in her chest, every muscle in her body seizing at the impossible commands—then, slowly, the tip of his staff moves in a tiny, controlled circle, and she can feel her blood sludge forward at the motion. Jaculus steps closer, his eyes hard and bright with victory, one hand still locking her in place; Hawke seethes, unable to move, barely able to breathe, tracking him only with her eyes as he circles her rigid form in the center of the arena. The crowd is shouting something, chanting something; she can taste copper on her tongue and her left arm is hot with her own blood.

"Now, now, now," Jaculus murmurs, tucking the polished end of his staff under her chin, "who's the trapped one now, little bird?"

Hawke cannot speak, would not respond if she did; she settles for the hatred in her eyes and turns every other strength she has to breaking this hold he has over her, to breaking free—

She can see Isabela over his shoulder.

Hawke blinks, stunned, and for a moment she forgets entirely the magister sliding his staff from her chin to the center of her chest. Isabela is there, right there in the first row of seats, Varric at her side, both of them shouting and struggling with nearly a dozen arena guards as they try to get to Hawke. They know as well as Hawke does that the use of blood magic should have ended the match and awarded Hawke the win by forfeit, but Archon Nomaran makes no motion and the guards seem little interested in their words. Jaculus is saying something, taunting her about—something—but Hawke is looking elsewhere, now, her eyes sliding as far as they can to the left until she can see—

Fenris.

Her heart stutters again, though this time it has nothing to do with blood magic and everything to do with the elf trapped behind the gates. The guard is gone, dead, threatened away, Hawke doesn't know; all she can see is the sunlit blur of his white hair and the rage in his eyes as he tries, again and again, to break apart the enchanted iron hinges, the lock, even the bars themselves, his lyrium lighting up over and over like a torchflame struggling to catch in a storm.

"And he goes next," Jaculus murmurs directly in her ear, and Hawke jolts back to earth. The magister is so close behind her she can feel his heat on her back, his hand sliding up her spine to wrap around her throat—to squeeze—

The choice, when the choice comes, is as simple as a song and as clear as polished glass. She will not die here, she won't; she has too much to do and too little time already, and if nothing else she will not give this bastard the satisfaction of throttling out her life. The Arishok himself did not stand against her and she will not permit it now—

Amari tua.

No.

The chains around her heart snap like frozen twigs. Hawke staggers forward, unbalanced with the sudden release, but as Jaculus bites out an oath she is already swiveling on one heel, fire and lighting sputtering from her fingertips in great roiling gouts to strike the magister in the chest. He reels backwards, his eyes wide with shock and fury, and Hawke presses her advantage, presses forward, driving him across the arena with the wind itself at her back, pulling on a line so deep in herself it hurts; she cannot remember the last time she dragged so much out of herself so quickly, wrung the gold Fade-spark in her soul so dry that there is nearly nothing left. But Jaculus is bleeding from a dozen wounds, limping as he retreats, scorched and scarred and as ragged as she is before the implacable wall of her magic and she is so close.

And then, in a heartbeat, everything stops.

The truth is: Hawke has no idea how it turns against her. She doesn't know if it's a lucky shot, or if it's the same luring trap that she'd used earlier turned against her, or even a last-second burst of desperation. She only knows that Jaculus slams his white staff into the dust at his feet and a solid fist of blood magic pounds into her stomach like a stone, like a battering ram, hammering her back across the arena as if she weighs nothing more than dried leaves. The wall smashes into her spine or her spine smashes into the wall but either way it is agony, a cudgel-blunt blow that knocks the air out of her and sends her sprawling to her knees.

Hawke struggles to her feet—her staff, where is her staff?—but Jaculus is already there, that oil-thick smoke billowing from the end of his staff towards her against the wind, twisting around itself like the dark funneled clouds she used to see in the spring as a child before they moved to Lothering and she sucks in a breath as the shapeless mass of it hurtles towards her—

There is nothing but pain.

Every vein, every artery in her body—her blood is boiling inside her skin, surging and seething and scraping her raw and she screams as if that will help relieve the pain. Jaculus laughs somewhere and the torment ceases, just for a moment; Hawke shudders and rolls to her knees, blind, deaf, conscious only of her desperate need to flee. Her stomach heaves and she chokes, coughs up bile and blood that spatters to the dirt between her torn hands. Somehow she convinces herself to move along the arena wall away from him, but it is little more than a half-crawling drag of her legs behind her. The low rumble of Jaculus's laugh ripples over her again and something distant in her mind rages at the sound, but she cannot—she can't—she is so tired.

Fenris. Fight for Fenris.

Hawke forces her eyes open—when had they closed?—but before she can coax her limbs to move Jaculus's magic floods over her again, painting her skin in fire and her blood in thorns and vinegar. Her back arches off the ground and seizes rigid as granite—it goes on and on and on and she is dying, surely, because no mortal woman could survive this torture—

It stops. Blood pools and bubbles in the back of her throat and she gags, twisting to one side, spitting out blood as she drowns inside herself, her legs trembling uncontrollably, her chest heaving, her head as heavy as a grave. Her eyes are half-lidded in weariness and anguish and she can see little more than the shadow of the magister's boots moving towards her across the arena. Forty feet, thirty feet. Twenty.

She is suddenly very cold.

It seeps through her like water rising to fill a cracked cistern, slow and frigid and wholly bitter, and she closes her eyes. She cannot quite remember why she is here, why everything hurts so badly, but surely it wouldn't hurt to rest, just for a moment…

Oh, child, sweet mage-girl. Are you tired?

The voice is wrong, she thinks, dazed, too heavy and too layered with something she cannot place, but—Yes. I am so tired.

I know, dear grief-wearied child; your song has thinned with sorrow, your voice broken with fatigue and with hurt. Oh, child! Come to me. I will give you such sweet sleep, such rest so deep that it cannot be torn away.

Oh, how she wants it! The very thought makes her heart slow to stopping, easing out of its panicked, pointless racing. Her head tips forward, her eyes closed; then, with the certainty of dreams, or of death, she senses movement by her shoulder, the slow lazy spreading of a proffered hand, gentle and kind—but too many fingers, or too few, and Hawke draws back in hesitation. Wait.

Time is short, child, and ever shorter. Choose—quickly—!

No, she thinks, startled, appalled, and names at last the thing that whispers to her. No, demon. I will not turn.

A fierce, raging snarl and too many teeth—but dwindling, descending, torn from its hold on her soul by her refusal. The Fade recedes from her mind like a shadow before noon, leaving her only the white and glaring pound of agony. There is no passage of time, no respite; there is only pain.

Then, suddenly, a voice:

Hawke!

She stirs. No demon's voice, this; no layered coaxing under the despair.

Hawke, get up!

Something—her name? Her name, faint, and distant, like the call of a voice across the sea. It is so hard—so hard—but she looks—up—

Fenris. Fenris on his knees inside the bars of the eastern gate, his arm stretched through the unyielding iron in desperation, towards her, for her, as Jaculus draws ever closer. Lyrium-light ripples down the veins of his arms like the reflection of sunlight on water. He is so close. When had she gotten so close?

He says her name again and it sounds in her like a bell, pealing out her history like the knots in her father's staff. She is Hawke, daughter of Malcolm and Leandra, Euphemia Hawke of Ferelden and of Kirkwall, and she will not die here.

Hawke swallows air, swallows down her pain—this will hurt—and pulls herself towards him. Two lengths—one length—three feet—

Jaculus reaches for her—

And Hawke reaches Fenris.

The world explodes. Her blood-slicked fingers slide down the bare skin of his palm and it is like seizing the heart of the sun, the years of untapped lyrium in his skin scorching through her like a wildfire to set every inch of her ablaze. A distant part of her is aware that Fenris is shuddering, bowing over their joined hands with a deep groan as what he gives is overwhelmed by what she takes, as every curled line of lyrium from his chin to the soles of his feet lights up at once under the strength of her pull. She is drunk with power, frantic with it, focusing every scrap of will she has left into the lyrium flooding her veins as she tries to keep her head above water long enough to breathe. The strength running through her is terrifying in its sheer might, dormancy shaken off like a living thing as the unchecked beast roars through her blood.

Hawke realizes that she is standing, burning alive, scorching the air around her with base strength. The Fade-gold inside her is an inferno—her skin is electric—Jaculus is staring at her like she has twisted into an abomination right before his eyes and Hawke bites back a wild and sudden urge to laugh.

Fenris says from behind her, his voice rough but strong, "Kill him."

"Yes," Hawke breathes, giddy, omnipotent, and her hands explode in light.

Only once has she ever felt this alive, one starless night when she'd lashed herself to a bowsprit in the middle of a storm and reached out her hand to white lightning. She reaches for it again, now, drawing it hot and blazing from the maelstrom in her heart, and lifts her palm to the silent magister Jaculus.

The first bolt hits him square in the chest, knocking him to his knees like a blow from a giant. His mouth opens helplessly, wordlessly—then the second arcs down his spine, and the third sends white sparks spraying over his arms and his eyes and between his teeth. His dark braid chars at the end and smolders; Hawke clenches her fist and Fenris's lyrium surges in her like the froth of whitewater rapids, searing through her skin as badly as Jaculus's magic ever had but it feels right, somehow, cleansing, as Andraste's pyre cleansed even as she burned and died.

As Jaculus burns and dies now.

Strike after strike shrieks down, one after the other, so close Jaculus becomes little more than a white star in the center of the arena. Hawke gives a name to each one—this one for Palla, for Dalos; this one for Clodia; this one for Varric, and Isabela and for Alam and for Fenris—

And for herself.

Thunder rolls with the last, so fast and so loud the pressure of it nearly drops her to her knees. She opens her mouth in a desperate struggle for breath—this strength is too much, Fenris's strength—so long has he carried its power untapped in his veins that now it scorches hers to ash in its race for freedom. She is nothing more than a conduit for this raw Fade, for the ferocious storm that rages both inside and out. Somewhere in the sun-bright blaze Jaculus screams, screams again—but she does not release the storm in her hands, urging the lightning unerringly to the fire's heart, to his heart, drawing out every drop of power Fenris has given her and more, unloosing all the bright shreds that remain of her magic until she reaches to the bottom of her soul and finds herself bled dry.

Suddenly, so suddenly that she nearly falls, she is empty.

The sparks between her fingers sputter out with a soft hiss. Slowly, gently, the thunder dies away into the distance; the white and blazing star in the center of the arena collapses in upon itself, withering like a vine with its taproot cut. Her rage dies with it.

Hawke straightens, her chest heaving, and takes in the work of her magic. Jaculus is little more than a charred and broken body, his skin burnt black, his eyes staring sightlessly at the brilliant blue sky above him. His scarlet robes are stained darker with his own blood and hers, his staff cracked clean in two where he'd tried to defend himself from her wrath. One hand still stretches towards her in the dirt, as if in a silent, useless plea. The crowd is utterly silent.

Victory, she thinks, and tastes ash.

But there is still one thing left to do. Hawke licks her lips with a dryer tongue and looks up to the stunned faces of ten thousand men and women who have just watched her burn a man alive, to the magisters in their linen-draped box who seem torn between appalled and terrified. To the Archon of the Tevinter Imperium, who watches her with his fingers folded at his mouth.

"I claim right of victory," Hawke shouts, her voice hoarse and cracking but carrying easily through the quiet crowd, "in spite of treachery and the violation of tradition. Who will witness for me?"

A silence, long enough for her heart to stop—and then Damia stands, straight and tall in pale green, and says, quietly, "I will witness."

The Arras brothers join her, dark and light, their wry smiles identical. "We will witness."

Then another stands, then another—Hawke's heart leaps as magisters and nobles alike rise to their feet; some she recognizes by face, some she knows she must have only written, but five, and then six, and then a dozen, and then something in the air catches and the tide turns in her favor for the first time she can remember since she has been in this city, and with all the slow inexorability of a landslide the crowd begins to rise to their feet and ten thousand voices cry out witness! The Archon himself does not rise—but neither does he speak against her, and neither does he stop the crowd roaring in her favor, and when Priscus falls to his knees beside the private box Nomaran looks at her and inclines his silver head to her victory.

A fierce, wild smile spreads across Hawke's face. There is little left in her but gratitude, a faint spark in the vast, echoing emptiness of her exhaustion, but at least that she can give freely. The long winding stairway has ended at last; she has reached the crown that crests it, bloody but unbowed; she stands atop the spire with her head thrown back and her arms spread wide in the clear and blinding exultation of triumph.

Hawke raises her eyes. The magisters, both seated and standing, look down at her expectantly and she starts to speak—but even as she does the arena goes dark around the edges and the sky speckles over with marks like the scatter of ink blots, deep black bleeding across the clouds, and the cheers suddenly seem as if they come from a thousand miles away. There is copper blood in her mouth, hot and thick and choking, and she thinks something must be wrong with her chest because it seems suddenly very hard to breathe—

She realizes, distantly, that she is on her knees.

Then the ground tips up to meet her, and she thinks nothing at all.

-.-.-

Hawke—

Come home.

Anders