J is for Jeweler

She's standing idle in Lowtown, at a long table laden with trinkets, all the petty ones that the woman who runs the stall won't mind nicked or stolen, if it should happen. They're all worthless - pretty baubles, but ones made of false stone or poor-quality glass, ones that will shatter easily or lose their luster within a year.

The owner is chatting with a customer, all flourish and grace, and Athenril thumbs the latch on the small, finely carved wooden box she's brought her. Inside are the real thing - glass orbs with real lyrium inside (the only lyrium she'll trade in), pearls from Rialto Bay, gold and precious stone. Rialda won't be able to afford them all, not immediately, and Athenril will have more quiet stops to make throughout the next week. But the shipment is good and, failing her usual merchants and fences, there are always the more adventurous nobles.

She thumbs at her lip lazily with her leather-gloved hand (newly made, not as nice as the last), and scans the table.

It's been a month since she returned to Kirkwall. Things continue on. Hawke is up in Hightown, negotiating the return of the family mansion. Aveline remains captain of the guard. There is new wealth in the city, courtesy of Varric Tethras, and she's edging around the borders of it, dipping in when she can.

She's begun to save up for more than protection and gear and the knowledge that she is, in her own way, rich - rich in gold and in favors and in bodies. Now she sets aside coin and trinkets not to have them set aside, but because, one day, she wants out of this city. She wants away from miserable Ostwick, too. There aren't many places ready to welcome a smuggler, let alone an elf, but she's begun having more and more dreams of settling down. Of being done.

Though what she would do with herself then, she's uncertain.

The proprietor's chatter is endless, and Athenril only comes back to herself when she glimpses the tines of a hair comb, a fall of lovely beads. They're iridescent blue and green and purple, peacock-colored.

And they're familiar.

She frowns and leans closer, reaching out to pluck it from the mass. The beads, she knows, are Nevarran. The comb is worth at least five sovereigns. It doesn't belong.

It belongs in the curling, dark hair of a woman she's never going to see again, who is foolish and lost. Her fingers fold tight around it except for her immobilized two, left loose by Bethany's magic. Her lips and jaw go tense.

She is not a particularly sentimental person, but this comb was a gift, one of the few she has ever given.

It's up her sleeve in another breath, the box braced on her hip, and she retreats before the merchant glances to her again. She has other customers.

And before that, she has a visit to make.

"Gamlen Amell," she says, intoxicating smoke of the Blooming Rose's main room curling around her. She keeps her tone light, her usual drawl, but she can see him tense.

"What d'you want?" he mutters, not sparing her a glance.

She slides up to the bar beside him and sets down Bethany's hair comb.

He drains his cup. "What?"

"Would you look at that - your memory's starting to go along with your hair and your dick," Athenril says with a shrug. "Either that or your eyes. How'd this get on Rialda's table?"

"Huh? How should I know. Probably stole it, or bought it from you."

She hums softly, leaning back a little. The fingers of her left hand drum on the polished wood. "Not from me. How much would you say it's worth?"

"Two silver," he replies, quickly enough that she knows he's quoting the merchant's payment. Her blood runs hot, then cold, and she regards him silently.

And then she reaches out and grabs the collar of his shirt, dragging him close.

"That belonged to your niece," Athenril purred low into his ear. "It was a gift. From me. And not only was it a gift, it was a rather expensive one. She's gone now, no thanks to you, and I will be honest with you - that you sold it, and at such aloss, no less, disgusts me."

She lets go, pushing him aside.

"Not that you ever don't disgust me."

"It's worth something?" Gamlen asks, and her heel catches the bar of the stool he's sitting on, tugging it sharply towards her and sending him tumbling to the floor. She grabs up the comb again and stands, stepping over him.

"Yeah," she said. "But you wouldn't have any idea, would you."

That night she sits on one of the walls overlooking the harbor, comb in hand, thumb rubbing over the beads and turning them on the wires that hold them in place. It's a soothing sort of motion, endless fiddling on round, quality glass. She wonders if Bethany's thumbs ever worked these paths.

The Gallows are illuminated even from this distance, endless torches. She fancies she can make out the movements of templars, or glimpse the shadow of a mage in a far-off window. It's a prison, a blighted prison, no better than the slave quarters in Minrathous. And yet Bethany walked to it, took those stairs instead of being dragged.

And she left behind a comb.

What else did she leave behind? Athenril isn't sure she wants to know, isn't sure she wants to see Bethany's life scattered in pieces, reduced to a copper here, a copper there. The girl, for all her foolishness, her naivete, doesn't deserve that. Athenril doesn't want to see that.

"All things in this world are finite; what one man loses, another has gained, " she mutters to herself. The words are twisted, but she's forgotten the original with the passing of time and reality.

Bethany would know the right of it.