AN: short chapter this week, in order to make room for what's coming down the pipe.
"Your taste in companions is lamentable," Morrigan remarks over their breakfast the next morning. "The qunari apparently do not allow mages to roam free." She pauses, drawing Marian's glance. "The precise word he used was unleashed."
Marian's eyes immediately snap to Sten; he sits a little away from the other side of the fire and watches them with unblinking eyes. She and Morrigan share a glance, full of rage and the promise of vengeance, and in that moment she and Morrigan are the same; there is an all-consuming dark fire that burns in their hearts, the kind that feeds on the finer emotions and leaves nothing behind except anger.
It leaves her feeling strangely unsettled, and much closer to Morrigan than she had been before.
They pack camp and leave for Redcliffe down the Imperial Highway. Marian reluctantly leaves her Warden uniforms in her packs and puts her Circle robes back on. It feels like going backward, reverting to the person she'd been only two weeks ago, someone whose only plan was escape, someone who had something to run to. She hates the reminder, but Alistair and Sten are even worse off, dressed and armored in what they could scavenge or trade for in Lothering. Then there's Leliana in her Chantry robes, and Morrigan, an obvious apostate... Marian surveys the motley group of people they've somehow assembled and sighs. They'll be lucky if they even make it to Redcliffe.
It's five days hard walk to Redcliffe, and Marian ignores her companions to remember little things about her father: the way his beard pricked the palm of her hand when she patted his face, the seriousness with which he taught her the basics of magic, he and her mother teaching each other to cook, the look on his face when he brought her to meet Bethy and Carver. She does notice Alistair running interference for her, and she's grateful to be left alone with her thoughts. She needs them more than ever now.
They trail down the path in a dispirited gaggle of tired and dusty travelers. When they finally sight the village, on the edge of Lake Calenhad far below, Alistair heaves a great sigh and turns to Marian. "I need to talk to you," he says. "Alone."
Morrigan huffs and wanders off; Leliana tows Sten away, chattering at him the whole way, and Marian turns back to Alistair with a raised eyebrow. If he's about to speak to her regarding her introspective silence, she has a few choice words about leaving the entire burden on her shoulders in the Wilds...
"Look, I need to tell you something I, ah, should probably have told you earlier." He's anxious enough that little lines have drawn themselves around his eyes and the crease of his forehead, and he doesn't seem to want to look at her.
She takes a breath. "All right," she says. "I'm listening."
"Well, let's see. How do I tell you this?" Alistair frowns. "Did I say how I know Arl Eamon, exactly?"
Marian tries to remember. "I think you said you grew up in Castle Redcliffe."
"Right," Alistair says. "He raised me. I'm a bastard." He takes a deep breath and starts speaking so fast that she has trouble keeping up. "My mother was a serving girl at Redcliffe castle and she died when I was born. Arl Eamon took me in and raised me before I was sent to the Chantry." He pauses for breath, and continues only reluctantly. "The reason he did that was because... well, because my father was King Maric. Which made Cailan my... half-brother, I suppose."
Marian stares at Alistair, speechless. "What?" she manages after a minute of pure, dazed shock. He shrugs, uncomfortable and fidgeting under her glare, and then Marian actually looks at Alistair's face for the first time since they'd met and the resemblance between him and Cailan snaps into place like the answer to a riddle. If Alistair let his hair grow, or Cailan sheared his, they could have been fraternal twins.
Suddenly so many things make sense. Alistair had been kept well out of things in Ostagar, where they needed every warrior. And he hadn't only been mourning his mentor.
"Does that make you a prince or something?" Marian asks, furiously reassessing their situation. This definitely made things more... interesting.
Alistair goes a shade of pale that she wouldn't have believed possible with his skin tone. "Maker's breath, I hope not! I don't think so... you don't think so, do you? I'm a bastard, and nobody even knows about me." The look he gives her is so appealing that she automatically opens her mouth to reassure him, but she stops herself. After a moment's thought, she sits on the river's edge, dangling her feet over, and watches the village far beneath her feet. Alistair joins her, and they sit in silence.
"So you're a royal bastard, huh," she says after a while.
"Like I haven't heard that one before," Alistair says; when she looks over, he's just finished rolling his eyes at her, but he has the grace to look abashed when caught out. She smiles a little and then looks back at the village. It looks so peaceful from up here...
"I would have told you," he says. "Really. It just... it never really meant anything to me. I was inconvenient, a possible threat to Cailan's rule and so they kept me secret. I've never talked about it, to anyone. Everyone who knew either resented me for it or they coddled me... even Duncan kept me out of the fighting because of it."
Marian looks up at Alistair, and he looks back; he is so sincere that his eyes are practically blazing with his wish that she believe him, and she does. Whatever his past, it's hardly the match of hers, and she has her own secrets that in the interest of fairness, she should probably tell him.
She smiles, a little ruefully, and Alistair heaves out a huge, relieved breath. "You're not mad?" he asks, carefully feeling for footing.
"No," she says, looking away. "If nothing else, we haven't had much of a chance to talk. I only met you – Maker, it hasn't even been two weeks since..." She glances at Alistair, wishing she'd stopped that sentence before she did, but he's not as upset as she expected.
Marian wishes with all her might that there were fewer conversational pitfalls waiting to trip her around him.
"True," Alistair says thoughtfully. "Well, I'm still sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
"So you grew up here?" Marian asks, taking in the incredible vista. The castle sits on its own, separated from the village by an expanse of glassy water. Tiny boats dot the water, and there are a few larger ships here and there, sitting far out from shore. She wonders if she still gets seasick; she'd been too upset to pay attention to her body on her trip with Duncan.
She wonders if her father ever sailed on this water.
Cú barks up at her from the path below, and she leans out a little and grins at him, thankful for the distraction.
"At the castle," Alistair says, his hand hovering near her arm. He drops it when she leans back. "Well, until I was ten." He looks over at the castle in the distance, shading his eyes against the bright sun. It's hard to read his face. "Arl Eamon eventually married a young woman from Orlais, despite all the problems it caused with the king so soon after the war. He loved her a great deal." He laughs, a short, irritated snort that tells her exactly how he feels about the arlessa. "She resented the rumors which pegged me as the arl's bastard. They weren't true," Alistair says, shrugging. "But of course they existed. The arl didn't care, but she did. So off I was packed to the nearest monastery at age ten." He stares down at the village, a haze of memories in his eyes. "Just as well. The arlessa made sure the castle wasn't a home to me by that point. She despised me."
"But you were just a boy," Marian objects, distressed.
Alistair shrugs. "She felt threatened by my presence, I can see that now. I can't say I blame her. She wondered if the rumors were true herself, I bet."
"Now you're making excuses for her," Marian says, unreasonably upset. She can't help remembering her earlier vision of Alistair as a child, the tow-headed little boy alone in the dark. "She was the adult. It was her responsibility to act like one."
Alistair turns to her and raises his eyebrow, smirking at her until she rolls her eyes and shoves him away. She scrambles up and whistles for Cú, who pretends to ignore her as he snaps at invisible small animals in the grass below.
"I remember," Alistair says, and she looks back to see the dreamy haze of memory on his face again. "I had this amulet with Andraste's holy symbol on it. The only thing I had of my mother's. I was so furious at being sent away, I tore it off and threw it at the wall and it shattered. Stupid, stupid thing to do. And then – the arl came by the monastery a few times to see how I was, but I was stubborn. I hated it there and blamed him for everything... and eventually he just stopped coming." He grimaces, so clearly regretful at losing both the amulet and the arl's goodwill that Marian feels a not entirely unwelcome wave of pity.
"I'm sure he forgave you," Marian says, moved to comfort. "You were young."
He laughs. "And raised by dogs. Or I may as well have been, the way I acted. But maybe all young bastards act like that, I don't know."
Marian turns to look out at the castle, shading her eyes with her hand. "You think the arl will help us?"
"I think so, yes." His voice drops, apprehensive. "This news we've heard about him being sick disturbs me, though."
"Me too," she confesses.
"I'm glad you know now," Alistair says. "Now we can move on, and I'll just pretend you still think I'm some... nobody who was too lucky to die with the rest of the Grey Wardens." There's a familiar note of sour jape there, poking fun at himself before someone else can get to it.
"Is that really what you think?" Marian asks.
"I suppose not," he admits with the smallest of smiles. "At least I'm not alone." He turns away then and walking a little down the path, sticks two fingers in his mouth, whistling for her errant mabari much louder than she'd managed with breath alone. Marian resolves to make him teach her that as soon as possible.