Three days. She waited three days for him to appear – at her house, at the Hanged Man, on the street, anywhere. Nothing. And she couldn't ask the others, it was too... no. But she worried. What if something had happened? What if he'd done something stupid? Worst of all, what if he'd left Kirkwall altogether?
She hadn't expected him to answer her knock, not really. And his door was locked. Not that it had stopped her before, but... Shit. She pressed her forehead to the wood and sighed.
A few minutes later, she was stepping out of the entrance hall into the great room beyond. The chill to the air and the state of the room would have led a stranger to believe the building was empty. She stopped just inside the doorway. "Fenris?"
She waited. Nothing. She fingered her daggers nervously, and moved forward to the bottom of the steps, and stopped again. "Fenris, it's Hawke. Though... I'm sure you already know that." She took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry to intrude. It's about business, not... anything else." She nudged a broken floor tile with her toe. They'd been expensive, once. What had this room been like when it was new? She waited in silence for a good minute. Still nothing.
How long should she stand here? Clearly he was not going to come out of the study, assuming he was even there, and she couldn't bring herself to breach his personal space any farther. It might be suicidal to try, anyway. She cleared her throat.
"It's just... we promised Emeric that we'd look into the DuPuis mansion, remember? And Aveline won't go, because the guard already got in trouble for searching there. We don't know anything about this guy yet, but women are dead. It could be dangerous, and I need..." her voice threatened to wobble, and she paused. No wobbling. Deep breath. "I need your sword."
Was that motion, just beyond the doorway? She couldn't tell. "We're meeting at Varric's at sunset." Yeah, that was unlikely to happen. "But the DuPuis place is just across the courtyard from here, if you want to meet us outside after dark."
And what else was there to say? He'd be there, or he wouldn't. She stood for another moment, looking into the shadows. Nothing.
She reached into her pack and pulled out the book of fairy tales, the ribbon still marking the page where they'd stopped the day of the viscount's summons. She gently placed it on the bottom step, then slipped out the way she'd come, locking the door behind her.