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At last the lift returned, moving in fits and starts. It was tilting slightly more than it had been the last time it went up, but not alarmingly so. What concerned the Iron Bull was that the first trip had taken two hours; the second, four and a half. And Dennon did not look happy.
Ren could read his disappointed look—he, and everyone else, had wanted her to go first. But she was no one now, just another Inquisition operative, albeit one with a strange glowing hand. And as a former Inquisitor, she had the responsibility to stay behind and be certain her people were safe. Morris had entrusted her with this task, and she was going to do it thoroughly and to the best of her ability—and when she got back to the surface, let him know by the first possible raven that she was done. The Inquisition could look elsewhere the next time it needed extra assistance.
Realistically, she knew she would never send that message. She owed the Inquisition too much, had too much invested in it, to truly remove herself from its roster. But it felt nice to think she would. It was something to look forward to when she returned, something to keep her mind on that didn't involve the increasing perils of the lift or the certainty that the Iron Bull was not ready to return to her.
"Let's get you on this and get you back up to the top," Dennon said, nudging her along toward the lift.
Grim followed, and the Iron Bull was behind him, watching Grim with a worried eye. Ren had been so caught up in the dwarves and the story she had told them about Valta—which had been more or less the truth, minus certain details—that she had missed whatever might have gone on between the Chargers, but between Grim's glower as he looked down at her and the Iron Bull's concern, she caught on quickly. Grim was the Qunari mole in the Chargers. And he had engineered the situation so that he would be on the last lift, already looking like a precarious ride, with herself and the Iron Bull.
Ren frowned, thinking it through, as she took a spot in the center of the platform. She was certain the Qun wanted the Iron Bull back—he was too valuable to them, or had been, to endanger. And they had sacrificed Gatt, however willingly, in the pursuit of the Iron Bull. Would they really give up so easily?
But then, the Qun wasn't necessarily as guided by pure logic and conservation of resources as the Iron Bull insisted. Pure logic had certainly not dictated Gatt's actions on behalf of the Qun. Who was to say that Grim would be acting on orders? Or that he hadn't altered his reports to get the orders he wanted? Clearly he was intelligent; he had evaded the Iron Bull's notice for a long time, and that wasn't easy to do.
So if anyone was in danger on the way up, she was. Well, she'd been in danger before. And she would be with Ashkaari, who would protect her if he could. She believed that in his heart he was still hers, still the man who had left the Qun behind when it threatened his Chargers. But anything could happen, dangling there between the surface and the depths, and Ren had to admit that for once, she was afraid—not just for herself, but for Ashkaari, too, and for Dennon, who had not asked to be placed in the middle of this struggle.
The lift creaked and groaned as it began to rise. Ren felt a buoyancy rise in her with it, an anticipation of eventually reaching the surface and putting all this darkness behind her, but the dread of what Grim might have in mind dragged at her in opposition to it.
"We tried to get this repaired in time for your return," Dennon said to her apologetically. "But without knowing when you were coming back …"
"Or if," Ren agreed, forcing a cheerfulness she didn't entirely feel.
"What's wrong with it?"
"The gears are stripping. And in order to replace them entirely, we'd have had to dismantle half the system." Dennon frowned. "I can't tell if it's from the earthquakes and the extra strain they've placed on the system or the quality of the metal, which I wasn't entirely pleased with from the start. It was such a rush job to start with that we couldn't be too picky about our supplies, but …"
"It's never good to start off with shoddy equipment," the Iron Bull agreed.
Dennon nodded. "The dwarves tried to help, but that little cell of the Legion of the Dead down there have been pretty heavily pressed by the darkspawn, and we're awfully far from Orzammar—they didn't have time to send us any experts. I barely managed to get here in time to take over. When I got my cousin's bird, I was in Starkhaven."
"Your cousin?" Ren asked.
He grinned at her. "Robert. The Inquisitor. Didn't he tell you?"
"No, it must have slipped his mind. Nice of you to jump to his command."
"As did you, it seems."
Ren shrugged. "The Inquisition is still my responsibility, at least in part." Grim grunted, and she looked at him sharply. "If you have something to say, say it."
He met her eyes, his gaze angry, but he didn't speak.
Dennon looked at all three of them, frowning, clearly trying to figure out what he had somehow landed in the middle of.
The lift continued creakily up and up and up, so very slowly that Ren could have drawn artwork on the walls, had she been so inclined. After Grim hadn't moved, Dennon had returned to incessantly pacing the edges of the lift, checking the hoists and the flooring and watching the darkness above them. If only they could have seen just a sliver of light up there, Ren would have felt so much better.
None of them spoke. Grim and the Iron Bull stood on opposite edges of the lift, arms folded, staring at each other, and Ren tried to stay out of the space between them, but she lacked their talent for stillness. She wanted to move, to climb the ropes hand over hand or make herself toeholds in the wall and haul herself up, anything to be moving, doing something. This everlasting standing here while a shaky piece of equipment did all the work for her had her restless and near panic.
At last, as though he wasn't able to take the tension thrumming through her anymore, the Iron Bull reached out a hand and grasped her by the shoulder, pulling her against him. "It's all right, kadan."
"You don't know that." Ren didn't like the way her voice sounded, thin and shaky. She prided herself on being more level-headed than this.
"Yeah. I do. We've gotten out of everything else together."
She wanted to remind him that they weren't together, not that that would have helped anyone, but Grim cut her off before she could speak.
"Was it worth it, Hissrad?"
There was a moment's silence, in which Ren could feel the Iron Bull's breath catch, his chest stilling, and then feel him letting it out again, slowly, his body relaxing. "Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah, it was."
She let out her own breath, which she hadn't been aware she was holding. Hearing him say it out loud, hearing him acknowledge that the decision he'd made, the decision he been all but forced to make, was the right one … it meant everything. Hopefully it meant as much to him.
"You're a fool," Grim spat.
The Iron Bull was nodding. "Yeah. I could be. I spent my life thinking the Qun was the right way; the only way. But then they sent me here, and I started meeting people who didn't know the Qun, but they were still honorable, still working toward making a better world. And they were happy. You happy, Grim?"
Grim glared at him.
"I didn't think so. I wasn't, either. Even on Seheron—I cared about my men, I wanted them to live, I enjoyed the time I spent with them when we weren't fighting. We were friends. But happy? No."
"Spoken like a true southern simpleton."
"Is that the best you can do?" Ren asked hotly. "Insults? Is that what you killed Gatt for, so you could stand here and insult the Iron Bull back to the Qun? I think Gatt would feel he'd wasted his life."
"You don't know anything," Grim hissed at her. "His life belonged to the Qun."
"His life belonged to him!"
"And what a waste," the Iron Bull added. There was pain etched sharply on his face, now that the truth was becoming plain to him. "The Qun doesn't waste a resource."
"It was the only way. He saw that."
"Grim, what the fuck happened to you?" the Iron Bull demanded.
"Enough talk! Talk never gets anyone anywhere. Are you coming back to the Qun or not?"
Ren looked up at her former lover, watching his face to see if there was an answer there, but all she saw was more of the confusion he had struggled with for so long.
"I'm trying," he whispered, painfully. "I … I don't know how. I can't seem to find the Qun inside myself."
"Of course not. This basra is holding you back." The look he shot at Ren was venomous. When he saw it, Dennon stopped pacing the platform and put himself next to her.
"I'm not doing anything to him that wasn't already started by you people. I didn't make him walk away from Seheron and turn himself in to the re-educators; I didn't kill his best friend in order to shock him back into the fold. You did that."
Grim's face darkened, and he lunged for her. Dennon and the Iron Bull both stepped between Ren and Grim, the Iron Bull's arm shooting out and catching his former comrade by the throat. He pushed Grim back a few steps, but then Grim set his heels and shoved them both forward again. Ren thought how strong he must be to move the Iron Bull, who was nearly half a foot taller, as she scrambled out of the way.
The two of them continued to grapple with one another. Ren and Dennon had to keep moving to get out of the way, and beneath them all the platform was swaying alarmingly.
Shouting into Dennon's ear in order to be heard over the racket the other two were making, Ren asked, "How close are we to the top?"
"Not close enough!"
"Can we speed things up at all?"
"Drop some weight."
Well, that they couldn't do, since the four of them were the only weight on the lift. And Grim's grip on the Iron Bull was tight enough that they would both go over if he did.
"Is there any way to let the people at the top know what's going on down here?" She ducked as a giant fist swished over her head. Grim connected with the Iron Bull's stomach, drawing a grunt from the Qunari.
"No way I know of," Dennon said. "They couldn't do anything anyway."
"So what can we do?"
"Tie these two down and make them sit still the rest of the way up?"
Ren rolled her eyes. "I'll get right on that."
The lift lurched and shuddered beneath them, the two combatants groaning as they tested each other's strength. They were standing at the very edge. One wrong move …
Ren's heart was in her throat.
"Come back to the Qun," Grim panted.
"I tried!" the Iron Bull protested. "I can't. It's … it's gone. It's not in me anymore."
"Then you're better off dead." Planting his foot on the edge, Grim threw himself backward with all his strength. The Iron Bull had braced for the move, but not quite quickly enough, and the two of them hung there on the edge, teetering back and forth. Ren lunged across the platform to grasp the Iron Bull's belt, hauling him backward with all her strength. She could feel Dennon's arms close around her waist, feel him pulling her back as well.
With all their weight on one corner, the lift was tipping, slowly.
Grim was dangling in space now, his hands wrapped around the Iron Bull's wrists. The Iron Bull, in his turn, was holding Grim by the upper arms.
"Bull!" Ren shouted. "Let him go! If you don't, the whole lift will fall!"
The Iron Bull's back stiffened; she could feel the breath he took against her knuckles, almost hear the protests going on inside him at the idea of what she was asking him to do. But in the end, the Qun, as he interpreted it, would have agreed with her—the most efficient result would be to sacrifice the one, and that one the antagonist, for the safety of the many.
Slowly, the Iron Bull's grip relaxed and he let go, leaving Grim to dangle from his wrists. He shook them, flexing the muscles, trying to force Grim to loosen his grip.
"Hissrad! No!"
"You started this, Grim. You and Gatt. I never wanted it this way. If you had just talked to me …"
Grim's grip was slipping, but the lift was continuing to tilt.
"It's going to go," Dennon shouted warningly.
"I'm sorry, Grim," the Iron Bull said, and he pried his former friend's fingers off, throwing himself backward as Grim fell. His scream echoed for a long time after he was gone.