"Difficulties with the authorities?" Fenris asked in response to Varric's question. "Hawke is a magister. There were four of us and over forty of them, including five magisters. So overwhelming a victory…" He let it trail off and snorted. "They will be most respectful. It is the friends and kin of the magisters who will prove difficult, but not this day."

"More enemies," Twyla accepted the bucket of water from Anders and washed the rapidly putrifying remains of the Abomination from her face and hands. Luckily her dress was dark enough to hide the stains. "Although this was an unprovoked attack without a formal challenge. Wonderful. Is there not a single rational person in Minrathous outside of my own Tower?"

"There's my cousin Thorold. He's a bank representative here, and his fiancée is—hey, I didn't tell you about her. Her name is Maevaris Tilani, and she's a magister too. Nice lady. I'll have to introduce you." Varric said. "Right now, though even if the authorities aren't going to make trouble, I'd just as soon get out of here. I guess we'll have to find you a palanquin, since yours is...unavailable." In fact, it was now kindling.

"Bugger that," Hawke commented crudely but convincingly. "I'm perfectly capable of walking. I've been doing so without help for twenty-five years. I'm the single richest woman and the richest single woman in all of Minrathous, if not the Empire, and polite society can go to the Void if it disapproves of what I do. Let's go."

She started off. Varric followed, but Anders stopped Fenris with a hand on his arm. "That thing you did, when you ripped the heart out of the last magister without breaking the skin—was it easily done?"

"Easy?" Fenris pulled away, glaring at him. There was but one mage he trusted, and that, of course, was Hawke. Anders he would tolerate, but only just, and this was pushing it. "Yes, it was easy—if you don't count the pain of having lyrium burned into my flesh in order that I might do it at all."

"Can you do it again?"

"Of course, but I won't," Fenris spat. "In battle is one thing. I am a bodyguard; protecting Hawke is my duty. Outside of that, I refuse. I will not perform on command, even for Hawke." It was bad enough being a monstrosity without being made to do tricks like a performing monkey. Danarius had enjoyed having Fenris show off what he could do.

"Get over yourself for once, and listen!" Anders shot back. "I'm not asking you to entertain me, or out of idle curiosity. I'm asking as a healer. If it were to save a life, could you remove a growth from a person's body that way?"

"I—do not know," Fenris had taken a breath to yell, but Anders' reason had quieted him. "I have never been called upon to try. Killing is simple. I do not know if I could tell the difference between healthy tissue and diseased. You would do better to ask Hawke before involving me. With her gift for perception—." Something in Anders' expression, a stony seriousness unlike the healer's usual penchant for joking charm, made him pause. "Unless it is Hawke herself who is…Is it? Is she ill?"

"I can't tell you who it is without permission. It would be a terrible breach of trust." Anders' mouth twisted. "Now let go of me!."

In his alarm, Fenris had seized the lapels of Anders' robe and twisted, half-strangling the mage. He let go. "That means yes, for were it someone else, you would have said no. What is it? What afflicts her? Is it mortal?"

"I cannot tell you more—I should not have told you as much—without her permission. I will not ask her on the public street or say anything else to you now. Let's get home, and tonight we will discuss what may be done. I will say this, though. I have often heard you speak disparagingly of mages and the contamination magic spreads. I tell you now, when you consider how easy it would be for her to make a bargain with the darkness, given how much she could pay for someone to sacrifice to regain her health—I do not believe she has ever even thought of doing so, much less considered it a possibility."

"I have not doubted Hawke's strength of character or goodness of heart in months," he replied truthfully. "It's the rest of you I don't trust."

"What's keeping you two?" Varric called to them.

"Just a moment," Anders replied. "Later," he promised Fenris.

It was indeed rather later. Fenris found he had no appetite for dinner, and instead haunted the kitchen. Hawke, ill? —Very likely mortally so, from how Anders had spoken of making bargains or using blood magic. Now he understood just why Hawke, who so hated slavery that she sewed her own clothes (he had overheard her conversation with Leandra before he knocked) would have bought Anders—the only other slave she had acquired since she bought Aron, Orana, and he himself. It was because she had needed a healer that badly.

Hawke, ill, possibly dying…Even the apple dessert Aron was demonstrating to the cook did not tempt his appetite. Small wonder she would hear no talk of love, that she was concerned lest she hurt him. Her death would darken his life beyond measure.

There was no question about whether he would try or not. The only question was, could he do any good? If only he could practice somehow first! From the way people…reacted when he reached within them, his touch caused excruciating pain. To grope blindly about in Hawke's body—he did not know where the growth was located, but Anders must—even were she drugged, he would….

Now he did not simply lack appetite. He was nauseated. Perhaps being in the kitchen around food smells was not a good idea at the moment. He stood up, made as if to leave—and his glance fell on the bowl of eggs, fresh from the cold room, waiting to be broken and whipped into a froth.

An idea occurred to him. He reached out, pulled the bowl closer. Aron looked up from the lesson he was giving. "They're not cooked yet, if that's what you fancy."

"It isn't. May I?"

"What are you going to do with them?" asked the cook.

"Separate the yolks from the whites." He picked up one of the oviods.

"But you don't have to do that for this recipe," Aron told him, bewildered.

"It's as an experiment." Fenris replied.

"An experiment? You, too?! Is there anyone left in this house who doesn't go experimenting?"


A/N: I think most of my readers already figured out that this was going here.