His room was empty when Alistair returned to it. Darisa was gone to South Reach for recruiting, but a letter she left under his pillow made it absolutely clear that she would have nothing to do with him when and if she returned.
Everything felt so quiet. It was as if the walls of the Keep itself were holding their breath. Even the noise of his armor as he stripped it away was muted in the hush. He was surrounded by Grey Wardens but felt so alone, his heart left behind in Antiva. The quiet in the room was broken when he slammed the door, leaving in search of Oghren.
Alistair stood atop the wall, vaguely reaching out his senses for darkspawn but mostly just watching Ser Pounce-a-lot stalking through the yard in arthritic slowness as twilight fell.
"Look at this." Alistair turned around to find the Warden-Commander walking toward him on silent footsteps. Nathaniel was holding a smooth, slightly curved sheet of wood in two hands.
"Hmm?" said Alistair, trying to be casual as his mouth went dry with nerves. The shield he'd been trying to make for Shartan had split two days ago and he'd chucked it into the hearth. "A… piece of wood?" He grinned and came forward as if humoring the Commander.
"A very nice piece of wood, I think. Good hardwood. No flaws in it. Too bad it's too small for us to use, really." Nathaniel handed it to Alistair without looking and went to the wall.
"Er, yes," said Alistair, turning the wood over. His heart quickened. It was perfect. He glanced over at Nathaniel.
"Well, goodnight. I'm turning in." Nathaniel paced away without looking at Alistair again. For his part, Alistair gaped after the Commander for a while before hurrying off to his room.
Alistair answered his door and peered down at Sigrun. "Hello!" she said brightly, brushing past him to enter his room. She had a bag on her shoulder which went clink, and while Alistair was a fan of bags that went clink, especially these past seven months, Sigrun was not one that he normally associated with clinking bags.
"Mmmmmm, your room smells nice!" she said as he turned around to follow her. "Like wood shavings!" She gave him an entirely too-sharp look, which made him shut the door.
"Oh! Yes, er, thank you," he said, willing himself not to look at his fireplace where the shavings themselves were.
Sigrun set her clinking bag on the table and turned around to face him, a calculating look on her face still. "Okay. I've got some of Oghren's good stuff here and I'll share it with you if you promise not to get mad about what I'm about to tell you."
"What?" said Alistair, his voice cracking, which was unfair, considering that he had recently noticed the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes. "Nothing good ever comes after a statement like that, you know."
Sigrun was practically vibrating, however, her fingers linking as she raised on her toes. "I went through your things—don't get mad!—and I found the shield!" she said quickly as Alistair felt himself turning several colors in succession. "Please let me paint it! I can do a really good griffon and I've been dying to! Please, please please!"
"What? You—what?" Alistair thumped heavily into his chair. "Andraste's knickers! Why were you—have you done this before? You'd better give me some of that drink."
Sigrun poured him a drink and chattered giddily while laying out her paints. She went straight for the shield where he'd hidden it under his bed and pulled it out. "This really is good!" Alistair said, looking at the faintly greenish liquid in his cup. "Oghren just gave it to you? Usually he only shares the swill."
"Yeees…" said Sigrun slowly in a way that implied that perhaps Oghren didn't know the bottle was missing yet and poured him another glass. She herself drank straight from the bottle.
She gave him a third glass when the shield was halfway done. She really was good at painting, he thought, but his eyes were tracing the tattoos on her face.
The bottom of the third drink made him do three things: notice that her merry eyes were a pale sky-blue, become troubled that there was a casteless brand on her cheek, and finally, try to gently wipe this tattoo away from her skin with his thumb.
The kiss that occurred afterwards could not rightly be blamed on the third glass, however. Judging by Sigrun's wild grin, the kiss was something she had planned long before she came into his room. His last coherent thought of the night was that he should never argue with one of Sigrun's plans again.
Two days later Alistair opened his door to another knock to find a different dwarf standing on the other side.
"Heeeeey there little pike-twirler," Oghren said. "I had a thing at the still and there was this… stuff that'll peel, I mean seal…. sod it." He held out a jar. "Varnish for the paint job."
"What?" Alistair's voice raised again in shock. He snatched the jar. "Does everyone know?"
Oghren chortled at him, then folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "So," he drew out his snickering in a suggestive way. "You and Sigrun, eh? Think you're man enough for a dwarf? If you need any, heh heh heh, tips…"
The door went bang as Alistair slammed it.