Hello stranger,
Can you tell us where you've been?
More importantly,
How ever did you come to be here?
Though a stranger,
You can rest here for a while.
But save your energy,
Your journey here is far from over.
-Green Valley, Pucifer.
Days became past in a golden blur. Outside of their room were constant reminders of the task ahead. Every day the gates of Mezzano saw new victims of the Dalish, men and women making the march for spring market, thinking only of trade and being lucky to leave the road with their lives. The whorehouse filled with those fortunate enough to still have coin and their group was forced to bunk together. Privacy was in short supply and Zevran had been forced to use his wiles, stopping short of administering sleeping potion, to force Guido Quentin and Ichiro into Elissa's sickroom for the night.
For here, in this bed, it was easy to forget such troubles.
Elaria's hair sprayed across the pillow, morning light picking out strands the colours of sunrise. The collar at her neck throbbed with her slow heartbeat, the only reminder of what they had yet to face. For now they had the grace of peace, though Zevran was not so foolhardy as to think it could last.
She would wake soon and so he watched her, committing every last curve of her face to his mind. The high rise of her elven cheekbones, the generous line of her mouth, the silvery scar she'd suffered at the hands of some long forgotten enemy. I have done this before, he realised suddenly. The first time I left. It darkened the beauty of the moment.
"Watching me sleep?"
There were flecks of gold in those oh-so-green eyes, and sometimes the light could shift and paint them a hue more like a stormy sea. They sparkled with amusement as they fluttered up and down his face. "Penny for them," she whispered, shuffling closer.
He raised an eyebrow in question..
"Your thoughts," she traced a line up his jaw with her nose until she reached his mouth, which she captured, softly, with her own.
He sighed idly twirling a ribbon of her hair after she'd settled on his chest. "Waiting is the hardest part."
"Say that when we're knee deep in corpses," she glanced up at him. "If you like I can go back to beating you?"
"Ah, I did not say it was bad, my tempestuous temptress. Merely odd."
"Most people would think our lives quite odd, Zev. Let's enjoy it while it lasts."
He hummed his agreement as she kissed him again. Her ivory fingers rifling through his hair, pulling him closer, deeper. When she broke away they were both breathless.
Three days he had endured such exquisite torture. Burying his desire as she undulated between passionate peaks and sorrowful dips. The thrill of repressed need was not entirely new but it proved to be more frustrating than he'd recalled. Elaria must've sensed something for her fingers stopped stroking and her mouth pulled into a frown.
"This isn't easy for you, is it?" She muttered, those oh-so-green eyes cast down.
"Not entirely," he said. It would lie between them like a festering corpse unless they spoke, so he tried to find the words. "I would like to help you heal, when you are ready."
"So you admit I'm broken?" The words stung though she said them with a smile.
"Not broken, wounded, perhaps." He stroked her cheek, feeling the raised skin of her scar under the pad of his thumb.
"I swore to myself that I'd kill him before I..." she broke off, her thin eyebrows pulling together as though to shield herself from the difficult thought.
"Vows are made to be broken," Zevran kissed the puckered skin between her eyes, letting his mouth linger there for a second before resting his chin on her head. "You know it would be justice."
Elaria expelled a long breath, rustling errant strands of her hair. "Vengeance and justice are two sides of the same blade."
"You're the scholar," he grinned into her ear. "You should not let him taint your life forever, my dear, whatever you wish to do."
She settled in the crook of his arm and for a while they lay not speaking. The silence only broken by other guests awakening; running footfalls, someone coughing and retching, raised voices shouting. When an upstairs bed begun creaking and the sound of two people labouring at pleasure filled their room the silence tensed like a tightening knot. Until he felt her smirk in his arms.
"We... could... try, if you like," her voice was small and scared and Zevran didn't know if he'd ever heard her speak so hesitantly before. The pulse of the ruby at her neck quickened. His body ached with the thought, mind buzzing with what was right and what he wanted, needed.
He lingered too long in response and her mouth found his, hungry and possessive. His body left his mind behind and his hands found the buttons of her shirt, usually dexterous fingers fumbling as her hips slotted against his, rocking, grinding.
"Elaria..." he managed to hiss between her bruising kisses. He was thinking now, and he was thinking that perhaps this wasn't the time, that they should wait and then thinking went right out of the window as she tugged at the laces of his trousers.
Only the Maker knows how far his contrary Warden would have taken him. His numb fingers were skirting up the taunt lines of her stomach, probing underneath her breast band. Her fingers finally loosened the knots and he sprung free, into her palm...
And then came the crashing from next door.
Elaria stopped, listening.
"Ignore it," he muttered against her collarbone, desperate for her now that they were almost entwined. His cock twitched in her hand, sincere in its agreement. She smiled, fluttering her fingers up the length of him.
And then the shouting started, next door.
Elaria's smile fell.
"Ignore it," his fingers had worked the material free and he was so close to filling his hands with her breast...
And then the footsteps came, knocking towards their door, as sure as an arrow. She gave him an apologetic look as she released him.
"Elaria!" Quentin's voice sounded a desperate squeak, between the poundings of his fist. Zevran groaned, lying back against the pillows as Elaria sprung from the bed, half buttoning her shirt.
"What is it?" She shouted back.
"It's Elissa...she's awake and she's armed!"
In any other setting two half dressed, dishevelled elves following a quaking fully armoured man might've drawn a few odd looks. The denizens of the whorehouse however were either too used to such sights or too wrapped up in their own troubles to care and they received no more than a polite cough from the people loitering in the corridor.
The sight behind the door was a stranger one still. Zevran took it in quickly, his cautious mind trying to calculate an exit that didn't involve a room painted with blood.
Elissa was indeed awake. Her frame skeletal from two weeks of imprisonment with only trickles of broth nourishing her. The half-dead Cousland crouched on the bed, free hand pressed over her wounded leg, feverous eyes bulging, naked but for her bandages. He could see every bone of her arm, pressing against her pale, sweating flesh, tensing as she gripped her stolen sword. At Quentin's hip was an empty sheath and Zevran put those two pieces together in flash as the point of the templar's longsword cut the air in an arch.
"Stay back," she hissed, slicing through the air, the point settling on Guido. "Or I'll kill you all."
The Crow had both his daggers drawn, a slight sneer twitching up his lips, as he held is stance. He took half a step forwards.
"No!" Elaria shouted and the templar's sword came swerving towards her. Zevran saw what she intended to do, went to reach to hold her back, but she moved too quickly.
She stepped into the blade. The point wavering at her throat. "Put it down, Elissa."
Elissa's eyes went up and down Elaria, blank and unsettling. The blade tapped against the metal at Elaria's collar, scraping over the pulsating jewel. "You...?"
It only ever takes a moment. Zevran had held the blade before, waiting for weakness or doubt in his prey, waiting to pounce. Guido grasped it. In the blink of an eye he had cut the gap between him and Elissa and a heartbeat later he leapt.
Zevran watched, hands out stretched and useless, as Elissa stumbled, the blade in her hand, the blade waiting to kill Elaria, jerked upwards. Droplets of blood flung in the air. Someone screamed. Thumps and moans and he held her. Bandaging her throat with his palms, feeling them slicken with blood.
She cupped her hands over his, prying them away. "It's just a scratch, Zev."
His hands were painted red and slippery. He tilted her head up, leaving smears across her jaw. The dripping wound stained the collar beneath, opening her throat in a thin line to her chin and though it wept blood like a squalling babe it went no deeper than the flesh. He let go a breath he didn't realise he'd held.
Elissa didn't struggle. Like a broken doll she let Guido tie her, her face a mask of indifference as her eyes bored into Zevran, bewitching in their blankness.
"I know you," she spoke in Antivan, her lilting tones shivering through the room. "Zevran Arainai."
Zevran wiped his hands on his breeches, looking at her bandaged feet. "And I you, Elissa Cousland."
She laughed at that. A laugh like perfume covering corpse-rot. There was something familiar in it that set Zevran's spine tingling. Like her eyes truly bored right through him.
"Quentin, please take Ichiro and break your fasts," Elaria broke the tense silence, gesturing to the bewildered boy cowering in the corner. The templar shifted, hand still firmly on his retrieved hilt as though by gripping it he could somehow change the past.
"Go," Elaria snapped, wincing and recovering her throat.
The templar held his hand out to the boy and Ichiro took it, clear blue eyes never once leaving the bound woman as they shuffled from the room.
The tension in the air did not abate. Elissa's eyes still burned through Zevran and it irked him that he could not meet her gaze. Guido, ever ready to add fuel to a burning down house, fixed Zevran with his customary glare. Sneaking a glance at Elaria, her face was marble, cold and unreadable.
"Elissa."
The woman's head twitched irritably to face Elaria, tsking as she did so. "And by process of deduction you are the Hero of Ferelden. I'd bow and scrape before your mighty presence but I find myself a little tied up."
Elaria took it well. He'd felt and seen her anger often enough to know that the slight inclination of her eyebrow was a timid a response as Elissa was going to get.
Elissa turned her Cousland stare on Guido next and managed a haughty look despite her tied hands, nudity and serious injuries. "You I do not know. Which makes you unimportant..." she paused, her lips curling up too slight to be a smile. "Or perhaps you're important but subtle." Again that mirthless laughter, again a silent response.
"You were sent here by the King of Ferelden to..."
"Oh, save your breath, Hero," Elissa clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though chiding an infant. "I remember now, the whys and whose. Nice collar," she smirked. "Does it hurt?"
"No more than the soles of your feet," said Elaria, grimfaced.
"Touché," Elissa inclined her head, as though acknowledging an opponent's well-struck blow. "I suppose we are even now, yes?"
"A few more questions," Elaria raised her chin, gently probing the fresh wound at her neck. "And I'll call it quits for this."
"You'll let me go?" There was a note of disgust in Elissa's tone.
"No," Elaria said. "Zevran will escort you to Antiva City, where we will pay for your shipment back to Ferelden."
It made him uneasy to think on it. It was a long journey north in poor company. Three people he barely knew, one child, one ham-fisted buffon and one disquieting, possibly insane noblewoman. Zevran was a betting man and he'd put money on bloodshed.
"And where will you be whilst our merry band trundles to the city?" Elissa's head cocked to one side.
"You remember the Lady of Cats?"
"Tall, red robe, smells sort of...corpsey," Elissa smiled, unnerving eyes shifting to Zevran. "She's hard to forget, isn't she?"
"I want you to tell me everything you know about her..."
"What? No hot coals?"
Elaria's mask cracked, the memory clearly unsettling still. She crossed her arms and through gritted teeth said; "I'm sorry for what I did to you."
Elissa's spluttered laughter sounded genuine this time. She convulsed, every bone of her spine visible, jutting and juddering. "You're a card, Hero. A real fucking card. Torturing one minute, apologising the next. You'd do better to find your side of the fence, you can't straddle it forever."
Elaria paled visibly, taking a half step backwards, looking more than vulnerable in her blood splattered shirt, toes curled against the wooden floor, every muscle tensed . He steadied her, his hand flush against the small of her back.
"Come, Elissa," he said. "Play nicely and we may let you eat."
"It's for her own good," Elissa shrugged. "She plays at being an assassin, keeps the company of them even, but has not the stomach for what needs to be done."
"What are you talking about?" Elaria's voice was no more than a hurt whisper.
"Killing the Lady of Cats, of course," Elissa shook her head. "Maker, you people think you're smart."
"You have a glib tongue for someone in your position," Guido growled, punctuating his threat with the point of his dagger, forcing Elissa's gaze to meet his as it traced a line up her throat. "I think I'll cut it out when we've no more use for it."
"Better men have tried," Elissa sighed. "Your lady hero will want to hear what I have to say and my brother would take it remiss if you returned me further mutilated."
"We could not return you at all," Guido grinned down at her, twisting the point and puckering the skin.
Elaria shifted. After all this time a small corner of her mind still ached with doubt. If he hadn't known her better, if he hadn't seen those contradictory lines of innocent and killer, he wouldn't have seen how much this pained her to watch. He had taught her to wear a mask against it, years ago it seemed.
The fragile bones of her jaw worked together. She pulled Guido back. "Talk," she barked.
"How was your first torture, Hero?" Elissa smiled. "Did you enjoy the sights and smells? I remember the first time I administered pain to a helpless, squirming creature. God-like, is it not? To hear its cries, its pleading, even animals try to bargain in their own way. Such screams! Even the Makers meekest..."
"Enough," Elaria spat, her fists clenching and unclenching at her side.
"You told me to talk!"
"About the Lady of Cats."
"What a bore. I'd much rather talk about you," and her eyes glittered with predation.
"As flattered as I am, you're not my type."
"Deflecting with humour is such an uncouth trait," Elissa shuffled to lean against the bedpost, rolling her shoulders backwards in a cacophony of clicks and closing her eyes. "I am bored of you, Hero. You're not so interesting after all."
Elaria bowed her head, shaking it slightly, the tension dropping from her. "I am not in the business of pleasing people," she muttered. "But if you find my company so very distasteful then I shall leave."
"Run away from the bad thing, can't face the truth, Hero?" Elissa smirked to Elaria's turned back. "How typical."
For a second he thought Elaria might crack. During the Blight she'd have been easily goaded into violence. Now, though, she simply clenched her fists and shrugged, turning her head over her shoulder she fixed Elissa with a calm, cool, stare.
"We are all of us broken things," she said. "You would do better to co-operate."
Zevran smiled as she brushed past him and out of the door without a backwards glance. His Warden had changed, of course, but like a fine wine changes with age. Zevran, well, there were parts of him that stayed the same, cold parts, as ingrained on his soul as the tattoos on his body. He reached for that cold part now, always just below the surface. He let it cloak him. To do what must be done. Elissa turned to him, eyes glinting, mouth ready with some witticism.
It was not a hard slap. A backhanded affair like a mother might give an errant child. Hard enough to sting, to let her know further punishment was on its heels. It was more the shock of the thing that made Elissa blanch. Not as smart as she thinks.
"Now, my dear," he purred, gripping her cheeks, pincer like, squishing her lips together so she could not use her words as weapons. "You and I are going to have a discussion and you are going to sing pretty songs about all the things you saw whilst in the company of the Lady of Cats."
He let her go and when she went to answer him back he hit her again. Harder this time. Enough to make her gasp. Enough to numb his arm.
"Do not mistake me, Elissa," Zevran flexed some life into his palm. "I shall be much more inventive than hot coals."
"I don't doubt it," she muttered, but her eyes still sought his, cold and unyielding like a winter's dawn. "Fine. I'll tell you. But you're not going to like it."
He didn't. Not one bit.
Elissa had been captured just shy of the border by Turiin, self styling himself the Commander of Cats. The elf's face loomed in Zevran's mind, once under the canopy of the Dalish encampment and once in the darkness of the Antivan sewers. A long pale face, all hard edges as though cut from gemstones. He'd found a letter from the King of Ferelden among her possessions and though he couldn't read the script the seal was enough to stay his hand. Without it Elissa would be dead. Turriin's hatred of all things human was etched into him as though written on his flesh.
They had an encampment. The Cats had taken the town of Jelsi, that much she'd already told them. It was the details that weighed on Zevran. Tents, numbering their hundreds, strewn across the outskirts of the walled town. Efficient well armoured troops. Scouts to the east and west, but not in the north. Only a fool would approach Jelsi from the Lovigno Steppes. There were no survivors of the sack and Jelsi was a pokey little mountain village, remote and desolate but for a handful of goat herders.
It had been why Rinna died there. A convenient ambush for their moving merchant target. As Elissa reeled off facts and figures Zevran found himself washed up in memory. He could still smell her blood, see it, painting the summer leaves autumn. He'd stood, watching, as though held by some unseen hand. Her unbelieving eyes, the light behind them so suddenly put out.
"What about the Dalish?" He heard Guido ask distantly.
It had been a quick death. Of course it had been. Zevran doubted he would have had the stomach for anything slow and torturous. Taliesin wouldn't have given him a chance to back away. And a little part of Zevran had wanted it. Wanted her to die. His last remaining weakness. He wondered what had become of the monster he'd been. Was it still there? Like the coldness? Lurking, waiting, watching?
Guido's elbow poked him in the ribs. "We've heard they are amassing."
Elissa shrugged. "There's Turiin and his band of cut-throats and a few young, wild gangs that fall under his command, warriors all. No hunters, no families."
"And the Cats?"
"They are one and the same now, the rogue Dalish and the Cats," she tilted her head, still managing to look down on them from her lowered position. "All scary black armour and sable cloaks, very fierce." She gave a false shudder, her skinny frame wriggling.
"What about the Lady herself?" Zevran coughed.
"Oh..." Elissa turned her stare towards him, baring her teeth in a skeletal smile. "You mean Rinna?"
There are two sides to every man's soul, one dark, one light. People talk about hues of grey but truly they are separate parts, black and white, present in every elf or man, painted by the brush of experience, in constant motion, like a spinning coin.
Zevran's darkness was deeper than midnight. He could end this woman now, what's another dead thing in a world so devoid of light. Easy. It would be easy. To wrap his bare hands around her thin neck, to watch her eyes bulge, to feel her fight, her pulse quicken, then die.
It took discipline to smile back. Hard, long fought for, discipline.
"I believe she prefers the title," he stared at his fingernails trying to keep the pounding rage at bay. "She took you into her confidence then? If she told you who she was."
"Is, Zevran," Elissa flicked her tongue over her teeth as though savouring the torture. "Who she is."
"Rinna?" Guido mused, ignorant to Zevran's barely concealed murderous intent. "Why do I know that name...?"
"She was Zevran's first love." Elissa made the words sound dirty, tainted even. "He had her killed but it didn't stick."
Such a fragile neck, long and graceful. It wouldn't take much. Just a firm hand here and a quick twist there. Zevran had done such a thing a thousand times with less provocation. He tried to flip the coin, tried to see the bright side of a creature like Elissa. They are only words, words are all she has.
He kept his silence. If she meant to break him with mere talk then he would let her try. What pain could she inflict that I haven't already thought myself?
"Did she intend to use Elaria as bait?" he forced himself to ask.
Elissa shrugged. "She paid me to not ask questions. I took her gold and kept quiet."
"With an inquisitive mind like yours?" Zevran said, a stillness settling over him, a distance. Whatever this woman would have me think, Rinna is dead. I saw it. Summer leaves turning autumn. "It must have been a mountain of gold to keep you at bay..."
A glimmer of pride in her eyes. A weakness he could exploit. "I think she just wishes to establish a dialogue, to make sure the Hero is aware of...all the facts."
Had he know flattery would break her he would have tried it sooner. Nevertheless a crack in an opponent's armour is a crack, however long the battle. "Your skills must come at a high price."
"Ah, well if you wish to talk shop I insist on being freed," she shrugged, indicating her rope bound hands behind her back. "And usually dressed, but I could make an exception for two Crows as handsome as yourselves."
Zevran turned to Guido, palm outstretched."Lend me your dagger."
The Crow fondled the hilt of The Rose's Thorn, absentmindedly staring into the middle distance, lost in thought. Zevran frowned and cleared his throat.
Guido stared at him blankly.
"Your dagger?" Zevran bristled, irritated by the man's unprofessionalism.
"You had her killed?" Guido muttered, searching his face. "You had Rinna killed."
"Not exactly..."
"And now..." Guido ploughed ahead. "She's a walking corpse. The Lady of Cats..."
The Rose's Thorn rattled in its sheath. The clink, clink, clink as Guido white-knuckled the hilt set Zevran's teeth on edge. He became all too aware that it would take just one thrust. The dragonbone would think nothing of searing through his ribcage, of finding his heart, of drinking his blood. Guido would think even less.
"Listen to me, Guido." Zevran turned his palms to face up in a placating gesture. "It was a complex situation between Rinna and I..." he tried to keep focused on Guido's eyes, tried to ignore the death that the other man gripped so tightly.
"It's you she wants." A vein in Guido's neck twitched, standing stark against his skin. "That's why Elaria won't take you there..."
"True..." Zevran gave half-a-step and Guido advanced. If he had to he could run. There would be no shame in such a thing. Unarmed and bare-chested, a fight would likely prove fatal.
"It's why she's been carving up Crows," Guido snarled taking another step forwards. "She's been looking for you."
Zevran had no words left. The man hated him. Held a deep grudge, a festering wound on his heart and Elissa, salt-like, had bared that scar again. What were words compared to years of unadulterated hate? But he had to try.
"Perhaps we could discuss this later, yes?" He indicated Elissa, with a drop of his head, never taking his eyes from Guido.
"Does Elaria know?" The Rose's Thorn stayed tight to Guido's hip, though it meant little as he shuffle stepped forwards. Say what he would about Guido, the man may be an ingrate, but he was still a Crow. He could still kill, without mercy, in the blink of an eye.
"Yes," Zevran said softly, palms still held aloft, meeting Guido's rage with a peace he did not feel. "I told you once that she and I kept no secrets. I spoke the truth."
A flicker across Guido's face. A moment of doubt. He didn't advance, held himself still, upright and stiff with tension. Not ready to pounce, not ready to kill. The door stood behind Zevran, inviting in its promise of safety. But safe had never been Zevran's path, so he stayed, willing himself to be stone, meeting the assassin's appraisal with one of his own.
"You know. I could have escaped a hundred times while you two measured your cocks," Elissa waggled her fingers at them.
It took Zevran a moment to realise why that was wrong.
"You don't tie very good knots for a Crow," Elissa ran the hempen rope between her fingers. "I thought you'd be better tutored in the arts of... subjugation."
It was certainly a low point of the all-powerful assassins guild, Zevran had to concur. Bickering whilst a dangerous prisoner watched on with glee. He snuck a glance at Guido.
Oh, but it was worth it. To see an ego broken so thoroughly by a simple sentence. Guido spluttered. Lost for words. All thoughts of attack gone as his shoulders slumped.
"Don't look so downhearted," Elissa chuckled. "It's not that you're bad, really," she whispered, leaning close as though sharing a special secret. "I'm just better than you."
Zevran's jaw muscles worked overtime to suppress his smile.
"So," Elissa clapped her hands together, clearly very happy with her days work. "How much will you pay me to behave?"
