Author's Note: And now the 'shit-hits-the-fan' chapter. Thanks as always to those who read/follow/fave this story. Special shout-outs to my intrepid reviewers: Drummerchick7, TheWickedTruth89, BrokenMimir, AD Lewis, EliteSky, KalenCaelli, jnybot & SuperGravyMan!
Whoever had first come up with the saying about virtue being its own reward was, Zevran was quite certain, not an Antivan. They had been guests at Redcliffe for over a month now, and while the food was good, the wine exceptional and the beds soft, it was - not to put it too indelicately - boring. Oh, there had been excitement aplenty once his background became known, with Eamon and Teagan questioning him avidly on every nuance of the conversation that had taken place between himself and Rendon Howe at the time that his services had been retained. Their satisfaction at learning that Loghain himself had also been present as the assassination of the Grey Wardens had been ordered bordered on glee, but once he had offered everything that they wished to hear, he was dismissed to return to that shadowy existence that the vast majority of the Fereldan nobility conferred upon elven-kind. In this, they were no different from Loghain and Howe, though he opted not to remark upon that particular observation.
Talia had seen it, he knew. She had observed his interviews closely, not hesitating to remind Arl and Bann that Zevran was an ally, not servant or slave, and apologized to him afterward. "I wish I could say that it's not the norm, but -" she'd shrugged unhappily, her dark eyes still glinting with irritation.
"I am difficult to offend, my friend," he had assured her, deciding not to mention that Isolde had drafted him into doing the dinner dishes the night before, since any mention of the incident would also likely involve mention of the lovely cook's assistant who had been the reason he'd been in the kitchen in the first place, and her gratitude for his assistance had been worth the dishpan hands.
All things considered, he was just as happy to be left out of the extensive planning sessions, as the looks on the faces of Talia, Alistair and Fergus suggested that they were every bit as boring as he recalled. And since the two Wardens spoke with their companions after the meetings, anyway, it was not as though he was missing out on any vital information.
Still, it did leave him with a fair amount of time on his hands, and mischief was not really an option. Making an escape through ass deep snow held absolutely no interest for him, and the mud that the recent melting had produced seemed only slightly less deep. Fortunately, Redcliffe - castle and village - had no shortage of lovely ladies who were awestruck at the tales of his heroism and more than willing to provide a few hours' company. In addition to the aforementioned cook's assistant, there was the lovely Valena, pretty Kaitlin, and of course, Bella.
Or perhaps not Bella, after all. Alistair did not seem like the type who would enjoy sharing, and whatever Morrigan was up to, she likely would not react well, were he to interfere.
It did provide an intriguing puzzle to keep his mind occupied, however. The Warden had been giving the waitress turned tavern owner shy looks since their arrival, but showed no signs of acting on his interest...or hers, for that matter. Zevran had observed the witch watching him, her expression unreadable, and a few days later, he had entered the tavern to find her deep in conversation with Bella.
The look that she had shot him had spoken as loudly as any words just what his fate would be, were he to speak of what he had seen, and not being actively suicidal, he had remained silent.
He had, however, kept his eyes open, watching as Bella's formerly casual flirtations with Alistair became far more purposeful and focused, an assault that the inexperienced young man stood no chance of withstanding. Not that he hadn't tried to remain the proper gentleman, much to Zevran's bemusement and Morrigan's barely concealed irritation, and perhaps if they had been able to escape to the open road once again, his resolve might have held - though the elf was at a loss to explain why he resisted so mightily in the first place.
There being no saving departure, however, and Bella being the highly determined and talented woman that she was, three nights ago, Alistair's last defenses had been overcome. He had returned to the castle from the tavern well after daybreak the next morning, looking as though he could not decide whether to hide in a closet or crow from the rooftop. Talia and Leliana had teased him good-naturedly, Wynne had simply smiled and shaken her head in amused tolerance, Oghren had been quite vocal in his demand for details, and seemed to be laboring under the delusion that it had been his own crudely offered advice that had brought it all about. Arl Eamon had made no attempt to disguise his disapproval, but a single glance from Talia had been enough to quell any vocalization of his objections; she was definitely learning to project a convincing air of authority.
Morrigan...had done nothing, said nothing, only watched briefly, her golden eyes inscrutable, before leaving the room. An intriguing puzzle, this. Was it her odd way of repaying Alistair for his part in saving her life in the Brecilian Forest? Or was there a more sinister motivation, possibly a plan to recruit Bella to seduce him and break his heart? Neither possibility made much sense, but the latter option seemed almost suicidal, should it be discovered, and besides that, while the witch could be sharp tongued to a fault, Zevran had never witnessed her being needlessly cruel. Nonetheless, he fully intended to maintain his observations over the next few days, and if anything seemed amiss, he would tell Talia what he knew...and let her break the news to her fellow Warden. Safer that way.
"Good afternoon, Zevran."
"Good afternoon, Gan'Chinua," the elf replied as Fergus Cousland descended the stairs. When not in their councils, the Cousland heir maintained his Chasind persona, seeming completely at ease wearing leggings and loincloth, facepaint and decorated braids, and Zevran had to admit, the look suited him...well enough, in fact, that the Antivan wouldn't have minded taking a walk on the Wilder side, though Fergus had politely made it plain that his own interests did not lie in that direction. Ah, well.
It had been decided that the deception would be continued until the Landsmeet, and Loghain and Howe allowed to assume that Alistair would be presented as the candidate for the throne. The plan was suitably devious, and would likely provide a few critical moments when their adversaries were off balance following the revelation of the truth. Such moments were often where the balance between victory and defeat could be tipped.
"The roads should be clear in another week," Zevran observed as he fell into step beside the human. Like his sister, Fergus was refreshingly free of pretension, and had accepted all of the Wardens' companions as peers, as well as allies.
"Aye." Even beneath the paint, the keen anticipation in the young noble's expression was evident. He could be patient, but he shared Talia's lack of fondness for the necessity.
"How do you think that your Chasind brethren will take to a city the size of Denerim?" He had spent little time with the Otter Clan, after discovering that simply gazing for too long at one of their women was cause for offense. A shame, really, but there were other places where his appreciation of the female form was welcomed, so he saw no need to brood.
"I'm more worried about how Denerim will take to them," Fergus admitted, frowning slightly. "Most Fereldans think of the clans as ravening savages." He snorted softly. "That used to include me, in fact. They're nothing like that, and for the most part, they've shown better manners than the people they've met. I don't expect that many besides Temulun will accompany us into the city itself, though. Redcliffe has been difficult enough for them to get used to; the people, the buildings...they're not accustomed to being so hemmed in, and I think it's getting to them. The warriors all took off on a hunting trip this morning."
"Is that unusual?" Zevran prompted him after a moment; though the man had tried to speak lightly, there was an odd undercurrent in his voice. If the sparsely populated farmland around Redcliffe made the Chasind feel hemmed in, it was likely for the best that few of them travel to Denerim.
Fergus shrugged. "I would have expected them to let me know, to find out if I wanted to come along, if nothing else, but I've been so busy lately." He sighed regretfully.
"That is not likely to improve," Zevran observed.
"I know," Fergus sighed again, "and I'll miss it. Being Gan'Chinua is much easier than being Fergus Cousland. More fun, too," he added with a wry smile.
And he meant it. Though he slept in the rooms that Eamon had provided for him, Fergus spent a part of each day, no matter how small, among the Otter Clan in their camp. He had accepted the role that his sister had given him, not for power or greed, nor even simply for revenge, but because he considered it his duty. In that, he was again very much like Talia, and both of them odd company for an assassin, odder still when he realized that he actually liked them both. Zevran hoped that honor wasn't overly contagious. It would not suit him half so well as it did the siblings -
His head turned sharply, hand dropping to the dagger at his hip at the sudden cacophony of shouts that rose up from the direction of the great hall. He exchanged a glance with Fergus, and they both moved hastily in toward the commotion.
"What have you done?" Leliana was being restrained - barely- by both Alistair and Oghren, her face twisted in fury, blue eyes fixed on Morrigan. That the dwarf did not even seem to be contemplating trying to take advantage of the situation to get in a quick grope was not a good sign, nor was Wynne's expression. Zevran had never seen the mage look truly angry before, but if looks could have killed, the furious glare that she was directing at the witch would have dropped her on the spot. For her part, Morrigan did not seem particularly cowed by either bard or mage, but she did look paler than usual, and more than a little shaken. Glancing around, Zevran felt the first real stirrings of disquiet; Talia was nowhere in evidence, though everyone else in the castle seemed to be arriving from one direction or another.
"What have you done, you bitch?" Leliana screamed again. "I will kill you!"
"What is going on?" Eamon bellowed from the doorway as Leliana's knee caught Oghren in a rather tender spot. The dwarf folded over, adding a string of colorful obscenities to the din, and Fergus quickly stepped in to fill the gap. "Alistair?"
"Little busy right now, sir," the Warden grunted through clenched teeth, struggling to keep hold of the armful of furious redhead while directing a deadly glare of his own at Morrigan.
"Talia has returned to the Korcari Wilds to attempt to kill Flemeth," Wynne spoke up, her voice steely.
"Alone?" The astonished query slipped out before Zevran could help himself. Another glance around the hall confirmed it. Sten stood in the doorway, observing the goings on with a scowl, and he had seen Shayle in the courtyard only a few minutes earlier. With the exception of their leader - and Brego, he realized - all were present and accounted for.
"Flemeth?" Fergus spoke up at the same time, turning his head to stare at Wynne, nearly losing his hold on Leliana in the process. "That's impossible! Flemeth is -"
"Mortal," Morrigan cut him off with a disdainful look, "and well able to be killed, despite the superstitious tales of the Chasind."
"You sound as though you are trying to convince yourself, my dear witch," Zevran observed, giving her a thin smile as he tried to sort out his own emotions at this unexpected turn of events. There was a sneaking admiration for Talia; it was rare for anyone to surprise him, but he had not anticipated this in the least. There was no denying, however, that her apparent course of action was reckless, at best. At worst -
"You tricked her!" Leliana had ceased her struggles for the moment, but her eyes held no less loathing for the witch. "A trick or a spell. She would never have gone alone!"
"I did nothing!" Morrigan shot back, golden eyes flashing. "I asked her, she agreed. The choice was hers, and freely made!" Her eyes dropped, her defiance fading somewhat as she muttered, "I did not think that she would go alone. I never thought she would be so foolish."
"And what, exactly, did you think that she would do?" Zevran had never heard Wynne sound so scathing. "Risk the life of another to fulfill your errand?"
"She seemed to have no compunction about placing all of our lives at risk to eliminate a threat to one of us a few weeks ago," Morrigan countered, her haughty gaze resting meaningfully on Leliana, whose eyes dropped, cheeks flushing a dull red. "And at least I did not bed her to twist her to my will."
A cheap shot, but devastatingly effective. The color drained from the bard's cheeks, but it was Alistair who took a step toward the witch, his expression one of infuriated disgust. "You utter bitch!" he snarled. "Of course you would think like that, not having the first idea what actually giving a damn about anyone but yourself is like! Marjolaine was trying to kill Leliana!"
"Actually, she sought to use the Chantry wench to lure the last Grey Wardens in Ferelden into a trap, as I recall," Morrigan corrected him with a contemptuous curl of her lips, "though I am not surprised that your sheep's brain has already lost track of that simple fact. Even if what you said was true, however, I assure you that Flemeth intends to destroy me no less completely."
"Chances are, you deserve it!" Alistair shouted, and perhaps only Zevran caught the subtle shifting behind the witch's defiant mask, though it was there and gone so swiftly that he could not identify it.
"Enough." The anger had faded from Wynne's face, replaced by a weariness that made her look every bit as old as she claimed to be. "This accomplishes nothing. If Talia has truly gone alone to face Flemeth, then we must-"
"She's not alone." The words came from Fergus, and when the elf - along with everyone else in the room turned to him, his expression seemed to waver between relief and anger.
"I need to know, Bayatei. Please." Speaking in the Chasind tongue, Fergus strove to keep his tone calm, level, in keeping with his promise that he was not angry with her. Because he really wasn't. That he was considering throttling both Temulun and Talia was something that he could not allow to influence his dealings with this young woman...his sister by the bond that he shared with Temulun.
It was the only explanation that made sense. Game in this part of the country was all but nonexistent this close to the end of winter, certainly not present in sufficient numbers to warrant a large hunting party, and for the shaman to accompany the hunters was highly unusual. Talia must have recruited them into her insane plan, and it would not have been difficult. The Witch of the Wilds had been a source of awed fear to the Chasind clans for centuries, stealing away the strongest of their warriors and the loveliest of their young women. The clan that could boast of killing her would gain a tremendous amount of prestige, once the clans returned to the Wilds.
He wasn't sure who he was angrier with: Talia for putting the clan at a risk that she was unwilling to ask her other companions to assume, or Temulun, for taking advantage of his sister's folly to attempt what had only been whispered at among the Chasind.
"They have gone to kill the Mongkenai," Bayatei confessed softly, her expression no less distressed than Fergus felt. "The spirits spoke to Chagatai; they told him of our sister's task, and it was our brother's thought that the clan would gain much honor, did they help slay her."
"It was not much of a thought," Aigiarn, Temulun's wife observed tartly, dark eyes glinting with an irritation that did not quite conceal the worry beneath. Her belly had just begun to swell with their first child.
"He seeks to ensure the clan's future," Fergus replied, reflexively rising to his brother's defense. "He would have his son grow up without fear of the Mongkenai."
"I do not know if that is possible," Aigiarn replied. "It may be instead that his son grows up without a father."
"It may be," Fergus admitted heavily. If such a thing did come to pass, it would fall to Fergus to provide for the women and children until the boys were of age. Normally, the survivors of a decimated clan were taken in as slaves or brides by other clans, but he owed them too much to allow that to come to pass. "He is a great warrior, as is Talia. As are the rest." That Chagatai had a vision also encouraged him, though possibly more than it should. The young shaman had nowhere near the skill of his late master, but Fergus' time among the Chasind had given ample evidence that their magic was real, and could be quite puissant. And Temulun was not a reckless man; vision or no, he would not take such a risk without believing there to be better than even odds for success.
"Women do not fight," Aigiarn sniffed. She and the other women had been quite scandalized by his warrior sister, and she was not yet ready to surrender the argument, since as Temulun's wife, she technically would have outranked Talia and been able to order her around as she did Bayatei. Fergus hadn't even bothered mentioning that to Talia.
"Fereldan women do," Fergus replied simply, not quite able to feel the indulgent pride that he'd always before felt when making such a statement. Turning to the trio who had accompanied him, none of whom understood the Chasind tongue, he gave a grave nod, watching Leliana sag against Alistair, while Zevran simply looked thoughtful.
Eamon had been in the act of ordering Temulun's wife and sister brought to Redcliffe Castle when Fergus had stopped him, possibly a bit more bluntly than he should have. The Arl quite plainly considered the Chasind savages, albeit tame and useful savages, not unlike pets or livestock. That the clans were not subject to the rule of any Bann or Arl, Teyrn or King had never crossed his mind, much less that compelling their women to attend him would be considered a grievous insult by the men of the Otter Clan. In the end, Fergus had come to the Chasind encampment, letting only Alistair, Leliana and Zevran accompany him. He approached them now, after offering a courteous thanks to Bayatei and Aigiarn, and repeated what Bayatei had told him.
"It doesn't sound as though she recruited them," he reported, obscurely pleased by that fact, even though it meant that she had most likely intended to make the attempt with no help besides Brego. "But they've chosen to involve themselves, and that can only help her."
"As will we." He'd expected Leliana's response from the willful set of her jaw. Alistair exchanged a glance with Zevran, neither of them looking particularly eager to speak up. The bard looked from one to the other, blue eyes flashing. "You cannot be seriously suggesting -"
"We cannot compound Talia's foolhardiness by adding ourselves to it, Leli," Fergus told her as gently as he could, in spite of the instinct screaming at him to do exactly that.
"My name is Leliana," the redhead shot back angrily, "and we can go after her and convince her to abandon this insanity! We must!"
"We'll never catch them in time," he replied somberly. "The Chasind can move overland faster than any infantry I've ever seen, and they'll be covering their tracks, as well."
"So, you're just giving up?" Her scathing glare swept all three of them. Alistair looked miserable and dropped his eyes, but Zevran answered her.
"Talia has made her choice, Leliana." The emphasis on her full name was faint but unmistakable. "I, for one, believe it to be more than a whim, but those that she left behind, she did for good reason. Alistair will be the sole Grey Warden left, should she -"
"Don't say that!" Leliana shouted at him, hands curled into fists at her sides. "I will go after her, and none of you will stop me!"
"And die with her?" the elf asked calmly. When she only stared back at him with tear-filled eyes, he continued. "Her wish was quite plainly that you remain with Alistair, to aid him against the archdemon, as was her wish for the rest of us. You have also said that the Maker wishes you to assist against the Blight; is that still what you believe?"
Fergus thought for a moment that she was going to attack Zevran. Her face reddened, then grew pale. "Damn you," she whispered. "And damn her. How could she-" She broke off, tears running down her cheeks, but when she spoke again, there was only emptiness in her eyes, her voice. "I will stay," she informed them hoarsely, "but if Talia dies, I will kill that bitch, and I would suggest that no one come between us."
"She'll come back, Leli." Alistair was evidently permitted the use of the diminutive, likely because he looked only slightly less shaken and betrayed than the Orlesian. "With the Chasind -"
She held up a forestalling hand. "Don't," she whispered, shaking her head. "I can barely dare to let myself hope. I should have known -" Her voice broke off again as she turned and ran back toward the castle.
Alistair looked as though he was about to cry. Not that Fergus faulted him; howling like a dog and drumming his heels on the ground was an incredibly tempting thought at the moment. "I'll...go with her," the younger man mumbled awkwardly. "She probably shouldn't be alone right now, just in case she – Morrigan would likely kill her."
"Unless Wynne decides to assist," Zevran offered, the minute shrug of his shoulders in response to the Warden's glare indicating that for once, he was not being facetious. Alistair nodded unhappily, then turned to follow Leliana, the picture of slump-shouldered dejection.
Fergus watched him go, the sorrow and fear weighting down his chest joined by a new worry. Despite the eclectic blend of personalities, Talia and her companions had displayed an outward unity of purpose that had undoubtedly been one of the strengths that had cemented the alliances promised by the Grey Wardens' treaties. Now, with the Landsmeet called, the fellowship seemed on the verge of tearing itself asunder, and even if Talia returned, Fergus wondered if the damage might be too great to repair in time.
Little sister, I hope you know what you are doing.
A.N. - Once again, I turn to Zev for that combination of humor and insight that let me look at a very intense situation through more detached eyes. He is quite possibly the only one who would have thought of the point that ultimately kept Leliana in Highever – and quite certainly the only one brutally practical enough to use it.
The chemistry between Zev and Fergus surprised me, but I decided to go with it. While Fergus is straight, he's not as easily shocked as Alistair; I can definitely see a potential bromance building there.
A bit more of a glance into Chasind society (I'm pulling it out of my left ear as I go, btw), this time a look at the female side of things. Anyone want to take a guess what's gonna happen when Temulun ducks back into his tent? He ain't getting' a hug first.
And no, it's not going to be as easy as 'kiss and make up' for Talia & Leliana, either.
