Fifty-two
She loved that smell.
There was the subtle undertone of wood and smoke, but over all of that, the smell of hot, fresh bread could almost be arousing.
"Fresh bread, coming out right now!" Vell yelled over the counter and out toward the street.
As usual, some of the passing Orlesians rolled their eyes and hoisted their noses at being so "audibly molested" as one particularly stuffy bitch had called it, but there were plenty more on the street who started gravitating toward the door of the shop.
At first, Vell has wished she had come up with a better name for the bakery than "Good Bread," but the uncreative name had turned out to become something of a lucrative joke. It generally went something like, "What kind of stupid name is that?" followed by someone else going, "It's dumb, but it is pretty damn good."
That had nothing to do with Vell and everything to do with Mai and Gayle, the ones who actually knew how to make all kinds of doughs and then actually bake them properly. All she did was yell out the door, work the counter and make sure the the raw materials stayed stocked.
There was a lot happening in Halamshiral on a daily basis, people were always hungry and the three of them were undercutting all of the other human-run shops in town.
At first, some had just dismissed Good Bread as a shop for filthy elves, but there were plenty of poor-as-shit humans who could use a fresh loaf at a non-predatory price, too. Therefore, Good Bread was doing pretty good, Vell thought. They weren't out of business yet, so that had to be a good sign, right?
She caught a whiff of the flowers in the vase on the far end of the counter again as she stopped leaning over the counter and went back to a normal standing position. She glanced over at them, white and yellow blooms stuffed into a small green glass vase, for just a second. Then glanced away just as quickly, shook her head and groaned to herself for looking. Again.
Vell had found the flowers on the counter when she came in before dawn yesterday to get started on the day's baking. The small note that was with them just had a small dash followed by the letter "M."
She once again regretted giving Merin a key for when he arrived late and needed to make deliveries into the back of the shop.
She doubly regretted telling him not to waste money on buying flowers.
She triply regretted awkwardly stopping him that first time when he tried to take the flowers away, then stumbled over herself trying to explain that, well, they helped brighten up the place and maybe the customers or someone would appreciate them.
He called her out for blushing. She rolled her fingers into her palm. He ran away, laughing.
It had been about a year now since the war ended and Vell couldn't exactly explain how or why she had fallen into place here. Val Royeaux had technically been her home, once, but she had no illusions of trying to go back there when the Inquisition had officially released the mages of their obligations. The Inquisitor had been clear that anyone who wanted to stay on at Skyhold could.
She had thought about it, maybe grabbing some new assignments or a commission to some kind of Inquisition outpost somewhere or maybe even staying around the mountain fortress and being useful, but something felt off. Maybe it had something to do with the chest of gold that Roggi had left her with and the unnerving feeling that she had to do something worthwhile with it. Something besides go down to the tavern and drink her and all of her friends into comas.
She had set off down the road to see where it might carry her. The road had led here, to Halamshiral.
There was something about the burned-out elven quarter, the busted-up human sections of the city where elves had retaliated even after the Empress' brutal cleansing of the city, and just the general sense that the all of Orlais and every aspect of the war had squatted over the city and taken one big shit onto it worse than anywhere else. It felt like there was an opportunity to make a difference here. So she had stayed.
It had been chance, a fortunate chance, that she had crossed path with the bakers. Vell needed something to do. They needed money.
Gayle was a human, with her kind of boyish build, squared shoulders, plain features and the big studded earrings she wore that had spread the lobes of her otherwise normal, rounded, human ears. She had a more serious personality, sometimes quiet to the point where if Vell didn't turn around to look, she couldn't be sure she was there.
Mai was an elf and might have given the impression that she was Dalish if any of the tattoos she had were on her face instead of up both her arms, up the right side of her neck, across her chest and around her hips and lower back. While she couldn't match the number of earrings in one ear as Vell, she had more overall across her two, as well as one in her left eyebrow, one through her tongue and one through each nipple. She was the kind who knew how to get into, and out of, a lot of trouble.
They were madly in love with each other, despite the high costs they had paid to defy the social and moral standards of the Empire. Both had been disowned by their families. And Vell respected the hell out of the fact that they had both agreed to tell the Orlesians to go fuck themselves in order to be together.
And both of them were not only willing but capable of going drink for drink with Vell at the tavern. Gayle, especially, drank like a demon and after four or six or ten beers, she started to get a little rowdy in a good way. That had made for a lot of damn good times so far.
Merin had gone to Kirkwall for a time, looking for family that he thought he had there. When he hadn't found anyone or, at least, hadn't found anyone who was willing to acknowledge they were his family, he had come to Halamshiral and laid his eyes upon the shabby-looking Good Bread shop and decided he might have to do something about it.
Now Merin's Merchant Service ran trade routes from Halamshiral all across Orlais. His carts never seemed to get raided, because who would raid a merchant column that was protected by a security detail led by a dwarf who claimed to be a king, rode a bronto and carried around a dozen or more axes at a time?
She hadn't heard from Jac or Malcolm recently. Last she heard, they were going to try to get involved in an inn together in Jader near the Orlais/Ferelden border. Or maybe they were just going to go to an inn on the border and look for women. She couldn't really remember. She had been kind of drunk their last night together. All she remembered was telling them that the should just get it over and kiss and get married and then made smooching faces at them until Malcolm tossed half a beer at her to shut her up.
"That's a beaut! A fucking beaut!" Mai congratulated herself as she maneuvered the fresh loaves of bread out of the oven with a large paddle, letting each fluffy, steaming one slide off onto the table to cool. Vell glanced over her shoulder, chuckled, and then turned back to the growing line of customers forming before her.
"You heard her," Vell said as she pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. "Not just a beaut, but a 'fucking beaut!'"
The day's lunch rush was more or less over and a few people were slouching in the chairs out front, looking at the crumbs of sandwiches and empty soup bowls and talking about how they should get back to the job site but they could probably just sit for another ten minutes or so.
It had been a good day. People were really interested in the smoked ham that Merin had brought in from the Anderfels, although she wasn't so sure it was ham after smelling it. Regardless, it was pretty good when slapped on some of the dark bread Gayle had mixed up with beer in the dough.
Vell wiped down the counter with a rag, glancing up from time to time to make sure no one was going to pilfer their plates or utensils. It sounded stupid, like who would steal a fork? The answer had turned out to be more people than she thought. Halamshiral - it was a pretty desperate place, after all.
When she glanced up again, there was a small girl in the front door of the shop, glancing around. She couldn't have been seven years yet. She was dirty, with messy blonde hair, ragged clothes. Vell had seen a hundred just like her since she arrived. That tended to be a byproduct, though, from when the Orlesians came marching through and creating rivers of blood in the streets.
"Hey there," Vell said. The girl jumped, almost as if she hadn't been expecting anyone to notice her. Then again, most people just looked straight over, past and through street urchins like her. "I'm Vell. What can I do you for you?"
She leaned forward, resting on her elbows on the counter. Vell glanced back out toward the street. It didn't look like there was anyone with her. No parents. No siblings. Didn't even look like any other street kids around. Sometimes the older kids would use a young child as a distraction while trying to pickpocket or shoplift, but there wasn't anyone else in the shop and she didn't see any teenagers trying to pilfer from anyone immediately out front.
Vell knew. She had been one of those kids back in Val Royeaux, when she was little.
The little girl's eyes were fixated at the left side of the counter, where she had stacked up a couple loaves of bread in a basket. The one on top was picture-perfect loaf too, like the kind Orlesians wasted time painting in still-lifes.
She lifted her small hand and pointed at the bread.
"One of these?" Vell said, reaching over and picking up one of the loaves. "That's normally three gold pieces, but, you know what? Here."
Vell looked left, then looked right, as if she were checking for guards, then leaned over the counter and extended toward the floor, holding out the bread. "Go ahead. That's for you."
The girl stepped forward slowly, nervously. She was smart to be cautious. It wouldn't be the first time someone had offered a poor girl something for nothing, only to try to snatch her up. Vell knew that too.
When she was close enough, the girl quickly reached out and snatched the bread away, clutching it tightly to her chest. She looked up at Vell and took a step back, before tearing a piece off and pushing it into her mouth. When it was clear Vell wasn't going to try to jump the counter and take it back, she seemed to relax.
"Do you have any parents? Any brothers or sisters? Where are you living?" Vell asked.
The girl didn't answer, instead only tore off another piece of the bread and ate it.
"If you don't have anywhere to go, I know a place, where there are lots of kids like you. Food. Heat. Even a bed with some pillows and blankets. Does that sound good?"
The girl didn't answer to that either. She lifted the bread and stuck the torn up edge to her mouth and took a bite directly out of the loaf. Her eyes remained suspiciously pointed up at Vell.
"It's not safe for a kid like you to be out on the street. I used to be out there when I was your age. I know it's bad." The girl took another bite.
"Maybe I can show you? It's just down the block here," Vell pointed to her left. The girl looked that way briefly, then returned to her bread. Maybe she was a mute? Didn't know how to talk? That would be even worse for her. "Come on, I can take you."
Vell placed her rag down on the counter and started to move toward the door in the counter. And the second she started to move, the little girl turned and bolted back out the door, clutching the bread.
"Shit," Vell said to herself as she vaulted over the counter and out onto the street, looking left and right. She spotted the girl running to the east, taking a turn down a nearby alley and off the main road. Vell followed, ducking between Orlesians out for a stroll with parasols shading them from the mild sun because Maker forbid the sun might touch their skin.
She turned into the alley just as the little girl was hanging a right down another side alley. Vell ran after, taking the turn into a dead-end alley. There were a couple doors to the backs of the buildings, but no other way out. There were heaps of trash piled there, some rotting, stinking pile of something in the far back corner that had a couple cats climbing over which meant, probably, there were mice or rats hiding inside of it.
Vell walked quietly on the balls of her feet, looking at the piles of junk. Empty barrels filled with stagnant rain water. Broken and rotted pallets that looked like they had been there during the fires that gutted this section of town. Empty crates that had been brought in from the market.
She walked toward the end of the alley, where there was one decently intact crate, covered by a bunch of other stuff that had been pulled in close around the open end. As a child, Vell had had a home she could go to at the end of the night, but she had known a dozen other kids who called this type of place home. She came around the front of it, stopping for a second so that her feet and legs were clearly visible, before she crouched down.
And that's when she felt the tiny slap at her hand and the jolt that ran up her arm.
She jerked back, instinctively, as she felt the electric course through her elbow before fading away. She snapped her fingers, trying to get the feeling back over the numbness.
Inside the crate, the girl was curled up in the back corner, clutching the bread to her chest so tightly she was smashing it. Her eyes seemed the catch the glare of the sun even in the shade, like catching the gaze of an animal at night digging through the trash.
Vell glanced at a small, filthy blanket in the crate. There wasn't much else. A dented up metal cup that was filled with what looked like filthy, dirty water. There was a small doll that was missing one of its button eyes. And a small painted box, that had a black scorch mark up the side of it.
"That's pretty good," Vell said quietly, shaking out her still-numb hand. She turned over her other hand, palm up and brought forward a small ball of fire into it. "I can do that too."
The little girl looked at the orb of flame swirling quietly in Vell's palm.
"So this is where you live?" Vell rolled her fingers in, extinguishing the fire, then tapped on the crate with her knuckles. She glanced up at the ceiling above the girl, noting the mold that was growing across the wood. "Not so good in the rain, though, huh?"
The girl shook her head. That felt like a victory.
"Let me take you somewhere better," Vell offered. "This isn't safe for a kid. Doubly not safe for a mage. You know what a mage is?"
The girl nodded again and pointed one of her small fingers toward Vell's hand. Vell turned over her palm again and brought the fire back.
"That's right. You're a mage and so am I. I used to be out on the street. And then one day someone caught me and there took me away to a bad place. The Circle. You know what the Circle is?"
The little girl shook her head no, and that nearly made Vell's heart burst with joy. She had no idea what the Circle was.
And she'd never have to.
"Good," Vell said. "That's not where I'm going to take you. I'm going to take you to a nice place, with beds and food and a big, stone roof that doesn't leak. It's dry and warm. Safe. There's lot of other boys and girls there, too."
The girl looked blankly, but bent her head a little and nibbled at her bread, which seemed to suggest she was at least listening.
"And hey, you know what else?" Vell turned her head, reaching up and tapping the pointed tip of her ear. "I've got these, just like you, too. And I never let anything bad happen to kids who've got these."
The little girl lifted her hand off her bread, clutching her own ear as she ran her finger up the edge until she touched the pointed tip too.
"So, will you come with me?" Vell extended her hand out.
The girl stared at it for a second, ran her finger over the tip of her ear again, looked deeply into Vell's eyes for a moment. She was so young, so small, but even at this age, those eyes had been trained to see through people and see danger wherever it might live.
After a moment more studying Vell's face, she nodded.
Vell smiled. "Good. I'm happy." The girl didn't smile back, but the frightful tension in her body eased. "Come on, grab your dolly there. I bet one of the other girls can help fix her for you."
Vell stood up and backed away from the crate. She didn't hear anything for a second. Then, a small rustle. A second of quiet.
A moment later, a small frightened elf girl emerged, clutching a half-eaten loaf of bread in one arm and a dirty, one-eyed doll in the other.
Ready to embark on a new life.
"Food!" Vell shouted from the kitchen.
She could hear various shouts and a rustle of activity from the other room and she finished stirring the pot and grabbed her mitt to lift the hot pot off the fire. With her free hand, she reached out for the sack, slinging the uneven pack over her shoulder as she spun toward the doorway.
"What is it tonight?" Micah accosted her as soon as she stepped out the entry.
"Onion soup."
"Again?" the boy whined, throwing his head back and letting his arms slump to his side.
"Yes, again," Vell said, throwing a half-hearted kick in his direction to shoo him out of the way. "Onions are cheap and I don't see any of you kids making any money."
"I could if you'd let me," Micah argued.
He was thirteen, tall for his age, but scrawny and awkward. He was growing faster than his body could handle, being stretched out like taffy being pulled at both ends. He needed red meat to add some bulk to him and it killed her she couldn't get it for him. His dirty blonde hair was shaggy and oily. He stank, not quite like a man yet, but enough that he needed to hit the wash bucket more often than he did.
"For the last time, you're not going out to the mine," Vell said.
"They'd pay me!"
"Yeah, they'd pay you and have you crawling down some filthy hole. And when that hole collapses, you won't get paid because you won't be alive any more."
Vell sat the pot down in the middle of the table and heaved the bag of bread up next to it. "One roll for the small kids, two for the big kids. You know whether you're one or the other," she said as hands began to stretch open the sack and dig into it greedily.
She let out a sigh and rubbed her back, sore from standing all day. She glanced up at the high vaulted ceiling, where the streaks of soot looked like shades stretching their demon arms up the walls of the church.
The Empress's Orlesian soldiers hadn't even spared the Chantry in the elven quarter when they came through and purged the city. The floors and walls had been stained with elven blood and flames had consumed nearly everything inside except for the stone walls that now bore the scars as a reminder of Celene's brutal power.
Once a place of worship, the elves who had survived refused to go back to it. It had sat empty, a sign of a faith abandoned, until Vell had come upon it and began to clean it up. What it did have once she cleared all the debris of it was space, strong doors and good walls. It was a safe place.
It was, to her knowledge, Halamshiral's only orphanage. Or, at least, the only one taking in elves.
The children gathered around the table, each taking a place as the bag of leftover bread from the shop was passed around and distributed. Each one huddled up on the bench, their bowls clutched in their hands, bent and tarnished spoons and forks at the ready.
Vell looked around, noticing the empty space at the far end of the table. She turned her head back toward the quarters in the back of the church and yelled again. "Cat! Come on! Food!"
"Coming!" was the muffled response from the back.
With the rest of the kids gathered around, jostling back and forth with each other, some of the smaller kids extended their bowls upward toward her in hopes of being first fed, Vell grabbed the ladle and stirred it around the pot.
"All right kids, who do we thank for this meal?"
In unison was the loud response. "No one!" followed by laughs and giggles.
"That's right," she said stirring the pot again. "You're going to grow up and you're going to fend for yourselves out there. You're going to fight for what you want and earn what you get. You're going to grow up and be good kids and do good stuff. And good stuff will happen to you."
She dipped the ladle, pulling out the first scoop and dropped it into the first bowl as she went around the table. "And if it doesn't, you're going to keep at it until it does. I don't want to ever hear that any of you kids are in trouble. Because what's going to happen if you are?" She stopped in front of the elven boy with black hair who had tried to knife her for her purse on the street one night.
"You'll kick our butts, Mama Vell," he said. He knew, first hand, after she twisted the knife out of his hand and then booted him in the ass halfway across the street before asking him why he trying to mug people in the night.
"That's right," she said as she scooped some soup for him while the littlest kids giggled at the mention of butts. "I'll kick your butts. But as long as you're good kids, you can stay here as long as you want. I'll be here for you until you're old enough to go off on your own."
She filled the last bowl just as Cat arrived at the table, the new little elven girl holding her hand with one hand and still clutching the doll with her other. The doll now had a second eye sewed to its head, even if it was brown instead of black and smaller than the other one.
Vell ladled a portion of soup into a bowl they had set out for the little girl as one of the other kids placed a plump dinner roll in front of her. She looked around the table at all of the other kids talking and joking with each other and looked terrified. But she reached up and grabbed her bread and began to nibble. Vell patted her on the head as she placed the pot back down on the table and stepped away.
"How is she doing?" Vell asked.
Cat shrugged. "Hard to say, since she doesn't talk. But I think she'll be fine, once she gets settled."
"That's good. I-" Vell stopped, reaching down and pulling on a thin silver chain dangling around Cat's neck. She tugged it up, revealing a small aquamarine pendant that had been obscured down the girl's chest. "And where did this come from?"
"I… got it at the market?" Cat said, rising into a question with a slight shrug.
"What have I told you about stealing?" Vell said, letting it drop back between the girl's budding chest. "Wherever you pinched it from, take it back tomorrow."
"Fine," Cat said, fixing the front of her shirt before crossing her arms over her chest.
She was the oldest and the first Vell had brought her. She had stumbled upon Cat out behind the inn, thrown out with the literal garbage. Her eyes were glazed and distant, with a trail of foamy white spittle oozing out of the corner of her mouth.
And someone just left her like that.
Vell had carried her halfway across the city back to the abandoned church, cleaned her up and sat with her until she came back. She was so disoriented and so weak. When Vell told her how she had found her, she wept.
Vell stayed with her in that room for three full days and nights as she suffered with blazing fever and crippling chills. She held Cat's hair as she vomited so hard it burst the blood vessels around her eyes. She stood in the doorway, blocking the girl in as she raged and tried to go as the withdrawal from the dust took control of her, screaming for another hit.
It was as messy three days, but she survived it.
At the end of the third night, she rolled over in the bed and clutched Vell and sobbed and choked until she expelled the last of the poison out of her body and out of her soul.
It's when Vell understood that she had to save these kids, as many as she could, no matter the cost. No one else was going to if she didn't.
"You're not using again, are you?" Vell said quietly.
"No!" Cat protested, shoving Vell. "How can you even ask me that?"
Vell put her hands up in apology. "I wouldn't do that to you," Cat said, running a hand back through her short, spiky, black hair.
"You better not."
"I won't."
Cat turned her head slightly toward the side. Vell looked at the pink scarred notch in Cat's left ear where someone had cut a chunk out of it near the tip with a knife like some kind of alley cat that she kept as her namesake.
She had lived out on the streets even before Celene's soldiers had put the elven quarter to torch. She had survived out there for ten years. She didn't talk about how, but she never took off the pair of curved daggers that she wore in crossed sheaths at the small of her back.
"Good," Vell said, pulling her in for a hug. "I wouldn't be able to take it."
"I know," Cat said as she hugged back. "Love you."
"Love you too, kiddo," Vell said as she patted her on the back before letting her go. "Get something to eat. Keep an eye on the others. Make sure they all get to bed tonight. I've got to run out of town tonight."
Cat only nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.
"Midnight rendezvous with Merin?" Cat teased, fluttering her eyelashes and making kissy faces at Vell and a slight stroking motion with her right hand, forefinger and thumb connected in a rather average-sized ring.
Vell narrowed her eyes and didn't look amused.
"Go eat."
She had made the trip dozens of times, but it still took her far too long to find the cabin in the woods.
That was the point, honestly, but still, she hated stumbling around in the dark looking around and second-guessing herself on whether she was going to the right way. No doubt whatever animals were out there between the trees or up in the boughs were gazing at her with their perfect night vision and laughing to themselves, if they laughed.
It didn't help that there never seemed to be any lights on, except for that few times that she'd catch a faint green glow in the air as Thelric danced outside, brushing the curtain of the Fade with her fingertips as she spun around barefoot through the grass and leaves.
Vell was pretty sure this was exactly how those legends about hedge witches got started, with some odd woman living in a cabin in the middle of a wood, howling at the moon.
The pack on Vell's back was loaded with another week's worth of supplies. She trekked out into the middle of nowhere once a week to bring bread, meat, wine sometimes, a fresh change of clothes every month or so. She didn't bother bringing a new hunk of soap any more, because it was clear from the three that were sitting on the windowsill that Thelric wasn't using them.
When Vell had decided to leave Skyhold, she had temporarily left Thelric there inside the safety of the high mountain walls until she figured out where she was going to get settled. When that place had become Halamshiral, she had made the trip back to the Frostbacks to collect her broken-minded teacher and bring her in tow.
The soldiers at Skyhold didn't understand and were, rightly, perturbed by her. Who could feel comfortable around someone who had been so badly damaged? It might have been easier to find her a place in the city. She could even stay at the orphanage. But this arrangement just felt more… right. Thelric seemed more at peace out here, where no one would bother her.
Vell trudged up the small hill, to the small cabin that had probably once been some hunter's outpost but had clearly been long-abandoned before she stumbled upon it, and tapped on the door with her knuckles.
"Thelric, it's me. It's your Pupil."
There was only silence. Vell leaned over, looking in the small window next to the door. The small bed in the corner of the small hut was empty. There were no candles lit, as usual. There was no light except the silver-white color of the moon stretching through the trees.
Vell stepped away from the door and walked around the back of the house. Sometimes she wandered a little away from the house, chasing some unseen something on the current of the Veil. She looked through the dark, listening for the rustle of leaves or the dim glow of magic in the air.
Nothing.
"Thelric?" she called out quietly to the darkness. "Where are you? It's your Pupil. I'm at the cabin. If you're out there, come back."
She paused, feeling like she was calling to some pet who had snuck out the back door of the house. Come on Thelric, come on! Come get a treat!" She circled the house, peering out into the dark, still looking.
Nothing.
Vell shrugged the straps of the pack back onto her shoulders and closed her eyes, reaching out for the Veil. It was calm, like placid water barely moving, or a field of grass slightly swaying in a light breeze. Vell stretched out her arm, pushing it slightly out and away from her, feeling as the magical barrier rolled like a wave. As it bumped up against the tree trunks, it rippled and vibrated, moving in different directions until it all kind of settled into its wholeness once more.
Vell opened her eyes. If anyone would feel a change in the Veil, it would be Thelric. The woman rode the currents like they were her own blood coursing through her veins. It was like attracting predators with a drop of blood that they could smell from a mile away.
And still, nothing.
Vell went back to the front door and popped it open. No, she wasn't randomly sitting in a corner or lying on the floor or anything - stranger things had happened before. Vell dropped the pack off her back and set it down next to the door, turning her palm up as she summoned a small ball of fire for light.
The cabin looked much the same. Sparse, dirty. Just like she had left it. The three clumps of soap were still on the back windowsill.
Everything was the same. Everything looked normal.
Except for envelope sitting on the table. There was a name printed in black ink on the front of the letter, in thick, somewhat jagged handwriting. It wasn't addressed to Thelric.
It was addressed to her.
