Part Twenty-Four: Magpie

"I wonder, Inquisitor, if you might consider waiting until the enemy is actually defeated before you commence looting."

Little fires still burn here and there, remnants of the spell Dorian cast only moments ago, but the elf pays them no mind as he moves from one dead Venatori to the next, searching the bodies for anything useful. "They were defeated," he replies distractedly. "Quite dead, in fact."

"Barely. If you get to it any quicker, you'll be going through their pockets before they even hit the ground. It's indecent."

"Dead is dead," the Inquisitor says. He holds a ring up to the sunlight, eying it appraisingly.

"My little magpie," Dorian says with an affectionate sigh. "You simply can't resist anything shiny, can you?" Not for the first time, he wonders how his lover acquired this adorable, if slightly macabre, trait.

Cole takes it upon himself to answer. "A boy walks in the woods, steps soft and silent. A world of green and gold and earth. Sunlight shivers through the branches, shows me what doesn't belong. A glint in the grass, strange and secret, glitters like half-buried treasure…"

The elf doesn't look up, but there's a ghost of a smile on his lips, and he flushes slightly. "That will do, Cole, thank you."

Dorian is overcome by the image of a small, silver-haired boy dropping to his haunches to examine his prize. What a beautiful child he must have been. "And what was it, this mysterious glint of metal?"

He shakes his head. "I'm not even sure which memory Cole is thinking of. He just described most of my childhood."

"It was a belt buckle," Cole supplies. "It was very pretty."

Dorian laughs. "Not quite treasure, then."

"It was to me," the elf says. "Anything that wasn't of the forest was treasure as far as I was concerned. The places my clan roamed, the wilderness was mostly untouched. Dalish passed through now and then, but we don't leave anything behind, so when you came across something unusual – a bit of metal, or a scrap of leather – chances were it was from the human world, and…" Another embarrassed smile. "As often as not, attached to a body. Or at least, what was left of one."

Inquisitor Lavellan: Looting corpses since 9:20 Dragon.

Cassandra's been listening to the tale as well, smiling as she wipes the blood from her blade. "Were you not frightened of the bodies? Even as a small boy?"

"At first. But curiosity won out in the end. I was fascinated by anything to do with the outside world."

Of course you were. It's perfectly consistent with the man he became. The sort who would devour history and arcane knowledge every chance he got. Who would pen a history of his own people in the hopes the wider world would be interested. The sort who would take a human lover, Dorian thinks, even if it meant becoming a pariah among his own kin.

The elf's glance falls to Cassandra's feet. He's spotted something else in the grass, and magpie that he is, he swoops on it.

"What is that?" Cassandra asks. "A necklace? It's beautiful."

"It's Dalish." The Inquisitor's tone is oddly subdued.

Curious now, Dorian goes in for a closer look. It's an amulet, a graceful thing of ivory and gold designed to look like interlocking halla horns.

"They're common among the northern clans," the elf says. "Lovers exchange them when they promise themselves to one another. Each amulet has two halves, and they fit together like a puzzle." He takes the delicately twined horns between his thumbs and forefingers and twists gently, and they come apart into two separate pieces. "In this case, one lover had an amulet of gold, the other ivory. Then, during the bonding ceremony, they exchanged halves, and…" He twists them back together. "Made a new whole."

"Beautiful," Cassandra says again, wistfully. She really is a romantic.

"Like a wedding ring," Dorian says. "Only more elegant."

The elf nods. "Which makes me wonder how it got all the way down here."

Dorian has a pretty good idea, but he keeps it to himself. He's just seen his lover smile for the first time since their ordeal in the Frostbacks, and he'll be damned if he lets dark thoughts overtake them again. "You do have an eye for pretty things, amatus," he says with forced levity. "Such as myself, for example."

The elf meets his gaze, and something passes through his eyes that Dorian can't quite place. He turns away, but not before a hint of colour touches his cheeks. "Come on," he says, pocketing the amulet. "Let's see what else they had that doesn't belong to them."

They sift through the camp, starting with the clearing before moving into the cave the Venatori were using as a shelter. They've only gone a few steps before Dorian sees the cold gleam of iron bars in the shadows, and he swears under his breath, praying they're not about to find another cage full of slaves. But no – this cage is far too small for a person. What in the Maker? Dorian casts a pale orb of light to illuminate the gloom, and a trio of small, furry things scurries to the back of the cage with a whimper.

"Puppies?" Dorian is incredulous. "What in Andraste's name are the Venatori doing with a litter of puppies?"

The Inquisitor lowers himself to his haunches in front of the cage. "Not puppies. Cubs."

"Wolves?" Cassandra scowls in disapproval. "What happened to their mother?"

"They killed her," Cole says. "They were going to kill the cubs, too, but that one"—he points at one of the pups—"put up a fight, so they decided to keep them. Take them back to Minrathous. They'll do well in the fighting pits…"

"Savages," Cassandra growls.

The elf is quiet, his gaze drifting over the bars before falling back to the cubs. Dorian sees the look in his eyes, and it's not pity, precisely. It's sympathy. Maybe even empathy. He murmurs to them in elven, as though they'll understand.

Cassandra sighs. "I suppose we will have to put them down," she says, drawing a dagger from her belt.

Dorian is not a dog person. Or a cat person. He's not a person who particularly enjoys animals of any kind, other than those that end up on his plate. But he's bloody well not going to stand here and watch the Seeker murder a bunch of puppies.

"Couldn't we have one of our soldiers take them into town? They're young enough yet to be tamed. I'd wager someone would be happy to have them."

The elf hesitates. "They're wild, Dorian. Deep down, they always will be. It might be kinder to—"

"No." He says it more sharply than he intended, but the elf's words have touched a nerve. "Maybe they won't be able to live the life they were meant for, but they can adjust. They're fighters, aren't they, Cole?"

"Yes. And they can trust. They want to."

"There, you see? Maybe they'll even be happier in the long run. Well looked after. Loved, even, if they're lucky." Maker's breath, he sounds like a sentimental fool. There's a fair to middling chance his lover, at least, knows where all this is coming from, but so be it.

One of the cubs inches toward the cage door and sniffs tentatively at the Inquisitor's glove. It's the cub Cole pointed out earlier, the black one who picked a fight with its captors. The elf extends a finger through the bars, and the cub nibbles at it.

The Inquisitor sighs. "All right, then," he says, and proceeds to pick the lock.

They take the cubs back to camp, the Inquisitor carrying one under each arm while Cole carries the last. They're surprisingly docile, for all their wildness. Too terrified to bite, perhaps, or just too exhausted. Happily, they don't seem to have been ill-treated, and a few scraps of venison get their spirits up.

"They're adorable," Harding says as they load the cubs into a supply crate. "Someone will take them for sure."

The others head off to find something to eat. Dorian waits until they're out of earshot before addressing himself to the black cub. "Clever of you, that bit with the finger-nibbling. He couldn't very well off you after that, could he?"

The cub yawns, showing off sharp little teeth. Then it gets up on hind legs to sniff at Dorian, little black nose twitching with curiosity. Tentatively, Dorian reaches into the crate, and the cub snuffles at his glove. It's especially interested in the buckles, licking at one of them and even giving it an experimental chew.

"Aren't you the little magpie?" Dorian murmurs. The cub pays him no mind, chewing away.

And Dorian has an idea.