There's all of one translation this time, and it will be at the bottom.
Leave-Taking
I woke in bed, contemplating a ceiling that still felt unfamiliar to me, even though I spent more time living in this room in the Grand Cathedral at Val Royeaux than I did anywhere else in Thedas. Time had failed to make it feel like home, though in truth leaving Skyhold had been something of a relief. Without Solas, my fortress - the fortress that had once been mine, before politics forced me to give it up - hurt more than comforted. Now I dreaded seeing it again, knowing what I would find when I returned to Solas's rotunda.
Solas. His absence was as palpable as the absence of my left hand, and often just as frustrating, and Latha was no substitute - was, in many ways, worse than nothing at all. It rarely used endearments, thankfully, but when it did, as it had tonight, my skin crawled.
Why had the felasil made a thing like Latha? Everything I knew of spirits told me such a step - reflecting so many unfulfilled desires onto one of them - had to be dangerous.
Years ago, he would have been happy to answer that question and tell me all about his motives - even, perhaps, those that he knew were unwise, tainted by desperation or regret. I would have listened, enthralled, because I did seek to understand everything I could, and, because I loved him, I would have forgiven him any weakness that had precipitated his actions. He would have told me I ought to hold him to a higher standard, but he would have said it with a smile. And then I would have kissed him. It was the game I played with myself, in those days: if I made Solas smile, I got to kiss him.
I pushed myself out of bed and away from the pull of mostly bitter memories touched by only hints of sweetness. Today I had to be conspicuous as I rode toward the College of Enchanters in Cumberland, drawing attention of potential observers while Leliana sent agents toward Nevarra and Tevinter. Sometimes when I provided these diversions, I knew what she was after. This time, I didn't. That meant that whatever-it-was would cause a scandal - or worse - if found out, and also that I wasn't in line to take the fall for it. I would need to be appropriately - and preferably honestly - shocked if it all fell apart.
We all served as we could, and in this case the entirety of my service lay in misdirection.
I called for a bath, as I wouldn't have the chance to bathe again before Cumberland. I might as well take advantage of the luxuries of the Grand Cathedral while I could. As I bathed, my maid, Pia, packed the saddlebags I would keep with me at all times - the ones that contained letters, books, and extra weapons. Pia used to travel with me, but she was now near the birth of her first child. Leliana and Josephine were both looking for someone suitable to add to my contingent of servants - another maid with enough fashion and political sense to make me up appropriately when I left Val Royeaux. Preferably a human maid, as humans were far less likely than elves to be agents of Fen'Harel.
I had observed that having such an agent stationed so close to me would be an opportunity as well as a danger, but I hadn't carried the point. At least not yet. And besides, I didn't have anyone specific in mind, whether elf, human, dwarf, or Qunari, so the point was currently somewhat moot anyway.
Cassandra, who was currently in Val Royeaux on business and staying in the Grand Cathedral on Leliana's invitation, came in to say goodbye and deliver a note as I attempted to make a start dressing myself. Pia had instructed me to wait for her, but she was off making certain my court gowns had been packed appropriately, and I was impatient. "Word from Varric," Cassandra said, settling herself into a chair and holding the note out to me.
"Read it for me?" I requested, struggling one-handed with my buttons.
She opened the paper and scanned it. "He says he cannot get away just now, but that he has pushed Prince Sebastian of Starkhaven to roust some of his own nobles to make a respectable show marching south to meet you."
I made a dissatisfied sound. "I would have liked to see him, but his getting away was never likely. I'll have to plan a trip to Kirkwall when I have time."
"He also says he will place some obvious agents in the parade to provoke speculation, and apologizes for the prince's…" She paused briefly and then shrugged, reading directly from the letter: "'complete ineptitude at subtlety.' According to him, it would be better if they were agents from Starkhaven. Somehow it would imply you were carrying on an affair with the prince?"
I laughed as I finished with my buttons and eyed the laces in the mirror. "Well, I'm certain there would be ways to do that, but I think Prince Sebastian would need to be either Josephine or Varric to work out how to do it. Anyway, as distracting as it might be for some, I don't think such rumors would interest Solas's agents much." Some laces I could manage, at least theoretically - depending on where they were placed, how tight they needed to be, and how vital they were to the structure of the garment. If they were easily accessible, mostly superfluous, and only needed to be tied off loosely, I could manage one-handed.
Of course, almost none of my garments had such laces, and they performed a decorative function on the ones that did, which meant I still couldn't do them one-handed, because I couldn't make them sufficiently even for decorative purposes.
Laces had become the bane of my existence since losing my left hand.
"Likely his agents would see through the ruse," Cassandra said, "though I imagine Solas would not lack interest in the matter." She saw my eyebrows go up in the mirror. "I am not so ignorant of the world that I fail to notice jealousy when I see it, and Solas seemed to me as capable of the emotion as any man," she chided me. "He may never have spoken it aloud, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen it change his conduct, but it does not follow that he didn't feel it regularly." Before I could recover enough from my surprise to find a response, she gestured to the stays whose laces I had been toying with without any discernible progress. "I am already here. Let me help you with that."
I nodded and began coiling my braid into a bun, moving it out of her way as she approached. She made quick work of the laces, tightening and tying them off with brisk efficiency - the same way she did most things. Sometimes I forgot that, while Cassandra had no patience for games and little for deception, she was still a keen observer, and her conclusions regarding people and their motivations were fairly reliable. At least so long as she wasn't dealing with Varric - but, then, Varric was a very skilled and charming liar, and at this point there was so much history between them that she could not possibly approach him with anything like neutrality.
"Who would Solas even have had to be jealous of?" I asked as she worked.
"Well," she chuckled, "though I hate to remind you if you truly have forgotten, aristocrats visited from across Thedas to stare at you, and there were certainly inquiries regarding marriage."
"Well, yes, but those were just politics." I dismissed them with a shake of my head. "And politics more favorable to specific nobles than the Inquisition. There was no chance of my marrying then, even if I had been inclined to consider it." She gave my stays a final, firm tug. "Will you pin this for me?" I asked, shaking my head again, this time to indicate the bun.
"You truly think that out of an entire parade of noblemen, none noticed you were young and attractive?" she asked with another laugh.
"You thought I was attractive?" I retorted, teasing her.
"You are generally thought attractive," she replied severely, sticking pins in my hair - and scalp - with a little more force than necessary. "Besides," she went on, "there was also the matter of-" Her eyes met mine in the mirror as she broke off. "But it isn't as though you need to know, and it isn't my place to speak of it."
"Wait, what?" I asked, suddenly interested.
"How is that?" she replied, ignoring my question.
I shook my head to test the stability of the bun, and considered more thoroughly the hint she had dropped. "Perfect, thank you," I told her. "Am I to understand that someone within the Inquisition was sweet on me? Someone relatively highly placed? Perhaps even one of our friends?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Was is more than I can vouch for, I fear. Last I knew - which was admittedly some time ago - the situation was ongoing."
I considered pursuing the matter further - but just as quickly decided against it. Satisfying my curiosity likely wasn't worth it, because I wouldn't change any of the key emotional points of the past several years, which made it difficult to see a way to change my present circumstances or feelings. I still loved Solas. Digging for additional details was only likely to embarrass someone, perhaps someone I cared about very much.
"Probably best kept in confidence," I told Cassandra with a decisive nod.
She regarded me with a faint smile. "You are a wise woman, Inquisitor."
With Varric's message delivered and discussed, Cassandra bid me farewell and fair travels. Pia returned shortly after, made a disgusted sound at the hash I was making of pinning up my sleeve, and helped me finish dressing. Then I completed the process by hiding various knives and daggers on my person. Though I was trained as an archer from childhood - bows being the preferred weapon of my people - I couldn't draw one missing a hand. I had a crossbow that had been modified so I could more easily reload it with one hand an my teeth, but crossbows were invariably slow in the best of circumstances. They were hardly suited to extended close-quarters combat, which was what I would be subjected to in an assassination attempt. Or - in a skilled assassination attempt. My best recourse after losing my arm was to make use of the dexterity I already possessed, but redirect it to hand-to-hand weapons. I would never be as proficient as I had been in my first discipline, but I had reached a reasonable level of competence. I was certainly good enough to make a great deal of noise and mess before anyone succeeded in killing me.
Afterward, I hurried down to the stables to mount my horse and wait. I couldn't go anywhere these days without a large retinue, and as it was a civilian as much as military operation, it invariably ran late. At last everything was either found and stowed or given up for lost, at least temporarily, and we rode out from the Grand Cathedral in a blast of horns and fanfare. People lined the sides of the road to watch, cheering, though I imagined many more were cursing us for disrupting their routines. It should have been familiar, but I always felt a curious sense of dislocation as we rode through the streets with people looking on, as though I was in the wrong place, or in a dream.
The feeling always faded, thankfully, once we left the city. It felt good to be on the road again. I might not be an adventurer anymore, but I didn't believe I would ever be at home in a city. Even a decorous pageant - which was the only kind of travel I was allowed anymore - was less stifling than the Grand Cathedral.
I glanced around and realized, now that we had made it to the much wider trade road, that the formation of my retinue had shifted and I was riding near Lace Harding. I greeted her and she offered me her usual unhurried, slightly acerbic smile. "You're a last-minute addition," I told her. "I would have noticed if my brief had mentioned you were coming."
She sighed, though she was still smiling. "The Divine wants me out of the way, I guess," she said with a shrug. "I'm not sure what she's up to, but it's either something I would disapprove of, or something I would want in on."
"So instead you're being sent into temporary exile with me," I teased her. "Ir abelas. This trip is likely to be dull."
"Maybe not as dull as you think," she replied, her smile becoming slightly superior. "I have some orders that will keep things lively for me - and I might cut you in if you ask nicely."
"How many elegant soirees do you suppose it will take to make me beg?" I joked.
"I should take bets," she replied, then lowered her voice a little, though no one is near enough to hear us over the stamp of hooves, creak of leather, jingling of tack and chainmail, and snapping of pennants. "There might be a Jenny or two involved."
"Might there?" I raised my eyebrow inquiringly, wondering if she was implying what it seemed she was implying.
"Sera - or whoever I've been trading messages with - is being coy about it, but would they even bother if she weren't coming?" Harding replied.
"Possibly," I answered with a laugh. "But, no, not likely. When will you know for certain?"
"Hopefully there will be a message waiting for me at the College," Harding answered.
"Are you going to explain further?" I demanded when she didn't go on to tell me what we needed Jennys for.
She glanced around again. "I'll arrange things a little better tomorrow, and we can talk then."
I nodded, satisfied enough. She was likely being overcautious, but some matters deserved exaggerated care, as I knew perfectly well.
We spent the rest of the day riding together, reminiscing and sharing innocuous gossip from the Inquisition, Chantry hierarchy, and Val Royeaux. Whatever the reason Leliana had decided to send her, I was pleased to have her along. It felt almost like old times, when she had accompanied me to new campsites within the various regions we were pacifying. Of course, now we were surrounded by many more people, and they were dressed much less practically, but tune all that out and it felt similar. There was still plenty of doom hanging over us, even if it wasn't the kind that left a visible hole in the sky.
Our company didn't even make it to the crossroads before we set up camp that evening - due in part to the inevitable late start, but also because we had spent the day riding easily, as we would no doubt continue to do in the days to come. The point was the spectacle, and so there was no reason to hurry - not like in the past, when I had been continually rushing across Thedas, closing rifts and trying to stay a step or two ahead of Corypheus. It would take us nine or ten days to reach Cumberland. I might have covered the distance on foot in the same amount of time, had I been alone.
My tent was nearly the first thing erected when we stopped for the night, and servants did it for me. I told myself, as I always did, that it was because of my missing arm, but I knew perfectly well that was less than half the truth. I wouldn't have been allowed to help even if I had still possessed two perfectly good hands. Inquisitor meant something different than it had four years ago - or even two - and I had become too important to see to my own tent. Or, at least, I had become too important to be seen seeing to my own tent.
I did insist, as always, on unpacking my own gear. That was a security issue, and also done in the privacy of my tent, so no one made a fuss about it.
Though this camp was little like either the ones I grew up sleeping in among my clan, or those I had become accustomed to during my first years with the Inquisition, it still sounded very much the same. I heard conversations, songs, and games of chance all being played out around fires near and far. The canvas of my tent shifted with every breeze. The sounds of crickets and the occasional frog slipped in past the boundaries of the camp, and all of it felt right.
I slid into sleep as into a pair of perfectly fitted and well-worn boots - much more easily than I ever did within the walls of any city.
Felasil: Fool, lit. slow thoughts